Quick Read – Selling during COVID locked in Donna’s $26,000 loss permanently.
The market recovered in 50 days, and she missed three years of 25% gains. – Ramsey told Donna her $200,000 would have doubled to $400,000 if left alone, noting 97% of all five-year stock market periods are profitable. – Ramsey advised Donna to move to a high-yield savings account, arguing a suboptimal portfolio you hold beats an optimal one you panic-sell. – A 71-year-old named Donna called into The Ramsey Show recently with a confession most retirees would rather bury. “During COVID we had our 401(k)s, our retirement accounts, and the stock market took a dive and we went down like $26,000 in a week and we got nervous,” she said. “So we took it out real quick
And our thought was that we don’t have time to recover.” Then, after working up the courage to get back in, she and her 84-year-old husband did it again. Dave Ramsey’s verdict was blunt: “Your $200 would be $400 if you’d have left it alone.” He’s right about the cost, and he’s right about the prescription that follows. The lesson buried in this call: the correct portfolio is the one you can actually hold when the screen turns red.
The receipt on panic-selling Donna’s account held roughly $190,000 in retirement money when COVID hit. Co-host Jade Warshaw put a stopwatch on the damage: “The problem is the first dive when you said you lost the $26,000, it recovered in like 50 days. The moment you took it out, you just locked in that loss.