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I don't know much about the market, and know even less about actual investing strategy-ish stuff, but what does the loss look like five years later?

I guess what I mean is, for an "index fund", crashes don't seem to be... permanent?

Perhaps that's small comfort for someone who's set to retire the month after one of these 30% crashes, but I guess that's what the whole "invest more conservatively as you get older" thing is supposed to help with?

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> I guess that's what the whole "invest more conservatively as you get older" thing is supposed to help with?

The big index and mutual fund companies offer different allocations between stocks and bonds. You might start out with 80% of your account in an index fund (or other diversified basket of stocks) and 20% in a hedged basket of investment-grade, low-risk bonds. This percentage allocation would change over time as you got closer to retirement.

You're not going to get insanely rich off of this, but it is a decent replacement for the fact that savings account interest rates are effectively 0% these days.

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