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...ugly truth, though, is that the 401(k) is a lousy idea, a financial flop, a rotten repository for our retirement reserves. In the past two years, that has become all too clear. From the end of 2007 to the end of March 2009, the average 401(k) balance fell 31%, according to Fidelity. The accounts have rebounded, along with the rest of the market, but that's little help for those who retired - or were forced to - during the recession. In a system in which one year's gains build on the next, the disaster of 2008 will dent...
...your pay but were not taxed, and you had control of them. Contributions could be added or suspended. Best of all, when you left your company, your 401(k) traveled with you, removing a penalty for switching jobs that had been built into the pension system. On the corporate end, a change in accounting rules made the growing cost of pensions more apparent to shareholders. Cutting the pension was a guaranteed way to improve the bottom line. The rise of the 401(k) began...
...haven't been nearly so rewarding. When Boston College's Munnell looked at the returns 401(k)s have actually produced compared with the projections, the difference was sobering. The average 55-to-64-year-old should have a 401(k) balance of $320,000. In fact, at the end of 2007, the average 401(k) of a near retiree held just $78,000 - and that was before the market meltdown...
...Additionally, to get the hypothetical higher returns over time and avoid investing disasters, you have to hold a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds. Many of us don't. Munnell found that 14% of workers held no stocks at all, leading to weaker-than-average returns. On the opposite end, more than a quarter of all 401(k)s were 100% stocks, exposing those accounts to big losses when the market dropped...
...German Book Award, which will be announced at next week's international book fair in Frankfurt - and critics there hold her in high esteem, but almost no one considered her a figure of global literary eminence. (See a video with Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison.) "Twenty years after the end of the East-West conflict, Herta Müller has been rewarded for keeping alive memories of the inhumane side of state communism," said Michael Krüger, of the publishing house Carl Hanser, based in Munich. "She is an impressive example of a European committed literature that succeeds...