| Home |
| Search |
| Today's Posts |
|
|
|
#1
posted to rec.boats
|
|||
|
|||
SOTU
On Thu, 1 Feb 2018 07:41:31 -0500, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 2/1/18 1:17 AM, wrote: Define "wealthiest". Are you just talking about what you call the middle class? (households making $110k+) That is going to be a pretty big number since they will have the biggest 401ks, assuming they did not raid them. I am sure if you just want to talk about hedge funds and guys like Buffett they have huge holdings but they also have stockholders themselves. They are essentially those funds I was talking about. You can't confuse that with individual investors. I suppose We could actually track down what percentage of stocks are held by the real middle class, that guy who makes $50k or so but you really need to figure out how much is in his pension or 401k. I tend not to believe some of the things that the left (or the right) says until I see how they arrived at their statistic. I crunched numbers at work long enough to figure out you can make a database say pretty much anything you want, just by what "view" you define in your query. Your assumption, I suppose, is that the guy making $50k these days has some sort of defined benefit pension. Well, that's not 2018 America so much. Defined benefit pension are disappearing. And at a $50k income level, I wonder how many workers are contributing to an employer-sponsored 401k, or hang around long enough to get vested, or have enough left over after living expenses for putting away some bucks in an IRA. I agree defined benefit pension plans started disappearing rapidly during the Clinton phoney "prosperity" days and most were gone by the time his tech bubble popped. Most employers are offering matching 401k program s now and the idea of "vesting" is pretty much an obsolete term. Your 401k is all yours from day one. The employer contribution may have a time on the job requirement at some places tho. BTW if you plan on living after you stop working, your savings ARE living expenses. That new big screen TV you buy when you are 25 would be 8 to 10 times as much when you retire if you invested it. The same is true of that new car. Many years ago I heard you have to pay yourself first. I put my first raise at IBM into the stock plan and continued doing that until I maxed out at 10% of my gross. It really just meant I deferred getting a raise for a while but I was racking up savings. When I finally got over the "new car" thing and paid off my car, I saved that money too. Pretty soon I was buying cars with cash. By your standards I was never rich but I still managed to save money. I would rather be financially secure than have a lot of flashy things. I think that is rare in the US. |
| Reply |
| Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
| Display Modes | |
|
|
Hybrid Mode
