The State of Pension Plans in the United States

<p><strong>Josh Tirado: </strong>[00:00:20] Welcome to the making smart decisions podcast. I'm your host, Josh Toronto. And today, we are discussing pensions. Is it a sheep, or is it the Wolf? Or is it just a Wolf in sheep's clothing? Let me jump into the pension thing here and try to delineate a little bit.</p><p>[00:01:19] When I am talking about pensions. I am talking about pensions from companies, not from the government, and quasi I mostly pension from smaller branches of government. So not necessarily federal pensions, but maybe something along the lines of that, of a state pension. </p><p>[00:01:35]The vast majority of people no longer have a pension 40 years ago, the vast majority of people. I had a pension, and that was a big push on retirement. Pensions became very expensive. They were hard to manage. They went away. The 1980s saw the rise of the 401k, and that really replaced the pension.</p><p>[00:01:49] So it used to be that, Hey, I had a pension, the company put so much money aside. Maybe I contributed to it. Maybe I didn't, depending on what setup you had. And when you retired, you got a certain amount of money, which was guaranteed for all these years in your retirement. And it was awesome. And everyone worked towards their pension fund people for years joked about the gold watch, and I got a pension.</p><p>[00:02:05]When I retired, the pension became hard to manage. It went away. And the onus of retirement transferred from the company you worked for over to you with the rise of the 401k. Because now you're consuming your money. You're getting a match from the company. But now you have to manage the investments that are in their project.</p><p>[00:02:21] How much is going to be in there? So it's no longer the company during a pension taking care of you. It's you taking care of your own money? Pensions used to be far and wide, very accepted, very common pensions are not that anymore—several large companies over the past 10 years.</p><p>[00:02:35]Have eliminated their pensions for people un