• hark@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    After so many years of financial education being “save early, save often” and “put your money in index funds to diversify” and “historically the US stock market has only gone up over long enough periods of time” there is a sizeable amount of retirement funds riding on this bubble. In the year 2000, the average 401k balance was a little under $60k (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-aug-14-fi-33836-story.html) and that has now ballooned to $326k (https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-401k-balance-age).

    The bailout will be sold as protecting retirement funds, even though the median 401k balance is far lower than the average and even though people nearing retirement should have a higher mix of bonds instead of stocks anyway.