Originally Posted by
Cactus
Well, if you never invested outside of the G Fund be forewarned that you could lose a lot of money. That's what happened to me. It ain't easy and we tend to be our own worst enemy letting our emotions get in the way.
My story is I was 100% G Fund throughout the 90s. Folks at work kept saying I needed to be invested in stocks to make money. I was scared so I kept stalling. I waited until the Y2K thing blew over in 2000, remember that? I finally took the plunge into the C Fund (No S or I Fund yet) that Spring. As you can see from historical data I bought high so it went down from there. I left it in there expecting dollar cost averaging to fix my mistake. I guess that works when you are first starting out and don't have much in there, but I already had 12 years of contributions in there when the Dot Com Bust took a big chunk of it and I never got back to my pre entry value before the 2008 crash took even more from me. I'm part of the so called "Lost Decade" that got nothing in what was supposed to be our prime earning years.
Now I'm here taking more risk than I should in my later years to make up for zero gain in my prime earning years. I'm doing better here at TSPTalk than I ever have before, but as you can see from my sig line, I'm not getting the 10% - 20% year after year you are talking about. People like to talk about the big year they once had but if you look at their 3 or 5 year average it isn't that high and that is what counts.
In my opinion you are at a very dangerous place being already retired. You have a lot to lose and not that much to gain. More importantly, you have no way to add more contributions to your retirement balance like I am doing. If I were you I'd leave it in the G Fund or L income Fund and learn to live on that. Just my 2 cents worth
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