Y’know there’s this thing called Target Retirement Date ETFs right?
Of course I do.
But a surprisingly large number of people either don’t, or don’t understand it and are terrified of making a mistake, so they end up making the much worse mistake of leaving their 401k contributions in the cash sweep account. (I think in recent years 401ks have started putting contributions in target-date funds by default instead of making people affirmatively choose it, but still, a lot of people lost a lot of years of growth to that issue alone.)
And again, that’s not even talking about the people who simply don’t [think they] make enough money to contribute at all, but would have had money going to their retirement if it had been in the form of a pension that they never had the option to decline and get in their paycheck instead. I have never heard of a 401k that forces you to put money away in order to ensure that your retirement is actually adequately funded, the way that pension plans used to handle automatically.
Perhaps but my years working for various companies that offered pensions with substantial vestment periods but which I didn’t stay at for long enough to get are wasted, because pensions usually take 10+ years to earn, whereas if I’d had 401k contributions with vestment periods usually around 1.5-5 years I’d have a decent little bit of money from those that could have grown.
Now I have the best of both worlds where I get a defined contribution of 10% on top of whatever I earn added to my 401k with just a few years to vest.
Pensions only pay out if both company and employee are a type of loyal that is simply not common anymore.
Of course I do.
But a surprisingly large number of people either don’t, or don’t understand it and are terrified of making a mistake, so they end up making the much worse mistake of leaving their 401k contributions in the cash sweep account. (I think in recent years 401ks have started putting contributions in target-date funds by default instead of making people affirmatively choose it, but still, a lot of people lost a lot of years of growth to that issue alone.)
And again, that’s not even talking about the people who simply don’t [think they] make enough money to contribute at all, but would have had money going to their retirement if it had been in the form of a pension that they never had the option to decline and get in their paycheck instead. I have never heard of a 401k that forces you to put money away in order to ensure that your retirement is actually adequately funded, the way that pension plans used to handle automatically.
Perhaps but my years working for various companies that offered pensions with substantial vestment periods but which I didn’t stay at for long enough to get are wasted, because pensions usually take 10+ years to earn, whereas if I’d had 401k contributions with vestment periods usually around 1.5-5 years I’d have a decent little bit of money from those that could have grown.
Now I have the best of both worlds where I get a defined contribution of 10% on top of whatever I earn added to my 401k with just a few years to vest.
Pensions only pay out if both company and employee are a type of loyal that is simply not common anymore.