Debt $ense

I’m going to stop checking my 401(k) balance for a few weeks. It’s just getting too depressing, and for no reason.

“No reason?,” you ask. “You mean you’re not concerned about the falling stock market?”

Sort of. In a big-picture sense, the falling stock prices could signal an economic slowdown, which could be bad. But I have enough seniority and usefulness at work that my job’s unlikely to be in jeopardy. And it means my retirement fund is worth less, but with 40 years to go until retirement, that’s not a huge concern either. There’s plenty of time for it to bounce back.

And zooming in a bit, the funds in my portfolio that are really falling are the two aggressive ones, which makes a fair amount of sense. The others are doing fine. So I’ll use this time to buy more shares in the funds than I normally can and be in good shape for when the market swings back up later this year.

But until then, I’ll stop checking every week. No need to undo all the good psychological effect of my declining CC balance by fretting over my declining 401(k) balance.