unfriendly reminder to open a pension fund/retirement account.
*If* my wage keeps up pace with inflation (historically not the case in the US for multiple decades), and I save 11% of my income every month until I’m 67 and never have an emergency at all that requires that money before I’m 60 (also unlikely given my family history and my current social circle), I can *maybe* retire at 67 and live an extremely budgeted life where I never travel and I only live in the cheapest housing. I also can’t depend on the Social Security system helping out at all, because it’s been slated to run out of savings by 2035 for years now, and it’s gonna have to reduce benefits and taper them off starting then unless the federal government starts putting more money into it consistently and immediately (also unlikely given the priorities current administration). Saving up for a decent-ish retirement with a 401k would require me to save 25% of my income each month for the rest of my working life on my own, and hope that the stock market doesn’t tank and make me lose money from that fund. I’m just never going to get to retire whatsoever, even if I budget hard and try my very best.
I don’t know how to tell you this but having an extremely budgeted life at 67 is better than being homeless and disabled, you don’t have to actually quit ur job to benefit from retirement funds, if you’re based in a first world country you are not going to face Societal Collapse™ and COUNTRIES OTHER THAN THE US EXIST! this dommerist fear mongering is self-obsessed, ahistoric, and dangerous. people have survived through shit you cannot imagine and will never confront for you to throw up your hands. most retirement funds internationally have compound interest, which really adds up over decades.
sorry gonna add some US specific info bc i had a straight up horrifying conversation with a 35 year old the other day who should have known better.
if you are in the US and contribute money to a pension fund/especially to a 401k, go log in and ENSURE the money is not just sitting there collecting minor interest. it is in your best interest to make sure it is in the market. yes. even if the stock market crashes tomorrow. we are talking about periods of time measured in decades, at which point your savings absolutely will have grown past the rate of inflation, often outpacing it by close to triple that rate. (US inflation usually holds around 2.5%, while the S&P 500’s annual rate of return has, on average, been 10.13% since 1957. 10.13 – 2.5 > 0. you also dont have to invest only in the US – you can choose funds that are global, or even excluding the US.)
nothing is guaranteed ever in life, but there are bets you would be dumb not to make.
Let us say that you are 45, you want to retire at 67, you put your money into an extremely conservative fund with a predictable 5% interest, you make $12,000 a year and save 10% of your income ($100 a month) and start with $1000 in the fund.
In that time you would have *saved* $27,400 and you have $23,590 built in interest. Is $50k enough to survive on for retirement? Absolutely not. Will it keep you more housed and fed and cared for than $27,400? YES.
Let us say that you are 35 and you are just letting your money from your 401K sit at a low interest of 1.5%; you are saving for 32 years to retire at 67, you start with $1000 and you save 10% of your income (same as above, $1200 a year).
In that time you have saved $39,400 and gained $11,500 in interest. Is that better than not saving? Yes. Is it going to be enough to survive on for retirement? Absolutely not.
Now, let’s say that you’re doing everything exactly the same as the 35 year old in the above example except you put your money into an index fund with a very modest return of 7%.
THAT’S A LOT FUCKING BETTER. You’ve still saved $39,400 but the interest is now $112K. THAT’S MUCH BETTER.
Now: same example – you start with $1000, you make $12,000 a year and put $1200 a year into your 401k, you invest in a fund with an average over time of 7%, but you are 25 and you are saving 42 years to retire at 67.
You have only saved about $11k more, but you have collected over a quarter million dollars in interest. Is $320k enough to survive on? Well, let’s say you expect to live to 87, almost 20 years after retirement. You get $16,000 a year, which is more than you were making during your working years in this example.
Now. Let’s say you’re 25 and you’re broke as fuck, you don’t have a thousand dollars a month income, you don’t have a hundred dollars a month to put in the fund. What happens if you just do twenty dollars a month with no padding up front at 7% interest for 42 years?
You ended up with more than the 45 year old who saved for 22 years at 5% interest, more than the 35 year old who saved for 32 years at 1.5% interest by saving at a rate of $240 a year.
Now, let’s say you’re thirty, you’re making $35k a year, you are going to be saving for 37 years, and we’ll still be cautious and say you’re getting 9% interest. You’re contributing about 5% of your income, $145 a month, paid directly to your 401K automatically from your paycheck, before it ever hits your bank account, because that’s what “pay yourself first” means.
You retire with half a million dollars.
Let’s say you get a tax return every year, and you take $300 of that tax return and put it in your retirement account.
Let’s say you’re 25, like the person up there who is convinced they won’t ever be able to retire, and you have 47 years to save. You figure out a way to save $50 a month for retirement and you put $200 of your annual tax return into your 401k, which has a 9% yield:
I am begging/pleading: PUT SOME FUCKING MONEY INTO YOUR 401K AND INVEST IT IN AN INDEX FUND THAT IS SYNCED TO THE YEAR YOU PLAN TO RETIRE.
THIS IS NOT LIKE THE BOOMERS SAYING YOU COULD BUY A HOUSE IF NOT FOR THE AVOCADO TOAST, THIS IS PLANNING FOR LATE LIFE HOUSING AND CARE FOR THE COST OF ONE FAST FOOD MEAL, SPOTIFY, NETFLIX, AND GOING TO THE LIBRARY INSTEAD OF THE MOVIES OR THE BOOKSTORE.
You already don’t do any of those things? Cool, this is about 1/8th what you can make selling plasma per month put into a retirement fund to make sure you aren’t homeless when you’re older.
I am a big believer in mutual aid and not trusting the government. You know what’s going to enable you to help more people later in life? If you don’t have to rely on your younger family members to support you in your old age. If you make 35k a year (which you might not now, but may in 5 years) 5% of your income means having the means to continue helping your family, and helping your community, and not relying on community resources that other people might need because you put your oxygen mask on first.
I know fifty bucks a month is hard. I know twenty bucks a month is hard. But it’s not as hard as leaving your home when you can’t afford it at 70 or becoming a walmart greeter at 75 would be.
It’s likely that Social Security will be around when you retire. However, you may not receive the full benefit offered to current retirees. The Social Security Administration’s 2024 annual report found that the program is likely to be able to pay 100% of the current benefits through 2035. After that, retirees would receive 83% of their scheduled benefits. What could that look like? As of January 2025, the average Social Security payout is $1,976 per month. If you were to receive 83% of that, it would drop to $1,640 per month.
Being an anarchocommunist does not absolve you of the responsibility to do some planning for the future. I know you want to give to every support post that comes across your dash and that is something that you should plan for and budget for. And you should plan to treat your own retirement savings as though you are a 70 year old writing a post on tumblr to try to raise money for rent
Part of recognizing that a better world is possible is recognizing that you have to have some agency in making that better world and nobody wants to do a revolution with people who don’t have the ability to do basic math or plan for the future.
Save for retirement now so that the money people would have used to support you can go to strike funds, or can provide dental care for low income families, or can be used to provide housing for someone who wasn’t able to work, or who DID have some disaster that wiped out all their savings.
And then fuck it if you want, plan on dying at 80 (or using less of your income annually after retirement) when you retire and give fifty grand to someone to put a down payment on a house or to pay for two years of rent for a family that needs help.
I’m in my late 30s now and I deeply regret not setting up better savings in my 20s or early 30s because it’s *HARD* to catch up. If you’re young, and you’re reading this, and you have twenty dollars a month that you can put into a 401K I am speaking directly to you. Don’t be me. Be smarter than I was. Please please please please just invest and provide a stable senior situation for yourself, or at least do what you can to make that situation more stable.
and by the way you can open a Roth IRA account (as long as you have a W2 form) if you’re an immigrant and it will still be there for you if you leave the US and don’t contribute to it, collecting interest.
imagine: you are chilling in front you your house getting high. along comes an old family friend who you last saw when you were six, you are now in your 50s. after a brief convo where he is kind of a dick to you, he’s like damn you’ve changed :/. and your like yeah bestie it’s been five decades why the fuck are you here. he leaves. later that night a shit ton of people show up and trash your house. just throw and absolute rager. halfway through the family friend from earlier shows up. he announces in full earshot of everyone that he wants you to come with him to rob a bank. you of course say wtf??? one of the people who broke into your house calls you a pussy. another person shoves you a contract which declares if you get shot robbing the bank they will not pay for your funeral. you pass out. when you wake up you find the contract on your table and your house almost completely back to normal. you stare at the contract for a moment and decide, fuck it this is just as a good a midlife crisis than anything.
Not where you grew up. Not where you’ll be living soon. Where you’re living right now.
Plz reblog this one actually I wanna get as big of a sampling of tumblr as possible. Reblog at any and all times of the day so we can reach different time zones.
just a suggestion but if you’re writing about “the ancient world” please don’t include societies that existed from like 1300 to 1521
AZTECS AND INCAS WERE NOT ANCIENT I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL
The Americas have genuinely ancient histories also!!!! Tell me why you talk about Rome and Greece and Sumer and the Qin Dynasty and Middle Kingdom Egypt but you’ve never heard of the Moche or Chavín, the Olmec or the Classical Maya city-states, or even Poverty Point or the Hopewell Interaction Network, or maybe the ancient Tsimshian city of Temlaxam????
okay this is gaining notes so I just want to clarifying:
I’m not saying that the Aztec and Inca societies are not fascinating and super important. They are!!!! Please learn about them!!!! And I’m DEFINITELY not saying this to say they are inferior to Eurasian societies–I want people to learn about the societies BEFORE the Aztecs and Incas.
However, when they are lumped in with the category of “ancient” alongside Rome/Greece/Mesopotamia/Egypt etc societies from before AD 500, it has the effect of flattening Indigenous American history. This is why people are constantly losing their mind over the fact that “Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire” like okay sure. But Teotihuacan is older than Oxford, it’s not like there were no societies in the Americas before the year 1300.
Basically no one seems to have a sense of the true length of Indigenous American presence and history in our own continents. That’s why this bothers me.
It’s VERY frustrating as a Quechua person to see ~ancient~ Inca stuff when Peru has truly ancient civilization. People have lived in the regions associated with Inca rule since about 16,000BC so 17,400 year before the Inca empire!!! Caral-Supe in Peru dates to like 5000 years ago and is the oldest city in the Americas. Here’s a timeline of cultures in the central Andes. Like cool yes learn about the Inca but remember that indigenous people have a history that actually goes wayyyy further back than European contact
someone on twitter is trying to claim that use of an em-dash is an indication of AI-generated writing because it’s “relatively rare” for actual humans to use it. skill issue
I can admit this is a little out of hand, but I promise AI didn’t write my 150k fic 😂
amhrancas 