The 401—HEY!

Most Americans are familiar with the different, so-called retirement plans often offered by employers. Plans such as the 401k and 403b are the retirement vehicles most used in the US.  They usually include some form of “company participation”, which usually equates to a matching contribution up to a certain % of funds—yada, yada.  These plans are usually explained to an employee by some slick talking sales representative who makes it sound like all your woes are over.

Recently, a friend of mine showed me their most recent 403b statement, I was stunned that this person’s plan had lost over $4,500 for the year 2018.  I know that the stock market performed poorly in the last few weeks of the month of December 2018, but I had no idea that it was bad enough to cause such a loss of funds for my friend.  And after all, isn’t there a fund manager of some variety to manage those funds and make the necessary changes to avoid losses?  According to most of the “experts” out there 401k and 403b are classified as “pensions”, as such they are usually managed in a similar fashion.

I decided to do a little investigating, well, because—I’m “Grumpy”!  After locating some articles regarding 401k and 403bs, I discovered some rather amusing facts.  Many of the financial advisors out there claim that these so-called “pensions” have been used as purchasing devices for “derivatives” from large financial institutions.  For those of you who don’t know what “derivatives” are, just simply go back to the financial crash of 2008-09, they were packages of bad debt that nearly collapsed our financial system.

Apparently, the purchase of these moldy shit packages by fund managers is legal and are covered by the “you could lose money” clause in the fine print of your soon to be a broke retirement fund.  So, it seems that these bad investment vehicles did not die but instead they have been given a new life as another way to f—k hard-working customers.  The purchase of these bad debts sends cash from a hard-working American’s account to banks who need to cover bad debts and their arses!  Customers are not even given a kiss or a tube of Vaseline to at least ease the pain of the screwing that they take.

So, it just goes on-and-on-and-on, at every turn, we the customers of America get screwed out of our money by the large corporation “fat-cats” who make billions.  I am going to start watching for a sale on yellow vests here soon!

Talk to Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2019 All Rights Reserved