I like to publicly comment on how our retirement funds have done at the close of each year, in hopes of offering some encouragement to others. In 2006, I started taking personal responsibility for managing our retirement money by investing in 10-15 individual stocks, with the help of Motley Fool Stock Advisor. My goal was simple when I started. I wanted to do better than the S&P 500. 2008 was an awful year.  However, as a result of not withdrawing from the market, we ended 2009 slightly above where we started in 2008. The current score, from 1/2004 to 12/2009:  S&P 500 - up 1/4 of 1%;  Our investments - up 102%.

Below is a table of how our retirement investments have done over the last 6 years on an annual basis.

Year	Method	Our Increase	S&P 500
2004	Mutual Funds	16%	09%
2005	Mutual Funds	08%	03%
2006	Indivd. Stocks	24%	10%
2007	Indivd. Stocks	52%	04%
2008	Indivd. Stocks	-40%	-38%
2009	Indivd. Stocks	72%	23%