"George Patterson" wrote in message
news:37BYe.16451$Zg5.9169@trndny05...
Matt Barrow wrote:

By that time, it's too late for that to do any good.

Why?

Let's say you got two job offers in 1984. One company offered you
$30,000/year
with a retirement package that would continue to pay you 1/3 my salary if
you
retire after 25 years. Another company offered you $32,000/year with no
retirement package. Both companies are assumed to offer similar percentage
raises as time goes on.

You have a choice. Accept the higher paying job and save for retirement or
take
the lower paying job and go for the security. You take the security.

First mistake (actually, first two mistakes).


Twenty years later, your firm eliminates or heavily curtails the
retirement
package (whatever their legal situation allows them to do). It's too late
to go
back and get that higher salary that would have allowed you to build your
own.

That's part of the reason why #1 and #2 are mistakes.

Here's one that bit me (kinda) back in 1998: You work for a company for
seven years in which the company retirement plan is the company stock, (you
can ALSO take an independent 401K on your own). You can opt out at any
time, but you're not fully vested until your fifth anniversary. You can
rejoin, but must wait another five years to opt out again.

Company goes belly up, stock value goes from $105 to penny stocks in nine
months time.

Advantage #1: your wife, who works for one of the larger stock brokerage
firms (Investment ANALYST, not a SPECULATOR), has you opt out of the stock
plan after your five year anniversary and divest your portfolio (MSFT,
WALMART, INTEL). You lose only two years of stock value, not seven.

Advantage #2: Learning long before NEVER to trust all/most my funds in the
hands of someone I have no control over.

So many Americans "want their cake and to eat it, too"; it has a tendency to
bite one on the rump...badly.

I can see your scenario, but I also know that "security" is a chimera.


--
Matt
---------------------
Matthew W. Barrow
Site-Fill Homes, LLC.
Montrose, CO