[travisgriggs]

This is pretty myopic, or something. Shows, at least, a real ignorance about the available possibilities (or lack thereof)—at scale—to the common worker for “saving for a later day”.

But I’m all ears. Now that you’ve diagnosed how 401K investing fools get what they deserve, care to offer any alternative solutions as to the entire work force should have been saving towards retirement.

[miningape]

(kinda unrelated but) I personally hate these forced savings schemes from the government. At least in my country the rates are low so it almost feels like I'm donating the entire difference in rates between the pension scheme and the S&P500 + taxes straight to the government.

At least give those of us brave (or stupid) enough to do something different with the money the option to.

[cudgy]

401k is voluntary

[travisgriggs]

I guess. My company (and I believe most) highly incentivize it by offering matching funds. The company says, "want to save $1000 of your paycheck? We'll throw in $500". The general wisdom is, you'd be an idiot to leave money like that going unreclaimed.

[miningape]

Where I am there's actually a %-age of your salary/wage that's "returned" to you when you retire. You don't get a choice.

You can choose to contribute to an employer-match scheme (I do) or even fund your own pension account with monthly payments to a pension provider. But these are in addition to the above forced pension.