Re:Older Americans who live in RVs and drive from one low-wa...
by justin66 on Saturday November 11, 2017 @11:52PM
(#15679720)
> At what point does personal responsibility kick in? Every 401(k) I've been on has given the option of investing in funds that ramp down risk exposure as the fund's target retirement date comes closer.
There is no reason to assume that a target-date fund is actually any good. It's like any fund, there are good ones and there are really bad ones, and we're not even talking about whether the 401(k) account that holds the fund has its own problems (which an employee won't be able to avoid if they want to actually invest to the tax sheltered limit every year).
So the "personal responsibility" kicks in once you've educated yourself on all the ins and outs of the way the retirement system in the US can rip people off, intentionally on the part of those peddling bad products or as the result of poor decisions on the part of the investor. Something maybe half of the people out there are qualified to do, and somewhat less than 1% of the people out there are actually interested in doing.
We could fix all this with better policy (allowing everyone to do fee-free in-service rollovers of their 401ks and IRAs to the retirement funds federal workers use, which rely on low-cost index funds, might be one basis of a decent system) but we won't. Too many people are making money ripping other people off.
There is no reason to assume that a target-date fund is actually any good. It's like any fund, there are good ones and there are really bad ones, and we're not even talking about whether the 401(k) account that holds the fund has its own problems (which an employee won't be able to avoid if they want to actually invest to the tax sheltered limit every year).
So the "personal responsibility" kicks in once you've educated yourself on all the ins and outs of the way the retirement system in the US can rip people off, intentionally on the part of those peddling bad products or as the result of poor decisions on the part of the investor. Something maybe half of the people out there are qualified to do, and somewhat less than 1% of the people out there are actually interested in doing.
We could fix all this with better policy (allowing everyone to do fee-free in-service rollovers of their 401ks and IRAs to the retirement funds federal workers use, which rely on low-cost index funds, might be one basis of a decent system) but we won't. Too many people are making money ripping other people off.