Why You Can't Plan for Retirement

[hermes]

Eu também sou poupado ... cerca de 80% do meu ordenado.

Quanto a esta situação dos 401k's, o problema nao é do sistema.

Creio que nao se pode dizer que o sistema é mau, quando tem funcionado, afinal não sao nada mais do que contas próprias de capitalização, que são 'Tax Sheltered' até ao seu levantamento.

O problema está é que o Estado, como sempre a achar que está a proteger os cidadãos deles mesmos (enfim), quer meter mãos a isso ... afinal 19 triliões de dólares a serem taxados, quase que acabava com a dívida americana ui ui ...

Trocar os 401k's por uma espécie de annuity gerida pelo estado é uma coisa absurda, deixa de haver escolha, ainda por cima por alguem mais imcompetente que eu.

Para além do mais, isso de proteger, o "eu" do futuro, a pessoa pode não poupar, mas por defeito, as empresas inscrevem os trabalhadores nos seus 401ks, assim como existe uma contribuição para a SS por defeito. Contribuição essa que se pode abdicar, obviamente não tendo depois os benefícios desta.

Nos 401k's podemos também escolher desde annuity's (se queremos ter paz de descanso e saber q recebemos X por mes na reforma) ou em detrimento deter outras coisas que nos deem na telha como stocks, bonds, commodities, etc.

Acabar com isso parece-me muito muito pior ... a ir avante o que muitos têm medo, isso é um autêntico assalto as poupanças das pessoas... diria que expropriação mesmo.

Essa visão dos impostos, é um perigo possível, porém não creio que seja isso que esteja por detrás destes estudos. De qq forma as pessoas já estão todas comodamente dentro do bunker, pelo que estão mesmo a jeito para que o governo lance uma bomba lá para dentro...

Eu cheguei a estes artigos fazendo arqueologia na web, após ter encontrado uns gráficos interessantes no livro: "The great super cycle - Profit from the inflation". Fora este fórum, não tenho conhecimeno de alguém estar a abordar isto actualmente.

[Zel]

que importam os 80%, importa querer poupar

[Incognitus]

Uma das coisas que poderá obstar a uma educação económica, é que esta passaria em grande medida por retirar as ilusões propiciadas pela ideologia que visa controlar e impor o ensino (estritamente) público.

[Zel]

as pessoas nao sabem nada, elas sao educadas para serem empregados e nao para serem capitalistas ou saberem mover-se no sistema, dai tb que eu diga que se sobrevaloriza as escolas privadas pois todo o sistema funciona mal e eh muito incompleto 

por mim faltam cadeiras que ensinem sobre o sistema politico, os partidos, financas pessoais, capitalismo, tribunais e lei, tudo o que no fundo permitiria ser um cidadao pleno

em vez disso ensinam teorias inuteis e a decorar o nome dos rios

[kitano]

as pessoas nao sabem nada

 

[Messiah]

Eu também sou poupado ... cerca de 80% do meu ordenado.

Quanto a esta situação dos 401k's, o problema nao é do sistema.

Creio que nao se pode dizer que o sistema é mau, quando tem funcionado, afinal não sao nada mais do que contas próprias de capitalização, que são 'Tax Sheltered' até ao seu levantamento.

O problema está é que o Estado, como sempre a achar que está a proteger os cidadãos deles mesmos (enfim), quer meter mãos a isso ... afinal 19 triliões de dólares a serem taxados, quase que acabava com a dívida americana ui ui ...

Trocar os 401k's por uma espécie de annuity gerida pelo estado é uma coisa absurda, deixa de haver escolha, ainda por cima por alguem mais imcompetente que eu.

Para além do mais, isso de proteger, o "eu" do futuro, a pessoa pode não poupar, mas por defeito, as empresas inscrevem os trabalhadores nos seus 401ks, assim como existe uma contribuição para a SS por defeito. Contribuição essa que se pode abdicar, obviamente não tendo depois os benefícios desta.

Nos 401k's podemos também escolher desde annuity's (se queremos ter paz de descanso e saber q recebemos X por mes na reforma) ou em detrimento deter outras coisas que nos deem na telha como stocks, bonds, commodities, etc.

Acabar com isso parece-me muito muito pior ... a ir avante o que muitos têm medo, isso é um autêntico assalto as poupanças das pessoas... diria que expropriação mesmo.

Essa visão dos impostos, é um perigo possível, porém não creio que seja isso que esteja por detrás destes estudos. De qq forma as pessoas já estão todas comodamente dentro do bunker, pelo que estão mesmo a jeito para que o governo lance uma bomba lá para dentro...

Eu cheguei a estes artigos fazendo arqueologia na web, após ter encontrado uns gráficos interessantes no livro: "The great super cycle - Profit from the inflation". Fora este fórum, não tenho conhecimeno de alguém estar a abordar isto actualmente.

Cres que seja o que entao que possa desenrolar? Isto aparte da desvalorização dos mercados, desvalorização do dolar, etc dado que esse tipo de contas podes sempre deter varias classes de activos incluindo stocks de empresas estrangeiras.

Ja agora, esse livro vale alguma coisa? Lembro-me de há um bom par de anos, passar por ele na amazon mas nao o adquiri ...

[deMelo]

Neste país só se enriquece, roubando, herdando ou com o Euromilhões.

Poupar 80% do meu income? hihihihih
Então e a lagosta?

Dêm-me uma herança de milhões, e aí eu já poupo 80% do ordenado... 

[ana]

fala baixinho, senão levas do zel:D qual lagosta, tá maluco? pãozinho com manteiga é mt bom.

[Zel]

iaiaiaiaaiai, onde esta o pau

[hermes]

Cres que seja o que entao que possa desenrolar? Isto aparte da desvalorização dos mercados, desvalorização do dolar, etc dado que esse tipo de contas podes sempre deter varias classes de activos incluindo stocks de empresas estrangeiras.

Ja agora, esse livro vale alguma coisa? Lembro-me de há um bom par de anos, passar por ele na amazon mas nao o adquiri ...

O dinheiro vai-se buscar onde o há. Enquanto os EUA tiverem o controlo da impressora, i.e. o mercado aceitar sem reservas o que esta cospe, não vejo grande perigo disso acontecer, à excepção da clássica repressão financeira, i.e. os fundos terem de ter uma percentagem da dívida do suberano e um aumento de imposto aqui e outro ali até a galinha o tio Sam encher o papo.

[hermes]

leprechaun, para a semana coloco aqui o artigo.

Segundo o autor, provavelmente isto vai ter aplicações interessantes na indústria financeira...

Quanto à inflação, podes começar a aprender alguma coisa no livro The Mystery of Banking. Vais ver que não custa nada. 

[deMelo]

fala baixinho, senão levas do zel:D qual lagosta, tá maluco? pãozinho com manteiga é mt bom.

E se for camarão tigre... já se pode falar?
Ou uma sapateirinha, vá...
Ali no Marujo, em Matosinhos...

Posso?

[ana]

fala baixinho, senão levas do zel:D qual lagosta, tá maluco? pãozinho com manteiga é mt bom.

E se for camarão tigre... já se pode falar?
Ou uma sapateirinha, vá...
Ali no Marujo, em Matosinhos...

Posso?

só se no fim da refeição simulares uma indigestão para não pagares e poupares esse dinheirinho:D

[Jérôme]

para quem quer aprender a poupar :
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

Um "bocadinho" extreme mesmo, há 20 anos atrás talvez fosse para mim... Isso e poupar 80% do ordenado... se vivesse em casa dos papás ainda dava, não vivendo a solução é fazer para quintuplicar o income.

No entanto pode-se aprender/consolidar que poupar é uma questão de ter consciência, planear e por o plano em prática. Optar por sacrifícios no presente para exponencializar o futuro acumular de capital.

Há por aí um tópico com um user a dizer que é pobre mas que almoça todos os dias fora... é tudo uma questão de perspectiva e capacidade de "encaixe" da realidade.

[hermes]

Leprechaun, podes consultar no google scholar as publicações do Hal Hershfield aqui:

http://scholar.google.com/citations?sortby=pubdate&hl=en&user=qGpS1NYAAAAJ&view_op=list_works

Seguem-se agora as aplicações à indústria financeira:

Digital imaging could be next big thing in advice business

Computerized picture of clients at old age brings retirement needs into focus, researcher finds

By Jeff Benjamin
May 4, 2011 12:01 am ET

http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20110504/FREE/110509991

A unique combination of psychology and technology might be just the ticket for getting investors to start taking their retirement savings more seriously.

Speaking Monday at the Investment News Retirement Income Summit in Chicago, Hal Ersner-Hershfield, postdoctoral fellow visiting assistant professor, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, illustrated how individuals generally take their future more seriously when they can imagine themselves as an older person.

“People tend to make decisions for immediate gratification, because they are treating their future self as a stranger,” he said.

He used the example of a teenage boy smoking cigarettes because he is unable to realistically imagine the known effects of long-term smoking on his body.

This is the same mindset, he explained, that helps justify why half the people in the country have just $25,000 saved for retirement, and why a third of the population has less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

To help remedy that gross shortfall in retirement savings, Mr. Ersner-Hershfield has developed a program that creates images of what people will look like in 30 or 40 years.

While the financial services industry has for years promoted savings calculators and estimates on retirement income needs, it turns out that seeing an image of yourself at an older age helps make getting older a reality.

In his research, Mr. Ersner-Hershfield applied aging avatar images of individuals to their perspectives on spending and saving money.

“The more similar people felt to their self in the future the more assets they wanted to save,” he said. “And we found that the more the future self looks like a different person, the worse we are at saving behavior.”

He even tweaked the research to alter the expression of the avatar so that poor saving habit responses would cause the avatar likeness to frown.

“The objective is to give people vivid examples of their future self,” he said.

Susan Carr-Templeton, founder of Stafford Wells Advisors Ltd., tested the technology on some of her clients.

“I think it would be great for 401(k) plan participants or some young people like athletes who are making a lot of money,” she said.

The technology is at least six months from being developed for practical use, according to Mr. Ersner-Hershfield.

“We envision it starting as more of an institutional thing that starts at a company like Fidelity or something like that,” he said.

He added that it is too early to even guess at what it might cost for an adviser to gain access to the technology.

“The idea is to make financial education more engaging and more fun,” he said. “The research shows that whenever we see an image of ourselves, even as a reflection in the mirror, we behave better.”

While the technology might not be available yet, Ms. Carr-Templeton said there are techniques that can be used right now to help clients think more seriously about their retirement future.

“I ask clients to visualize where they will be when they retire,” she said. “I ask for specific details about where they will live, and what it will actually cost to live there.”

Of course, she added, being able to show a client an avatar image of what old age will look like “could make an adviser very unique.”

Picture yourself in retirement.

For people who are many years from retirement, it's a hard thing to do. But helping investors visualize themselves in their golden years might get them to save more.

That is the surprising conclusion of Hal Ersner-Hershfield, an assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. At InvestmentNews' 2011 Retirement Income Summit, Mr. Ersner-Hershfield talked about research he conducted that creates digital images from photographs of test subjects and artificially ages the images to about 65. In experiments, people who saw their retirement-age image said they would set aside more than people who did not get to see their older self.

“People have a hard time understanding the consequences of decisions they make today,” Mr. Ersner-Hershfield said at the conference. To many people, their “future self” seems like a stranger, particularly if retirement is many years away, he said.

In the experiment, which used college student test subjects, those who saw their retirement-age image put twice as much into a hypothetical savings account than those who saw themselves as they were that day.

Mr. Ersner-Hershfield said that the goal of his research is to help counter what he calls a “chronic undersaving” problem that can't be explained by cash flow problems or inability to set aside more.

“The future is hard to think about,” he said. The aging digital image is designed to help people see themselves as retirees and feel an emotional connection to themselves at an older age.

As to whether the technique would work in the real world, Susan J. Templeton, founder of Stafford Wells Advisors Ltd., said she tried the technique with a 36-year-old female writer who is a client, and the sight of herself as a 65-year-old did prompt her to say she would put more money into retirement savings.

[hermes]

Depois da falência da Studebaker em 1963, que destruiu as esperanças de uma reforma para muitos dos seus trabalhadores:

In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy created the President's Committee on Corporate Pension Plans. The movement for pension reform gained some momentum when the Studebaker Corporation, an automobile manufacturer, closed its plant in 1963. Its pension plan was so poorly funded that Studebaker could not afford to provide all employees with their pensions. The company created a program in which 3,600 workers who had reached the retirement age of 60 received full pension benefits, 4,000 workers aged 40–59 who had ten years with Studebaker received lump sum payments valued at roughly 15% of the actuarial value of their pension benefits, and the remaining 2,900 workers received no pensions.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Retirement_Income_Security_Act#History

A resposta política foi a criação dos 401(k)s, IRAs etc. em 1974. Entretanto parece que o futuro chegou ou está prestes a chegar...

401Ks are a disaster: Column

By Duncan Black
On 2:27p.m. EST February 5, 2013

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/02/05/social-security-retirement-benefits-column/1891155/

Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles.

We need an across the board increase in Social Security retirement benefits of 20% or more. We need it to happen right now, even if that means raising taxes on high incomes or removing the salary cap in Social Security taxes.

Over the past few decades, employees fortunate enough to have employer-based retirement benefits have been shifted from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. We are now seeing the results of that grand experiment, and they are frightening. Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles.

Frankly, that's an optimistic way of putting it. Let me be alarmist for a moment, because the fact is the numbers are truly alarming. We should be worried that large numbers of people nearing retirement will be unable to keep their homes or continue to pay their rent.

According to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the median household retirement account balance in 2010 for workers between the ages of 55-64 was just $120,000. For people expecting to retire at around age 65, and to live for another 15 years or more, this will provide for only a trivial supplement to Social Security benefits.

And that's for people who actually have a retirement account of some kind. A third of households do not. For these people, their sole retirement income, aside from potential aid from friends and family, comes from Social Security, for which the current average monthly benefit is $1,230.

There are good proposals out there for improving the private aspect of our retirement system. Having employer-based 401(k) contributions be opt-out rather than opt-in is one such proposal. There are other commendable suggestions for ways to simplify personal financial management.

But none of these ideas will help people who are nearing retirement. Only the possibility of several decades of compound returns make the personal financing of retirement a realistic idea for most people; those with only a few working years left cannot benefit from this. Absent an unexpected windfall, such as lottery winnings or inheritances, most 60-year-olds lack any capacity to significantly increase their savings.

Even if we do find ways to improve the framework for self-funding retirement, how, exactly, do we expect younger workers, who might benefit from these improvements, to start saving significantly for their retirement? Soaring tuition and fees at universities, combined with the associated soaring student loan borrowing, have led many people to start their working lives already deeply in debt. According to the Project on Student Debt, the members of the class of 2011 with student loans had an average of $26,000 outstanding.

These are mostly 22-year-olds who have never worked full time and who are finding it difficult to find good jobs in the age of the Great Recession. They're beginning their working lives in the hole. Understandably, and necessarily, retiring that debt is going to be a priority over retirement savings. One might imagine that saving for a mortgage down payment and even spending a few bucks to enjoy life might be priorities too. At the very minimum, beginning their personal retirement savings will be delayed by years.

People who go beyond undergraduate education and go on to graduate or professional schools can find themselves even more deeply in debt. The cost of law school is prohibitive for most. Many graduates effectively find themselves with a mortgage-sized debt but without the house.

Those who, for whatever reason, did not choose to further their studies might lack the large levels of debt, but they also generally lack the opportunities to obtain jobs with decent wages and benefits, or any benefits at all.

If the consensus is that we need policies in place to ensure that the vast majority of people have at least a comfortable retirement, then we need to adjust our current failing policies. Expecting people to save sufficiently for their retirement, even if those savings are subsidized by our tax code, is unrealistic.

The 401(k) experiment has been a disaster, a disaster which threatens to doom millions to economic misery during the later years of their lives. Proposals to improve our system of private retirement savings -- even good ones -- will offer little to no help for the baby boomers who are currently nearing retirement, and are also unlikely to be of sufficient help for current younger workers. We need to increase Social Security benefits, now and in the future. It's the only realistic way to provide people with guaranteed economic security and comfort post-retirement.

[Zel]

o que os americanos precisam eh de acabar com o sistema de seguros de saude que so causa inflacao de precos

[Messiah]

Nao percebo porque o continuam a achar um "failure" ... os argumentos continuam a ser que a maioria não tem poupanças suficientes lá. Mas isso é pelo facto de não terem muito provavelmente poupado o suficiente, afinal são contribuições autónomas e VOLUNTÁRIAS!

Parece-me a meu ver muito mais justo um 401k, do que um fundo de pensões do qual eu não tenho qualquer tipo de controlo, nem sei se vejo o dinheiro ou não. (aliás veja-se o exemplo dos fundos de pensões também ai referido em que os montantes actuarais não consegue fazer face as futuras liablities)

Um 401k é meu, e posso transferir o $, posso levantá-lo se me apetecer (obviamente incorre em algumas penalidades), etc.

Chamar de isso um "failure"... o que nao falta são exemplos que fazendo uso recorrente da poupança periodica os 401ks funcionam as mil maravilhas ...

O problema está, como já foi postado aqui, que a mairoia das pessoas olha para o seu "eu" futuro como um estranho e logo não poupa.

[hermes]

Salvadorveiga, não estás a ver o filme todo. O falhanço está em que essa gente vai depois de mão estendida ao estado [são uma quantidade significativa de votantes] para que este saqueie o teu futuro a fim destes poderem continuar a cantar e a dançar.

[hermes]

Um estudo curioso, desta vez sobre as línguas em que os verbos se conjugam de forma diferente no presente e no futuro [repare-se que tal influencia a capacidade de distinguir o eu presente do eu futuro]:

Does the Language You Speak Determine How Much Money You Save?

By Audrey Quinn
October 24, 2011

http://www.theworld.org/2011/10/future-tense-language/

A new study from a Yale University economist concludes that people save more or less according to the language they speak.

Behavioral Economist Keith Chen is interested in how people make financial decisions. Last year, he started wondering if people whose native languages make fewer distinctions between the future and present might think differently about the future.

In Chinese, for example, there is no future tense. There are many ways for conveying the future, but you don’t do it through tense. In the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for example, a young female fighter beats up several men, and then warns them she’ll be back the next day.

“Tomorrow,” she says, “ I will uproot Wudan Mountain”

Except that in Chinese she doesn’t say “will” What she says literally translates to “Tomorrow, I uproot Wudan Mountain.” The word tomorrow indicates the future. The Chinese language doesn’t more than that.

So, is there any significance to that?

Chen says yes, but it’s subtle. In some languages, he says people are “slightly nudged every time [they] speak, to think about the future as something viscerally different from the present.” In Chinese, he says, that doesn’t take place. The present and future are the same.

Chen has concluded that having a separate verb tense for your future self might make your future self a little harder to relate to.

He knows it’s “kind of a crazy hypothesis, it’s a little bit out there.”

The flip side of this idea is that speakers who use the same verbs for the present and future might be a little better at thinking about the future– and maybe even better at saving for the future.

This is pretty controversial territory.

A lot us might feel like the way we use words affects our thoughts. Some bilingual speakers believe they think differently from language to the next.

But most linguists don’t buy this idea that we language we speak determines how we think.

Chen, however, persisted in his research.

He divided up world languages by whether they distinguish much between present and future tense.
He then compared speakers of those languages based on savings statistics.

He found “huge differences.”

For example, he found that people who speak languages requiring a separate future tense— English, Arabic, Greek, the Romance languages— are far worse at saving money than people whose languages don’t really distinguish between the future and the present, like Chinese, German, Japanese, or Norwegian.

After factoring in people’s education levels, their incomes, religious preferences, Chen found that the different-verbs-for-present-and-future people, were 30 percent less likely to have saved money in any given year.

By the time they reach retirement, these people will have saved on average more than $200,000 less than speakers of languages with no future tense.

Some linguists aren’t buying Chen’s conclusions.

John McWhorter, author of What Language Is (And What It Isn’t and What It Could Be), doubts whether verb tense and savings habits have much, if anything, in common.

McWhorter says studies like this one are prone to mistakes, because they survey too many languages without knowing enough about how these languages truly function.

For example, he says Chen placed Russian in the wrong category.

Still, McWhorter says he’d love to be proven wrong: “If somebody really could prove it…I would even be open to finding that my skepticism about the language-is-thought hypothesis is unfounded.”

Chen insists he did go into his research with a healthy amount of skepticism.

But he says all the data points to his conclusion: “I haven’t been able to find a counter-example in the world yet.”