4 ms·
Neither of those accounts are "locked up", there are ways to access your money before the government sponsored year of retirement. See rule 72(t) or periodic di
by vecinu 6y ago
Neither of those accounts are "locked up", there are ways to access your money before the government sponsored year of retirement. See rule 72(t) or periodic distributions for withdrawing without penalty. Finally you can always withdraw the money with a penalty.
You can withdraw your contributions to ROTH IRA's at any time, penalty free and ROTH 401(k)s are easily rollover-able to a ROTH IRA.
They are completely a part of net worth, it's in the very definition.
- mehrdadn 6y agoI thought it was obvious... I wrote "more or less locked up" precisely because I knew if I just summarized it as "locked up" without qualifiers somebody would eagerly jump in to trash my comment here. Somehow I forget people are keen to do that regardless. My bad, I thought I was trying to help people interpret that statistic but now I regret it.
- vecinu 6y agoI'm not sure I understood your point though. Retirement accounts hold YOUR money, that is money that YOU saved for YOUr own use later. Whether I put it in a savings account or taxable investing account it is still part of my net worth as it's money I will be using some time in the future. Perhaps I'm too dense but I'm not understanding why you are not including retirement accounts as part of net worth calculations.
- mehrdadn 6y agoThe sentence was "55% of Americans are estimated to own stocks", and I pointed out this includes retirement accounts, feeling (evidently quite wrongly) that that would be important to many readers to be pointed out. If you don't see any value in that, then I'm sorry, the next time I won't mention it. My apologies. I repent.