We have all seen this in Minnesota.  As we drive to work or to the grocery store. We have seen it on a four lane highway or on residential street. We have seen in cars that pass us or cars that we pass.

The young driver is on their cell phone texting while driving.

Young people are the worst, right?  They are the ones that think they can actually drive 65 miles per hour, in traffic, changing lanes.

Besides being illegal, texting while driving is extremely dangerous.  Any level of common sense would tell you that texting while driving is extremely dangerous to any driver on the road at the time. 

The same level of common sense should be applied to the management of your retirement plan money. I frequently meet with individual company retirement plan participants who are managing their company retirement plan accounts in the same way.

These individual company 401(k) retirement plan participants are not breaking any laws, but they are showing the same level of dangerous behaviors in managing their retirement money as the drivers that text while driving. 

Individual company retirement plan participants who don’t pay attention to the U.S. economic and stock market cycles are one big negative event away from another investment management accident.

Just like the July 2008 to March 2009 stock market decline.  Those few months erased several year’s worth of stock market gains.

Most individual company retirement plan participants in Minnesota are too busy trying to manage their family, kids, grandkids, school, and work schedules while at the same time trying to keep an eye on their investments.  In most cases, the company retirement plan account is the biggest attention casualty in their lives.

You should not text while you drive, even though some people do it every day.  You should not be responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of your retirement plan money if you don’t have a game plan to manage the downside risk.

You are driving in stock market traffic with the smartest investment professionals in the world, who use the most sophisticated computer technology available today.  Every day the stock market is moving at the equivalent of 65 miles per hour.

Right now, you need to pay more attention to the amount of risk you are taking in the stock market.

Ric Lager
Lager & Company, Inc.