Your Retirement Savings

Invest in sunscreen and swimwear.

i have quite a bit but not as much as i should have; I withdrew a lot to buy a house six years ago, which was actually a good investment (so far). my company doesn't match unfortunately.

"does anyone else worry about putting money aside for the future when maybe there will be no gov backing the dollar in the future?"

all the time

I really like UMS's plan - $1 sale of the house is clever, but I think you should also budget for a good lawyer for your daughter. Legally emancipating her doesn't mean your creditors won't still try to lean on her to settle your estate.

For extra righteousness I might also say that your orgy of credit-card-fueled spending should probably shift away from local small businesses.ethically sourced whatsits, and more toward eeevil megacorps, as you get closer to financial self-immolation. Make sure all the people who get screwed over are the ones who deserve it.

― I will finish what I (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, February 9, 2018 9:16 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks, that's good advice and also good point on screwing the big companies.

Old Lunch - sign up for my webinar "Dirtbag Retirement Planning"

Trump has been sort of...inspirational is the wrong word...but eye opening, like reading about him, it's like rich people act like crooks all the time why should I approach things like ooh save my pennies one at a time like a good little boy

Also inspired a couple of things...a friend's brother was getting divorced and they were broke as hell but his soon to be ex stayed in the house and just kept bullshitting and making payment agreements and sending them payments here and there as much as she could and it was FOUR years before she was evicted

also, my cousin does crop insurance and one of his adjusters is this older guy who went down post-Katrina with his wife in an RV to do freelance adjusting (there was obviously just shit tons of work down there)...anyway, he goes to check out this trailer park that had been destroyed, gets there and there's NOTHING left, like maybe a piece of sheet metal here and there or piece of wood, but like the things was erased...like it never existed...so like good luck trying to assess anything, he was just gonna write it up as a total loss for every person that could be shown to own a trailer there...

anyway, he's walking along the beach and he sees this sock...picks it up and it's full of cash. a lot. so he's like how the fuck would I ever trace who's money this was? so he takes it back, and him and his wife hang it up to dry like in a fuckin movie..anyway, it turns out to be more than $50,000....so he's real careful about it but it like fuck it, it's just gonna sit in some government office or something and they'll never get it to whose it was anyway...so they just keep the cash, don't buy anything crazy but just say hey this is food, groceries and clothing money...he got more than a decade out of it, just using it for those basics and paying in cash keeping the money in a safe

but eye opening, like reading about him, it's like rich people act like crooks all the time why should I approach things like ooh save my pennies one at a time like a good little boy

on one hand yeah but otoh you want to be a better human than djt. not saying you can't bend the rules and be a good person (and sometimes maybe bending the rules is required to be a good person) but the way djt acts like a crook he leaves a lot of damage in his wake.

who am i damaging in my scenarios? (if you say banks or credit card companies i don't give a shit)

back when i had a steady job i put 5% of every paycheck into retirement, which was matched by my employer. it is weird, now, outside of that job, to have ~$0 in my bank account but to have a decent amount stored away for "retirement" 35 years from now. hopefully i won't have to withdraw it early in order to make it through the next few decades

one of the many reasons I left the usa was that here I'm a civil servant with a nice pension plan. since I came here late it'll only be like 80% of my highest salary but that'll be plenty, especially since there'll be no health care costs. no college costs either (my older daughter will start higher ed this fall, if we were still in the usa I have no idea how we'd have handled that, I guess the usual loan thing)

https://i.imgur.com/kV3v7oZ.png

this is good presumably. anyway, i play along to an extent with the conceit that in 30y time the world financial markets will still be intact. but i am p close to converting my retirement plan contribution into a canned goods and ammunition stockpile fund

considering how much you need to retire shouldn't there either be a few more options or consolidate a bunch of these into one?

I worry that my savings are inadequate and I'm in the highest category (albeit barely)

I have a 401k, but have not been able to contribute more than a couple % of my income to it for many years. I've also borrowed from it twice, once to buy a home (stupid, I know) so I'm paying that back rather than accumulating new retirement savings. The recent fluctuations didn't hit me too badly because with the help of our company's advisor my portfolio is VERY conservative.

Although last year I was getting like an 11-12% return, now I'm getting 2.66% YTD. Thanks, Trump!

I am retired now. My answer will no doubt ruin the curve.

I contribute the max 18,500 every year and currently have $140K total. At 36 with a good twenty years to go I think I’m sitting pretty. Thank you Thrift Savings Plan. And I guess thank you Ohio for having such a low cost-of-living.

i have $1000 saved dollars and i am so fucked forever.

You have saved dollars?! So jealous right now.

P.S. I am powerfucked times infinity.

I do have a change jar at home that's like a quarter full atm, so it isn't technically true to say I have NO savings.

$0 but the only person in my family who's ever "retired" was my grandmother who worked for the post office and even then she worked 30 hours a week as a Wal-Mart greeter until she died, so the concept is fundamentally foreign to me.

the $1000 i have saved is because i tried to save some money while i was working a bit extra, and then i gave it to my wife for safekeeping.
i 100% live paycheck to paycheck, and my 2 days/week regular work doesn't cover my rent.

I think my mom is the first person in my family to retire and stay retired (so far, it's only been a couple of years). Thoroughly expect to still be working as a brittle nonagenarian.

We were pretty rich when my daughter was born. Her college account balance is twice (twice!) my IRA balance. She's 10.

Some folks say it should be the other way round, because you can borrow for college but you can't borrow for retirement. Welp, too late now.

I may have to ask my daughter if I can crash in her dorm for a while.

a big tent and a one-way ticket to Uzbekistan should do me

i'd love to visit bukhara one day

I've been to Uzbekistan, some cool stuff, madrasas, Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, etc., but it's pretty hardcore there right now. Great bread, great plov!

'Zero student loan debt' is second only to 'life' in the list of greatest gifts you can give to a child.

ie I have no savings largely thanks to student loan debt. Thanks, college (and, tbf, my complete absence of financial acumen).

i live paycheck to paycheck. i currently have about $800 credit card debt, that's the extent of my worldly debts. i have no savings, and while i do have a decent enough pension in my current job - where I've only been 18 months - i am extremely unlikely to stay here long-term as i don't want to live where i am longer than perhaps a year or two more.

oh i have student debt in scotland of about 1500 pounds but a: they don't collect it from me since i left the country, b: it's interest are,. c: they take it directly out of my paycheck when I'm in scotland in very reasonable (i.e. small) installments so i basically don't even think about it as being a thing that exists

yeah, my retirement savings pretty much == my student loan debt. i'm hoping that the savings appreciate at a faster rate than the debt, but who knows.

I may have to ask my daughter if I can crash in her dorm for a while.

― I will finish what I (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, February 9, 2018 1:58 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

throw keggers to fund your retirement!

it's probably been addressed in the uncool conservative beliefs thread, but the student loan debt problem is related to a higher education bubble, which could be helped in the future by reducing the number of people going into debt to go to college, and reducing the number of people going to college, period. Many of them get little professional or financial benefit from higher education. If they are going to be Wal-Mart greeters or Uber drivers or Amazon warehouse workers, or even many computer programmers, the only real role of college is to prolong childhood/youth, postpone the meaningless drudgery of adulthood, and to give a basic overview of social justice issues.

I have a lot of money saved. This is due to me being cheap as shit, saving a majority of every paycheck since I was 16 and never having student loans or any serious health issues yet.

also living somewhere cheap i suppose?

I took out a few grand in student loans to finish my master's thesis without having to have a day job, (after failing at that for 3 1/2 years) then I paid $60 a month for 10 years on autopay, and my credit is now "excellent"

Yeah. The student loan debt crisis is very real and it needs to be addressed asap.

By a strange coincidence that there is ~$1.4 trillion in outstanding student debt, and the recent tax bill is estimated to increase the national debt by ~$1.4 trillion, while it does nothing whatsoever to address student loan debt but pours most of its largesse into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. We are so fucked.

making notes for my ILXor plundering spree 25 years from now

xpost Hard emphasis on the 'we'.

xpost. No, I lived in NYC for 13 years. Now I kind of live everywhere.

you entered the matrix

must have a hell of a job!

Even though I have a lot of money saved in cash and I paid for my last apartment in Astoria in cash, I still won't take taxis/ubers, haven't had cable since 2003, my MotoG has been cracked for over a year, I am using a second hand laptop, I cut and dye my own hair...but I do drink expensive bottles of wine regularly. My mom was a waitress and dad military. I am just super good with saving money, making investments and being flexible with jobs.

less than it was at the beginning of the past two weeks

xpost -- Can't claim to be on Yerac's level but the importance of some kind of consistent frugality is key. Let the indulgences be just that, and sparingly rather than constants. (Obvious points but.)

voted 0

the student loan debt problem is related to a higher education bubble, which could be helped in the future by reducing the number of people going into debt to go to college, and reducing the number of people going to college, period. Many of them get little professional or financial benefit from higher education.

I'm super wary of this line of thinking. People with degrees still earn way more over a lifetime than people without, and that's not reversing itself any time soon.

As someone without a degree, there's a security to having that piece of paper that I don't have. If my business fails, I can go make $11/hr at an Amazon warehouse until I die of heat exhaustion.

i have a considerable amount in my 401k thanks to starting to contribute when i was 22, a nice employer match and profit-sharing contribution, and some cool portfolio management stuff we get (~20% return in the last year even with the recent dip). but i'm 30 years from needing that money so it's pretty uh conceptual at this time.

i have none which is dumb of me as I've been financially stable for a couple years and still haven't gotten around to setting something up

college is for networking

I kind of think everyone should be able to start a 401k at birth

I really wonder about US social security and will it be there or not when I retire

or shall I say "when I can no longer work"

I kind of think everyone should be able to start a 401k at birth

Hell yes they should.

are y'all who are putting 10%+ of income into a 401(k)/Roth/etc including employer match in that number?

I feel insanely privileged and jerkish for even asking that, I'm here thinking "am I way behind?!" when half my peers here are measuring savings in sandwiches :/

url is not accurate. headline is "‘The 401(k) industry owns Congress’: How lawmakers quietly passed a $300 billion windfall to the wealthy"

holy shit this poll

This was the 2022 tax bill … I thought there was something new … or do i need to read more than the first few paragraphs? (Will read the whole thing later just… on phone rn)

Who is the richest ilxor

Me

I have a 403(b) - the nonprofit equivalent of a 401(k) - and I'm always slightly afraid when the quarterly statement arrives in the mail
Sometimes it's good, often it's bad

I have been the beneficiary of savings plans since the 90s (social security, 401k and a small pension). I think I'm wealthy enough to survive as a senior, but as someone with MS I will need nursing care in the future. I just don't want to go to a depressing nursing home, I want to live in an assisted living facility where there is a chance for some independence and camaraderie with others my age

I don't have any heirs that are important to me in my family - they all have enough money - but there are some other people that I want to help or at least acknowledge as ones I've loved.

The whole idea of a living will is so fraught, and my ideas about it change from day to day

I’m not that old (I’m just 68) and am not near to being incapacitated but, as a single person, advanced aging concerns me. My friends and I are discussing these issues. Many of you will too in coming years

68!

Old bro itt

:) it's not that old, really, you guys will be there soon

Respect

I got $10 set aside for some sleeping pills and a plastic bag. Retiring Heaven’s Gate style.

Respect