[Marilyn]

Haley, dear, I know it's a very trying time, but contributing to your 401K is still a good idea. The reason is the money is tax deferred. Whether or not there is a company match, the funds are taken from your check pre-tax and it reduces your taxable income. You are taxed when you take the money out when your income is lower, so you should come out ahead. What we need to do is be very careful how our 401K's are invested. Mine is currently going into a Putman money market account. It's like putting it into a money market account at the bank only it's pre-tax money. My return is low, but I'm not losing anything.

My 401K was hit hard by the stock market because it was in a "balanced" portfolio utilizing mostly mutual funds, stocks, as yours probably was.

I also have rolled my 401K's from previous jobs into a self directed IRA managed by a financial "expert" who had it in a "balanced" portfolio. So you know what happened to that. It's still in the "balanced" portfolio, only I had him shift what he could to funds that hopefully have greater potential for recovery should things actually recover some day.

The amount I can contribute to 401K has been significantly reduced, and there is no match, but it's still a good idea to continue putting what we can in there.

Hope this helps you. As you know, I'm very, very frustrated myself right now. I thought my job would weather this, and I'm still not too concerned, but am realizing that this is bad enough, I may have reason to be more concerned. I still think, even if my branch were to close that they would keep me on and let me work from my home strictly in an outside sales capacity reporting to another branch, so I'd be around to restart things later, but you never know. This may get really bad. Take care!! ((((((((Haley))))))))