I have enough to last 8 months after working 45 years and having a heart attack and having to spend my life savings on medical bills.
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It’s unclear why people took exception to that question. Retirement is commonly tied to your type of employment.
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What a strangely hostile response to a perfectly reasonable question. If you don’t want people to comment on what you say, you really shouldn’t participate.
Is them saying 45 years of working not enough? If they would have thought their job mattered they would have said that. You guys are just horny to say they did something wrong and they are cutting you off.
You guys are just horny to say they did something wrong and they are cutting you off.
Nailed it!
It is interesting that you assume that people are looking to break this person down, it really comes off as projection. In fact, we are curious about the type of job he had because that changes things. If he was a government employee, then retirement is required. If he was in public sector, then what you get will depend on employer. If you’re a contractor, then it is fully up to you to put money into it. We have no idea who this person is or what their experiences are like. Assuming the worst from us says more about you than anything.
Are you shidding and farding about what I said enough to send me 2 messages on this?
🚨Creep alert 🚨
Yeah you’re pretty toxic yo
Well said.
You’re projecting. I actually don’t care about the person or their story, but noticed someone have a little temper tantrum when someone asked a question in response.
you really shouldn’t participate
Participate in posting my personal work history which as zero to do with this thread and would do nothing to add to it except to invade my privacy? Ok Chief.
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What’s that matter? Have you retired?
Did you have retirement savings before the heat attack? How about insurance with a max you’d have to pay?
Regular Americans are struggling to survive in a nightmare dystopia. News and weather at 11.
Not surprising that a lot of boomers got left behind. The American system is designed to grind everyone to zero with overwhelming debt to keep everyone working at nonliving wages.
Making sure income can’t match debts is a form of wage slavery. Company towns with mines back in the day. This current “economy” is that bullshit on steroids.
Marketing and the media are also to blame. We’re constantly bombarded by advertising and people telling us that what we have isn’t enough. We’re so status conscious and aware if how much is out there that they have us chasing dreams straight into massive debt.
I’m in my 50s with no savings. It isn’t lifestyle or marketing driven though. I just have had very few years where we had any extra. Also three teenagers and the price of food is killing me, cost of cars too. It’s just surviving that’s gutting me.
“It isn’t lifestyle”
“Also three kids”
You do realize having 3 kids was a choice right? Some of us choose no kids and can’t afford shit still
A society in which the poor can’t afford 3 kids and retirement savings is a failed society. I’m not one of those birth rates people but you absolutely should be able to afford to have the replacement rate number of children
Those its “my money and I need it now!” commercials…devious now that a lot of folks dont have anything saved.
That’s because DEMOCRATS keep trying to SAVE Social Security! Why can’t we just GIVE that money to BILLIONAIRES instead like REPUBLICANS want to do?
I put money into my 401k for decades only to find out I had enough to cover two months of rent. Shits fucked.
Were you putting in a nickel per paycheck? The market has killed it over the last 30 years, even with a relatively low contribution, if you contributed consistently for 30 years you should have way more than that
You go tell my 401k account that.
Either you weren’t contributing for decades, or you literally only contributed $10-$20/mo for ~30 years. If your job provides a 401k option, with tax write-offs and everything else you should have been contributing a lot more to maximize its future utility. This is assuming your employer wasn’t even matching.
Either you aren’t telling us the full details, or you haven’t fully been contributing for decades.
Third option- their rent is $50K per month.
4th option: They don’t know how a 401k works.
https://lemmy.world/comment/8024551
I don’t even know what that is, man. I worked, I didn’t play with stocks.
4th option confirmed. Everyone that has a 401k in some capacity, and isn’t sure how they work, please go check your 401k elections right now. It isn’t really “playing stocks” but just putting it somewhere that isn’t cash equivalent. Otherwise your money is depreciating in value from inflation. This is your chance to learn from WarmSoda’s mistake and hopefully will keep you from making the same mistake!
Figured. A lot of people just straight believe everything they are told and remain ignorant to how things work. If your job offers any type of benefits, fucking read all of the documentation and if you don’t understand something, ASK QUESTIONS! So many people I work with are oblivious to some benefits available to them and when I try to explain, “hey this one thing is basically free money”, they shrug it off. Whatever, your loss.
When your bedroom is the Kapua Suite in Hawaii.
You know what you should do? Instead of heeding our warnings you guys should attack us and tell us we’re wrong.
Look stranger, no one is saying you’re wrong to call out the problems with the economy. Everyone is on your side there.
They’re saying that you personally made a mistake, and that’s one that other people can and should avoid for themselves. If after 45 years you REALLY TRULY only have like $2k USD in your retirement account then you messed up somewhere. That’s almost impossible the way compounding interest works.
Many 401ks are not actually invested by default, it’s up to the account holder to assign those funds themselves. Guessing that’s what happened to you. Unfortunately this isn’t widely known for some reason and companies don’t bother to educate employees about it.
Right right, being called a fucking idiot, accused that I’m lying, absolutely goes along with what you’re saying. I too enjoy blaming the victim. Everyone’s on someone’s side alright.
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Not gonna lie it sounds like you fucked up
You were certainly putting in minimums. You should be aiming for 10%-15%.
how the fuck do you set aside 15% of your paycheck to invest in something you won’t see for another third of a century? you mansa musa or something?
I am so confused here–this is what you do to prepare for the future. I guess you could blow it on women or something.
Living expenses > income. It’s not complicated math. You can’t save when you don’t have enough to live and already putting off things like car repairs, health care, hair cuts, buying clothes…
no i mean who HAS 15% of their paycheck available to spend. i ain’t bill gates, i have FOOD and RENT
I think you just figured out why we’re doomed. Don’t assume I have spent my life doing this, I’ve tried to stay out of poverty for most of it. Now that I can, I do. Those who have good pay right after college spend their lives paying in.
- It doesn’t need to be 15% right away
- Use the power of time
The trick is to set aside something, anything, no matter how small, to start. Then whenever you get a raise, set aside part of that so you will never have seen it or spent it.
Your most powerful weapon is not how much you can set aside now, but how early you can start. Investments over the length of your career can turn a little into a lot. Get started now, no matter how small, and use time as your greatest weapon.
Most people here decided they’re better than those with less money than them and it’s fine to blame those less fortunate for “thier mistakes”. It’s pretty depressing.
I’ve always made decent money, so admittedly it has been easy for me, but my first job, on the advice of our security officer (of all people lol) I immediately put 10% of my income into my 401k. So I went from making no money to 90% of what I had negotiated and learned to live on that. Every raise I got, I increased the amount so my raise was smaller, but my savings larger.
This is how you make it work.
Did you fuck up and leave it all in the cash-equivalent fund instead of actually investing it?
I don’t even know what that is, man. I worked, I didn’t play with stocks.
yikes.
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Nope. Company matching and everything.
You can doubt all you want, but I’m the one sitting here without anything to show for being in the workforce my whole life.You seem to be in complete disbelief that other people have a hard time, questioning anyone that relays 401k does almost nothing for them. It must be nice for you to be in a better position, a huge portion of the population is not though.
If you put “money in for decades” it would be almost impossible to only have enough for “two months rent” at this point. Either you’re not telling the whole story or you were literally robbed.
This still doesn’t explain the “only 2 months rent” part, but I’ve had friends who thought they were investing in a 401k but were seeing virtually no growth. Upon looking into it, they hadn’t allocated funds but were required to do so, so the money was sitting in a cash reserve pile earning the typical .02% interest.
So, this could mean losing out on 30 years of gains if it were to go on long enough. But 30 years of deposits should still have been way more than 2 months rent so dunno what to say about that part
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I put 4%, matched by my employer, for 5 years and have 40k in there. Have you sorted out where the money all went? It’s wild that you can contribute and have nothing.
Or is your rent like 80k/month? lol
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A lot of people don’t even know they need to invest the 401k funds. So they throw money into a bucket and it only grows as much as they put in.
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When the magic money generation machine goes wrong.
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Didn’t/couldn’t save for retirement.
Blames the gays and immigrants.I appreciate seeing this information but lines like this will dissuade non believers. “while 1 in people are fighting to survive on less than $15,000 annually.”
The editor or whomever submitted the article missed it during revisions.
I assume they meant to say 1 in 10?
Edit: updated typo lives to lines
