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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

#171

Post by avn2109 »

sigstoat wrote: post #160
crdoconnor wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called social security for a reason. The politicians are itching to hand the pot of money over to Wall Street who will extract fees from it.

as though the social security administration has no costs associated with its operation? i'd put my vanguard expense ratios up against the ssa's effective expense ratios any day of the week.

When Bush the younger tried to privatize SS in the early 2000's as a favor to his cronies, he made sure the defaults were e.g. John Hancock at 2.4% fees.

With effort you could have run it through Vanguard but most people are confused by investing and would have ended up being robbed in broad daylight by borderline criminal "asset managers."

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#172

Post by AnimalMuppet »

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #141

obviously alabama and wisconsin need their votes to count much more than california or new york. rednecks deserve their voice to be heard 10x more than well educated tolerant people on the coasts.

Oddly, you don't sound very tolerant...

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#173

Post by Fnoord »

brewdad wrote: post #132
adventured wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump easily won the popular vote for the 48 states that aren't California and New York. Popular vote indeed. There's a very good reason the electoral college exists.

CA would be the 7th largest economy in the world if it were its own country. NY would be 11th. But yes, let's just pretend like they don't matter when it comes to the US as a whole.

> CA would be the 7th largest economy in the world if it were its own country. NY would be 11th. But yes, let's just pretend like they don't matter when it comes to the US as a whole.

Except we're not pretending like they don't matter. We're pretending they have a proportionate say. Regardless of wether your hypothetical proportion would be sound or not the proportion just isn't based on the size of the economy of a state.

Businesses work that way though.

You're free to petition for a CAexit or NYexit if you desire. Not that that'd happen either...

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#174

Post by kevinh »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #150
kevinh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you take out a couple states, Clinton won the electoral college. What's your point? That we should ignore the votes of two of the largest states because they don't agree with you?

> That we should ignore the votes of two of the largest states because they don't agree with you? Ahh, yeah. That's the point. So America isn't CaliforNewYork. The electoral college isn't a scam, it exists to bring balance, so your hipster javascript developer gets the same weight as a coal miner in rural Ohio.

The design of the electoral college was not to prevent influence by larger states. That's the function of the Senate. The electoral college exists in part to enable the 3/5ths compromise and in part to allow the vote of the people to be changed by someone who is theoretically more sophisticated.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#175

Post by Frondo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #150
kevinh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you take out a couple states, Clinton won the electoral college. What's your point? That we should ignore the votes of two of the largest states because they don't agree with you?

> That we should ignore the votes of two of the largest states because they don't agree with you? Ahh, yeah. That's the point. So America isn't CaliforNewYork. The electoral college isn't a scam, it exists to bring balance, so your hipster javascript developer gets the same weight as a coal miner in rural Ohio.

Why should the coal miner get more of a voice than the guy who lives in a city? They're both citizens, right?

They both get to vote on their state, city, and county stuff. Why should the guy who lives in the middle of nowhere get to say "my vote's worth 50x what yours is, sucker!!"?

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#176

Post by MikeTV »

dlp211 wrote: post #135
MikeTV wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that the limits are different between Roth IRAs and Traditional IRAs, though, if you have a retirement plan at work. A married couple making between 119k and 186k wouldn't get any deduction for the trad IRA, so might as well go with the Roth even if they think their income will be much lower in the future. The Roth also lets you pull out contributions later without penalty, which is a nice worry-free saf…

One caveat. A married couple where the other person doesn't work can still contribute to a traditional IRA and the couple gets to deduct it on their taxes. The limit for this is 186k and it is called a spousal IRA.

Thanks, didn't know about that one!

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#177

Post by baddox »

Bartweiss wrote: post #81
DoodleBuggy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough to tap into it" You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you. The fact is you pay ~16% of your paycheck into social security and medicare, it is designed to be like a pension. It is not an entitlement, it's your money.

"You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you." I really don't like the glibness of that sentiment, even if the idea is fine. As a voter or constituent, yeah, fight for Social Security, try to maintain it. But as an investor? Recognize that your personal view has approximately no impact on whether Social Security exists unless you run for high office or devote your l…

In fact, I will argue that the commenter's attitude is MORE harmful. He or she is placing the responsibility on the individual, when this clearly is something where the individual has no authority. The notion that if you just vote REALLY HARD the people in power will treat you well, and that if you're not treated well you must not have voted hard enough, only helps maintain the status quo.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#178

Post by koolba »

chimeracoder wrote: post #62
koolba wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd qualify but I'm pretty sure when the law was first written it didn't have them in mind. It was specifically to prevent top level executives or business owners (>=5% of company) from creating 401k plans for only themselves.

> They'd qualify but I'm pretty sure when the law was first written it didn't have them in mind. It was specifically to prevent top level executives or business owners (>=5% of company) from creating 401k plans for only themselves. Even if that was the rhetoric used when creating the rule, I'd be very skeptical of assuming that was the case, rather than it being motivated by a desire to increase tax revenue, as a lot…

> 115,000 is a really low threshold to use to define "executive" - many blue-collar workers make far more than that.

Quantify "many".

$115K/year comes out to an hourly rate of $57.5 (assuming 2K hours). Even factoring in overtime (1.5x) or double time (2x), I doubt a significant percentage of people make that much at a blue collar job.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#179

Post by ryandrake »

justinph wrote: post #42
callinyouin wrote: post #4

I'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.

I read this a lot. Why do you expect this to be the case? Social Security may become unable to pay the benefits that you're expecting at some point because the input from workers will not be enough to pay those benefits. But that doesn't mean it will pay nothing. It will just pay less. You'll still get some payments.

Social Security is a money funnel from the young to the old. It will end if and when young voters ever outnumber old voters. Pretty simple.

Likely will not happen while the Boomers are still alive because as a generation they're huge and they vote, but I can't imagine that today's Millennial generation is going to keep Social Security around for us relatively few Gen-Xers when we need it.

Re: Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s

#180

Post by SEJeff »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71
SEJeff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to correct someone, please correct them properly. You buy shares or instruments traded on Exchanges, which make up the "Stock Market". However, you don't always buy on Exchanges (OTC/Over the Counter Trading). Those instruments can be equities (shares of a company) aka stocks, securities, futures, options, etc. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (a common benchmark index such as the Standard and Poor's 500)…

> If you want to correct someone, please correct them properly. You buy shares in instruments traded on Exchanges, which make up the "Stock Market" Shares are instruments [1]. (You say this later, but nobody buys "shares in instruments"). Exchanges, together with ECNs, OTC markets, broker-dealers, other market makers, buyers, sellers, arbitrageurs, investment banks, et cetera make up the stock market. [1] https://en.…

Totally correct. I had to reword that a few times but figured less people would understand it otherwise :)
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