Monday, February 17, 2014
First they stole your pensions
And while there are still some plans out there, most notably in the public sector, they are not given much longer to live. Therefore it is time to turn to the pension replacement, your 401k. The 1% know they can simply manipulate the markets and pour your savings into their accounts but that is disruptive and makes the peasants restless so they are taking a less obvious approach.
Employers are squeezing their workers’ retirement savings, holding back on both the amount and the timing of 401(k) matching funds and dragging out vesting schedules. Taken together, these measures are making it more difficult to save for old age.Used to be that a good company would match at least 50% of you contribution every time you got paid which was probably weekly. Then they realized the joys of paying you every two weeks or even monthly. Then they started to trim the match and now they are going for paying the match once a year, if you are still employed. If not, you lose. But the best part is if you leave the company before you are vested, they claw back all the match they might have made. And that tax deferred part, you put in so little each year it makes no difference in what you pay until you take it out. Let's face it, until someone puts a big money bounty on CEO scalps, you won't ever stand a chance of putting anything aside for your retirement.
Major companies that have engaged in such practices in recent years include Whole Foods Market Inc., Facebook Inc., Oracle Corp., Caesars Entertainment Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The most frugal have been scaling back company matches and setting lower limits for the maximum annual payment they’ll make to a 401(k) account, according to hundreds of government filings analyzed by Bloomberg. A difference of three percentage points on a match can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars lost for employees over the course of their careers.
“There’s been an implicit contract for years and years -- workers save and companies match -- but now they’re changing the rules,” said Brigitte Madrian, a Harvard Kennedy School professor who studies retirement policy and corporate management. “Most individuals can’t do it on their own. We’re going in the wrong direction.”
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There's definitely an advantage for those of us who retired ten or more years ago. The penalty, of course, is you have to be older than dirt to enjoy the fringe benefits of yesteryear.
Meanwhile in Tennessee, workers don't need no stinkin union to look after their interests.
They can handle it themselves.
They can handle it themselves.
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