My plan is to crumble with it.

https://lemmy.world/post/12772306

My plan is to crumble with it. - Lemmy.World

Gonna just make sure I die at 50.
over 50 is overrated
…been over fifty for awhile, can confirm…

Fun fact: you can withdraw from your 401k. While there is a hefty tax penalty, you still can do it. Maybe you can get a down payment on a house or pay off student loan debt. Just make sure you withhold taxes from your payout. Don’t get caught with that bill at tax season

Especially handy if you have a job with good matching and instant vesting. Of course, this is not finacial advice, but it is an option that exists.

Bold of you to think we all have 401ks.
I imagine there is quite a dispersion of ages on Lemmy
Age has nothing to do with it. I’m 46 and I don’t have a 401k. I’ve never worked for a company that offered me one and I can’t afford such a thing out of savings I’ve never had.
You can use $10k from your 401k for a down payment on a house with zero penalty. If you’re married, then your spouse can do the same. So now you have $20k for a house down payment! With an FHA loan you can buy with as little as 3.5% down, which your $20k should cover 3.5%. Weee!
Why even bother with a down payment, lots of loan options out there for 0%
Those are usually harder to get and carry higher interest rates.
In most cases, it’s better to save up for a down-payment to cut off a chunk from your loan along with the portion of interest with it. You also tend to be able have loans with better options available to you.

Heh, here in Australia I’d need over $100,000 for a down payment.

Many are 20% here, so really I’d need over $200,000 just to make the initial payment.

You need that here in the USA too, but with an FHA loan, or a first time buyer program on a conventional loan the percentage needed is reduced. Although they hit you with some pretty hefty fees when you take advantage of those programs. The FHA charges an up-front fee, and conventional loans hit you with PMI which equates to hundreds of dollars per month.
You can also borrow against it sometimes. Basically b3ing a low interest loan to your self with the fees being lower than the penalties
You have to pay it back within 5 years, though.

100% its a loan. Useful for things like down payments or cars, etc. Things that help you save money/make money reliably enough to pay it back.

Still better interest then any other loan too

Or have to pay off the entire loan within a year of leaving the job
Yep, my plan is to pull all the money from my 401k as soon as my employer funds are vested. Paying down debt and living a comfortable life now seems like a better bet than hoping retirement happens.
If this is your plan you’re probably better off rolling it over into an IRA, and then doing a qualified distribution. There are a number of qualifying events that can be used to avoid the penalty for early withdrawals.

just don’t get caught with that bill at tax season

Meh, I’m pretty sure the IRS will agree to a payment plan for a small monthly fee on top of the payment, which at this point is almost certainly less than what I’m paying in these fucking usurious interest rates.

In Switzerland there is a retirement fund similar to the 401k from which you can withdraw if you definitely leave the country or if you want to use the money to buy your main house.

I quietly take a truly unhealthy regimen of stimulants before I go to the gym, and every man in my lineage either died of or was diagnosed with heart problems.

A heart attack at the gym sounds like an admirable death, “they died trying to better themselves” kind of thing. Bonus, I look good now.

Its bullet proof gym motivation too, the worse day I have, the harder I cardio. It’s like depression aikido.

Me having a morbid thought: “I just want to be dead.”

Also me, in Morpheus voice: “Show me.”

Ten years now with that mindset, barely ever miss a gym day.

cool, what stimulants?
Usually Bang, adderall(Im prescribed this, but down dose the rest of the time to take more at the gym.), and ephedrine. When my body can no longer hang with that, I’m cool with it shutting down.
bang should be classified as a dangerous hard drug, it’s the worst thing i can imagine putting in your body lmao

Things never work out the way that you plan.

It’s a fine line between a clean noble death and being the guy who strokes out on the treadmill, falls, gets his nut sack wrapped up in the belt.

Don’t be the guy stroking one out while getting their nutts tugged, got it.
thank you for this comment. brightened my day. I haven’t laughed with this sort of light relief in a long while. (I tend to carry the world on my shoulder). Especially the Morpheus line. gold. ✨
65 is too optimistic of a number for zoomers like me. I’m thinking 50 seems reasonable.
My retirement plan involves laying down in a ditch off a highway in Colorado with an amazing view of the Rockies during a freezing winter night and just falling asleep. Social Security will not exist when I reach retirement age. I have a pension through work, I contribute to a Thrift Savings Plan, none of it will be enough, and I refuse to contribute more to either (as my Boomer parents both (of course) suggest), because to me I am literally throwing that money away. I will never see that money, the markets will crash, I will be left with nothing anyway, there’s no point.
That does sound a lot more peaceful than my retirement plan of: using my 2nd amendment rights on myself lol
I used a chunk of my 401k as an interwst free down payment on my house.

This is… An unhealthy mental stance to take. The markets have pretty consistently gone up for just about a century now, its about time in the market not timing it. Yeah it will go up and down, yeah we really might see a recession in the next few years, but 20-30 years from now, money you’ve invested will be worth considerably more and you’ll likely feel quite different when the time rolls around.

I worry about you, grasshopper_mouse. If you really feel this way, please talk to someone.

“You don’t understand! Right now is the worst times, and my specific suffering is the worst and most hopeless in history! This is the end!”
Hey, I’ve tried that one before, it doesn’t work that easily. I think you might need to do some drugs or get really drunk for it to work properly. Alcohol would work well because it encourages blood flow to extremities, making you feel warmer while making you go faster but I think ketamine would be the best way to go

The copium some people have about gov work is absurd, GS pay raises don’t match inflation AND (at least in the IT field) typically pay worse than industry standards, for…

  • slightly cheaper insurance benefits
  • faster time off accrual (assuming you stick around for 3 years for 6 hours per pay period or 15 for 8 per pay period, which is only for annual leave. Sick is capped at 4 hours regardless.)
  • a pension that a political party absolutely intends sweep out from under you
  • a 401k by a different name.
  • Oh, but it’s also “more stable” (we’re definitely not facing a shutdown deadline on the 8th and 22nd of this month, which is somehow more confusing in news coverage because nobody covers who is/was affected which shutdown deadline or if the march 8 shutdown is still possible).

    If people could plan for retirement during the cold war when nuclear annihilation could happen at any time then you can plan for it now.
    Pretty sure ecological and climate collapse are not the same thing as, eh, maybe they’ll drop nuclear bombs, maybe they won’t.
    Obviously, they’re not exactly the same. My point is people still planned ahead even though there was a chance the world would end.

    In 60 years all you dumb fucks are gonna be old and broke as fuck and demanding the next generations pay for your stupid asses through higher taxes.

    Save your fucking money. The world might not end.

    So… what’s currently happening and has always happened? The current average social security payment is $1800. Which isn’t even enough for rent and bills in most places. There are a lot of old people that worked blue collar or service jobs, payed taxes their whole life, saved what they were told and could. But they retired at 65 and planned on dying at 75, the average life span. Now they’re 80.
    Exactly. Boomers spent all their money in the 80s and are now broke and surprisingly not dead yet. They should have saved more.

    So here’s the thing- social security shouldn’t be your only source of income. That’s what savings are for. That’s what investments are for.

    I’m not saying it’s great or I agree with it, but saving for retirement is something that should be a priority from the beginning

    Ooh la la, look at Mr. Money Bags over here with extra cash to save for retirement.
    If you go all the way to retirement age without ever saving a dime, there is some self reflection to be done

    Not necessarily your fault. Some careers just don’t pay anything, and some areas only ever have low paying jobs, and some people are disabled etc etc.

    A lot of people are born poor, live poor, and die poor. Getting out is the exception.

    Getting out may be an exception but self-defeating right away, like a lot of people in this thread, isn’t the way to become the exception.

    Right?! All these people who think that there are just well paying jobs, that cover your expenses plus some, are just sitting there while we ignore them and choose to be poor.

    I’m in my 40’s going back to school again trying to do better. I’ve changed jobs roughly every 4-6yrs to get better pay and hours. I got stupid lucky to find 2 people to buy a house with right before the market went to shit. I’m making better money than ever in my life but still living the same. Gas, taxes, food kept a steady rise, along with the school loans I never made the promised income for (from the schools recruiters, career aids, etc) thus am still repaying.

    Poor people aren’t lazy. We’re just poor.

    Imma bet most of us are the kind of people that would never take advantage of someone else for our personal gain. Most old acquaintances I’ve met back up with who are doing much better off, I can’t say that I would do what they did for it. I’ve been called things and scoffed at when I’ve said I have personal morals, and told how it interferes with making real money. Absolutely not saying anyone making good money isn’t moral. It does narrow down the scope of opportunities though.

    (Addressing the US because I live there) Even people with “middle class” incomes are living paycheck to paycheck these days. How can you contribute to a 401k when you can’t even maintain a balance in your savings account? Let alone other investments, etc, even if you do know what you’re doing with the various financial instruments.

    The cost of living is beyond the pale right now anywhere in the US where you actually stand a chance at making decent money, so your choices are to A: suffer now under severe self-imposed austerity, saving a pittance for retirement knowing that you’ll still almost certainly wind up destitute in old age, or B: enjoy your youth to the extremely limited degree that you’re able to, have the odd nice coffee or dinner with friends, and then also still become destitute in old age.

    Frankly, a huge percentage of the US population are simply fucked, and given the political landscape where you are given a choice between the “do nothing” party on the center right and the “eat the poor: serfdom now” party on the far right, you can’t blame people for having absolutely zero hope. As for me, I’m extremely privileged to be a dual citizen of the UK/US so I’m going to be running back to Scotland as soon as humanly possible. Come what may, at least Scotland’s position on poor people isn’t to let them die on the streets like it is here.

    I’ve long maintained that if every US citizen got to experience the basic social safety nets that even the UK provides, politicians would find themselves strung up by their intestines in short order. I think people here just really lack context as to how truly distopian this country is.

    They’ve already normalized people living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of jobs are offering daily pay now, where you can pull out your wages from the previous day for a small surcharge. They’re trying to normalize living shift to shift next.

    The world will be fine. Its human society or specifically the working class who are fucked. Mostly by food scarcity due to drought and/or climate collapse.

    We are already in the age of mass die offs, and low level extinctions, by the early 2030s mass extinctions will be the norm and by 2050naround 50% of all crops globally will fail on average. And that’s only if thing stay the same trajectory as they are now. Major events like the gulf stream collapsing could make things much worse much quicker.

    So I think I will just spend my money enjoying life while I can, before the global famines happen :)

    Sounds like I should be investing in dry beans, rice, sugar, and other non-perishables.

    And maybe some ammo.

    I don’t want to hear a PEEP outta you when you’re old and broke
    I still have my mandatory pension as a backup so even if a miracle happens I won’t be that broke.
    In 60 years, you will be dead. The world will be fine. You, however, will not.
    Holy cow, how did I never think about saving my money? It’s such an obvious solution! I can save so much by just saving! Sure, after rent, bills, and other expenses I only make about $100 of profit every month, but if I just save that $100, I’ll only have to work 16 years for every year I’m retired. By the time I hit 96, I’ll have enough saved to live to the age of 100!
    Yeah yeah. I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to all the idiots in this thread who refuse to save money even though they could
    You’re getting angry at people which don’t exist