this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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[–] kerrigan778 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Y'know there's this thing called Target Retirement Date ETFs right? Also, aren't most 401ks either managed or extremely restricted towards very safe investment options?

[–] grue 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] kerrigan778 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.