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Fearful of an impending recession? Here's what you need to know if you're near retirement or retired
Personal Finance • Perspective
Fearful of an impending recession? Here’s what you need to know if you’re near retirement or retired.
By Michelle Singletary, Columnist
August 19 at 8:00 AM
It’s not a matter of if, but when. ... The United States will have another recession. The question many people are wondering is: Will the economic downturn be mild or brutal?
The Great Recession, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, was harsh. People lost their homes. Many investors bailed from the stock market after experiencing devastating drops in the value of their retirement accounts.
“In the worst recessions, the stock index has been slashed in half. In others it only slipped a few percentage points,” Andrew Van Dam, who covers data and economics for The Washington Post, pointed out recently.
....
“At the market’s close on March 9, 2009, U.S. stocks had fallen a stomach-wrenching 57 percent from their Oct. 9, 2007, peak, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the Wilshire 5000 indexes,” The Washington Post’s Allan Sloan wrote last year on the ninth anniversary of the day in 2009 when the U.S. stock market hit bottom. “For those of us (including me) who had large parts of their net worth tied up in stocks, it was a really scary time. But those of us who didn’t bail out have been rewarded. Richly. That decline, the second-steepest since 1932, has been followed by the second-longest bull market.”
....
Follow Michelle Singletary on Twitter @SingletaryM and Facebook.
Michelle Singletary writes the nationally syndicated personal finance column The Color of Money. Her award-winning column is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group and is carried in dozens of newspapers nationwide. Follow https://twitter.com/SingletaryM
Fearful of an impending recession? Here’s what you need to know if you’re near retirement or retired.
By Michelle Singletary, Columnist
August 19 at 8:00 AM
It’s not a matter of if, but when. ... The United States will have another recession. The question many people are wondering is: Will the economic downturn be mild or brutal?
The Great Recession, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, was harsh. People lost their homes. Many investors bailed from the stock market after experiencing devastating drops in the value of their retirement accounts.
“In the worst recessions, the stock index has been slashed in half. In others it only slipped a few percentage points,” Andrew Van Dam, who covers data and economics for The Washington Post, pointed out recently.
....
“At the market’s close on March 9, 2009, U.S. stocks had fallen a stomach-wrenching 57 percent from their Oct. 9, 2007, peak, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the Wilshire 5000 indexes,” The Washington Post’s Allan Sloan wrote last year on the ninth anniversary of the day in 2009 when the U.S. stock market hit bottom. “For those of us (including me) who had large parts of their net worth tied up in stocks, it was a really scary time. But those of us who didn’t bail out have been rewarded. Richly. That decline, the second-steepest since 1932, has been followed by the second-longest bull market.”
....
Follow Michelle Singletary on Twitter @SingletaryM and Facebook.
Michelle Singletary writes the nationally syndicated personal finance column The Color of Money. Her award-winning column is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group and is carried in dozens of newspapers nationwide. Follow https://twitter.com/SingletaryM