this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
31 points (89.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43965 readers
1403 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why do you expect that the savings in a 401K will be worth something once you want to retire?
In Germany, about 20 years ago they pushed evwryone to additionally to the normal state funded retirement to have private insurance too (Riesterrente) over time all this money was stolen by shady insurance people who got super rich (Meschmeier or so his name) so that what is still left is not worth anything. But the state owned retirement is still working kind of OK.
(I'M NOT FROM THE uS, so I'm not sure if 401k is state owned or private)
401k (employer sponsored) and IRA (individual account) are managed by investment companies. They’re not a state operated asset. It seems unlikely that the government would move it away from these investment companies because they’re probably great a lobbying.
The law states that these retirement accounts should be completely untouched and recoverable if the company goes bankrupt.
Historically the market returns have been around 7% annually over the long long term but that fluctuates a lot and might not even be possible into the future but America is good at pumping those numbers up so idk.
Yes. “Put your money here, it will be there when you’re old—we promise.” Is a ridiculous plan.
You get to choose how your 401k is invested, though. The only difference is a tax advantage.
The advice is just: save money, let it grow using compound interest, use tax laws to your advantage.
There's no "trust the government" in that advice.