I’m going to be blunt. My blog mostly avoids the FACE-PUNCHING of the Mustache Blog, but an article hit my phone a couple days ago that has just pissed me off. Fortune’s website wrote an article about the “possible” new retirement accounts for people whose employers don’t offer a 401k plan.

“Workers who never had a retirement savings plan have long been suspicious of programs like this for good reason, said Teresa Ghilarducci”

We’re living in 2026. I haven’t met a working age American (let’s just say under 60) that doesn’t either own a smart phone or doesn’t know how to use a computer for the internet.

Maybe it’s meant to be sensational choice of words, but telling us that people are suspicious of retirement accounts is the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a very long time. Don’t trust the stock market? Fine. Don’t know where to start or how to open an IRA? OK, I get that. But being suspicious because you think a retirement vehicle is deceiving you? That there is a ‘catch’ that going is to somehow steal from you because it offers some kind of tax advantage – that is a special kind of crazy.

If this article has any sense of realistic backing, then please spread the word about places like this blog. Financial literacy and self education are the only way to overcome what I can only see as disingenuous claims.

“That distrust is warranted, Ghilarducci said. “For the third of workers, their money is safer in a shoe box under the bed than it is in an IRA” because of monthly fees.”

What monthly fees? Vanguard isn’t whacking you with monthly fees. Is my IRA at Robinhood also hitting me some crazy fee ratio? What the hell is this article talking about? These are 30 second Google searches to overcome this type of basic ignorance.

Heck start here: Talk Like an Investor, What the Hell is an IRA? Why are we letting anyone say these things? Investing requires removal of emotion. Fear of the unknown is not the way – learn, grow, invest.

~~Miniwing~~
Still mad 2 days later.