Just curious, How many of you have a 401k?

[Meister]

I have a government annuity, and retired. I had money in the stock market through indvidual stock, and mutual funds. I did quite well for several years. I too, pulled mine out when the dems took over. So I'm retired and feeling good about it.

 

[gardenbee]

One word....Gold!

 

[Shadow]

I have a government annuity, and retired. I had money in the stock market through indvidual stock, and mutual funds. I did quite well for several years. I too, pulled mine out when the dems took over. So I'm retired and feeling good about it.

I owned a little stock and took it out also. I have a 401K at work that the company matches what I pay into it. I changed my stock choices to low risk at the same time.

 

[WillowTree]

I have pension with a guaraneteed benefit that will pay me a guaranteed amount until the day I die. My Union fought for it, and obviously given current events a pension is better than a 401(k), given that we're in the throes of a second great republican depression.

You republicans hate unions, pensions, and worker benefitts....and you love the freedom of the market and making workers place their money in the stock market. I hope your 401s recover, I honestly do. And I hope you'll rethink your hatred for unions, and rethink privitizing social security and putting your FICA in the stock market.

I think I'll be fine with a pension and social security which wil pay me guaranteed benefit, unrelated to the stock market fluctuations.

Just curious. How will your company pay your pension if the Obama policies cause the company to fail? And aren't most companies retirement accounts invested in the stock market?

Pensions are legal obligations that have to be paid out. Companies are required by law to set aside money to pay pension obliga tions. It doesn';t matter how the stock market does.

Anything's theoretically possible. The country could crash and burn, like Limbaugh and many republicans "hope" it does....and pensions obligations could be defaulted.

but there's almost zero chance of my pension being defaulted on. And liberals wisely instiuted tthe Pension Guarantee Corporation, for the rare times a major company ever defaults on pension obligations.


the bottom line is that a pension is not only superior to a 401k....its safer. There are cons at my work And if you asked them to trade in their gold-plated pension for a 401k, I can guarantee you with 1000% certainty, they would turn you down. They would rather have their nice, gold plated union pension.

Cons may hate unions and hate pensions. But when push comes to shove, Con prefer to live and work in the liberal world. Cons in congress talk the wonders of 401ks. But when Bernie Sanders introduced legislation to turn congressmen's federal pensions into 401ks, every republican senator turned down the opportunity to convert their pensions.

If you didn't lie so much one could almost listen to you with interest,, but alas, you cannot help your partisan hack self.. Kerry On!

 

[random3434]

Just curious. How will your company pay your pension if the Obama policies cause the company to fail? And aren't most companies retirement accounts invested in the stock market?

who would pay it if these companies failed anyway?

ever heard of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation?

Can you elaborate on that? So that means my money is safe, no matter what? (From my Retirement Fund and PERF)

 

[alan1]

Or is your retirement all in Social Security?

If you do have a 401k how is it doing since Obama took over?

I rolled the 401(k) from the last place I worked into an IRA about 2 years ago.
I have a 401(k) with my current employer.

Both accounts took a serious beating over the last year. Perhaps more so than some people because (I will admit it) I had my portfolios set with some high risk. Had this market crash not occurred, I probably could have retired in about another 5 years. Oh well, I'm only in my 40's, I've got time to recover. I may have to work until I'm 60 instead of 50.

I wasn't maxed with my 401(k) at my current employer, but now that the market is cheap, I decided to max out and capitalize on it.

 

[oreo]

Stastically--67% of the American working population is in some form of 401K, Roth or IRA fund for retirement.

 

[American Horse]

Or is your retirement all in Social Security?

If you do have a 401k how is it doing since Obama took over?

Don't forget IRAs and SEP-IRAs, and ordinary savings in CDs.

In that mix we have about 4% of our assets in mutual funds and common stock, and together they've lost about 60 percent of their value since December 31; 60% of our assets are in Bank CD's earning a few percent; 12% of our assets are in paid up life insurance still earning a few percent; and 24% is in real estate which is not our personal residence, and maybe is keeping pace with inflation. It's always on the market at market value.

In 2006 we reduced our personal residence down to only 1500 square feet and a garage and it has lost about 18% in appraised value since then but we don't have to sell, so that is only a loss on paper at present. We don't count our house as a salable asset because if we sold it we'd have to replace it with something else, likely giving up an equal asset of equal value.

At 68 I'm drawing SS and it would take an asset of $500k earning 3% p.a. to provide the same amount of cash flow. My Medicare, Supplemental insurance and Pard D drug benifit chew up 28% of that every single month. In two years my wife will be able to draw also and we'll both continue working, probably as long as we both live, or as long as we can sustain it. Once both of us can't work we'll have to spend down our assets and hopefully everything will be depleted at about the same time.

We've only started being able to save anything more than our stock shares at all in the last 15 years, but since then we've been pretty determined to be frugal or we'd face a bleak old age. We did take a two week vacation to Florida in late December. We'd just gotten our $1,200 IRS tax rebate check, and we were able to do the whole two weeks within that amount and have a really good time stimulating the economy. That was money well spent.

 

[Meister]

who would pay it if these companies failed anyway?

ever heard of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation?

Can you elaborate on that? So that means my money is safe, no matter what? (From my Retirement Fund and PERF)

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)