Wall Street is stressing me out

Hello Zebra! I work for a financial institution where we assist people with their retirement finances. We also advise those who have investments in the stock market what to do. This bear market that we are experiencing right now is stressful for everyone. It affects EVERYONE's 401Ks and pensions and basically, daily life. I know this is a scary time for all right now, however, there are options for you. (I would recommend consulting a local financial for a FREE Independant Personal Retirement Overview (aka. an IPRO). I know offhand that Ameriprise Financial offers these IPRO's and I am sure many others do, as well. Without delving into your personal finances, this is the best generic advise I can give you during this bear market economic time: If you are not yet retired and still have a few years to go: I know this sounds crazy, but now is the best time to get as much money as you can invested in the stock market! BUY LOW, SELL HIGH. Well, now is the low point. Yes, you may lose a little bit of money in the meantime, since no one can predict how long this bear market will last, but if you don't buy now, you will miss your opportunity to take advantage of this. If you are already retired or within just a few months of doing so: Well, this is a lot tougher decision for you. If it were my money and I were already retired, I would probably sell all but 20% of my stocks and invest a small portion of it in a CD, a portion of it in a Roth IRA, and let the rest of it sit in a cash account (kind of like a savings account managed thru the stock market) until things start looking up. You will miss the lowest cost to rebuy these stocks this way, but you may not lose as much this way. Always remember, DIVERSIFICATION IS THE ANSWER!!!! It won't solve your problems, however, it will make the sting hurt a little less, so to speak. But again, talking to a financial advisor for some advise may ease your mind a little and 9 times out of 10 you can do so for free! Good luck and I wish you all the best.

It isn't going to get any better ny time soon. This whole bailout thing means more bad news I fear. We are just going to go in debt even more and the value of the dollar is going to go down even more. This bailout was suppose to settle things down and the stocks went crazy south today. The only good news I got was that the price on oil went below 90 bucks. Now if that would start going down at the pump it would help.