I am 65 and plan to keep working until 70 if possible, or at least 67. No debt and own my house so no rent or mortgage. I have not started collecting Social Security benefits yet.
I have an approximately $250,000 portfolio (was $254k at peak until the recent drops). It was mostly in a conservative tax-aware fund (American Funds TAIAX), but last week asked my financial advisor to sell $175k of it and start a 5-year annuity with $150k and put a cash reserve of $25k in a money market account.
That leaves approximately $75k in the TAIAX fund. About 36% of that fund is in stock market funds. So about $27k of my money is exposed to the stock market. My risk tolerance is low.
This portfolio is my nest egg and I have no other assets except the house and small business I own. Once a day, I log on to my account and see a loss for the previous day. It is smaller in percentage than the DJIA, S&P, NASDAQ, etc. But it's still a loss, on paper.
My question is, why should I continue to just sit here and look at a loss each day? What's stopping me from selling the rest? To wait 5 years for a market recovery once the current presidential administration is gone?