Quote:
Originally Posted by Sly
Yeh, this is always the counter argument when I mention privatizing Social Security. It's always "people are so busy with their 40 hour work week and kids, how could we possibly ask them to spend five hours a year meeting with a financial planner to balance their investments?"
Sorry, I think it's a silly argument. Very very silly. If people can't spend five hours a year working on their retirement (yes, that's all it really takes,) then I really don't know what to say... that's just beyond retarded. There are so many different types of funds and investments set up that automatically balance your retirement portfolio according to your goals and your age it isn't even funny. Everyone is busy, everyone! Time management is about shifting your time into areas that are a priority... retirement is a priority to anyone with any sort of vision at all. To those without a vision... they need to wake up.
Bare minimum... take my 15%, give the old and sick 5%, put another 5% in some retarded slush fund that politicians can rape and pillage as they see fit, let me decide where the last 5% goes.
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So then assume this is the situation. And I have had jobs in the past where I have had 401K accounts and 1-2 times a year I could split up how I wanted that money invested (IE low, medium or higher risk investments) so I understand where you are coming from. I go to a financial planner. A guy who is smart. A guy who has made a lot of people a lot of money. He makes some recommendations for me and I think they are good solid ideas so I follow his lead. For several years everything is great. Then we have something like we just had and the bottom drops out of the market. If he had me in funds that were invested in anything that had to do with sub prime mortgages I'm a huge loser. I could lose everything I have. If not everything I could lose a nice chunk of it that takes me several years to regain. So if I am 35 it isn't that big of a deal. I still have many years to rebuild it and can recover from this. If I am 65 I'm fucked.
We are not to far off in our ideas. I said in my original post if people had 2% of their social security to invest on their own it might work out better. I have no problem with people having access to some of the money to invest as they see fit. Some will do well, some will lose all of it, but at least they get some control over it. I do have a problem with people getting 100% control over the money. I'm not saying that government is great and that they do a perfect job of handling this money. I know they fuck it up and the could do much better. I am saying it you leave it up to individuals to handle themselves many of them are going to fuck it up badly.