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Was the 401(k) a Mistake? How an obscure, 45-year old tax change transformed retirement and left so many Americans out in the cold. (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean maybe, but 401ks almost always require you to set a target fund or indicate a preferred risk level just to set an account up. So unless the commenter went out of their way to not allow their 401k to be invested, it would almost certainly be invested in, at least/lowest risk, an interest bearing cash equivalent, like a MMF as you mentioned. And MMFs were crazy last year, some earning like 7% with essentially no risk and great liquidity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch. I know folks forget to do this when setting up IRAs, but kind of hard to do with 401k. Who knows.