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Trump Says Biden Plunging U.S. Into Depression. The Stock Market Hit a Record High
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this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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Total shit like always. 401ks are poor substitutes for pensions or ya know social security that's actually worth something, since I don't think it will exist when I can retire.
401Ks, in general, are a terrible substitute for pensions and social security. The GOP wanted to push Americans' retirement funds into the stock market, and they did that with 401Ks.
I ran some basic analysis a few weeks ago, and even with the corporate matching on 401Ks, due to the poor fund investment options available in most 401Ks, they underperformed index funds over a 30 year period.
Yes, that means many people who contributed to their 401K at full amount, even with matching, have less money than someone who just invested in SPY or VOO over the same period.
Financial vehicles for retirement should be relatively low risk, with that risk becoming even lower as you reach retirement age. Investing in a single stock, no matter what it is, is a high risk. Sure, you can look into the past and say "if you'd just invested in Stock X," but that's with the benefit of hindsight.
The only way you should be managing your 401K is into an index fund with low fees. That's it. Everything else is gambling.
Yup. If your 401k is consistently losing money, then you have it in the wrong investments. You should be seeing an average return of ~7%.
confused by your comment because my 401k contributions go directly towards index funds. are you talking specifically about target date funds, or something else?
It's laughably obviously that this individual has zero experience with individual retirement accounts and is, in fact, making up this alleged analysis. There is no way they even have access to such data.
Target year funds will almost always underperform SPY, by design. They are broad market funds which taper into bonds over time. Either way, I have never seen a 401k which doesn't have many, many index tracking options.
The index fund options in many 401Ks underperform - this is just across the average, not all 401ks. Some 401Ks have general stock market index funds, some only offer index funds in specific sectors or target metrics.
The analysis I ran started with the question: 'given the average 401k, compare returns including average match against general stock market index funds'.
My assumption going in was that 401Ks would return better results because of the employer match, but that's not the case on average. The average investor would have significantly more money if they'd just invested in 'market' index funds, and it wasn't even close.
That being said, 401Ks or general ETF funds are still risky and inferior when compared to pensions and social security.
Holy shit you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Most 401ks these days have very few restrictions on how they can be invested. And you can always roll them into an IRA with basically no restrictions. You can literally day trade options on margin in most IRAs.
Yeah, but now the upper and middle classes future are dependent on stonks go up. Who would have guessed that all it took to disrupt class solidarity between the lower and middle class was just a little gambling?
Also, there are all those management fees to be made....I'm surprised the 401K is even legal at this point. Imagine setting up a structure where huge amounts of guaranteed profits are given to an industry:
Why would that surprise you? It's the kind of policy Republicans absolutely love, and which most elected Democrats are perfectly willing to tolerate.
This is no different from a pension though. Those were typically managed funds as well.
That's on them for falling for the " money managers know what they are doing" scam.
I fell for it for 10 years. Now it's direct stock ownsership and etf's. The founder of Vanguard started his fund because he knew the scam.
Everyone thinks they have a young Warren Buffett running their investments when really it's used car salesmen getting kickbacks for investing your money in bad funds. Obama made that illegal but if course Trump made it legal again.
Sounds like victim blaming to me. Scams should not be legal or tolerated, and most especially, nobody should be allowed to profit from running a scam.
Is Vegas a scam? You know the odds. Funds publish their returns and their charges. The commissions on bad investments should be illegal and once were.
Do Vegas casinos party money to promote the idea that gambling there is an investment?
Your analogy sucks. Everyone knows gambling is for entertainment.
This depends greatly on circumstances. In many cases a 401k will be worth significantly more than the equivalent pension (in my father's case, his pension buyout was worth double ten years later), and there's no risk of bankruptcy rendering your 401k insolvent. Likewise, many jobs which would have never come with a pension have 401k matching these days.
The downside is obviously that it rides the stock market, but you can make the argument that this actually makes the collective global economy our pension. It's gives more people a stake in that stability and growth, for better or worse.
In many cases betting at a casino has a higher ROI than any actual investment. Still doesn't mean it's a good idea to bet your life savings at a casino.
Betting on the S&P 500 is way less risky than betting at a casino, especially in the long-term. You are betting on the growth of the global economy, not betting on whether the casino wants to give you money.
Good thing people only put their money in the S&P 500.
If you want to criticize fund managers or lack of regulations for pushing people towards risky picks like individual stocks, then fine. That doesn't mean that 401(k)s and 403(b)s are bad tools.
Either way, the "casino" argument falls flat because an informed person can control the risk they undergo.