If 2009 was meant to be the start of a bright new age, someone forgot to tell Wall Street. Stocks celebrated President Obama’s swearing-in by posting their worst inaugural day performance in history.

Since closing the books on 2008, the market has lost 10.5%, as measured by the Wilshire 5000 (.DWC), vaporizing another $1 trillion of shareholder wealth. And the pain isn’t limited to the market. Major banks came back for billions more from taxpayers, millions of whom learned last year that they wouldn’t have paychecks to pay taxes.

So if you’re looking to turn your fortunes around, don’t count on the market or the economy to be much immediate help. You’ll have to take matters into your own hands. That doesn’t mean, of course, that you can single-handedly restore what you’ve lost. But you can recover the sense that you’re in control.

“The big thing is to replace that feeling of dread with the knowledge that you can handle the worst and take advantage of an upside surprise,” says Ross Levin, a fee-only wealth manager in Edina, Minn. “In other words, you need a plan.”

1) Get the real picture

After one of the worst years in stock market history, probably the last thing you want to do is relive 2008 by looking at your 401(k), bank and mutual fund statements for the year.

Do it anyway. You have to know what you’re working with.

The shock will be more bearable if don’t count just your stock funds, which on average lost about 38% last year. Instead, view your whole financial picture. Your cash investments – bank CDs, money market funds and stable value funds in your 401(k) – survived 2008 just fine. The average U.S. Treasury bond fund actually rose almost 20% last year. So, a portfolio that was 60% in stock funds and 40% in Treasury bonds and cash would be down “only” about 23%.

You’ll find it easier to gain a holistic perspective if you can see all your bank and investment accounts in one place. Yodlee (https://moneycenter.yodlee.com) and Mint.com (www.mint.com) are two of several free Web sites that let you view at one glance all accounts where you have online access. Fidelity Investments offers its own tool, Fidelity Full View.

Just enter your various IDs and passwords, and the sites update your holdings. Sites and tools such as these take elaborate precautions to keep your passwords safe; if you can bring yourself to plug your information in, there’s no easier way to get your full financial picture.

2) Find out where you need to go

You may instinctively feel like the first thing you need to do is earn back all the money you lost. But that’s not what really matters. “The thing to remember is that the paper wealth you had during the bubble wasn’t real,” says Levin.

What does matter are your financial goals. Rather than joking that you’ll have to work to 90 – and then waking in a cold sweat at night, wondering if that’s really true – run the numbers on an online retirement calculator and see what really needs to be done.

The best online calculators let you experiment by assuming different retirement ages, amounts of saving, and retirement income targets to see what adjustments you'll need to make. Then they give the odds – because there are no certainties – that you'll hit your target, based on market history.

Two calculators that meet this standard are the retirement planner at CNN/Money.com (http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/retirementplanner/retirementplanner.jsp) and the myPlan Retirement Quick Check at Fidelity.com.

“When you run the numbers, you’re likely to find that it won’t be as bad as you thought,” says Robert Padgette, managing director of Klein Decisions LLC, a Raleigh, N.C., provider of Web-based investment software. “Postponing retirement just a couple of years can really make up lost ground,” he adds.

In his analysis (see chart), a 50-year-old who was on track to retire at 67 and suffered a severe 40% loss needs only to postpone retirement by two years to have a 75% chance of retiring at the same income level as before.

3) Take some risk …

 The one thing that can throw off your recovery, however, is playing it too safe with your investments. Padgette’s analysis assumes that the 50-year-old keeps 60% in the stock market; chopping that holding to 20% cuts his or her odds of success to just 54%.

Of course, it was the stock market that caused problems in the first case – and there are no guarantees that stocks will get back to the historical returns that Padgette’s analysis assumes.

But at today's depressed values, the odds favor stocks.

"The total market value of U.S. stocks has dropped from about $18 trillion to about $9.5 trillion," says John Bogle, the well-known mutual fund industry leader and now an oft-quoted, highly independent, investment thinker. "Does anyone really believe that the value of American business has dropped by almost half?"

Bogle figures it's probable that stocks will earn 8% to 10% over the next decade.

4) … But not too much

Still, if the current financial crisis proved anything, it’s that anything can happen in the short run. The odds may point to a stock market rebound over the next decade, says Bogle, but “if you can’t risk your money, it should not be in the market.”

"If you're going to get a return of 9% to 10% over the long term, that's going to require that you take some risk," agreed Derek Young, portfolio manager of Fidelity's Strategic Dividend and Income Fund (FSDIX)

	Loading...

"You look at your statement, you realize how volatile equities can be and you say, 'I can't take it anymore,' and you sell," he added, noting last year's drop of 36.5% in the S&P 500 (SPX) was the second worst since 1926.

	Loading...

"Ironically, when it's on the other side and stocks are near record highs, most people tend to buy more. In my mind, it's just the opposite of how most people approach their retail purchases," Young said. "If you want to buy a jacket, you don't wait around to see if they marked up the jacket."

Best advice: Make sure you have enough set aside in low-risk investments like money funds or short-term bond funds to cover the big foreseeable expenses of the next three to five years.

You should also have between six months’ and a year’s worth of daily living costs covered in the same kind of safe investment, as a backstop against an emergency like losing your job. You’ll sleep better.

Just as important, you’ll be better able to resist the temptation to pull your money out of stocks during the inevitable market stumbles that lie ahead. Trying to time the ups and downs of the market is a trap.

“History shows that when it comes to managing a portfolio, consistency is what matters,” says Allan Roth, a fee-only wealth manager in Colorado Springs, Colo., and author of “How a Seventh Grader Beats Wall Street” (John Wiley & Sons, $24.95).

Know where you stand, know where you’re going and stick to your plan: In an uncertain world, it’s the closest you can come to controlling your fate. The only thing that’s sure is that your personal financial rebound has no chance if you play it too safe.

“To get back on track, you have to be invested,” says Roth. “And to be invested, you have to embrace uncertainty. It is here to stay.”

Learn more about Fidelity Investments or other mutual fund companies at Fund Companies. For particular fund information, visit Fund Selector.