SS is nice, but you'd be hard pressed to live on it alone. Herse's my "raise" for 2017:
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/jamest52/SSraise_zpszib3nzc7.jpg"</img>
Left is 2016, right is 2017.
Top figure is gross.
2nd figure is what they take out for Medicare.
3rd and 4th are the taxes I don't have deducted monthly, preferring to be surprised in April.
Bottom line is, well, my bottom line. Zero net gain.
You have to read to the end of the article to get to it, but the writer is saying, as many have before, that we have a perfectly workable national pension system called Social Security, with all the necessary apparatus in place to be expanded at very little cost.
Management of 401(k) plans is terrific pain in the ass for all businesses, particularly small ones, and most employees are totally befuddled by the investment choices they're offered. This raises wonderful opportunities for sharpies to come in with expensive "advice" that usually results in the gradual transfer of money from the employee to the sharpie.
So if the money the employee (and maybe the employer) contribute were put in SS instead, everybody would be better off, except the sharpies. Very few people with middle-class incomes have the self-discipline and good fortune to save enough for a comfortable retirement.
I used to have a 457 plan, nearly identical to a 401(k), but something for state gummint workers who weren't otherwise qualified for a 401(k). It lost half it's value in 2007-2008, even continued losing money after I rolled it into a money market fund. If that same thing happened to my SS account, well, not hard to see why I'm a staunch opponent of privatizing SS…
Everybody knows you're supposed to buy low and sell high, and almost everybody does the opposite. We're wired that way, and only patient education and counsel can help you through that urge to capitulate and grab for falling knives. Bogleheads.org kept me sane in those dark days. Can't recommend it enough. Callyson'll agree, I betcha.
That's a problem with mutual funds. Most participants, myself included, don't know what they have. And that's just the way "they" wanted it. When it all went to hell, it went fast. And I was suddenly and permanently unemployed, with no way to correct it. I did better than a lot of others, in that a lot of my losses were on paper. What cut to the bone was the taxes on the back end, where I lost an additional 28% of what I had left. It all went into the down payment on my house, so I have something other than a balance sheet to look at. I'm doing OK, but no cash reserves.
Oh God yes. John Bogle is the best! Though he did prevent me from going into what could have been a lucrative career as a financial snake oil salesperson financial consulting position. Damn morals and reluctance to swindle people's hard-earned money for questionable investments and such…
😂
I'm an upper middle class idiot scientist who doesn't have time to pay attention to retirement savings. My plan is to take off two weeks(maybe) before I die. Tell me where I can kill these "sharpies"
My retirement plan was to be put out on an Arctic ice flow to die. Now, what with Global Warming and an ice-free Arctic in the near future, that plan's out the window. THANKS EXXON
Going through my dad's papers in 2011, after his untimely early death, I saw that the value of his pension declined by half in 2008…which just happened to be the year he retired. I will always believe that the stress from that contributed to his demise.
FUCK Paul Ryan and everyone else who wants to gut Social Security FFS.
Sorry for your father's misfortune. The idea of letting each and every working person decide for him or herself how to invest is an insane fantasy of the financial services "industry," and not a rational way to deal with the collective problem of how to make sure old people don't die in poverty, or because of poverty.
"No evidence" clearly does not mean the same thing as "no possibility" or "you are cured."
My father and brother paid into Soshecurity all their working lives and never got a dime back, as they died too young to be eligible for a benefit. I did some high-level (for me) maths and ascertained that at my estimated age of death it was a wash whether I started drawing at 62, 66 or 70. With pensions, as with health insurance, the larger the pool, the better everybody does.
For a while there, you could start drawing at 62, pay back all the money you'd received at 70, and then start drawing at the higher rate, which could be thought of as purchasing the world's safest annuity. But word was getting around and they shut that option down.
Nudged towards it by family history and what seemed the likely prospect of Mittens winning the 2012 election and embarking on the libertarian dream of destroying that piece of the safety net, I started drawing at 62. And I learned that if you start drawing part-way through the year, they pay you as if you'd been drawing from 1 January, which might be of interest.
I'd grab it now. I wasn't given much choice, having been put out to pasture fairly young. My plan was always to start drawing at 62. Missed it by 5 years.
Please, don't get Karen's hopes up.
SS is nice, but you'd be hard pressed to live on it alone. Herse's my "raise" for 2017:
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/jamest52/SSraise_zpszib3nzc7.jpg"</img>
Left is 2016, right is 2017.
Top figure is gross.
2nd figure is what they take out for Medicare.
3rd and 4th are the taxes I don't have deducted monthly, preferring to be surprised in April.
Bottom line is, well, my bottom line. Zero net gain.
I'd be up against it without this, though!
I get about the same.
You have to read to the end of the article to get to it, but the writer is saying, as many have before, that we have a perfectly workable national pension system called Social Security, with all the necessary apparatus in place to be expanded at very little cost.
Management of 401(k) plans is terrific pain in the ass for all businesses, particularly small ones, and most employees are totally befuddled by the investment choices they're offered. This raises wonderful opportunities for sharpies to come in with expensive "advice" that usually results in the gradual transfer of money from the employee to the sharpie.
So if the money the employee (and maybe the employer) contribute were put in SS instead, everybody would be better off, except the sharpies. Very few people with middle-class incomes have the self-discipline and good fortune to save enough for a comfortable retirement.
I used to have a 457 plan, nearly identical to a 401(k), but something for state gummint workers who weren't otherwise qualified for a 401(k). It lost half it's value in 2007-2008, even continued losing money after I rolled it into a money market fund. If that same thing happened to my SS account, well, not hard to see why I'm a staunch opponent of privatizing SS…
Everybody knows you're supposed to buy low and sell high, and almost everybody does the opposite. We're wired that way, and only patient education and counsel can help you through that urge to capitulate and grab for falling knives. Bogleheads.org kept me sane in those dark days. Can't recommend it enough. Callyson'll agree, I betcha.
That's a problem with mutual funds. Most participants, myself included, don't know what they have. And that's just the way "they" wanted it. When it all went to hell, it went fast. And I was suddenly and permanently unemployed, with no way to correct it. I did better than a lot of others, in that a lot of my losses were on paper. What cut to the bone was the taxes on the back end, where I lost an additional 28% of what I had left. It all went into the down payment on my house, so I have something other than a balance sheet to look at. I'm doing OK, but no cash reserves.
Oh God yes. John Bogle is the best! Though he did prevent me from going into what could have been a lucrative career as a
financial snake oil salespersonfinancial consulting position. Damn morals and reluctance to swindle people's hard-earned money for questionable investments and such…😂
I'm an upper middle class idiot scientist who doesn't have time to pay attention to retirement savings. My plan is to take off two weeks(maybe) before I die. Tell me where I can kill these "sharpies"
A cabinet meeting after 20 January?
My retirement plan was to be put out on an Arctic ice flow to die. Now, what with Global Warming and an ice-free Arctic in the near future, that plan's out the window. THANKS EXXON
Out in my area, the opposite option is somewhat popular: folks will just start walking out into the desert without water. Foolproof!
The good news: there's gonna be a whole lot more desert to walk out into. Another little known side benefit of industrial progress.
Just a golf course waiting to be irrigated! You lucky dog.
Alternatively, you can walk out to sea in Florida, and wait for it?
Going through my dad's papers in 2011, after his untimely early death, I saw that the value of his pension declined by half in 2008…which just happened to be the year he retired. I will always believe that the stress from that contributed to his demise.
FUCK Paul Ryan and everyone else who wants to gut Social Security FFS.
Sorry for your father's misfortune. The idea of letting each and every working person decide for him or herself how to invest is an insane fantasy of the financial services "industry," and not a rational way to deal with the collective problem of how to make sure old people don't die in poverty, or because of poverty.
"No evidence" clearly does not mean the same thing as "no possibility" or "you are cured."
My father and brother paid into Soshecurity all their working lives and never got a dime back, as they died too young to be eligible for a benefit. I did some high-level (for me) maths and ascertained that at my estimated age of death it was a wash whether I started drawing at 62, 66 or 70. With pensions, as with health insurance, the larger the pool, the better everybody does.
For a while there, you could start drawing at 62, pay back all the money you'd received at 70, and then start drawing at the higher rate, which could be thought of as purchasing the world's safest annuity. But word was getting around and they shut that option down.
Nudged towards it by family history and what seemed the likely prospect of Mittens winning the 2012 election and embarking on the libertarian dream of destroying that piece of the safety net, I started drawing at 62. And I learned that if you start drawing part-way through the year, they pay you as if you'd been drawing from 1 January, which might be of interest.
I'd grab it now. I wasn't given much choice, having been put out to pasture fairly young. My plan was always to start drawing at 62. Missed it by 5 years.