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Listen folks, I hate to tell you this but your chance for a comfortable retirement is falling fast!
Of course, we already know pension plans have been raided, depleted, and "financially engineered" - against the laws that were supposed to protect you.
And if you think you're protected because you're a union worker, or municipal worker, or in some other job that you figured you'd put up with because you could retire well... well, those "protection" plans are all under attack, too.
Your benefits are being bargained away... and so are your cost of living increases and so are all the other promises you were made.
You need to wake up to your worst nightmare.
Of course, your 401(k) was invented to replace pension plans... but have you really looked at how it's doing? I mean really calculated how you're going to retire on it?
The Center for Retirement Research said the typical 401(k) in the United States has about $120,000 in it. Do you even have that much?
They also calculated that to retire comfortably you need 10 times what your retirement year's salary was in savings. How much are you making now? Are you going to save 10 times that?
And as far as your employer matching your 401(k) to help you amass that retirement stockpile, forget it.
Newsflash: Companies aren't required to match anything. They only do it to entice employees to come on board or stay. That is until it costs them too much. After the 2008 crisis, 20% of public companies suspended, delayed, or stopped matching contributions altogether. This is a travesty for the average worker.
You see, your comfortable retirement is a long way off in the best of circumstances.
Today, just to have a decent retirement pot, you'd have to make 6% a year, compounded, every year. Are you making that every year on your investments?
No. Especially if you're moving more money into fixed income at these piddling interest rates. Two percent a year on a 10-year savings bond, really? Good luck with that.
Here's the thing:
About the Author
Shah Gilani boasts a financial pedigree unlike any other. He ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When options on the Standard & Poor's 100 began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah worked in "the pit" as a market maker.
The work he did laid the foundation for what would later become the VIX - to this day one of the most widely used indicators worldwide. After leaving Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB, Shah moved up to Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique firm. There he originated and ran a packaged fixed-income trading desk, and established that company's "listed" and OTC trading desks.
Shah founded a second hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003.
Shah's vast network of contacts includes the biggest players on Wall Street and in international finance. These contacts give him the real story - when others only get what the investment banks want them to see.
Today, as editor of Hyperdrive Portfolio, Shah presents his legion of subscribers with massive profit opportunities that result from paradigm shifts in the way we work, play, and live.
Shah is a frequent guest on CNBC, Forbes, and MarketWatch, and you can catch him every week on Fox Business's Varney & Co.
