Money Peach

Wow - did someone just say that your 401k is a bad plan? Yes. Rebecca Walser comes on the show to share with us why your 401k isn’t just hurting you...it’s actually KILLING your financial plan. It all started back in 1978 when the famous 401k plan was in a way created by accident. Back in the late 1970s, most employers contributed to a defined benefit plan (AKA a pension) and that cost employers a lot of money. During this same time, tax rates were much higher than they were today and some very highly compensated executives were looking for loopholes to avoid these high taxes. What they proposed was they could be bonused out in the form of a 401k plan, which allowed them to take their bonus, dump it into a 401k plan to avoid paying the high taxes now, and then grab that bonus money at retirement when taxes were much lower. However, a few years later businesses started catching on and realized they would save millions upon millions of dollars by getting rid of the pension plan and moving to a 401k plan. Instea