Thursday, January 8, 2009

401(ghey)

Atrios quotes someone on the problems with expecting untrained individuals to manage their own retirement investments. I totally agree. I recently encountered a related annoying pattern when it comes to trying to find general financial advice, which is that the assumption made by people who are trained in finance is always that more control over your investments is better.

This came up because since my employer was just sold, at some point I'm going to have to do something with my old 401(k). One option is I think to sort of transfer it to my new one, basically cashing out of everything and then using the money to buy funds in the new plan. But everyone advises that it's much better to roll it over into a Roth IRA, because then I can invest in whatever individual stocks or funds you want, rather than have to pick from the dozen or so I can choose from under the new plan. But I don't really want to invest in individual stocks because I find finance confusing and tedious...I would much prefer to be able to treat my retirement investments as a black box that somebody who is actually qualified manages for me.

Of course, it's all moot at this point. With the failure of global capitalism it's become clear that nobody is qualified to manage any sort of investment, and every dollar I put in my 401(k) is surely never to be seen again.

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