Wow, it’s been a rough week in the market, hasn’t it? My IRA is now down 35 percent. Even VDC, the consumer products ETF I bought a couple weeks ago, is down 15 percent.

And we sure picked a bad time to start playing around with buying individual stocks. Except for RQI, a real estate ETF that’s down 64 percent since I bought it, the individual stocks that we own (GE, Bank of America, Manitowoc) are by far our worst performers. When BAC fell below $20, my husband wanted to buy, and he kicked himself when he didn’t and the stock nearly doubled. Now, it’s back down again, but I think we’re too skittish to buy back in, especially since we have a big tuition bill coming due–and no idea yet whether we’ll be able to get any student loans.

Also, I am becoming more and more convinced that index funds are the way to go. This recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out that index funds have outperformed actively managed mutual funds during this recent downturn. That’s partly because many actively managed funds were heavily invested in banks.

And the other advantage of index funds is that they don’t take over your life. When you choose individual stocks, you can beat yourself up over your bad decisions. If you just stick to a plan and invest a certain amount in index funds every month, however, then you’re less likely to wake up in the morning, as my husband does, and immediately check how your stocks are doing in pre-market trading.

It’s amazing how much can change in a week or two. When this crisis first started, we wanted to keep buying, because stocks were so much cheaper than they were a year ago. Now, as many businesses prepare for a protracted downturn, we’re staying on the sidelines. My gut feeling is that the market will be higher a year from now than it is today. But my gut feeling has been wrong too many times for me to trust it now.