Retirees 'stunned' as market turmoil over tariffs shrinks their 401(k)s

Clearly they just need to take their own advice:
No more avocado toast
Stop buying so much coffee out. Make it at home.
????
Profit.
Simple as.
- Also they could just get an easy job at McDonald's?????
  
  They just arent qualified for that job.
  
  Maybe they could try an unpaid internship to get experience first
- Boot straps. Don't forget about the boot straps.
  
  They could eat the bootstraps.
- Trumps plan is to fix obesity by making everyone too poor to eat..... Or something
- Don't forget about the cell phone plan, Internet access, Netflix or large screen TVs. I remember reading about "boomer math", if I remember correctly - the skewed notion about what really costs what.
  Used to be a color TV was a luxury, and that probably made a real imprint on some. Same for coffee - until Starbucks really cracked that market, the idea of paying more than fifty cents or whatever for a cup of coffee was considered ludicrous at one time. And things like cell phones, Netflix and Internet were not really things in their formative years...
  
  I just saw the Costco flyer for this week and they had a 75" LG TV on sale for like $599. I couldn't believe how cheap TVs are now.
- Maybe they could have remembered to not trust everything they see on the internet for the past decade.
  Oh! And learn some basic financial literacy!
  Can't just rely on someone else to make all your decisions for you =D
  Time to start by brushing up on some basic math, its not like everyone will always have a calculator in their pocket.

“I don’t want to have to worry that everyone is constantly changing my financial reality,” said Alison Carey, 64, of Oregon, a freelancer in the theater industry. “Let the economy do its machinations, but don’t put me in the gears.”
Sorry you had to learn it this way, Alison, but "the economy" has always been grinding people up in its gears. The main difference is, that it is now reaching you, personally.
- He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.
  
  I gotta assume a theater freelancer in Oregon probably didn’t vote for him
- “I don’t want to have to worry that everyone is constantly changing my financial reality,”
  Welcome to my entire adult life, Alison
- The main difference is, that it is now reaching you, personally.
  Ah, republicans and not giving a shit until it hurts them, name a more iconic duo.
- "Swarms of leopards unleashed upon zoo-goers who voted for Leopard Looser to run the zoo, millions of zoo-goers stunned, in disbelief, mauled."
- a freelancer in the theater industry.
  I wonder what that means. I'm not in the creative industry, but that sounds like that could be barely-subsistence type of money or something in the stratosphere... ?
- I love how people seem to think that "the economy" or "politics" is the same type of thing as sports— a recreational activity with no actual bearing on anything that other people pay attention to as a diversion. It explains so much about how we ended up here.

It's ok everyone they will all be a lot better off once manufacturing comes back to the US, they can make up the difference by working in a local sweatshop.
- Didn't you hear? Vance is saying that manufacturing is never coming back to the US.
  So even working in a sweatshop won't be an option. Well, I guess until we're colonized.
  
  Suppose it does come back, who is going to buy it ?
- Yeah, just hold on and wait for those low paying, low skilled manufacturing jobs that no one really wants to work, and that we don't have logistics in place to support.
  Then you can make minimum wage working 12 hour shifts with no pension and a 401k that will flatline right before you can retire.
  When you die next to the assembly line they'll cover your face with a red MAGA hat right before they wheel you to the Soylent green processing facility
- The elderly yearn for the assembly lines.
- Even that chucklefuck billionaire was talking about how it will be all robots - openly. Meaning, I don't know how many sweatshop jobs will be on offer 5, 10, 15 years or whatever it takes to build that kind of infrastructure here...
  https://www.axios.com/2025/04/03/tech-jobs-robots-lutnick-manufacturing-renaissance

But it's so worth it when you remember that he ended all that DEI stuff and stopped those two trans kids from playing women's sports.
- Over two trillion has been wiped out. That's one trillion dollars per trans kid.
  Is America great again yet?
  
  For a trillion dollars I'll stop playing any sport you want.
- That is really what it came down to for so very many of his base. They believe "go woke go broke" is a thing?
  🤣 🤣
- Their biggest problem was DEI and immigration. Now its gonna be their second biggest problem. 🙂
  
  inb4 'the transes groomed the stock market, somehow'

Let's go vote republican !
Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it
- "But... but... but at least we stuck it to the libs didn't we? Right?... Right???!"
- But the next Republican will for sure fix it!
  
  Aw dang it
- Gosh darn it!
- That's exactly what happened with this lady.
  https://sh.itjust.works/post/35574874
  
  Wait, I thought this was the plan...what happened? You mean dipshit game show host who bankrupted so many businesses doesn't know what the hell he's doing?

Oh the thing professionals all said would happen? That's what they are stunned about? The very thing they were warned would happen if trump did the thing he said he would do.
- Old people aren't exactly "finger on the pulse" types
  
  And they have been trained to hate government, science and experts.
  
  Please stop the generation blaming/shaming. It’s a “divide and conquer tactic”. Also, please notice a LOT of the people at the protests are “old people”. We don’t sit behind keyboards blaming, we actually get out and DO something. And, finally, do some research and look up who voted for MAGA. ✌️☮️

Well, if you voted for these dumbasses and are now pikachu over how idiotic they actually are....hard to feel sorry for you.
BTW, if you say "I didn't vote for that"......YES YOU DID. It's not like donvict was quiet about his love for tariffs.
- I mean, I know quite a few retirees who actively voted for his opponent. So I wouldn't feel right saying that THEY voted for it, no? However, around my area, they definitely are a minority in their age group, so I think statistically speaking you are probably going to be right most of the time.
  
  Oh, of course. I don't think anyone DESERVES to live in destitution - and this is probably where progressives like me get made fun of, but it's just how I was raised - even if they voted for donvict.
  My lizard brain immediately wants to condemn people that were told not to vote against their own interest, but did anyway because of their hate of wokeness and DEI or whatever the hell. However, though I do rant here and elsewhere, I ultimately have compassion for people, even if it's from their own actions...
  As for those that voted against donvict, of course they don't deserve it, though I know it's now quite fashionable to dunk on "boomers" as if they are some monolithic block and that means every single one of them, to a person has caused the Republicans to get worse and worse. Personally, I believe this thinking is goaded on by elites, because it only divides us further...in addition to racism, xenophobia, transphobia, if you can whip up the various age groups and pit them against one another, you can sit back and count your money and be comforted in the notion that few people will cop to the reality...
  
  They did say when they were exporting all the jobs to China that the stock market will do amazingly well, while skeptics were more concerned about jobs and unions. It really blurs the line between the left and the right when the left is complaining about a shrinking 401k while applauding the rich like Musk getting poorer.

You keep saying retirees when I think you mean future walmart door greeters.
- My fucking parents are going to end up Wal-Mart greeters and they will not admit, even after everything, that they fucked up voting for Trump.
  
  It's obviously Biden's and Obama's fault, they made the stocks go so high in the first place! Not only does that mean they could buy fewer, but it also means they fall more!
  
  They'll keep saying it's still a good idea butt just barely executed for years. That's what happened with Brexit in the UK.
- oh that reminds me, our local old lady Walmart greeter passed away 😔
  R.I.P. Ms Wendy
- "Last season's winners"
  "No. Last season's losers"

"Victor Fettes, 54, of Georgia, who retired last week"
Fucking hell, you guys can retire at FIFTY FOUR?
- He was senior director of risk management, so I assume more than 100k+ salary a year.
  
  I'm surprised he kept his job so long, seeing how poorly he managed his own risks....
- you guys can retire at FIFTY FOUR?
  My cousin retired 2 years ago at 48.
  Stock market whiz? Nah: union.
  He started working at a local mechanic in high-school, as engines were interesting; just sweeping up. He asked questions. He applied for his apprenticeship and the school district moved him to the 'trade' oriented school where the rough kids seemed to end up completely randomly when catchment overlapped. Did metal shop in his final year and found a funding programme to get through his first courses. Displayed a natural talent for adequate work and straightforward math that was apparently everything people needed when paired with his indomitable spirit and happier-than-sadder mood profile. In short: he hustled, he did his fucking work and he was a net-positive to work with.
  Now we fast-forward. The union was good to him, and he moved into jobs where his 5'8 size, nimble fingers and "yeah, I'll crawl in the slushy muck" attitude got him as many opportunities as his quick wit got him out of shitty politics. He went to a place we call Fort McMoney and was able to exercise his options when bosses were dinks; and he did so very quickly and openly, explaining what's happening on the way out -- "We agreed on this vacation time, but you broke that agreement. I'm still getting on the plane tonight. I got a job with the guy down the road, so that's why I'm clearing out. I'm sorry it went this way, but we both get to learn from this. Good luck, and have a great weekend."
  At 48 he'd done his 25-plus years at one career and many shops, and the half-pay-for-life union retirement kicked in.
  He now rides his donorcycle with his adorable wife or they take the little car on trips to climb mountains or see a lake or something. He got a shitty place in a nice place, made some friends and some of them knew how to fix up his place and needed his own skills, and his easygoing attitude provided the glue to get everything fixed everywhere, and he's kinda set.
  He touches grass and trees a lot, and the pics he posts on his cell phone show some great locations and his beaming face in the dawn light. He's fucking winning so hard and I'm half jealous and intensely proud of him because he is actually an absolute sweetie and a great and caring guy.
  Guys, build better unions or build better labour code. Focus on getting into a work arrangement with a group that pretends to like you better than at-will dot-com fat-cat "we're a family" pizza-party dickheads think they're pretending.
  
  I'm really happy for this guy and just absolutely despairing over how weak labor generally is. People don't even imagine a better world, it feels like.
  
  Holy shit I just felt like I lived his life vicariously with that comment.
- Don't worry, he won't stop working. He'll spend the next 15 years as a 'consultant' in his old position and make 100 times more than he did as an employee.
- It think it's like suing someone. You can sue whomever you want for any reason but that doesn't mean it's going to be successful. If this guy is retired yet keeps all his retirement money in volatile stocks, he's not going to be successful in retirement.
- Very very few can. Or do. But yes.
  He can't access that 401k without some pretty significant restrictions or penalties, though.

Don't let them fool u by saying that this is just a correction. A correction needs a catalyst. The catalyst here is the tarriff. Trump created this mess. Rise up. Fight.

Turns out woke wasn't so bad, huh
- I can only have an opinion when Fox News informs me of the new outrageous fad for this week.

Oh no, are the Boomers finally collectively suffering the consequences of their own collective actions?
What a shame.
Anyway, welcome to the 'you can never retire or afford a house' club along with all your children who've been begging you for the past 20 years to stop voting for policies and politicians who made this current situation inevitable.
- This is not a good time to hate on Boomers.
  https://www.thecivicscenter.org/blog/youth-voting-in-2024-election
  White voters over age 65 supported Harris stronger than white voters 30-45. The most pro Trump group was white voters age 45-65.
  
  ... The boomers have majority supported Republicans ... for the last 20 years.
  Which I specifically mentioned.
  Your own source shows:
  50-64 at a 56 to 43 for Trump
  65+ tied at 49 to 49
  Wonderful, great, a few of them finally realized that maybe now that they actually need Social Security and they want to actually draw from their 401ks... after majority supporting 401ks over unions+pensions for 20 years.
  How typical. A few of them finally figured out maybe spending 20 years supporting corporate profligacy and then betting their retirements on the stock market ... is bad, when the obvious problem with a stock market based retirement plan... actually looks like/is actually happening, to them, personally.
  You are bringing race into this. I did not.
  If you purely go by age alone, which is how you actually define a Boomer...
  30-39 (16%) is 50 to 46, Harris.
  40-49 (16%) is 48 to 50, Trump.
  They are neatly both 16% of the total sample, so...
  30-49 is 49 to 48, Harris.
  Wonderful, younger Millenials to younger to mid GenX went for Harris by a point.
  But I am not talking about them, I am talking about Boomers, over the last 20 years of their existence.
  A tiny bit of the older ones shifted course after it was too late to undo what their disproportionately large, wealthy, and influential generational cohort has supported for 20 years.
  I guess 'they'll be sorry/regret their decisions when they're older', another common boomerism often directed toward anyone younger than them that makes a life choice or holds a worldview they disagree with.
  This is a perfect time to laugh at Boomers collectively.
  They got what they said they wanted, and only now, after its all too late, did they almost, but not quite, flip over to 'this is not what i wanted.'
  If this isn't clear, obviously not all boomers individually deserve this scorn, but uh, collectively... they do.
- Excellently stated. Thank you.

It’s almost like this is exactly what we warned them would happen.

I just took a couple Ubers. They were driven by retirees as a way to make a little extra cash and get out of the house. Both of them said they would have to quit driving and get another “real” job again if the market continued to tank. This shit rolls downhill…gonna create a job crunch again. People not leaving jobs, no jobs for people entering the marketplace, and companies are going to start crushing labor’s wages and benefits again.
- Maybe that IS the end goal. Get old people working so wages get fucked for everyone and the corporate overlords can increase their profit margins from a measly 99% to 99.9% or whatever
  
  And what's the end goal? What's their plan for when those old people die in a fiery crash while driving Doordash? Nobody's having kids anymore and immigration ain't happening so who's gonna take those jobs?
- Every day, I'm further grasping just how fucked we are :)

“The leopards ate my face”
- Only if they voted for Trump. Many didn't. This election saw a lot more young people, especially men, move to the Republicans. In fact if you want to blame a specific demographic then blame men.
  
  I dont want to blame a specific demographic because that would be a stupid thing to do
  
  I think the blame rest solely on the 78 million people or so that showed up to vote for Donald Trump. And maybe the 40 million or so people that didn’t show up to vote at all.
  
  Yet even more GenZ men just didn't vote because they hated both options

Lol, I rolled my 401k to an IRA as part of a actively managed fidelity fund right after Trump got inaugurated. If I hadn't I would be down about 150k, instead I'm up 35k already, and that was after cashing out just below all time high.
That said,I decided to ride it out in my fuck around E-Trade account. I went from being up 25k on jan 1st to being down 9k today.
Trump's 'plan' is to crash the market so that people with large reserves of cash can buy at all time low. Then he'll back pedal his bullshit and things will go up, so they'll sell. It's not going to go back up to what it was before his watch, at least not with him around. People who don't have the cash reserves/appetite to buy in a recession will get fucked, and that's most people in the country
- Yeah but you can't just say "ok the plan worked, tariffs are off now" and expect the rest of the world to be chill about that. It's too late to backpedal.
  
  If the rest of the world turns on the US then that's also a win because Krasnov is a Russian asset and part of why Russia and China worked so hard to get him elected was to destabilize the US and remove them as the world leader so China can step in
- I really don't think this is part of some grander plan. I think he really thinks blanket tariffs are a good idea.
  Tariff man is an idiot.
  
  He's doing it because that's one of the few things he can do without judges and Congress getting in his way. He expects other leaders to offer him deals (i.e. bribes) now. He doesn't care about average American. It's all about how HE can make some extra $.

Oh well, should have raised your kids to be better people.

Retirees 'idiots' as they keep savings they need to live in volatile asset classes such as stocks.
- Boomers lived their entire lives failing upwards. Why wouldn't they expect things to just go their way?
- Seriously I was scanning the comments to find anyone mentioning this. It's insane to leave your funds in stocks if you're retired or close to retirement. That should have been shifted to bonds or other stable investments years ago.
  
  What's insane is expecting every individual to be person to know enough about financial asset classes to know how to balance risks in their portfolio, when we used to have pension plans with subject-matter experts whose job it was to do that. Getting rid of them was like throwing everybody overboard from the cruise ship (pension), but giving them a life jacket (401k).
  I mean, it makes sense when you know that the decision was made by the sharks.
- There was a time when people were dependent on defined benefit pensions. Then the U.S. pivoted to defined contribution plans, 401Ks. This of course put retirees at risk of a situation like the present one.
  Could they have diversified their portfolio better? Sure. Should you blame them for Trump being an evil asshole? Only if you are one, too. The system itself was redesigned to fuck over the elderly, my friend. Then it did.
  
  My parents are boomers. Like a lot of boomers they have a pension. In addition, they're still getting social security checks. A pension for me isn't even a dream and I'll be lucky if social security is even around in twenty years.
  So, pardon me if I'm a little flippant about some of the "screw you, I got mine" generation eating a bit of shit because they were attempting to draw income from volatile assets that you're supposed to be in when you are decades younger after voting overwhelmingly for a clown that said for months he'd blow up the market and then did as he promised.
  It'll eventually come back around to screw me in the end anyway in the form of one disaster or another because I'm a millennial: born at exactly the right time to live through every financial, political, and constitutional crisis possible as well as to finance a Domino's pizza.

Going to brag a little bit. I've been very suspicious of tech and the US stock market for a long time. When I finally got the job I have now and got to choose 401k contributions I went heavy with international stocks and specifically avoided anything involved in too much tech. My 401k has gone down in the last week but we're talking barely 3%. The paranoia sometimes works in my favor
- I'm not very tech or stock savvy but tech industry always seemed unstable to me

That’s the best part. The baby boomers created this shit and now they can’t retire. Good for them!
- So, all of boomers created this?
  
  More or less.

Got what they voted for, didn't like it? I'm shocked.
- You think all the people with 401(k)s voted for Trump? I'm curious as to what leads you to that conclusion?
  
  The elderly vote mostly conservative. This is a known fact.

Good, it's what my parents deserve.
- My mom retired last year. She also voted for Trump. She made her bed ...
  
  I love you Internet stranger. And I hope you found some peace after moving out.

I live in Canada and have a locked-in retirement fund, from a former employer, which I have zero control over. It's lost 10% since the Dumpster was elected.
That mf'er is killing us too.

Bootstraps or whatever

People at or near retirement age should have a 401k invested in more safe funds with a higher mix of bonds. Why would they have such a high proportion of stocks that a drop in the stock market would impact their spending habits?
- Yeah, exactly my thoughts. At retirement age, most or all your investments should be low risk.
- They saw stocks rise over 1000% over 5 years (AI stocks) like everyone else and started dumping everything in it.

Retirees? I'm not even 40 yet and my 401k dropped several thousand the last couple days.
- 401k are supposed to be the long game, ride out the ups and downs. That being said, it's best to have other investments too.
  
  401k are supposed to be the long game
  The older you get, the shorter the game is. You need to gradually reduce the volatility of your investments, even at the cost of rate of return.
  
  Good news, those are plummeting as well
  
  Yeah, I try to forget it exists and only check it every few months.

I know several people that were suppose to retire next year. Looks like they are gonna have to postpone 😂😂
- They'll be out of work next year, one way or another.

This isn't fair! I was gambling with those other people's lives!

But at least they're stripping the rights of foreigners and women - that's what they voted for, right? Cruelty? Fuck those ones and every other Trump voter. Enjoy your inevitable consequence you bastards.

If a retiree is holding significant stocks that they will need to liquidate soon, then they fucked up. It's their own fault at this point.
- It's sad to think he actually may profit if/when the Greenland bullshit comes to fruition.
- Blame the victim.

Pardon my ignorance but is there leverage in 401k ? Would it be able to get liquidated if stocks crash too hard ?
- You can cash out a 401k but you'll pay a 20% penalty and then have to pay taxes on the remaining amount - since the money put into a 401k is untaxed until it's drawn upon. Liquidating your 401k is a desperation catastrophe.
- No. It's a pretty secure savings engine. Even if you had a loan out against the account, they reserve a portion of the account as collateral, as I view it. Let me go research that right quick.
  I think the biggest risk would be if your holding institution went tits up and you had more than is covered in FDIC, you would only recover the FDIC limit. I think. Anyone confirm that?
  Now, a fun question there is, if there was a crash out of the holding institution, would 47's FDIC manager pay out.
  Another fun question is, if this isn't protected by FDIC because you own the investments which are external to the holding company:: are you really holding the investments you selected? During the fervor of the GME due diligence, it was surfaced that when you buy a stock on the open markets, it is but a right to a stock, not the actual thing. So, your access to those rights could get rug pulled too, if things get too crazy and system risk becomes too high. I think that the chances of this rug pull are super low for msot investments in a 401k. Generally retirement savings plans are slow moving investment engines, so for instance, if I schedule a change in my 401k investments, it trades, not at the time of request, but at the end of day. There are also high frequency trading limits in some of them.
  In case you want to learn what the GME due diligence found: https://fliphtml5.com/bookcase/kosyg
  House of Cards is a good starting point to understand how the current stock trading machine functions.
  
  I'm starting to wonder if I should be switching my savings to Euros or Chinese Yuan or something.
  If the FDIC fails or is shut down, a bank run is almost inevitable.
  
  covered in FDIC
  I still don't know where donvict's plan (lol, "plan") is at regarding FDIC, but early on, there was musings about how they were going to "abolish the FDIC".
  I swear to Zeus that the dumbfucks that follow donvict would be 100% for that if they were told something something argle bargle FDIC is woke and filled with nCLANGers, oops, I mean "DEIers". Even if abolishing FDIC would be a perfect speed-run of causing a Depression 2.0 style run on the banks.
  FFS. So much dumb.
  https://theweek.com/business/economy/fdic-function-trump-elimination
  
  When you get a 401k loan, it is treated as a loan, it looks like, from yourself. Only risk there is if you default, it then switches to a disbursement and has a 10% penalty and probably some sort of tax implication.

Where is the foresight? You knew you were voting for instability.

So, y'all freaking out because boomers are losing money?
What?
- Some millennials have 401ks
  
  Gen X also exists.