Watch your bank account. The Treasury Department expects — by Wednesday — that 80 million Americans will receive their emergency stimulus checks.
In the prelude to the flurry of direct deposits, there has been a lot of disinformation on social media.
Some people have posted warnings that these payments will cut into your regular tax refund or that you must pay back some or all of the stimulus payment on next year’s returns.
Those claims are false.
Is your 401K OK?
Chances are it got battered and has probably recovered some.
But where are we going from here? Some experts think the stock market will still drop more than it did last month. But other experts think the worst is over.
There is a stark lack of consensus.
Perhaps even more than usual, the market’s future is hard to predict.
So, many analysts look to the past. The market optimists and the pessimists can both point to charts and examples that bolster their outlook for stocks.
If you take the long view with your 401K, some information provided by Fidelity may be instructive.
Fidelity shows two sets of data: One tracks savers who completely dumped stocks from the 401K accounts during the Great Recession.
They found the average balance among those savers was $89,000 in 2008 when they abandoned stocks. On average, balances among those savers increased to $276,000 by the end of 2019.
The other set of data followed savers who kept some of their 401k savings in stocks. That group had an average balance of $79,000 in 2008 grew to an average of $360,000 by the end of 2019.
Anyone who is confused about what to do should talk to their financial advisor.