The American SS

[jj82277]

I'm with you kyhawkeye, even if its just lil ol me and my big mouth.

I am not a big Newt Fan, but i will stickl up for him a little, back then as Mr. Oriely would say, Fow was still warming up in the bullpen, and blogger was just another term for an offensive lineman so i don't know how many friends he would have had, but at the time i was still in Middle School so i can't be sure just speculating, but yeh both sides do idiotic things. like right now we have our proverbial foot on they're throat and i'm just waiting for us to cut ther #$@@! head off. I think this story beginning to surface about wmd being moved from Iraq to Iran aided by Siria around the time that we were at the UN should just about do the trick , but let's please start acting like the party in charge and stop trying to get the mainstream media to like us, that's what made NIXon a nutball

 

[coloman]

OK jj82277 I will agree that with planning a married couple with kids can put $100.00 a month aside to invest for their retirement. Since your job is helping people invest money for their retirement you must certainly know that in todays market you have to be a very shrewd investor. We had meetings at work today to dicuss our 401K retiremant plan and the company that manages our 401K accounts is constantly monitoring where they invest the money. They had a informational sheet in their annual packet that they give us that showed about eight investment funds they were dropping and along side of them the eight investment funds that were taking their place effective a week from this Thursday. I sincerely wish that every company provided as good a 401K plan as the one my company does but I am also realistic enough to know that many companies can't afford to or simply choose not to do so.

 

[nessonite1]

I'm not one to jump in on discussions like this but I have to agree that in the vast majority of families living paycheck to paycheck is IS possible to make choices that would improve their futures and their retirement. I forget the exact figures but when my daughter was born we talked about putting an extrememly small amount of money away each month which would end up paying for a very good college education for her as early as her 16th birthday.
However we, like many people, are good at talking and bad at doing. We could very easily make some sacrifices in our lifestyle in order to invest for the future but we don't. I'm not going to be so presumptuous as to say this is the case for EVERY family but I'd be willing to bet that for the overwhelming majority of people who claim they just can't save anything and are forced to rely of social security for their retirements that it's just a matter of some simple sacrifices. Buy second hand clothes and furniture sometimes. Drive a more fuel efficient car. Subscribe to a less expensive cable plan. Use dial-up instead of DSL or cable. Don't eat fast food. Go to the library instead of the book store. Don't keep pets that cost a lot to feed. Stop smoking. No one thing saves enough for it to seem worth it but it adds up. I imagine the number of people who truly can't come up with an extra $100 is VERY small. Hell...get that lazy teenager off his ass and get him a part time job. No kid is hurt by the responsibility of helping to pay household expenses or at the very least his own. Or just saving for his own education and future.
I'm always amazed how much money we save just by hubby throwing his pocket change in a jar every other day.
My 2 cents. If I give it to you 5000 times that's $100. 😛

 

[jj82277]

In all seriousness Mr. Schmidt, the idea that yu have to be some shrewd investor in todays market is a flasehood created by banks, insurance copmpanies, credit unions, and most of all the companies providing 401k plans.

consider the following. I know for a fact that the only ood thing about these plans is the fact that some of them match. If your doesn't match don't contribute, if it does only contribute up to the amount that you get matched. why, because you can do better. want proof. ask for a one on one consultation with one of the real representatives of the company handling your plan. ask him for a financial needs analysisn and tell him you want to know your financial independence number (in other words, with your situation, how long it will take you to save enough money to stop working) one of three things will happen, a.) most commonly they will chuckle under their tounge and give you the run around. b.) if you are lucky you will only be ooking at a 500-1000 dollar consultation fee which you probably won't want to pay. or c.) if you are related to someone at the company they will tell you that to retire you will probably have to save at least low ball numbers 3/4 of a million dolars. and then that 20,000 dollars that you have been saving for the last 20 years al of a sudden looks really small. how do i know, its what i do.

why is that, your probably going to averrage about 6-8 percent in a 401k. most companies that handle those accounts don't like assigning pricy coundelors to small accounts (Schwab, lynch, and everyone else are actually restructuring to disallow accounts of less that 150,000 dollars) they take on coorporate plans because all at once its a pretty ok sum of money, and they only have to send out some new guys to gain experience by giving annual seminars. and for the most part 6-8 percent sounds good to most.

what makes it good for them. 200/month 35 years, 6% 287,000 dollars 12% 1.3 million. they reinvest and keep the difference. for all those keeping track at home thats about 1 million dollars. whose money is it yours. is it illegal, it should be. what are my options, there are plenty of people out there like myself who will show you how to get 12-18 % for free, and the government won't even tax you on it. think about banks. they give between 1-3% and then loan it back at between 19-24% so that's why those banks are so big. and for lack of a better explination, insurance companies for the most part just fucking take it. I can't believe the railroad job they do.

but the markets down. it goes down and it goes up, but in the long run as a whole it alwayus falls between 12-18%. why don't they teach it in school, the teachers don't know. healt insurance is up because the markets down, I'm not in health insurance, but my educated guess is that they are investing heavy while prices are still low and borrowing money in essence from the policy holders that are in essence trapped. they have actuaries with degrees in maths that i can't pronounce. they saw this shit coming.

but what about Enron and world com. most funds picked up on that and were long gone before anything like that happened. that's jsut a prime example of don't invest with the place you work.

i could go further, but that could be a little too detailed. i hope i made some points.

 

[jj82277]

I'd be intereste to hear goodiluvers oppinion on this one

 

[Goodieluver]

Imagine a time when there are no fidelity adds on tv. Charles Schwab is still in the steel business, and the stock market just died. After the first world war one of the more non partisan presidents of our time instituted a program to provide partial retirement for the working class of the country. After all, unless you were a Carnage you couldn't really invest in anything any way, so what's a guy to do. For the time it made a lot of sense, and I acually think that F. D. R. was one of our greater presidents for having the imagination to try to fordge a solid future for our country.

fast forward oh about 75 years, we know now that the global economy could only be completely destroyed by the complete distrucion of the continental united states, France, Germany, Great Britain and a lot o other well to do nations and in which case i don't know if your retirement package would be the first thing on your mind. There have been such government programs to aid private investing such as the traditional, and literally revolutionary ROTH IIRA. 401k is a household phrase, and if anyone has 25$ a month to save you can find someone to help you invest it. for reasons of partisan pride the 3/4 century old plan is still in effect. Is there anyone here who really thinks that this plan is woth saving.

I know i know. there are people depending on that money for retirement. that's really what worries me. looking at figures 50,000 a year gets you around 1500 dollars a monh in SS. that means that you were just making it by on 4,000 a month you are going to loose 2500 dollars a month in income. does that sound like a guarenteed benifit, or a false sense of security. if i told you about our little friend inflation the situation would seem so grim that i fear too many would commit hari keri so i will leave those figures out, but if provoked i do have them ready. oh and don't forgett early exit from the system means your family gets none of your hard earned dollars. the truth is that if the average american invested their SS contributions instead of keeping them at the nominal rate of return that the government gives us and we would all retier millionaires. (that's not exaduration 200/month 35 ears, 12% 1.3 million dollars all day long and twice on sunday. and that is only half the allowable contributions to a roth IRA 'who says retiring at 55 isn't possible')

I get it, Bush uses words like God and Faith, Good and Evil and i know that makes some people feel icky inside, but you have a.)keep big brother on life support and flush any chance of actually being able to stop working, b.)make new small brother and allow yourself to plan for your family.

and please save the transition cost thing, because it would be the cheapest just to let SS die and not pay that much of my income to someone else and invest all of it which would be my primary concern, but if I took that message to my fellow 20 somethings we might burn down washington untill we got our way.

I open the floor to debate, i really would like to hear from the other side on this issue.

Heh i got fired up to argue cuz i thought u were calling some presidential organization the SS like in nazi times(cuz people have done so disgracefully before)...

 

[jj82277]

nah, you had to be there, i did however choose the name becauser i thought that it would attract attention