More on that later. For years before IRAs, my eyes would be riveted to stock listings in The Wall Street Journal . Stock gyrations of a couple of points or so were cause for either great satisfaction or considerable consternation in the Iwaszko household on a daily basis. Or, if I saw a mutual fund that doubled its money in a year, while mine returned only 25 percent, I'd grow very frustrated. I willingly let myself get jerked around by short-term market swings.
Nobody wants to go through life like that.
In short, I was allowed to put away 6 percent of my pretax salary and my company would match half of my contribution from their own pocket. I was making a bushel of cash on my own, courtesy of my employer. In the early days, that wasn't so tough. Back then there was usually a limited menu that included a stock fund, a money market fund, a bond fund, and shares in company stock. Part of that plan, as I said earlier, was sticking to mutual funds, especially no-load ones that didn't charge me high fees.