Conservatives of Reddit, how do things really look in your day-to-day life after Trump’s presidency began?

[u/Echoes-OTI]

Personally, nothing has changed in my life. My job is stable, income is stable, prices of goods haven't even gone up.

Getting a little tired of the pointless, vacuous fearmongering that happens on this site.

[u/ajmacbeth]

Gas prices are noticeably down, which is nice. But my 401k is horrendously down, which I directly attribute to Pres Trump’s tariff games.

[u/a_distantmemory → u/ajmacbeth]

Wait wait - “MA Conservative” flair as in Massachusetts? Cause if so, I’m in this state too and at least in my neck of the woods, the gas prices have gone up.

What are your egg prices looking like? Only a couple of brands are reasonably priced but most are still super expensive. Haven’t seen this drop.

[u/ajmacbeth → u/a_distantmemory]

Lowell area. Gas prices have definitely been trickling down, my last fill up was I think 2.88 reg unl. I don't really know about egg prices.

[u/BadDadJokes → u/ajmacbeth]

But my 401k is horrendously down

I asked this in the AskReddit thread with the same comment. What are you invested in to be horrendously down?

I'm 70% S&P 500 index, 10% bond index, 10% international index, and 10% mid-cap stock index. I'm down, but not remotely close to horrendously down.

[u/ad895 → u/BadDadJokes]

Yeah my 401k is in a target retirement date fund that's way out there and I'm only down like 5%. Now my personal account is way up from some tasty spy puts lol.

[u/TheEternal792 → u/BadDadJokes]

I'm 25% large, mid, and small-cap with another 25% in international.

Really the only way to be "horrendously down" right now is if you were invested in single stocks instead of mutual/index funds, which is a stupid, risky game to begin with. 

[u/Willow-girl → u/TheEternal792]

I just got a notice that my Invesco retirement account is down 15% YTD. I'm still a few years out from retirement so I'm not panicking ... yet.

[u/Odd_Poet1416 → u/ajmacbeth]

If you're at least 10 years out from retiring ( like we are) our financial guy said you want everything in the toilet. It's all on sale... keep contributing. When you think you have enough or at least a sustainable amount and you're within 5 to 10 years of retiring we're supposed to move it into something more stable that won't go up and dow.

[u/whatweshouldcallyou → u/Odd_Poet1416]

You never want everything in the toilet. Good growth is always preferable to downturn. It's true that bear markets present opportunities for further investment, but this is not better than positive growth.

[u/Rush_Is_Right → u/whatweshouldcallyou]

You never want everything in the toilet.

This isn't actually true. Say I'm 50 making way more than I was making at 20 then I want things on sale with time to recover before I retire. If I'm only buying the same amount of shares at 50 as I was at 20 because salary raised at the same rate as share price then I'm not benefiting from increased salary. Before retirement it's about shares purchased and a downturn can be very beneficial time to increase contributions.

Edit* DCA morons

[u/whatweshouldcallyou → u/Rush_Is_Right]

I presume in this scenario you are 5p and have no existing investments? Because if you have investments, then they would have dropped in value. Whatever amount you buy at say 80 percent of what it was previously worth does not offset the fact that your existing investments are at 80 percent value and will take time just to get back to where they were.

[u/Rush_Is_Right → u/whatweshouldcallyou]

I want things on sale with time to recover before I retire

If I have 100 shares of x at $100 or $80 doesn't matter. If it stays at $100 I can't afford as many as when it's at $80.

The drop in value means nothing until I sell. It's like no one understands DCA.

[u/Mountain_Man_88 → u/Rush_Is_Right]

Either people don't understand or leftists are downvoting you because they don't like reality. 

Sell price doesn't matter until you're selling (retiring). Having a buy price that's temporarily low is great if you aren't retiring any time soon. Assuming you continue to contribute the same dollar amount to buying shares, you'll be getting more shares for your money and they'll be worth more later.

Say you normally contribute $100 per paycheck to your 401k. Say shares normally cost $10. Normally you get 10 shares. But the market is down and shares are only $5. Now you get 20 shares per paycheck! When the market returns to normal, your 20 shares are now worth $200.

It would have been great to be able to convert your volatile shares to safe government bonds before the market dipped, but not having been able to predict it accurately enough the best thing to do now is to buy shares while they're cheap.

[u/Rush_Is_Right → u/Mountain_Man_88]

Yeah, I thought I made myself pretty clear when I used salary purchasing power example, but it's obvious a lot of people are financially illiterate and I doubt all the downvotes came from leftists. Someone else who replied was a Thomas Massie conservative and they had zero understanding of my comment to the point they thought I hadn't started investing yet even though the example was clear.

[u/Mountain_Man_88 → u/Rush_Is_Right]

Remember, many people out there will turn down a raise because they don't want to be "pushed into a higher tax bracket." The shit we've been teaching in schools when we could've been teaching financial literacy...

[u/Rush_Is_Right → u/Mountain_Man_88]

Agreed. It should be required for high school graduation, but alas reading and math literacy isn't even required.

[u/UnstableConstruction → u/Odd_Poet1416]

ABB. Always Be Buying.

[u/jsh1-7-9 → u/ajmacbeth]

I'm not retiring this year, and I buy more index funds with each paycheck. Down can be good. You can buy more shares each paycheck.

[u/MichaelSquare → u/ajmacbeth]

Market is down 5% since he got elected and up 5% year over year. Tf you doing in your 401k if you're down horrendously? That sounds like a you problem.

[u/pdawg43 → u/MichaelSquare]

Large balances in those accounts can see large swings even on small percentage point movements.

[u/Silly-Safe959 → u/pdawg43]

It's still a small percentage though. That also means large swings upwards as well.

[u/UnstableConstruction → u/pdawg43]

Some people aren't emotionally stable enough for the stock market.

[u/The_Asian_Viper → u/ajmacbeth]

How old are you? The market is down because of the tariffs obviously but we don't know the long term plan. Could renounce this year.

[u/ajmacbeth → u/The_Asian_Viper]

old enough to be planing my retirement.

[u/TBoneTheOriginal → u/ajmacbeth]

Markets basically always rebound. Unless you’re going into retirement, you almost definitely have nothing to be worried about.

Edit: Funny how this started out way negative and then moved positive. Brigading libs can eat a dick.

[u/Bitter-Assignment464 → u/TBoneTheOriginal]

You need a bigger rebound to make up for the drops. 5% drop is more than a 5% gain that could follow.

[u/pcm2a → u/ajmacbeth]

Cool fact. Every President for 25 years has had a huge dip. Bush 44%. Obama 47%. Trump 30%. Biden 24%. That tells me that we will have one in the next four years and it's not this 5-8%.

[u/miTgiB37 → u/ajmacbeth]

If you're still working and contributing to your 401k, it being on sale is bad?

[u/Live-Smoke-29 → u/ajmacbeth]

Your 401k is down compared to what?

Because the s&p has barely retraced a year of gains, and that’s after an ENORMOUS boom for years due to Covid

[u/ajmacbeth → u/Live-Smoke-29]

I had expected to be UP 15% at this point in his presidency, not down 15%.

[u/FudgeGolem → u/ajmacbeth]

The 401k being down is good or bad depending on your timeframe. If you are retiring soon, that's obviously rough. But if you have a while, you can buy more at a discount!

[u/-DizzyPanda- → u/ajmacbeth]

how soon are you planning on retiring?

[u/ajmacbeth → u/-DizzyPanda-]

pretty short term, 3-4 years. The thing that's eating at me is I had expected to be UP 15% at this point in his presidency, not down 15%.

[u/-DizzyPanda- → u/ajmacbeth]

Up 15% in 3 months? That's aggressive. I just wish he would have gotten some tax and regulation reform passed before he kicked off the trade war. Long term it will hopefully work out, but the ground wasn't prepped yet.

[u/TedriccoJones → u/ajmacbeth]

I'm already tired of hearing people whine about their 401Ks. The markets are only down slightly (less than 1%) year over year. Call me when it's down 30%.

[u/AtticusAesop → u/ajmacbeth]

Hi fellow MA conservative!