There was a time when people were dependent on defined benefit pensions. Then the U.S. pivoted to defined contribution plans, 401Ks. This of course put retirees at risk of a situation like the present one.
Could they have diversified their portfolio better? Sure. Should you blame them for Trump being an evil asshole? Only if you are one, too. The system itself was redesigned to fuck over the elderly, my friend. Then it did.
My parents are boomers. Like a lot of boomers they have a pension. In addition, they’re still getting social security checks. A pension for me isn’t even a dream and I’ll be lucky if social security is even around in twenty years.
So, pardon me if I’m a little flippant about some of the “screw you, I got mine” generation eating a bit of shit because they were attempting to draw income from volatile assets that you’re supposed to be in when you are decades younger after voting overwhelmingly for a clown that said for months he’d blow up the market and then did as he promised.
It’ll eventually come back around to screw me in the end anyway in the form of one disaster or another because I’m a millennial: born at exactly the right time to live through every financial, political, and constitutional crisis possible as well as to finance a Domino’s pizza.
Seriously I was scanning the comments to find anyone mentioning this. It’s insane to leave your funds in stocks if you’re retired or close to retirement. That should have been shifted to bonds or other stable investments years ago.
What’s insane is expecting every individual to be person to know enough about financial asset classes to know how to balance risks in their portfolio, when we used to have pension plans with subject-matter experts whose job it was to do that. Getting rid of them was like throwing everybody overboard from the cruise ship (pension), but giving them a life jacket (401k).
I mean, it makes sense when you know that the decision was made by the sharks.
Retirees ‘idiots’ as they keep savings they need to live in volatile asset classes such as stocks.
There was a time when people were dependent on defined benefit pensions. Then the U.S. pivoted to defined contribution plans, 401Ks. This of course put retirees at risk of a situation like the present one.
Could they have diversified their portfolio better? Sure. Should you blame them for Trump being an evil asshole? Only if you are one, too. The system itself was redesigned to fuck over the elderly, my friend. Then it did.
My parents are boomers. Like a lot of boomers they have a pension. In addition, they’re still getting social security checks. A pension for me isn’t even a dream and I’ll be lucky if social security is even around in twenty years.
So, pardon me if I’m a little flippant about some of the “screw you, I got mine” generation eating a bit of shit because they were attempting to draw income from volatile assets that you’re supposed to be in when you are decades younger after voting overwhelmingly for a clown that said for months he’d blow up the market and then did as he promised.
It’ll eventually come back around to screw me in the end anyway in the form of one disaster or another because I’m a millennial: born at exactly the right time to live through every financial, political, and constitutional crisis possible as well as to finance a Domino’s pizza.
Boomers lived their entire lives failing upwards. Why wouldn’t they expect things to just go their way?
Seriously I was scanning the comments to find anyone mentioning this. It’s insane to leave your funds in stocks if you’re retired or close to retirement. That should have been shifted to bonds or other stable investments years ago.
What’s insane is expecting every individual to be person to know enough about financial asset classes to know how to balance risks in their portfolio, when we used to have pension plans with subject-matter experts whose job it was to do that. Getting rid of them was like throwing everybody overboard from the cruise ship (pension), but giving them a life jacket (401k).
I mean, it makes sense when you know that the decision was made by the sharks.