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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Retiring Boomers Find 401(k) Plans Fall Short

An extremely sobering look at the retiring baby boom generation. The median 401k's are not enough to cover a decent yearly wage and the maintenance of a standard lifestyle.

I am reading that many 401k holdings were shifted into bonds during the recession and that many have missed out of the rebound in stocks. This really saddens me.

Look if you have a 401k you have to be a least minimally savvy with finance. Its not their money, its not your financial adviser's money. Its your money G.D.it. Its yours. Your financial adviser is getting a nice percentage cut of your holdings probably quarterly or yearly regardless of how much your account goes up or down.

I swear to god, reading this article pisses me off. Excuse me I have to go scream.

WSJ: Retiring Boomers Find 401(k) Plans Fall Short
"The discussion turns out to be: What kind of part-time work do you want to do after you retire?"


He has clients contemplating part-time work into their 70s...


She says she lost more than half her savings in the recent financial crisis, then shifted heavily to bonds and missed the stock rebound.


The median 401(k) plan held $149,400...(which) would generate just $9,073 a year for a couple...less than one-quarter of the $39,465 needed.

5 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

Yep, were screwed, millions of us boomers face poverty in our old age. On top of this, Obama and his GOP pals will probably cut SSI and Medicare as well.

Public Vs. Private workers

I think part of the reason so many people with Public pension plans are not getting the public support they'd like to see as the right assaults these people's plans, is that there is the perception that public service Unions stood by as the right hammered private Unions flat and now there aren't any left to come to the public Unions rescue and damn little sympathy for these people. The GOP is successfully I might add turning the middle class against itself with this tactic. Here's the irony in NJ. Our Gov. Chris Christie is leading the fight against public service unions Nationally and wants to cut benefits , pay etc. He's never worked for anyone but the public his whole life, see him voluntarily cutting his two huge pensions and his golden medical plan? Not a chance! The truth is the glut and greed in these plans is at the top 1% of public employees, the rest aren't getting huge retirements etc. The problem is everyone else got stuck with these lousy 401K's that were wide open to the thieves on Wall st. and no offense Jim but it's just a f*cking game and the rules change by the second. Not even my stock broker pals can keep up with the mile a min. ( micro second) scams rolling out of these TBTF banks on Wall st. It's become nothing more then a clever trap. The real game on Wall st. they tell me is Hedge funds and you need millions even to get to play. Maybe Soros will loan us a few bucks? Fat chance of that happening, right? Ok, so the bottom line is lawns anyone, howabout McDonald's? Gonna be a lot of old people doing things at 80 they never thought they'd be doing, like working part or full time just to pay for ever increasing food and medicine.

Jim Sande said...

I talk to people and pretty much 95% don't have a clue about anything on Wall Street. Little people with modest amounts of money could have done well in the last two years by investing in the right equities, easily doubling their money, minimum. There's no reason why this should not have happened for millions of people. Nobody left behind. Hedge funds are for the billionaires, what's 100 million, chump change? We are faced with savings account interest rates which don't even keep up with inflation. But there are still equities out there that are producing between 7% and 20% return, even now. Housing is tricky too. You have to know what you are doing with housing too. I just feel that people have to learn about it because knowledge is power. I think one can still selectively flip houses and own housing to rent.

Personally I support the state workers. I am happy some have golden parachutes. I could never have spent my life working in that kind of a bureaucracy, too much sacrifice. Give up your life, get a golden parachute - fair trade. But what you say is true - there is little sympathy. The unions are in decline. We are going backwards and there will be lots of poverty among the senior citizens and apparently no safety nets, nothing.

Glynn Kalara said...

We've come almost full circle now haven't we? The right always hated FDER's reforms and for a few generations they actually worked but the Conserv. ( Reactionaries) figured out how over time to defeat these programs. One trick was to simply steal the money as Reagan did in the 80's to SSI. They used bookkeeping tricks ala ENRON to take the SSI $$ and then put in it's place IOU's they never intended to pay off. Clever right? Not so clever, because what will happen over time is the population will grow hungry and angry and the cycle will start all over again. The big ?? is this, who owns this country? the BIG $$ people or "we the people". If they do then it's inevitable that our future and our grandkids futures are to be nothing more then serfs or slaves on their plantations and estates. This is what they envision by the way. They really do have nothing but contempt for us, I know some of them. They see themselves as smart and deserving of all they have and we all deserve nothing more then to lick their boots for pennies and be thankful for the boots.

Ed said...

"Little people with modest amounts of money could have done well in the last two years by investing in the right equities, easily doubling their money, minimum. There's no reason why this should not have happened for millions of people."

Right. Believe me Jim, if millions of little people were invested, the financial gamers would apply themselves to the project of figuring out a way to suck their guts out...

If you're doing ok on Wall St. it's because you just happen to be temporarily on the right side of a rip-off.

Glynn Kalara said...

I agree with Ed. I see nothing but very complicated small print slick scams for as far as you can see. Major Corps. in particular specialize in cons and swindles as if they're just standard business practices. They are now, because the regulators and cops are all bought off and spend they're time arresting kids on street corners for possession of nickel bags of pot. Rob a bank from the "inside" steal trillions wreck entire nations and your rewarded for being clever. Ted Rall is right only a Revolution will change this shit now.