I think personally it is because of our atttitude towards retirement planning that majority of the companies today offer either no pension or almost-entirely employee-funded direct contribution based pension system.
My Dad drilled one concept into my head in my early days of career - everybody gets old and every old person wish to retire with pension.
I don't exclusively rely on my employer's pension plan for my retirement planning -- on top of it, I contribute to my state defined (bank managed) retirement funding.
I see a version of this statement all the time from us old people, sometimes it ends with "purchasing homes" or "full time long term careers at one company" say, or "retirement saving" as in your example.
I'm starting to suspect the reason just might be that the new generation doesn't actually have any fucking money or stable jobs. Just a theory.
possibly in other contexts, but obviously not in this one. if what the article states is true, they are paid pretty well at these companies, but seemingly at the cost of no matching retirement plans.
Perhaps it is because they don't wan't to pour what little money they have into what could likely be a black hole. $3.4 trillion[1] in retirement savings were swindled in the Big Short of 2008, and no justice was done despite the massive amount of fraud going on. And then there is Social Security, which they will never see a penny of.
There's a reason Millennials typically aren't buying houses, having kids, and investing in retirement funds. It's because they can't afford it and/or the risk is too high.
[1]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-much-did-the-f...
People who left their 401k investments alone, or drew them down slowly, have more value in their accounts now than they did before 2008.
I don't think the average American is any different.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/12/heres-how-much-the-average-am...
Nearly half have no retirement savings at all.
Really, the generation that normalized the concept of FI/RE (financial independence/retire early) has no interest in retirement? I find that hard to believe. I think it's more to do with the segment that is burdened with high debt loads. Those with the income seem excessively interested in retirement, while those of more modest means just want to get ahead.
I think it's a _little_ bit of that and a whole lot of "the government will take care of me." I mean it's a legitimate strategy to a lot of young voters. Too much student loan debt? Vote for Bernie, he'll nullify it. Broke at retirement age? Vote for Bernie 2.0, he's promising a healthy "basic income" for seniors, indexed to inflation.
As is usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle, which is being lost in this increasingly polarized world.
I'd rather not have risks just swept under the rug.
401-Ks have no underfunding problem. Of course, they expose you to market risk directly.
Give me the money so I can put it someplace where you won't spend it on this year's budget shortfall, thanks.
You'd be crazy to buy into a de luxe health plan by yourself if you're self-employed. I go for something minimal: no drugs or routine dental, just emergency dental and medical: for situations you pray won't actually happen.
It's so much cheaper to just pay for the massage or to have a cavity filled, it's not even funny.
But I'm frustrated that with all the time and energy put into healthcare over the last decade, no progress has been made in keeping health insurance coverage separate from employment status.
Self-employed people can write off payments for extended health. (There are some upper bounds on how much, but generous enough that I think I would have a full write off even with the rather frivolous plans out there.)
I did the number crunching that way, using pre-tax dollars. Of course, it looked better that way, but still a waste of money compared to giving your credit card to the dentist or whoever.
By the way, in British Columbia, if you make a decent income, you are required to pay some $1800 per year to the province for a health care plan called MSP. That is not a business expense you can deduct from your income as a self-employed person, nor a qualifying medical expense for a tax credit.
It's ironic that you have a Security Exchange Commission down there which will put you in jail for trading on an insider stock tip, yet they don't crack the fuck down on this sort of blatant anti-trust between health and insurance.
The US is such a cop against corruption abroad. I worked for a US firm for some years and had to regularly go through anti-corruption training.
Like, clean up your local messes first that affect the lives of millions of Americans at home, before worrying that someone working abroad is wining and dining some foreign official to get a deal and how that affects their democracy over there.
If, on average, only half of the plan members get dental check-ups and 10% get massages, the insurance company can still make the same 50% profit margin if your premium includes 75 cents per dollar towards dental and 15 cents per dollar towards massages.
Now, in the real world, fewer people use all these benefits, and far more is charged on the premiums. I suspect that the profit margin in the whole industry is much larger than 50%.
+1 to this entire concept.
Insurance is for dealing with catastrophes. Not to cover an annual physical or dental cleaning.
Correct, and that's why we're in the situation we're in today. Insurance turned from, well, insurance into a bizarre discount club.
The real solution to the high price of medial procedures and prescription drugs is to do away with insurance (as we know it today) and normalize paying out-of-pocket for procedures and drugs like we did so many years ago, and still do for car-related expenses. I have no doubt that if the auto insurance industry worked the way health care insurance worked a routine oil change would cost $3000 and the out-of-pocket expense would be anywhere from $30 to $200 depending on how good your coverage is.
But fortunately for us, that industry can't obfuscate prices and consumers are informed and can shop around. And the prices stay sane. Funny, that.
If instead my employer decided to give me the money directly, my marginal tax rate would take roughly half of it.
The existing system works really well for well-compensated employees, and we vote. That's probably why it's been allowed to be on fire for everyone else for so long.
Sometimes you can get a cash discount that is similar, but not always.
In addition to match, other factors that matter a lot (but are harder to find out up front) include what funds are available and if after-tax contributions are allowed. Having access to low-cost funds is a huge plus, and after-tax contributions allow for the mega-backdoor Roth 401(k) strategy.
It's the pingpong tables that kill me. Why does this make me want to work there?
That doesn't make any sense. Even if you value retirement savings at zero, you can withdraw as soon as the match hits with a 10% penalty. Matching is free money.
What I mean to say is that salaryX + 3% 401k match is not as valuable as salaryX + 50% salaryX with no 401k match.
The extra salary you need to ignore a lack of 401k can be debated, but at some salary, I just don't care.
In retirement, I can raise my standard of living while halving my spending by relocating to somewhere that's not a high-end job center. That would mean a much lower income tax bracket.
Amazon (3 years), Microsoft (9 years), Google (6 years), Facebook (8 years), Yahoo (1 year), Netflix (5 years).
We may disparage Yahoo but the initial formula was right.
Highly valued startups aren't generous employers (when viewed along a single axis)
