Do 401Ks Suck?

My roommate and I were having an interesting discussion on 401k plans. He had read some articles (here, here, and here), and we concluded the nation's elderly are vastly unprepared financially for retirement. A lot of people are heading in to retirement with not a pot to piss in, and Social Security is drying up. Grab your land and guns, it's gonna be every man for himself!

"The Society of Professional Asset-Managers and Record Keepers says nearly 73 million Americans, or just under 50% of our working population, now have a 401(k). And collectively we pour more than $200 billion into these accounts each year. But retire rich? Don't bet on it. The average 401(k) has a balance of $45,519. That's not retirement. That's two years of college. Even worse, 46% of all 401(k) accounts have less than $10,000. Today, just 21% of all U.S. workers are covered by traditional pensions, and the number shrinks every year. "The time may have come to consider returning 401(k) plans to their original position as a third tier of retirement planning, behind pensions and Social Security," says Alicia Munnell, who heads the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. "They should not be the thing we rely on for retirement security." And the government seems to agree. This summer, the Government Accountability Office concluded, "If no action is taken, a considerable number of Americans face the prospect of a reduced standard of living in retirement." That's what is known as an understatement."

Yeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhh. Seems like a lot of people are fucked, but believe it or not the rest of the world (Europe and Asia) are in a worse situation. Due to population decline they're facing a future with a lot of old people and too few young people to work (and pay taxes) in their place.

The only conclusion I've come up with is that our retirement funds will most likely be whatever we can gather for ourselves (like in the Pre-Industrial era!), thus we are responsible for it. We are responsible for saving, and paying attention to our investments. The best advise I could give you is to start saving now while we're still young, and don't touch it. I could talk about this forever so if anyone has questions on retirement or why Danzig tears apart a chicken in this video feel free to leave comments.