return2ozmaI mean... somebody has to be the bagholders for all their reckless financial speculation.
Sure as shit isn't gonna be them.
Crypto and Private equity need bag holders with deep pockets and little oversight of their money to keep the pyramid scheme going. Targeting 401ks and passive investors will fill that need… for now.
this is part of why retiring from the stock market is a scam
They don't want us to retire, they want to literally work us to death. Cheaply as possible I might add.
401(k)s were always a wealth extraction vehicle for the wealthy, they just want a bigger cut now. A pension was an earned and guaranteed benefit. A 401(k) is a gamble for bootraps fetishists.
This is all about having a bigger pool of marks to be left holding the bag when the AI bubble pops. I think capital knows by now that regular retail investors aren't going to buy the hype enough to buy them out right before the burst, so they need to force them to do so to make sure they keep their money. It's the same bullshit that had SpaceX trying to get listed on the index funds, only bigger.
That's why they want the change. If you lose the money in your 401(k), it is not gone. It's just that someone else has it. If you retire in poverty, someone else has an additional Ferrari.
That’s an over-simplification of the mechanics of wealth transfer, but yes, wealth transfer is their goal here, and they know what they’re doing, so it will work if they get their way, which they may given how captured our government is by the Epstein class.
TL;DR - They want to allow riskier and more expensive investments into 401(k) accounts.
Many 401(k) options can be pretty crappy as it is now, and as boring as it can be, we need to ensure we understand what we're signing up for if we don't expect to be screwed, just as in any other financial situation. Learn the basics of investment saving, set up your own brokerage account, and do a regular sweep of your funds into your personal low fee account as frequently as your employer plan lets you.
Yes, it sucks that they are attempting to remove guardrails, but this shouldn't be anything new for anyone with a retirement account. If you don't understand what you are investing in, you've already likely failed yourself. Everyone should at minimum be able to understand the terms of your 401(k) policy, know what different asset classes are, and know what expense ratios are. Getting informed keeps us safe. Trusting an employer or financial product salesman is not the way to go.
For anyone wanting to start on basics, from simple to more involved:
Yeah, they're not "doing" anything to our 401(k)s. Allowing riskier funds to be added and reducing the liability for the people offering those funds is scummy but if someone can't be bothered to inform themselves my sympathy is limited. When you start a new plan you get about half a tree's worth of prospectuses, and they are also available online. If you can't be bothered to learn, just dump it into an index tracker or one of those age based ones that slowly transitions from stocks to bonds as you age. If you put a significant amount of money into some risky get-rich-quick scheme: I'm not going to say you deserve it, but I'm not interested in hearing you cry about it.
My plan added a lot of funds a couple years ago. When I was first informed about it I was very interested to see what would be available because up to that point it was very vanilla and some of it sounded like it might work for me. It took about 30 seconds to scan the fees on these new funds for me to laugh and know they were all crap. I still read the rest of it and even aside from the fees they were all junk at best and designed to create a bunch of bag-holders at worst. It's not forced and it's not hidden. Be informed and/or just keep it simple and this won't affect you.
I'm sure there are genuine WallStreetBets types that would be thrilled to have some of these zanier options available. I've known some reasonably fiscally intelligent people put money into gold, crypto mining funds, supposed collectibles, etc. A company wishing to give people what they want, even if it is stupid, is something that makes sense in that context. I wouldn't put these things quite up to Nigerian prince levels of scammy, but if someone asked me if they were good investments picks, it'd be an easy no from me.
I have no issue with them being barred from being options in 401(k)s, because even if you do know all the ins and outs of trading these things, a 401(k) is a personal pension plan, and since that is supposed to be your personal safety net, I don't support people making that safety not of questionable quality ropes, but I also know people foolish with money are going to do so no matter how foolproof you try to make something. I'm mid 40s and almost 100% in all stocks, which some people would consider overly risky, but I am comfortable with it. If someone wants to be what I consider greedy, it's still within their right to bet on crazy stuff. I'd be mad if 401(k) money could only go into treasuries to be super safe.
There's always risk in every part of the market, and I think we as a society do a disservice to people not teaching better financial literacy early in life when it can have the greatest impact, but what foolish stuff we spend it on should still really only be our own business. With that said though, now that places are auto-enrolling people into 401(k)s, anyone who would auto-enroll someone into a higher than average risk fund is a prick and should be punished.
Yeah, different things work for different people. I'm retired and 100% stocks, but that's because I have a pension and my house is paid off and if shit really hits the fan I can just withdraw less, or even zero, for a few years and it'll only impact my luxury and travel spending.
I do think there should be some guardrails, but you're right, they shouldn't be too restrictive, people should have the choice.
You're also right when you say education early in life would be a big advantage.
As for auto enrolling in these funds; that definitely should be prohibited. Until someone makes a selection it should go into secured bonds, just like a settlement fund with a brokerage. That at least gives them the opportunity to become informed, and if they don't take that opportunity, that's on them.
You certainly sound like you did many things right along the way!
My grandfather taught me about the barebones bits when I got my first job at 16 and he started my Roth for me at the time. I didn't care so much about it then, but by my mid 20s I was doing ok enough to start learning more and take a more active (for a Boglehead!😅) position on things right around the financial crisis, which I think benefitted me as I watched the money I had left untouched and largely forgotten about disappear, but then shortly after got to watch it come back with a vengeance for a long time, so it taught me to ride things out.
I'm about to get my mortgage down in the 5 figures, so that milestone is starting to actually feel in sight. My wife went back to school recently and has a great job now, and my personal investments are worth more than my house at this point, so I'm pretty pleased with myself considering I've never been a high earner.
I see we both picked up downvotes, and I can understand even at what I'd consider a healthy modest net worth, that this is still out of reach for far too many, so I wish people would talk rather than just be silently pissy. I'm not here to gloat about anything or say this rule change is great. Anyone who actually read what I said should be able to get that. But no matter our position, we can almost always find some small way to improve our situation, it just starts with education. Can't please everyone though!
I had a little early exposure myself. A math class in junior high had a project where we invested fake money over the semester. When my dad learned of this he opened me a brokerage account and put a little money in so I was doing it for real and took the opportunity to give me some basic education. My results were...mixed, but I learned a lot. (This was the late 80s so he actually had to get on the phone every time I wanted to trade.) So I paid more attention than my peers as soon as I got my "real" job after college, this allowed me to retire as soon as I earned a pension at 48. My wife thought it was weird how much I was into it when we met in our mid 20s but she says she's very appreciative now.
Losing that 6th figure from the mortgage is huge. I remember how good that felt, congrats on the milestone!
I don't know how long you've been on Lemmy but discussing sound strategies for living in a capitalist system (which most of us have no control over) instead of screaming about how everything is designed to make us wage slaves for life and ensure we die pennyless (they may be right, but many people avoid that fate and I would like to be one of them) is always going to pick up some downvotes. God help us if someone decides it's interesting enough to post a screenshot on "the triad" and they decide to hop on their alts and come over. Comes with the territory.
When do worship services end, when the singing starts or whenever you're done with the holier-than-thou, limited sympathy shtick for every man, woman, and child not taking the time out of their attention starved lives to read every 500 page thick prospectus? What about every Form 10-K? Let's just grind the whole dang world to a halt so that everyone can be forced to read all the EULAs, terms of service, company handbooks, and warranty terms for every single thing that touches our lives. "You're a citizen of this city in this state in this country? Ok recite every single ordinance and law of each from memory bro." Most Christians haven't even read the whole Bible, are they still Christians? Are they still called Christians? What about the Bhagavad Gita, did you make sure everyone who offers incense at a shrine has read the entire thing? Do you even speak English if you can't recite the entirety of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales?" Let's calm tf down. Professional investors don't even read the prospectus. If you want to give ppl the limited-sympathy, r/iamverysmart treatment then mandatory voting would be a more productive place to start but even that has some serious issues too. Isn't there enough suffering and injustice in the world that we don't have to look for reasons to justify misfortune when it happens to others with petty "well if they can't inform themselves I can't be bothered to have sympathy for my fellow human beings" statements?
Given your reading comprehension I would not recommend you read the prospectus.
Like I said, if you can't/won't inform yourself just play it safe with index trackers and age based funds. If you can't/won't inform yourself and still decide to invest in risky high-fee funds, you share at least some of the blame with the people who offered you those funds.
Seconding Bogleheads’ general advice. I’ve recomended The Investment Answer, which gives broadly the same advice.
From looking at the 5 points in the summary, it sounds like similar advice. It's been all I needed to do realistically well for myself, and once you set things up, if you've been honest with yourself in your risk levels, you set it and forget it for a couple decades, since so many sites let you automate everything.
It really doesn't need to be hard, I think a lot of people think it's going to be and just flat out don't want to learn, even when I try to ELI5 to them. I'm honest with them and will show them my balance and holdings to show I'm not blowing smoke, but I don't know if anyone but my wife and ex have ever listened, and even then I think it was just so they didn't need to listen to it anymore. 🙄
They want us to die penniless. First they strap young people with tens of thousands in student loan debt, suppress wages, raise taxes and prices higher and higher, heavily promote video games and turn citizens into Dopamine junkies, then transition them to rigged gambling and prediction market apps, do massive targeted advertising timed precisely to the consumers' personal aspirations, making them irresistible, etc, over an entire lifetime.
It's all designed to extract every last penny out of our pockets by the time we're old. And just in case you had enough money to put aside into a safe retirement fund, so that you'd have a nest egg, even if you burned through everything else, now they want to get their mitts on that, and steal that, too.
They aren't moustached villains, actively plotting people's misery for their joy.
They're simply making choices that are good for them personally, as anyone would. They aren't thinking of any broader externalities and effects on people they've never met.
Few are cartoon villains; few are thinking of externalities. But the people pushing for this change know what they’re doing. They are actively plotting wealth transfer from the working class to the capitalist class.
Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
— Michael Parenti
"as anyone would"
I guess altruism is a made up thing?
Well it is, just like greed is a made up thing.
In a proper world, altruism wouldn't exist.
It only does because nature is uncairing, and society can be cruel.
But being made up doesn't matter to my point. People can create a problem with one hand, while trying to fix it with another, having never noticed the connection.
I would've been fine with your comment if you hadn't included that. I don't doubt these people are trying to act in their own self interests.
But when you say "as anyone would" it implies everyone is horribly selfish and never takes other people into account when making decisions ever and this is just accepted common knowledge, which it isn't.
Anyone and everyone are very different things.
Yes, the words are different, but the meaning was effectively the same. "People are inherently selfish and we all know this"
I wasn't saying selfish. More myopic, or ignorant.
Animals are altruistic. Just search for _____ saves person. You will find lots of instances of animals saving humans. Not just dogs and cats either. Ravens, crows, pigeons, elephants dolphins, beluga, and humpbacks are all well documented displaying protective behaviors when predators are around humans that they know.
Of course they do. Altruism was made up by all social species. A few others even copied it.
What pedantic definitions to be as reductive as possible. You are not a good person.
What a thought stopping dismissal, to be as righteous as possible.
You don't know what makes a good person.
We dont accept the premise of assholes here
It's clear you lot think you don't fart.
