this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
654 points (97.7% liked)

News

23413 readers
3319 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This is an important thing to note when someone claims that you should be eager about stock market performance because of your [comparative handful of] shares in your retirement account. Accounts such as the 401k were probably devised to tie up regular people's money into the stock market, injecting more money into it and making it seem more important (and thus worth bailing out).

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

They were devised to get rid of pensions so companies didn't need to care for their employees, they could just have the option to match input, but retirement was made to be 100% on us.

More bullshit to benefit corporations, but to be honest there are so many scumbags out there and so many pension plans that were stolen from, I don't know how to feel about it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

It was also devised so that when a crash occurs, the lower classes get wiped out, the rich still have piles of cash, and they get to buy up everything at fractions of a penny on the dollar.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You know exactly how to feel about it. Douchebag MBA's who think they're Masters of the Universe gamble with other people's retirement money. And all those sweet sweet fees...

We should invest in guillotines.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That and it artificially inflates stocks by creating regular buy pressure. Stocks are almost completely worthless unless you get a whale that wants to buy out the company or a large controlling share. It's not like you can just cash in your share to the company and they give you a percentage of the current value. You have to find someone else that wants to buy it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

This point is huge and seemingly overlooked by most people? Once a majority of boomers start pulling their 401k money I don't think millennials and gen x will be putting as much money back in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

They really cooked up such a great Ponzi with 401k. I'm sure it'll get rugged right when we come of age to cash out.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Accounts such as the 401k were probably devised to tie up regular people’s money into the stock market

Aren't pensions also tied up in the stock market. Yes there's a difference of who manages and how the contributions are made, but both plans put the security of your retirement in the market in some capacity, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Pensions also allocate some funds in stocks, but overall they invest conservatively. By default, most 401k funds are set to a target retirement date fund and early on those are mostly stocks. These funds also often have significant annual fees. Instead of a single large fund managed conservatively, you have many individual funds that are managed all over the place. The common advice is to invest more aggressively when you're younger, there has also been a huge push toward ETFs which are their own tangled mess and have a potential for trouble in the future, but that's a different topic.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are the fees of target funds usually that significant? Vanguard Target Funds have an expense ratio of 0.08%. They say the average comparative fund is 0.44%, which is a bit high for my liking, but not terribel compared to other managed funds. https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vfifx#performance-fees

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Vanguard is good with fees. That 0.44% is an average so there are also funds that charge more. I think fees have come down as 1) more attention was brought to them 2) Such funds became more computerized and straightforward to manage. Still, a 0.44% average fee each year is a significant chunk of change.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I fully agree on .44% being high. I raise an eyebrow on anything over .10%. But if you follow the old reddit personal finance prime directive... You should max out your 401k inso far as you maximize the employer match. Then max out your Roth IRA where you hopefully have access to better expense ratio target funds. I have been trying out the 0% Fidelity index mutual funds as opposed to older S&P500 funds to maximize potential there.

I haven't really looked at the robo brokers though. What are fees like for betterment and the like?

Either way, I think people are shooting themselves in the foot for not investing in index funds or target funds out of moral principle. Unfortunately there isn't much other safety net for your retirement, and you're probably going to be forced to spend cash for everyday goods from major corporations. Might as well try to secure some value of those same corporations at the same time instead of letting your savings constantly depreciate over time.