isn't just reducing the net worth of billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It's also taking a toll on Americans' retirement savings, wiping out trillions of dollars in value.
This year's stock slump is the most severe market downturn since March of 2020, when COVID-19 erupted in the U.S. Historically, 401 investments take about two years after a market decline of this size to regain their previous value. "Younger people, you can kind of wait it out — these things have come back time and time again," she added."But people who use their retirement money to support themselves really suffer in this kind of event.
"One could argue that these recent losses are simply wiping out the extraordinary gains that occurred from mid-2020 to the end of 2021, so that people are not actually worse off than before the pandemic," Munnell wrote in a blog post, shared first with CBS MoneyWatch. But human nature being what it is,"the prior gains were permanent, so the recent losses are no less painful.
Target-date funds are a popular set-it-and-forget-it option for choosing a retirement plan, with more than half of all 401 participants holding a target-date fund, according to Morningstar Direct, an investment research firm.
This should be a bigger story. At this rate we'll have to work till we die. Corporate America is out of control.