Below is my asset allocation on October 1st 2008. As many of you know, this was the month when the market crashed and lost more than a trillion dollars of shareholder value.
4.3% – Traditional IRA, mostly equity mutual funds
8.5% – Vanguard 401(K), mostly high risk mutual funds
87.2% – ING High Interest Savings Account, cash 🙂
I use the term “genius” in jest, but this just goes to show you that sometimes the best decisions you make come by doing absolutely nothing at all.
Over the course of my career, I had developed a huge stockpile of cash and had been feeling pressure to invest in the market to get a better return. However, I never found the time to do the research and learn proper investing principles. Therefore, I never pulled the trigger.
The market crash changed everything. My assets dodged a huge bullet. My career did not – I was laid off by my employer. The combination of these two gave me tremendous incentive to learn how to invest in the market, during a time when the market was cheap. Clearly, I wasn’t an investing guru by any means back in 2008, but the crash put me on track to becoming one.
