Category: 
Big mistakes usually happen during times of insecurity and volatility in the market.
My case is no exception, but at least I’m taking couple of important lessons with me which hopefully will help me in the future. So here is what is it all about (the complete story).
Looking about two months back (around July 2008) the majority of my family’s savings were kept in Washington Mutual, which provided in my opinion the best overall service ease of use and interest rate on savings accounts from all the banks I’ve been dealing with till now. At around that time I started looking more and more into the troubles WaMu had in the financial markets and I started to feel uncomfortable with the thought that the bank I keep all my money in can fail at any moment.
I transferred majority of our savings to EverBank, taking advantage of their offer of 3 months of 4.75% interest rate for their money market accounts, plus my own notion that EverBank is a solid bank at the moment, compared to WaMu. This is all good…
But about one week ago I did something in a hurry which will cost me a little bit.
A week ago (around Sep 19th 2008) was in my opinion the first recent major crash of the stock market (failing of AIG AND a money market fund breaking the buck… DOW Jones at 10 600 approx and SnP falling more than 4% in one day…) I decided to take advantage of this situation and max out my and my wife’s Roth IRA on the cheap. Plus I’d use the last of my savings funds in WaMu (aka insecure bank at that time – now failed) so only a very small amount is left at risk.
It’s all great until after placing the order I realized that it is after 10:00 PM and Vanguard (where my IRA is at) will actually buy the shares of the Target Retirement 2045 Vanguard Fund 2 days AFTER I placed the order.
This to me meant that the good buying opportunity has been lost. I ended up acquiring the funds at the TOP of the recent stock market (SnP had returned to it’s previous levels in 2 days and started going down from there on..).
Lesson Learned: If you will be timing the stock market in any way (which I tried sort of…) - make sure you have the available CASH position at the same institution you will be buying the equities from. Bank transfers and such take time and your Golden Buying Opportunity will most likely be lost if you have to rely on money transfers or check clearances or selling other positions in a different institution before that.
On the bright side - The Target Retirement 2045 Fund is a diversified Stock position fund at this point. When the world Stock market goes up in 10-15 years or so - the 4% loss will be forgotten.
Other musings from the last month - I continue to enjoy the little presents in the mail we receive every now and then thanks to the great folks at the www.fatwallet.com/forums.
I’ve taken advantage of many of the links to freebie offers on the site and have received smaple items of minor value, but which bring some joy to me and my family.
After all - it’s like Christmas in September 
Some of the things we have already received are : $5 Chevron Gift card, free chocolate chip cookie, coupon for free Cheerios cereal (24oz package), free Schick Razors (2 of them) and maybe some other items I don’t remember.
As I said these are very small value items but we enjoy the little “treasures” none the less.
Thanks to Jonathan from www.mymoneyblog.com who pointed the former website on his own blog.
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