Harming the retirement funds of millions of us is high crimes and misdemeanor

[question everything]

at least, should be.

But... do members of Congress have any investments? Do they have retirement funds?

When I remember the way they were considering eliminating the tax benefits of contributions to 401K and IRA I have wondered.

[Lars39]

1. iirc, they can do insider trading somewhat legally.

[quartz007]

2. Huh? my IRA is up 40% in 14 months!

[question everything]

3. How has it been this past quarter?

Or today?

[quartz007]

4. My IRA is long term...for Individual Retirement Account!!

Stocks have averaged 7-8% return per year for 3 decades.
So 40% gain over 14-15 months leaves room for 30% loss without sweating too much.
I ignore daily prices, weekly changes, monthly changes.
Long term, I am doing just fine.

[angstlessk]

5. The thing about that is where it is when you actually retire.

Will the stocks be up or down? Seems a ton of old folks lost their retirement in 2008...You could be next?

[Major Nikon]

6. That's something of an overstatement

If someone had invested in the stock market only right before 2008 and then pulled out and never invested in stocks again, then they would have lost a significant amount (but nowhere near all) of their retirement. Not many people are in that boat.

Most who invest in stocks do so as part of a long term strategy. Someone who never invested in stocks would most likely be worse off in retirement even immediately following 2008 compared to someone who had. If your return on your retirement savings doesn't beat the rate of inflation, you are effectively losing money every single year.

[karynnj]

13. Your post is very true

The ONE group of people who could have been hurt a lot are those who needed the money in late 2008 and 2009. They had to pull money out of the stock market at a time when the value was low. This is true within IRAs and outside of them. All people who did not pull the money out of stocks found that they regained their value by some point in 2010 and have increased since then.

One group of people really impacted are people who are living off their IRA, savings, pensions etc. They would have had real loses on the money spent while the market was low. This also was true for people over 70 1/2 with IRAs who are required to take minimum distributions out of their IRAs. However, they could take that distribution and if they didn't need any of it to live on or pay the taxes on it, buy the same holding in your non IRA account. In 2008/2009, this would have taken a LOT of guts to do rather than putting it into a bond, but as it happened, you would then have had the big rebound -- that when you sold would be taxed as capital gains. These are truly people who are very fortunate to have the assets they do.

[Skittles]

7. do you remember what happened under George W. Fucking Bush?

do you realize Donald Fucking Trump may be even worse?

[quartz007]

8. Yes, my memory for stock market history is good

I just do not remember when my wife asks me to do some chores

I am either just lucky or a genius, but in 5 decades in market, I am still way ahead of what I put into the market. Because I am never 100% invested. I sell partially in May and buy more in November. More often than not, it works.

As for the market future, it is currently way overvalued. So are other assets like housing. It is because of artificially low interest rates by the FED for many years. A horrible crash is coming. It will be before 2020 election in my opinion.

Accordingly, I will be more out than in the market at that time. It does not make any difference who the president is to me. My method is to re-balance between Cash and market exposure.

[Skittles]

9. do you realize we progressives are supposed to care about EVERYONE

[quartz007]

10. Caring is good, actual action to help is better!

The market was already over-valued in November 2016,
due to FED keeping interest rates artificially low.
With Rump on the side of corporations giving them record breaking tax breaks from 35 down to 21%, the market is
up 40% more, making it morbidly over-valued.

Now get ready for millions of hard working workers to take a beating in their 401-k's. If you care about them, work actively to warn them what's ahead. That is action, better than just caring.

[Skittles]

11. LOL

nice try

[quartz007]

12. No LOL's lol, need actual points for discussion