How long till your personal investments recover?

On Sunday Ben Bernanke stated on 60 Minutes that he could not see is shadow and that the end of the recession would come in 6 weeks. Oh wait, that's wrong, I've confused him with some groundhog, but he did say that the end of the recession is near. That's likely wishful thinking. But if it is the end, how long 'til we recover?

For awhile I couldn't even look at my 401(k) which seemed to getting slimmer by the minute. I just wanted to close my eyes and hope that someone would wake me and tell that this had all been a bad dream. But I've made some changes and slowed down my losses.

My friend, Michelle, told me about a handy calculator on The New York Times site that would estimate how long it could take to recover lost investments. It gave me something like this:

I love calculators. Though I know there are basically just guestimations they help me see things more concretely. But, Ugh! Not any risk assessment test could have predicted how hard many of us were hit by the downturn. But at this point there is nothing to do but accept it, hunker down, change my risk tolerance and move on.

Go see how long your recovery will be.