Future Insight – The Jenkins

If you come from the future and the best investment vehicle you can think of is a 401k, you don't deserve to be a time traveler.

Lol 10-15% of our income? I'm sorry... But who can afford that? We're getting so fucked right now by greed in this country...

My power bill was $500 last month for a two bedroom apartment. This is because I live in a city with the highest energy rates in the nation, all because the company and our local governments are absolutely lousy with corruption. They have posted obscene record profits for the last half a decade while everyone in the city suffers.

My rent was also 21% higher this year than it was in 2020. My landlord bought this place a decade ago at a bankruptsy auction, but like, fuck me right? Gatta keep those rates up when the rest of the city goes up.

I also haven't saved money since around 2019, since I went four years with a 0% raise due to the company I work for struggling. We were bought out by another company with tons of money, but they decided we were overpaid, since they live in a cheaper city.

My story is not unique. My story is not special. I hear a similar one from people every week. Retirement is a luxury most post-boomers will never experience, no matter how hard we work.

If you have perfect knowledge of the future and know which stocks will do well, why bother with trying to diversify your portfolio to try to mirror the market?

Old self is greedy and wants young self to reduce the fun of their prime years by locking away money so they can sit on a big ol' retirement fund in their older years. Of course, that's assuming that past performance guarantees future results and that the conditions of the 401k will remain the same. What's to say politicians don't start applying extra taxes on 401k withdrawals? What's to say they won't increase the retirement age?

A lot of people can't spare 10-15% of their income and I'm not so sure the advice is not just a ploy by 401k fund managers to squeeze out extra fees. Maybe it's just a silly little comic and I'm taking it too seriously.

Must be nice to have a job that does 401k matching. I had one for about a year, then boom, laid off. Back to part time work that doesn't match. 🤷‍♂️

He should have come back with winning lottery ticket numbers and sports outcomes

What exactly is 401k?

this thread calls out to all the real adults on Lemmy lol. actually learning so much.

It turns out if you save that 10% instead of giving it to the church you might not be destitute when you retire. Or you can buy the church for assistance and see how that goes.

What company let's you put a full 15% into a 401k? I mean... sign me up.

"Come on, you couldn't have brought a Grays Sports Almanac from the future or something?"

Good plan, temporal instability tends to make things like giving yourself a list of winning lottery numbers butterfly effect out into ways that have unintended consequences. Tends to make the list meaningless short after as well, too.

just invest that 15% in stocks that pay dividends instead