Meltdown Retirement Blow Is Softer for Lawmakers

[lligrd]

Source: AP

Inside Washington: Lawmakers' retirement plans riding out the storm better than others

Along with the rest of America, Rep. George Miller has watched the value of his retirement investments plummet in recent weeks.

"I've lost 30 percent like everybody else. This hits home with the Miller family, too," the California Democrat said in a recent interview.

<snip>

Only 5 percent of private sector workers have defined benefit pension plans, in which the employer pays into an account and promises them benefits based on years of service, salary levels and other factors. That's down from 1980, when 60 percent of workers had such plans, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Increasingly, employers are putting the responsibility for retirement -- and the risk -- onto workers themselves by switching to investment plans like 401(k)s. About 30 percent of workers have 401(k)s, in which employees contribute to their own accounts, often with employers matching a small percentage of contributions, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Thirteen percent have both defined-benefit pensions and 401(k)s. The remaining workers don't have retirement coverage from their employer, according to the institute.


Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/106022/Meltdown-Retirement-Blow-Is-Softer-for-Lawmakers?mod=retirement-preparation

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Bring back pension plans. Your retirement is nothing to gamble with.

[TomClash]

1. This is part of the class war

waged by the rich against the rest of us.

[lligrd]

2. Yep, But Many Fell For It

And the rich just stole their pension plans and got taxpayer dollars to keep them from going bankrupt. Disgusting!

[TomClash]

5. Not sure I know where the money went

I suspect it was never there all along.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[barbtries]

4. after spending my entire adult life without

a retirement plan, i finally got a job with a 401K plan with matching funds. just in time to see the economy go to hell. oh, well. in my real life, i always knew i'd be working until i die.

[WriteDown]

7. Actually, you are amazingly lucky....

This would be an excellent time to START contributing to a 401K. Especially one that matches contributions. Its those of us who have been contributing to a 401K for the last 10 years who are really screwed.

[barbtries]

8. yeah, in a sense

so far i've only lost a little bit of a very small amount. to me it's all abstract anyway, since i live from payday to payday and if i can't pay for it, i just can't have it.

amazingly lucky that i haven't been able to put anything aside for my retirement in 37 years of working? i'm not so sure about that, but okay.

[Odin2005]

6. IMO everyone should have a guaranteed pension paid for by corporate taxes.

As far as I'm concerned "investing" for retirement is a big scam.

[toopers]

10. So you would rather trust someone else . . .

or some other entity with your retirement. Sorry, let me manage my own retirement.

[hughee99]

9. Aren't these big corporate pension plans invested

in the market, and haven't a number of companies already sought to change the defined, agreed upon benefits when they've come on hard times?

[GinaMaria]

11. My employer cancelled the pension plan

they grandfathered in only a few people who had greater than 35 years in. I haven't been able to look at my 401K. It's going to be terrible and there's not much I can do about it right now, so I still haven't looked. Just can't make myself do it. So depressing isn't it?