Submitted by greatestmofo t3_1083pyh in UpliftingNews
xybet t1_j3qhiy6 wrote
Reply to comment by nonamefounder in Walmart cashier, 82, retires after TikTok raises $100,000 by greatestmofo
Well... Personally I'd make better saving and investing the deducted amount, but I do like the safety net as well in case something goes wrong.. It just allows a lot of unemployment and abuse, and is not sustainable with growing population. Which means I'm probably paying for pension that I'll never receive, whereas investing it, it would stay mine..
Thought it's easy to pick the easy and good things, there are a lot of things in the US that are better as well :-) Grass is greener where it's watered and taken care of.. good and bad things both ways.
AdministrativeWar594 t1_j3qkbdn wrote
Saving and investing as your retirement is how the 401ks and Roth iras work here. Although you can have some limited control over it, most are hands off and through your job usually. There is a problem with that though. Whereas social security or a pension was usually guaranteed. If the economy takes a nosedive, so does your 401k because its value is attached directly to the market. My aunts 401k took a nosedive in 08 and took over a decade to recover. So you could be chugging along just fine and then when the economy goes into the shitter (which is a design in capitalism the boom/bust cycle) all your retirement goes out the window. Real estate seems to be safe because assets can be sold if you find yourself in a position to not be able to rent them out. But in general I think we need a better system than social security because it's not nearly enough.
xybet t1_j3qlgso wrote
Yeah.. I invest some money monthly as well to diversified funds, so I guess that could be comparable to 401k, but investment is.. voluntary investment... it's not forced tax deductible.
Pension as set up here would be if you paid x% more taxes in to a shared saving account run by government, with government stating when and how much you can have it, and paying off other peoples benefits as well from it..
Current age diversifying is punishing for younger people, as so many old people reclaim pension but younger peoples solvency is not high enough, which means the young folks will be working more and longer to be eligible for the same pension earlier generations had with less work.. so in that sense, personal investment based pension would at least be "fair to all", allthough leaving people who didn't invest hanging for dry..
Real estate is a bitch here atm for investing 😅
Inaksa t1_j3u6chi wrote
I understand what you are saying. In Argentina (and many countries) there were this private administered funds (specially during the 90s) and pensions were forced into them. Eventually what those entities did was gamble the funds buying high risk bonds, and you can picture how that went.
I dont trust my government, but even less an unaccountable private entity to guard those funds. You may say that couldnt happen in your country but when it does you end up with the government having to foot the bill in order for citizens to be able to survive. It sucks but those are the rules of the game apparently
CharuRiiri t1_j3uo8tw wrote
Yeah, it sounds great on paper but ultimately the fund won’t lose money, it’s peoples pensions that will take a hit. Happened in Chile too, they advertised a lot for people to switch from the old system and join the new one, promising substantial pension rises and when the first people started getting their pensions they amounted to less than half the minimum wage.
SizzlerWA t1_j3uux5e wrote
You can invest your 401k in US Treasuries, which is what I believe Social Security invests in. So you could engineer your 401k to have the same investment risk as Social Security (much less risky than stocks).
You can also buy CDs and other risk free investments.
Im sorry that your aunt’s 401k took a nosedive. But investing in a 401k can be as low risk as you want it to be …
Prunestand t1_j3t38pk wrote
> Well... Personally I'd make better saving and investing the deducted amount, but I do like the safety net as well in case something goes wrong.. It just allows a lot of unemployment and abuse, and is not sustainable with growing population. Which means I'm probably paying for pension that I'll never receive, whereas investing it, it would stay mine..
I'd say it is even worse without a safety net. You literally have to work if your savings is somehow wiped out.
xybet t1_j3uuw12 wrote
Yeah.. And even a normal savings account that hardly caters for inflation will be better than forced safety net that is negative and abused.
Prunestand t1_j3z20p7 wrote
> And even a normal savings account that hardly caters for inflation will be better than forced safety net that is negative and abused.
So great 80-year olds can't retire?
xybet t1_j3zyctk wrote
Why couldn't they?
What you're obviously not wanting to understand or take in to account is that you've PAID for the safety net yourself, it doesn't just exist for free. And the payments have gone with negative investment rate because the safety net is not built to account for population growth or abuse. Literally the same as investing with negative rate.
If you invest like a moron, you will lose your investment like a moron. If you invest stupid but enough to cover inflation, you're already better off than losing forcefully deducted negative capita. If you invest smart enough to gain profit on top of inflation, you're good enough to retire earlier than planned.
Prunestand t1_j3zzys2 wrote
>if you invest like a moron, you will lose your investment like a moron. If you invest stupid but enough to cover inflation, you're already better off than losing forcefully deducted negative capita.
If the stock market crashes due to an unforeseeable event and it causes all your savings to be wiped out, is that your fault?
[deleted] t1_j4002ho wrote
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xybet t1_j400de2 wrote
You think the money the government took to do the same thing is somehow immune to that? It's value will crash just the same. A dollar is a dollar.
Prunestand t1_j44z2it wrote
>You think the money the government took to do the same thing is somehow immune to that? It's value will crash just the same.
The money the government took will certainly have less risk, yes. You may be the unlucky one to choose a bad portfolio, but everyone shares the loss with the money the government took. It's essentially just spreading the risk among the whole economy.
You might lose your savings because your stocks crash, but it takes the whole market crashing to lose the money the government has invested. Governments may also have better leverage to protect assets from crashing than you individually have.
xybet t1_j451wts wrote
It's not like the government takes all taxes and piles them up to have leverage. Pension system is built like shit, and its handled as it's own thing, just like any company would handle it's own investment money separately, it's invested just the same and will crash the same.
The only leverage a government has against crashing money value, is if they have their own currency and availability to print more to regulate.
Like I said, I live in Finland, which probably has one of the best social safety net systems built and I've been trying to tell you it doesn't work that way, it's built in a way that will crash just the same, wont sustain growing population and abuse. I worked in KELA for 2 years, which literally is short for national pension institute. (KansanEläkeLAitos)
I'm just guessing since you don't have this system you have no idea how it works and have imagined up a working better system, but it's not like that in reality.
Best of luck with your pension though I'm done talking about this.
Joseluki t1_j3s8qy0 wrote
Sure, invest in a S&P, then one year of recession with a loss of a huge chunk of your retirement savings, then boom, your ass working at walmart with 70 years.
xybet t1_j3s9g80 wrote
Yeah I mean.. that's literally investing.. There aren't many things you can invest in that are guaranteed profit... its a risk you take when investing. You can also put that money in to your normal savings account which will maybe keep up with the inflation %.
Joseluki t1_j3sf9wl wrote
The joys of capitalism, gamble your money and risk losing, or work until you die.
FREEDOM
[deleted] t1_j3sg8yj wrote
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xybet t1_j3sj35m wrote
Or you can give it to your government for safekeeping, and receive 50% of what you've invested because most of it was used to pay other peoples pension and now the government cant afford yours.
Or just keep it at a normal bank account that caters inflation keeping your money somewhat 1:1.
Or invest and lose it all.
Or invest and ten-fold it all.
The difference is that in one of the countries the first choise is FORCED, and in one of the countries you can choose.
The joys of capitalism and freedom of choice.
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