Ok- everyone wants their 401K account to go up in value all of the time- right? Well, fat chance. Markets go up and down all the time and lately it’s more down than up. So hang in there because what goes around comes around again and again. Here are some tips to smooth out the bumps and get the maximum 401K values you can:

Diversify across categories. What’s a category? It like stocks, bonds and cash.

Diversify across asset classes. What’s an asset class? It is like large cap, mid cap and small cap could be under your stock category.

Diversify across asset styles. Let’s say you have a stock category and you have a large cap stock fund in it. You could further diversify into a large cap value stock fund and a large cap growth stock fund.

Keep your costs low. Use only no-load mutual funds or index funds.

Get an asset allocation and stick with it. What’s an asset allocation? It is the percentages that you put into each asset class. Say you want to put 60% into stock. You could put 20% into large cap, 20% into mid-cap and 20% into small cap.The higher you put into stocks, the higher the risk and volatility of your portfolio.

Rebalance once a year. That means if you put 60% into stocks at the beginning of the year and it grows to 65% at the end of the year, take that 5% and add it to another class that is doing poorly. You will be constantly selling high and buying low. Guess what? That makes you money not limit your gains.

Stick with it! No matter what Fox News or famous Joe Money blogger tells you, if you keep moving in and out of funds, you are gambling -not the right way to get maximum 401K values.

Get the 401k maximum balance going for you right now.