401Ks are a disaster: Column

[ReRe]

55. K&R

... We've been had. Period. Remember when the latest crash happened and the business pundits were running around with their hair on fire telling everyone to leave what little money they had left in their 401(k)s, that the market would come back? Well, I've had my ear to the ground and there's rumblings that it's going to crash again soon. The reason being that we bailed Wall Street out and very little was done to prevent them from doing the same thing again. And the market is running high again...

The market is no place for retirement funds. The market is a casino. Me? I don't like to gamble. I don't have enough to be gambling it in a casino, because, frankly, I don't have much luck at gambling. It's a game of risk, and I just can't risk it. When they started this 401(k) business up, and hubby jumped for it, I knew what was going to happen. And sure enough, whammo, it happened, again, and again, and again.

When I was young, I waited tables at a big fine hotel in a nice big city. Several of my waitress friends saved their money all year and would go to Las Vegas and gamble it all away the next year. I seen no sense in it, as none of them ever came back with money in their pockets. To me, it was like saving all year to go throw it away once a year. Duh??? Hello????

The 401(k) system has been the biggest boondoggle of our lifetime, sucking the money away from the middle class. And here we are in 2013, wondering what happened to our bankrupt country. It's like we've been living a tragic social science fiction story.