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I received my 401(k) statement in the mail Thursday.  I opened it up, looked at my loss for the 4th quarter of ’08 and laughed.

I then added up my losses from October 1, 2007 to December 31, 2008.

I laughed some more.

Half my loss came off the principle amount that I had built up over the years. The other half was all my contributions to my 401(k)  that came out of my paycheck for the past year.

Talk about throwing money away.

I’m trying to keep in mind that it’s a loss “on paper” and yeah, I’m young and have time to build it back up. I’m not sweating this thing, but it was a little disheartening to add it all up and come up with a figure that, to me, was pretty staggering.  It’s certainly not a figure Boss Hogg would’ve sneezed at.

The good news is with my interest bearing accounts and investments I managed to make 1.5 times more in interest this year than I did last year. But that amount only covered about a quarter of what I lost on my 401(k).

Although disheartening, I won’t be discouraged by this. The market will turn around and just as I learned new things in 2008 in regards to investing and such, I’m looking forward to learning new things in 2009.