Most of these seem like good ideas, especially #1.
I wanted to see mandatory matches
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Too late for me, but if this passes I hope that people take advantage of the opportunity to save more and not take the penalty free early withdrawals just because they’re a little short.
Its nice to see some good legislation (Secure Act 2.0) come out of Congress, even though its part of another bloated spending bill.
Anything to encourage people to save for their own future is a good thing, although I don’t agree with forcing companies to match employees contributions. Instead of 401k’s just have IRA’s (traditional and Roth) that individuals contribute to and the company can put in the match if they have one. I’d raise the yearly contribution limit, lower the age for withdrawals to 55 and raise the RMD. I’d also like to see a personal Roth type savings account you can contribute up to $1,000 a year after taxes that grows and the withdrawals are tax free. You can take the money out for any reason such as an emergency, education, a home, vacation, car or anything. It would encourage people to save.
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One thing i would like to see is higher contribution limits. Retirement just got way more expensive and your going to need to say way more.
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Whle it’s a hassle, penalty free withdrawals kind of defeat the purpose of retirement plans.
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How do we get to mandatory matches when we don’t even require employers to offer plans at all?
This is partially how the government will steal from the citizens to make up for its spending recklessness. Failure to adjust things like this adequately for inflation.
Easy. Make plans mandatory and make them match.
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Yet another evolution in work strategy. Back in the day, they offered a salary. Will the salaries advertised for a job be before or after the mandatory savings. Since a retirement account can’t make mortgage payments, put gas in a car or food on a table. It would be kind of unfair to offer them a job $50,000 a year when they won’t be able to touch several thousand dollars
Which went up a lot from 2016-2020
Why? A 401k is an optional benefit employers can offer like health benefits, vacation time, free products or services the company produces to attract and keep employees. Individuals already can open an IRA if they choose.
And those increases weren’t wiped out by near double digit inflation. NPR had a recent story about a woman that saw her pay go up 50% ($10 to $15 an hour) but that didn’t cover the increase in her rent, transportation costs, food or other costs. She lost ground and was worse than before.
When things become mandatory they lose their value.
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So we take it back to pre Trumpian levels and THEN take money out of it. It IS kind of amazing though…Trump got fast food places to pay $15 an hour.
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No he didn’t, that happened after democrats shut down the economy and then came Bidenflation.
Fast food worker: Yay, I’m making $15 an hour.
Landlord: Sorry kid but I’ve got to raise your rent 300 bucks a month.
Fast food worker: That sucks.
Fast food worker: $20 on pump 5 please.
Gas station clerk: No problem, three and a half gallons on pump 5.
Fast food worker : WTF?
Democrats: Yay Biden!
Ira are very limited.
What?
Side story regarding 401(k) plans. Like many companies, my employer offers a 401(k) plan and also contributes profit sharing to it. A few years ago I was joking with a co-worker about a deal that I thought was lousy and told her that they would take it out of our profit sharing program for the next year. She said it didn’t matter to her since she didn’t participate in it anyways. To make a long story short, she had been at the company for about six years and had never heard of the 401(k) plan or profit sharing. I told her to go check on that, and there was an account with six years-worth of profit sharing deposits in her name that she did not know about.