Don't you just love the magazine headlines "Rescue your 401K" or "How to get all your money back in your retirement plan"?

Like we can accomplish all that by reading the article. Trust me, if it were that easy I would be telling you.

I do have a guarantee of how to help you get well.

What will help us regain some of our lost funds is a 2,500-point rally. It's pretty simple. There are no hidden plans to help, we need a good stock market.

Before this bear market struck, if you were adequately diversified with a mixture of stocks, bonds and cash you probably lost money but you likely will live to play again. If you had too much money in one investment vehicle and that vehicle wrecked, then you have a problem.

One good thing happening right now is that there is more negative, doomsday, loss of confidence, irrational behavior than I have seen in my career. I mean if you watch some of these financial programs on television you'd think we were already dead and buried.

Why I think that is good is because the herd is never right. Maybe our markets will do well and surprise everyone but me. My clients are a bunch of really good people who have a basic understanding of what is going on. Even they don't feel very good right now. I don't blame them.

It is my job to provide some sort of plan or assurance that everything is going to work out. I've told most of them that if our current economic issues are not resolved positively then you and I are going to be worrying about a lot of things; our investments will not be one of them.

We have the world's best and strongest economy, if anyone makes it out of this mess it should be us. I know, I know, the world is coming to an end. My problem is I am just not buying it.

Okay, what has been happening in the market? So far this year, as I write this on Wednesday, March 3, and measuring from New Year's Day, the Dow Jones industrial average is down 25 percent, the Standard and Poor's 500 index is down 25 percent and the NASDAQ is off 19 percent.

The Wilshire 5000 is also down roughly 24 percent year-to-date. Gold is up about 3 percent YTD and crude oil is down 6.5 percent.

I was laughing this morning at one of those talking heads on TV talking about how gold was just roaring upward this year. Had no idea what she was talking about. By the way, the absolute worst thing you can be doing, in my opinion, is watching the cable business channels.

Remember, this is not about news, it is about entertainment.

We should play a little game here. Let's pretend to buy some things that don't look good right now. Probably the number one thing is stocks. Like RSP, which is the S and P Index equally weighted instead of by capitalization.

Right now as I write this RSP is trading at $21.17. OK, oil looks terrible; let us buy that here. OIL is about $41.50 a barrel. How about commodities? Horrible, huh? The Barclays AIG Commodity index symbol DJP is $31.65. What else do we hate? Aha, real estate. The SPDR Real Estate Index, symbol RWR, which measures domestic REITs, is $24.35. Lastly, how about banks? The SPDR ETF symbol KBE reflects the DBW Bank Index and is currently trading at $10.79.

Now I want to make sure that I stress that I am not recommending that you buy any of this stuff, this is just a game! In six months we are going to revisit these investments and let's see what our returns look like. Any guesses?

Let us talk about dying. Some of you may think you have. Anyway, I have some advice for you. If you have substantial assets, do not hesitate to pay someone to help you do some planning. I see people refuse to do that all the time and it is sometimes frustrating. That is what Trust and Estate people do.

Don't be silly and stingy at the same time. Deciding who gets what is difficult for some. I had an instance several years ago where one of my wealthy clients died, nothing I caused of course, and had two surviving sons. One of the sons was somewhat less than successful. Lazy and no ambition come to mind. The other son was very successful. Guess who got the majority of the estate? Mister lazy and no ambition, of course. Any guess as to what that did to the families involved?

I wanted to bean my client. It is difficult being fair but try to take everything into consideration and don't penalize success. Make the will or trust contain the simplest language possible. Make no doubt as to what you want. Dying with real estate holdings and leaving it to the kids is a horror story. Everyone wants something different. Not good.

By the way you, can ask me questions or correspond with me at Howie.Pentony@uvestfinancial.com. You can also check me out at www.nextierwealth.com. I thought you cynics might enjoy this: Do you know what the difference is between a pigeon and a financial adviser? A pigeon can still make a deposit on a Lexus.

Howie Pentony is a Butler financial adviser with UVEST FINANCIAL SERVICES, member FINRA/SIPC.