Why don’t they have any savings? Are they stupid? /s
Yes, some of them are stupid because this is not restrained to the working poor. Those people are stuck but they are not the entire scope.
This includes professionals making stupid financial decisions.
This includes people who are working at companies that have company matching but not investing to receive free money is stupid.
This includes people who have cars worth more because the idea of driving and maintaining an older vehicle is a hit to vanity.
The joke is to say it’s avocado toast or Starbucks and the reality is it is sometimes lifesystle choices.
The issue is 401ks were never a good solution. The level of financial literacy to properly manage one is clearly not universal.
However, the financial stupidity of these people is not an excuse for the richest country in the world to allow a situation the prevents retirement but no one wants to talk about that.
Instead we talk over each other about the symptoms pretending they’re the disease when the real disease and it’s cure is obvious, fund retirements not the military.
Social security is basic income for the infirmed but it doesn’t pay out enough for survival.
No generation has retired on 401Ks to prove it works generationally.
(It won’t)
The passive income to companies that manage 401k plans is the reason it will not change.
Fidelity investments had 3.5 TRILLION in assets under management when I was there years ago.
They take in money passively doing nothing but automatically redistribute it year over year for a target date fund.
It’s a scam to the tune of billions a year and we do Notta.
Yep the successes are anecdotal not generational. Stepping backing and looking at raw numbers it’s clearly heading for a series of catastrophes that amplifies with each successive generation.
The weird part is the working poor can often maintain their lifestyle into retirement because they lack the very assets everyone is told to have. They can qualify for additional benefits that prevent anyone above the meager limits from various avenues of additional help.
This is all solved by basic income but we spend an insane amount avoiding the simple solution because it’s not capitalistic.
This is something I’m really struggling with. I’m finally at a point where I have sufficient income to start putting it away. I have over 20+ years until I’m of retirement age and I’ve got a state pension but no matching contributions so I’ve never started any personal retirement account. I’ve always felt like it was just another scam for the wealthy to profit off of the working class.
Of course, they get to charge me a fee - take their cut. However, can I be sure that they have my best interests in mind? If they can leverage all of the investors an index fund, or whatever the fuck I’m invested in, and throw us under the bus to benefit themselves or a high-value client that’s actually paying attention and throwing around orders of magnitude more money… will they?
Ignoring the scam angle… what the fuck can I invest in, without putting significant time and energy into, that isn’t diametrically opposed to my ideals? Tech, power, pharma, banking? For lack of a better term, anything making money these days is either Evilcorp or likely to be put out of business by or acquired by Evilcorp. Do I want to profit off of that shit, or even help raise their stock price?
I could always put it in a CD or something at a credit union and know that I making substantially less for my retirement than virtually every other option. Yay.
65 is a really bad time for that career switch to OF
OnlyGrans
