The Retirement Mistakes You Can't Take Back

So one that you see happen sometimes, either knowingly or unknowingly, someone will take a big withdrawal from their 401k, pay a penalty if they're younger than 59 1⁄2, and they may or may not have known about it, and they say to themselves, well, yeah, okay, I'm taking $30,000, big deal.

well what i would say is well let's say that 30 000 you were going to have invested for another 15 years before you actually retired okay and let's say you made seven percent you know the thirty thousand dollar decision was really more of like an eighty three thousand dollar decision because that's what it would have grown to if you had left it alone So even if after five years you go to put it back in, it's just not the same, right? Because it doesn't have that time that's been in the market.

And over the last 10 years, I was using 7%.

Over the last 10 years, we've averaged more like 15% in the market, right? So think about that for a minute.

Okay, so if you do that, well, now that's a quarter million dollars.

If you had left it alone, it made 15% over the next 15

years.

So a $30,000 decision just turned into a $250,000 loss, an opportunity loss.

Right, and you can't reverse that once you've done it.

So there's one there, and we can speak to this, and I'll let Phil do it.

We had another situation quite recently where we were able to prevent someone from doing it.

Yeah, keeping her from making a massive mistake.

So one that you see happen sometimes, either knowingly or unknowingly, someone will take a big withdrawal from their 401k, pay a penalty if they're younger than 59 1⁄2, and they may or may not have known about it, and they say to themselves, well, yeah, okay, I'm taking $30,000, big deal.

well what i would say is well let's say that 30 000 you were going to have invested for another 15 years before you actually retired okay and let's say you made seven percent you know the thirty thousand dollar decision was really more of like an eighty three thousand dollar decision because that's what it would have grown to if you had left it alone So even if after five years you go to put it back in, it's just not the same, right? Because it doesn't have that time that's been in the market.

And over the last 10 years, I was using 7%.

Over the last 10 years, we've averaged more like 15% in the market, right? So think about that for a minute.

Okay, so if you do that, well, now that's a quarter million dollars.

If you had left it alone, it made 15% over the next 15

years.

So a $30,000 decision just turned into a $250,000 loss, an opportunity loss.

Right, and you can't reverse that once you've done it.

So there's one there, and we can speak to this, and I'll let Phil do it.

We had another situation quite recently where we were able to prevent someone from doing it.

Yeah, keeping her from making a massive mistake.