Becca, I’m an Allstate agent working from home in TV. Allstate has many financial products that can protect some of your assets. You can put some money in an annuity. There are various kinds with no risk and higher risk and a few years and longer terms. I’m not licensed to discuss them. We have experienced advisors that are happy to provide valuable information free of charge. Call me 954-437-9230 ext. 308 and I’ll set an appointment for you. I’d say take the free advice and then make a decision that meets your needs. I have an annuity with little risk I will use to supplement my social security when I’m 70.5. I felt the same way as you and pulled out some money from the stock market. I didn’t want all the risk and wanted extra income when I’m no longer working.

I would not call that an aggressive portfolio. Not even close.

A general rule of thumb I have used is to use volatile stocks only for money you won’t need for 10+ years. Money you will need sooner should be more conservative.

What is going on in the stock market right now is gambling pure and simple. People aren’t investing in good companies with strong fundamentals, but in companies who’s stock price is skyrocketing. They are betting that they will sell before everyone else does. And, the ones who will win this game are not likely to be folks like us. People are getting second mortgages to buy stock in worthless companies. The bubble will eventually burst and people will wake up one morning with a serious financial hangover.

To answer your question, yes it will crash. You are currently fairly conservative with your investments. Read Ferri’s book on asset allocation. Read boogleheads.org web site. Understand what your invested in. If you can’t or don’t want to, put everything in Vanguard Life Strategy income or moderate growth fund until you do. Very safe, very conservative and will adjust as market changes. DO NOT TRY to time the market. No one has every been successful doing that.

Sorry. But, I would definitely stay away from insurance companies and annuities for investing money.

:bigbow:

Start watching financial tv networks and go to your library . Many brokerages have free talks . Enjoy life and relax . And just because you have certain percentages does not mean your stocks are the correct ones for your lifestyle and age. Ask your brokers which stocks do you have and are they dividend stocks or growth stocks. Read read and read some more. Don't be rash and don't do anything wholeheartedly until you really understand what you're being told remember it's your money

Just curious why you say this. My Advisor suggested transferring some of my investments to an annuity. Thank your for sharing your thoughts.

First off, Good luck in this market. If you were invested in 100% in stocks then you have done well. You did not state if you are retired or working full or part time. You just stated info about a account you have with a former employer. Now you may be getting nervous with the S&P and the Dow reaching new highs. Like someone else said you cannot time the market's ups and downs.

1st, I would recommend getting out of your 403B. Transfer your account into a low cost fund manager like Vanguard, Fidelity, or Charles Schwab. I just happened to choose Charles Schwab because they are local and I can meet face to face with a financial adviser when ever I want. Charles Schwab also has a ROBO Adviser which will maintain your % of invested portfolio. When I worked I was invested 100% in stocks because every week I was depositing dollars in my 401K. Right now I am invested 52% stocks 36% bonds and 12% cash in a money market. That's how Schwab's ROBO Adviser has me invested, a very low cost computer generated method of managing your account. Some other advisers want 1.25% annually to manage your account. To me that's highway robbery. They state, they try to outperform the S&P 500.

2nd, everyone's personal situation is different. Are you collecting a pension? Are you just collecting Social security? Are you withdrawing money our of your 403B every month to live on??
So to answer your question, No, I would not pull all of your money out of the stock market and place it in a MM account. I know someone who did just that in a panic right after the pandemic hit and the market dropped 25% or more. They missed out on the come back because they did not know when to get back in. Just remember it is extremely difficult / impossible to time the market. Stocks go up and stocks go down. Try and discuss your personal situation with a good financial advisor who will guide you based on your age and financial needs. Best of Luck, invest wisely.

It almost sounds like Becca might be playing a game and the info/question not real.

Becca9800,
I would look for and go with a Fee Based financial advisor. What they would do is sit down with you and go through your assets and liabilities, goals, age, all your financials and look at what you would need for your income going forward and making it last through the years. Also, they would find out your risk tolerance, what you can handle comfortably as an investment portfolio. Once that is done, then comes the mix, conservative can be 70% safe funds, 30% in the market for growth, giving you a monthly income to supplement SS and a pension if you have one. They would recommend different funds to go into based on what they have about you. Once in, tune up once a year and if all is going well, stay the course. Crash?, they call it a market correction now, eases the shock value. Will it happen, experts make a lot of money predicting.

Market
 

Yes, the market will go down. No one knows when.
No, you should not change your current holdings.
FYI: The average length of a bear market is 289 days, or about 9.6 months. The average length of a bull market is 973 days or about 2.7 years.

Totally agree, Fidelity has an office in the villages sit down with someone there and let him start your education.

There is an old saying about annuities. They are sold and never bought.

Ask your advisor how much in commissions he will make selling you an annuity.

There are no experts - even Warren Buffet has lost Billions over the years. All you can do is take the advise of previous comments posted and get your ducks in a row....then keep your fingers crossed.
I believe there is another housing bubble coming though.

I suspect that your advisor recommended an annuity because it has one of the highest commission rates of any investment that he/she can sell. Typically, someone who sells an annuity will receive a commission of about 10 percent of the money you "invest". Some people don't realize that an annuity is actually a life insurance policy issued by an insurance company. So, it is a "contract" rather than an actual investment in real assets like a mutual fund, stock, or bond. Annuities have very high built-in management fees, and they usually have high surrender charges, that require you to pay a penalty if you decide to withdraw your money within 7-10 years.

I would suggest that you ask your advisor to give you a copy of the "entire" annuity contract for you to read (not just the brochure). Chances are that he/she will refuse to do it. They know that if you read the contract in advance, you will probably refuse to sign it. So, they require you to buy the annuity before giving you the contract. Not a good way to sell a product.

Getting advice from strangers? Hire a financial advisor. Case closed

Because the only people that make money on Annuities are those selling them.

It sounds great. You deposit X amount and get paid Y amount over a period of time, guaranteed! That's right, you'll never have to worry about not having money! It's perfect, free money!

Or not. Annuities are almost ALWAYS bad investments. You hand over a pile to a company that invests your money, turns a huge profit and leaves you with some scraps. They are always capped on upside gain and your return almost never includes any dividends a stock or index may produce.

They would only make sense if you need to produce income for someone incapable of even the slightest bit of management. If you had a child of limited mental capacity and needed to ensure they could live after you're gone. That kind of thing. That said, there are better options in trusts and such, much beyond the scope of this original post.

To the OP: Yes, the market will crash. You have to ask yourself will you need your funds to actively live or can you weather an 18 month downturn(including your own mortality). If you can weather a crash, then "balls to the wall". In that case, get some low cost index funds or ETFs, like Vanguard VTI or an S&P 500 fund, put 90% in there, 10% in money market and enjoy the returns. That's Warren Buffet's strategy and mine too. Although I'm young enough, I have 95% of my investments in index funds and growth funds.

Conventional wisdom is you start to get more and more conservative as you age. A family member has not done that and in the last 25 years has seen his original retirement money quadruple. He literally has 4x as much money now than he did when he retired. He's 86 now, and still mostly in index funds but has toned down to about 20% in bonds, 10% in cash.

Stay where you are. There are periodic “market adjustments” where people get scared and decide to do what they call “profit taking.” Plenty of people then panic and sell. But if they hold on, chances are that in a week or two or a month the market will be higher than it was. Remember that last year there was a huge crash of a third when the Dow was nearing 30,000. A lot of people sold off everything is it dropped, a lot of that when it was near the bottom. They lost 30%. Could you survive if your funds dropped 30% and stayed there? Of course you could! But it’s not likely to drop like that again in your lifetime. Still, those who sold with the market down lost their money. Those who didn’t sell had a pretty good year, despite that drop. At this moment the Dow is at 34,466. That is a really big rise since the last election, just as there was a big one after the election before that. They worried and moaned, but they didn’t sell, and it was a smart move.

I’m invested the same way you are. If I had listened to estate planners in 2015, I would have moved more and more of my money into bonds and “less risky” funds. If I had done that, I would have about half of what I have now and I wouldn’t be able to afford to live here. If I had put the money into an annuity, I would have about half the monthly income I have now just taking some of the growth out of my fund, which keeps on growing. I assume it will fall. And then it will go up again.

Be brave. Stay the course! Don’t reinvest in risky investments with big pay-outs like the Bernie Madoff thing. Don’t reinvest in things that aim to just keep your money “safe” (relatively) by keeping it where it also won’t grow much.

I recommend Parady Financial for a review of your financial situation. They are a zero pressure company. We divided our investments between stocks and annuities. The sun 🌞 is shining on us.

Since you are “ignorant” as you say, it is possible that your $ is already invested properly. Or nearly so. Maybe just needs some adjusting.

Perhaps you could try to learn about the market & economics in general. Try to educate yourself. Start reading. Look up terminology you do not understand. Then you will at least be able to ask intelligent questions of your investment company or advisor or whoever handles your $.

There are many beginner books. After you have read some, you could start reading the Wall Street Journal online or delivered.

There are so many variables, and since no one here knows your situation or age, answers are perfect, or perfectly wrong. The allocation in your fund is not what I would pick, but an advisor picked it based on your fear of the future value, versus the goals of maintaining original value. Risk. The allocation you have is like, bonds are blah but safe, stocks are less safe but have been growing, and stable or cash is like, useless but quickly available? So leave it all where it is and start doing some reading on allocation choices over time. Then decide to change if you want. But to your original question, the stock market is long overdue to "correct" meaning go down some, or a lot. The main reason it has not is that no one wants to be in Bonds. They pay historically low interest. But, if I had a less foggy crystal ball, I can predict with certainty that eventually inflation is going to come home to roost due to the excess spending and stimulus money in the USA. When it does (it is already) and the Fed tightens money supply to try and check it, Bond Rates will rise. Fear will begin to move money from stocks to bonds, and the market will "correct" for 6 months to a year. When? Well it is overdue and the crystal ball is foggy. If you are scared of all this and can't do more research, consider moving some investments out of mutual funds and into direct stock ownership. Allocate that money to blue chip dividend payers. These will pay you dividends regardless of the ups and downs of the individual stock price. Meaning, let's say you put 5000 in pretend stock XXXX that buy 500 shares, each paying $1 dividends annually. If in five years the "value" dropped to 3,000, you still will get $500 annually in dividends because you still own 500 shares. If that same 5000 was put in mutual funds that tanked 30 or 40%, you will own less "shares" in the fund, and get less dividends. I dislike Mutual funds, but understand that do more asset diversification. But it comes at a cost (fees) and never, ever, fare will in a correction. And when the market recovers again, you never fully recover. Back to stock XXXX, you owned 500 shares as the price went up and down, and the only opportunity you los, is selling at a profit if you just sit tight.

Do not use LPL Financial (there is an office in Spanish Springs). After years of having an account up north with them I decided I wanted it transferred to TV. I had to interview with them to accept me. Accept what - I am a customer now ! When I told them I wanted to park my money in a money market fund they politely advised me we were probably not a good match. That is when I decided to move on to another organization. It took over 30 days for them to perform a transfer of funds and $180 charge to to do so. Get this $15 FedEx to send a check. Send a check - you are in the finance business. Hit the computer button. $125 paperwork fee. $40 yearly account charge of which I just paid the 2020 fee less than 30 days prior but now I have to pay all of 2021 - not a proration. Run for the hills from LPL Financial.

Please find an advisor
 

Please talk to friends, ex-colleagues from work, and family to try and find an advisor you can trust. Then tell him about your market fears and give him all the information he needs to do his job (assets, income, debt, anticpated longevity etc.). Allow him to put together a plan and execute it. You can read along the way if you want to learn more about the markets. The plan will need to change over time due to changes in your age and market conditions. I'm 63 and have been with my advisor for about 20 years. At one point I thought I'd try and manage my assets myself but quickly learned I didn't have the stomach for it, or knowledge to do it. My advisor has talked me down several times when I wanted to cash out of stock funds (at the wrong times) and he's been right every time. Also, please ignore opinions found here on your asset allocation. Nobody here has enough of your personal information (which you shouldn't share anyway) to make any resonable judgements. Hire an advisor; in my opinion it's well worth the cost for folks that don't have the inclination or knowledge to do it themselves.

Where are you "reading" the Stock Market is going to "Crash"? Did you instead hear it on Fox Noise or Noise Max cable. You better get another financial adviser.

Keep in mind if any investment advisor had all the answers they wouldn’t still be working. They would be retired with everyone else working for them. No one can really predict “the Market” because it runs off emotion al reaction to real and unreal events and a world wide reaction to those events. It will go up, it will go down, it will self-correct. “Spread your wealth around” then don’t watch the market daily. That is what your financial guy is supposed to do.

Grumpy and Tom gave good advice
 

Few things. Bases on what you shared you got good advice from Tom and Grumpy. Ignore the cheap seats advice like knowing your age. You explained enough to know a conservative portfolio is best for you. Don't try to time the market. Stick with your plan. Good luck. And chill... you are in The Villages... God's gift to retirees.

A finance professor once told my class to "never invest beyond the sleeping point", in other words, if you have so much invested in the stock market that you can't sleep at night, take some out until you can.

Your asset allocation is fine but definitely conservative.
 

Having said that, 27/73 would be considered very conservative but may be appropriate if it lets you sleep at night. However, most advisors say you need at least 40-50% equities (stocks) to keep up with inflation.

I would suggest you visit bogleheads.org . John Bogle was the founder of Vanguard. Spend some time on the forum. Introduce yourself and ask questions. Explore the Wiki. There is also a recommended reading list.

I relied on Vanguard for three decades and even consolidated Fidelity to Vanguard. Everything was converted to a IRA. I have no idea what Lincoln has for fees for the Mutual funds you probably have but Vanguard has the lowest in the industry the best I can figure. Go to Vanguard.Com as they have a lot of free information, meaning even without an account. I also use Vanguard Brokerage and trade for free. They have helped me sleep better!

Hope that helps.[/QUOTE]

My suggestion is to check out the forum on Bogleheads. There are many sharp folks that post there with practical advice. Look for threads dealing with newbie or novice investors. Like any forum, do a lot or reading and form your own plan if you can. Otherwise, a fixed fee financial advisor who is a fiduciary may be a good starting point.

a fixed fee financial advisor who is a fiduciary may be a good starting point!
 

This is the best answer in the entire thread. Pay the fee, see what they have to say, and go from there. A fiduciary is required by law to act in your best interests. Most likely, you will agree with their recommendations.

I would have three comments. One, your investment mix is far from aggressive. In fact, I would consider it quite conservative. Two, everyone talks about a "market crash", but that is very misleading. Market "corrections" (a ten percent or more decrease in overall value) are a normal occurrence, and most knowledgeable investors know that they are actually healthy for markets. Trying to time investments around market corrections is a fools errand. And three, you should find a fiduciary financial advisor who must put your interests before their own. In other words, a fiduciary must give you advice without concern for their possible commissions from investments they suggest. You will have to pay this advisor, but you can generally trust the advice.

Where to get advice on my 403b?
 

Many good suggestions on how to learn about investing or finding an advisor. However, there may be an easy way to get reasonable advice.

A 403b account is an employer sponsored plan that was typically provided by health, education and governmental type employers. It is, or was, also known as a tax sheltered annuity and used to only be offered through annuity companies. Today, I think many or most 403b plans have both annuity companies (like Lincoln Financial) and mutual fund companies (like Vanguard and Fidelity) to choose from. Before you try and find a professional advisor (a great suggestion by the way) you might contact your HR department at your employer as they may have assistance available.

Annuities are not bad investment vehicles for some situations, but they are more expensive than using a straight low-cost mutual fund family like Vanguard or Fidelity. Some annuities do have the ability to limit the downside potential of market volatility and for some people, this might be attractive.

I would start with your employer and see if they have someone that can help explain the fundamentals that should be considered in your situation.

Good luck

I'm by no means a financial wizard. Been retired 19 years, and have only used 30k of my principal in my retirement fund. My recommendation is to contact Blackston Financial (they are on Rt.466) and talk with one of their fiduciary persons. You have nothing to loose, and a lot to gain as far as finances and knowledge. Do it now, before the crap hits the fan.

Agree

Wow! I'm overwhelmed by the many responses AND by all the knowledge out there. I've read every word of every response, please know that I sincerely appreciate your tips and your time to respond. THANK YOU!!!

Alrighty then, I feel better knowing my money is safe where it's at. It may not be in the best place but I no longer feel an urgent need to move it. And while I didn't want to have to know this stuff, I recognize that I must have at least a basic understanding. Next order of business: read the recommended books (I'm actually a bit excited by the idea of new knowledge) and then begin the hunt for a trusted advisor.

Thanks to each of you again!

This book will help.

Amazon.com

FYI, my 85 y.o. mother has an advisor she's used for years and he's done right by her. After she sold her home in OH and moved down here in Feb. she had me invest the proceeds from her home sale. I put her in Vanguard's Wellesley Income Fund, which has a good mix of stocks and bonds. Stocks make up almost 40% of it and the rest is bonds/cash. It's a fund with a good performance history, well managed and lets me sleep at night. My wife and I also have a position in it.

Portfolio
 

I agree with Tom. Your portfolio is in good shape. Relax, and don't listen to all of the experts.

Realize that you don't have to be a genius to succeed in the markets. Fidelity did an internal study a few years ago and found that the accounts that did best over time were those that were in "contested estates" ... meaning that no trades were allowed during contestation. In other words ... your plan should be to decide on a percentage of your assets to put in equity markets (mutual funds) and then do it. Forget timing the market (too complicated). And realize that paying someone to tell you which mutual funds to use is a waste of money. Go to the Fidelity office and get free advice.

You will always get conflicting opinions for most anything. Best course is to educate yourself at least to the point of being able to choose how much of your investments should be aggressive vs conservative. Then find an adviser who aligns with your thinking

You are asking financial advice from people who do not know you, your needs, your portfolio, your desires. Please. If you don’t trust your current financial advisor, get another one you trust. Then give the CFA your desires and your fears. The market and your portfolio will go up and down but over the long run should go up. Take financial news as information, not advice. Remember, media (print, digital, and TV) have the primary goal of selling advertising or subscriptions. Read on how markets work (not how to get rich) and why, by economics, supply & demand, political policies, and global news. That will help you better understand your CFA.