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Home > Time.com -- Why it's Time to Retire the 401(k)

Time.com -- Why it's Time to Retire the 401(k)

November 5th, 2009 at 09:11 pm

"...upgrading the 401(k) alone won't save the nation's retirement-savings problem.

Here's why: Remember, the biggest factor in whether the 401(k) works as designed has to do with when you retire. If the market rises that year, you're fine. If you retired last year, you're toast. And the chances of your becoming a victim of this huge flaw in the 401(k) plan are pretty high. The market fell in four of the nine years since the beginning of the decade. That means anyone retiring this decade had a nearly 50% chance of leaving work in a down market. In fact, your chances of retiring into a down market are even greater than that: forced retirements spike in recessions just as the stock market is tanking.

The solution: a new type of insurance. Retirement savings, it turns out, are exactly the type of asset we need insurance for. We need insurance to protect against risks we can't predict (when the market collapses) and can't afford to recover from on our own. "People tend to meld savings and insurance in their mind, but they are not substitutes," says Nancy Altman, a former Harvard professor and the author of The Battle for Social Security. "It's fine to have a savings plan as a supplement but not as the main retirement protection for everyone." She says the best way to guarantee a replacement for people's wages in retirement is by pooling risk, and the way to do that is through insurance."

Text is http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1929119-5,00.html and Link is
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1929119-5,0...

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