That's the performance of my 401(k) for all of 2008.  To put things in perspective, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down nearly 34% on the year.  The S&P 500 was down 38%.  And then when you consider the world as a whole, the global return was down 44%.  All in all, it could have been a lot worse.  I'm just glad that retirement is so far off for me that this will be just a blip on the radar.

I doubt I'll do anything to the allocation of my 401(k) except let it rebalance itself in June.  Everything in my portfolio was down between 30% and 40% for the year.  It would be a waste of time to try and move things around so that I don't lose 1% or 2% here and there.  I think that I will wait until 2010 before I move things around again.

In other news, last year I opened a savings account that pays about 4%.  Of all my "investments", it was only one of two that actually made me money on the year.  Go figure!

I not at all surprised given all the economic problems we've been having lately.  This morning I was checking my finances and decided to look at a graph of my 401(k) performance over the last year.  It was more or less holding its own until the last week when the markets took a dive.  My 401(k) is down roughly 23.5% from its yearly high back in June.  Obviously I'm not alone here and just about everyone else's 401(k) looks very similar.

It will go back up eventually and any contributions I make right now are obviously going to be worth a lot more to me in the long run.  Since the DOW is at the same place it was in 2004, it's kind of like rolling back the clock.  From 2004 up until late 2007, I believe my 401(k) gained somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-14% each year.  Not too shabby and I didn't have a financial planner to help until 2007.  Even if this downturn lasts a while, I would expect at least a mediocre 6-7% return following the current downturn.  The grass will certainly be greener when all the markets sort themselves out.