Is the sky falling?

Even if you don't follow the stock market on a consistent basis, I'm sure you've heard all the gloom and doom about your investment or retirement dollars. We'll I'm one more voice that here to tell you, don't panic.

First of all, investing is considered to be savings for a period of greater than 5 years. I'm 41 years old so retirement for me is still 25 years away. So, that means I'm an investor when it comes to saving for retirement. At this stage of the game for me, I look at the down turns in the market as "everything" is on sale. So using the principal of dollar-cost-averaging, I'm getting more shares for my investment dollars right now.

Why and I calm when the market is down so much already this year? Great question. Take a look a the chart below. There are some major "bad news" events listed here. Look at where the market ended up 5 years after the "bad news". The worst return was over 8%. So take heart, keep funding your retirement plan and ignore all the "financial experts" on TV.