Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
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Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#2Headline is shameless click-bait. Percentage change is much more valuable than absolute dollars. From the article: "An increase in retirement savings of 0.6 percentage points [from 2010 to 2015]".
Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#3With more money chasing after the same quantity of equities, I would have thought the market prices would have been going up. But they've been essentially flat over the past year. Even though firms have been buying back their stock. There must be another reason why they've been stagnant.
Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#4I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough to tap into it, and I'm also not planning on having any kids to bail me out when I go senile, so yeah I'm putting a lot into my 401k. I think a lot of people my age (turning 30 next week) are feeling the same way, so I wonder if it's younger workers driving this trend.
Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#5Having a somewhat paranoid personality, I find myself wondering if auto-enroll and (especially) auto-escalation - which my job has - are designed with the employee's well-being in mind, or just a ploy to prop up the stock market?
Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#6Say what you will about government incompetence, but the idea of tying things like my retirement and healthcare to my employer just sounds terrible.
Also, auto-enrolling people into 401K sounds kinda like... ya know... social security.
Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#7With more money chasing after the same quantity of equities, I would have thought the market prices would have been going up. But they've been essentially flat over the past year. Even though firms have been buying back their stock. There must be another reason why they've been stagnant.
Really? Its been a very good year for me. IIRC approximately 13% returns.
Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#8With more money chasing after the same quantity of equities, I would have thought the market prices would have been going up. But they've been essentially flat over the past year. Even though firms have been buying back their stock. There must be another reason why they've been stagnant.
Where are you seeing markets as flat over the past year?
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#9With more money chasing after the same quantity of equities, I would have thought the market prices would have been going up. But they've been essentially flat over the past year. Even though firms have been buying back their stock. There must be another reason why they've been stagnant.
There are also potentially even more people withdrawing money from the markets as baby boomers are retiring en mass now.
But also having said that, they haven't been flat over the past year. 2015 was a flat year, maybe that's what you're thinking of?
Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
#10Say what you will about government incompetence, but the idea of tying things like my retirement and healthcare to my employer just sounds terrible. Also, auto-enrolling people into 401K sounds kinda like... ya know... social security.
> Also, auto-enrolling people into 401K sounds kinda like... ya know... social security.
Except that you have control over how your 401(k) gets allocated, along with additional ways to access those funds early (with a penalty) in case of emergencies.
Furthermore, 401(k)s are explicitly not comingled, whereas the entire premise of Social Security is that the funds are comingled.