401K

I diversified my portfolio today...LOL. What? Yeah, that's what I did, I guess. I made an appointment with the investment advisor who oversees our 401K accounts at work to change my name on my account. I don't know ANYTHING about investing or the likes. So anyways, I get there and he greets me and we sit down and do the paperwork for the name change and then he asks if I'd like to take a look at my "portfolio". To me a portfolio is a folder. I knew what he was getting at though. I thought, "why not?" I had time and was interested to see what he had for me. Well he pulled out my current plan and showed me the growth (which was slow but steady) and said this is okay, blah blah blah. THEN, he pulled out the big guns. He showed me 5 different options for investing my money (please note that these are not huge investments...it's 5% of each paycheck). My jaw dropped to the floor when he showed me where I COULD have been had I chosen any one of these other 5 options in the beginning. Well why didn't he tell me that IN THE BEGINNING? I know why. Because in the beginning I didn't have a clue about any of this stuff and the thought of losing a penny one year to gain 5 over the next two just didn't sink in. I didn't want to take any chances, so I guess I must have told him to stick my money in the "conservative" places. Well that was dumb. He assured me that it was okay since I still have almost 40 years until I can even use the money. HA! Thanks for the assurance. BUT, we did get the funds moved around into a tad more risky options and we'll see how that goes. It appeared that even when the riskies (is that a word?) had losses, they were temporary (2-3 years in a row) and more than recovered in following years to produce bigger and better gains. Even still, I won't be able to retire when I'm 35. Shoot. But I can say I diversified my portfolio, and that sounds impressive.