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On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:10:23 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
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On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:30:16 -0400, bpuharic wrote:

it's greed. there's a reason the financial sector accounted for 40% of
GDP in 2007 while the US did NOT become more competitive in world
markets. the financial sector added NOTHING to US assets

Where do you think the money for your retirement will be coming from?

The whole basis for everyone's pension, 401k and IRA is that Wall
Street sector you seem to hate. Retirees are by definition not adding
anything to the economy, they are living off of it.

Well, that's not really true. They're spending their money in many ways
that
contribute. If they just hoarded their money, the economy would be much
worse off.

I agree the retirees are great about distributing existing money but
they do not produce anything. It is a transfer of money from the young
to the old.
The best example is Social Security where you have retirees spending
money their kids make and have taxed away. My parents spent my FICA
taxes and I just started spending my kid's FICA money. Too bad we
didn't have an exponentially larger number of kids than our parents.

The same is true of everyone on Social Security. You better hope Wall
Street stays 40% of the economy if you want your 401k to be worth
anything when you start sucking off the public tit.

Unfortunately, 401Ks and IRAs (except Roths) aren't really great for
retirement instruments. People forget about the tax consequences of
withdrawing money. Tax rates are at historic lows. They will rise, and one
needs to factor that in when planning for retirement.


I have been saying that forever. Anyone who really thinks the
government is not coming for that 401k money is just naive.
It is why I did not really hit my 401k contribution that hard. I took
what they matched.
I am really thinking about rolling it over before the taxes reset. A
little fall rally would cinch it for me.

If you roll it into a Roth, you'll need to pay taxes on the money when you
do that. The Roth is only good from then on. I'm not sure it would make
sense for someone in their 60s, but I don't know your situation.