It seems to me that the employer will fund it either way. Maybe I’m misremembering stories of pensions being mismanaged and lost. I think the most important thing is that the employer actually does something to fund a retirement, in my way of thinking the 401k approach puts me in control of the money so I don’t rely on someone else to not fail.
Whether it’s promised bonuses, stocks, or retirement funds, my motto is always “show me the money”, and I’ll believe it when it’s in my hands.
Diversity, my friend. What will you do if the 401k doesn’t come through like you want? Bear in mind that the ultra rich and the big banks employ people who are really good at investing money. They have more experience and information than you. They’ll bail themselves, but not you, out in case of disaster.
“Show me the money” is not a good motto for long term savings. Inflation or poor investment can make that money disappear easily enough. Of course you don’t want to get scammed, so oversight is a good idea.
It’s income rather than assets, so if you fall into debt due to medical issues or whatever you can declare bankruptcy and still have your pension.
The old plan was that you’d have three things in retirement: Social Security, a corporate pension, and a 401k. Each of these has problems, but if any one of them fails, then the other two are still there to provide enough.
Problem is, pensions have all but disappeared, Social Security gets fucked with, and 401k’s are highly dependent on market conditions at the time you retire.
Immune to market fluctuations. Based on years working and salary so if you worked a long time then retired and lived for a long time you may get more money than if you had a bag of cash in the market. It lasts until you die and your spouse can inherit it so it provides stability for you and your partner for the rest of your lives instead of having to guess how many more years you’re going to live and dividing your savings by number of years left. Removes that stress of outliving your guess and running out of cash.
30 and out. Work for a single company for 30 years and you can retire by 50 with full pension. Doesn’t exist anymore, but it used too.
Wow. All my life, 65 has been retirement age. I didn’t know that it had been even earlier. I expect to work until death.
In theory a pension is stable, guaranteed income. The employer promises a monthly or annual payment for life, and they manage a pool of money to make sure you get that payment regardless of whether the market goes up or down. People like stability.
With a 401k you take on the market risk yourself. If the market tanks (2000 and 2008 come to mind) then your retirement funds are suddenly worth less and your payments to yourself (distributions) go down. Of course, if the market is hot you can also direct your investments to try and ride the wave. Greater risk means greater (potential) reward.
401k’s also have required minimum distributions that kick in as you get older. If you live long enough you will reach a point where you have been forced to drain the whole thing into your regular bank account. Then it’s time for another plan.
Yeah, I remember my parents talking about how badly they were hit in the late 00s. They were considering retirement just as the recession struck, and they lost a huge chunk of what they’d hoped to retire on.
They still haven’t retired fifteen years later despite declining health.
Stocks are 293% higher today than they were at the peak of 2007. Even if they bought all of their stock at that peak right before the 2008 recession, the market had fully recovered by 2012. It isn’t the market keeping them from retiring…
I’ve never asked, but I believe medical issues cropped up and their reduced retirement funds wouldn’t have been enough, forcing them to keep working, and the situation spiraled from there.
401ks have way too much fluctuation and uncertainty. I’ll take the stable pension any day. But IMO the stock market is unethical and should be destroyed.
I put a good chunk of my 401k in CDs.
Edit:
It’s less than an 8th of my fund, just because I don’t like where the market is sitting right now, I’m keeping something secure in case something bad happens to me while something bad happens to the world.
My point was to respond to someone who is morally opposed to stocks. There are other ways to go about it (irrespective of good advice).
That’s a terrible strategy. You are going to cost yourself years of retirement.
Feel free to elaborate.
4.5% vs 15%. CDs in particular have been garbage for the past 3 years even more than usual with the unstable rates.
