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Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

Main issue: depends on your age. If you're 26 this is a great deal and you'll carry it wherever you go

if you are 50+, worked there 30 years, and had your pension frozen after 20 years of work, you are so far behind the curve even if you max out your 401k for your remaining years. You need to do a lot of work and probably invest in high risk stocks to even begin to make up for that 25 years of lost compound interest in your career.

Also: I realize I'm spoiled, but I had quarter matching 401ks in tech (which apparently isn't that amazing to begin with), so I don't see this as an insane deal for the effort and sacrifice they put out.

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I have no details on the plan, but the assumption would be that the current pension still would pay out as it did before.

Even if you contribute late, you probably don't need to draw down on the 401k until much later in your retirement to make up the difference between your pension payouts and inflation. So that could still mean a few decades of compounding growth.

>you probably don't need to draw down on the 401k until much later in your retirement to make up the difference between your pension payouts and inflation

How much "later" do you have? you're 65, life expectancy is 76 IIRC in America. Worse depending on various socioeconomic factors. If I'm not living after some 40 years of labor what was the point of life?

Also, call me paranoid but I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to raise the retirement age like they did in other countries.

>but the assumption would be that the current pension still would pay out as it did before.

Does a frozen pension accumulate interest? If not, I don't see how the difference is ever made up.

An American's life expectancy when they're born is around 76. But the life expectancy among Americans that have already lived to the age of 65 is more like 83.

> en if you contribute late, you probably don't need to draw down on the 401k until much later in your retirement to make up the difference between your pension payouts and inflation. So that could still mean a few decades of compounding growth.

I guess you could try living frugally and wait it out for as long as you can. The only hope is that you won't die before you even begin to tap into it but I guess more for your family...

The idea is that you still take the reduced pension payouts and then the 401k is there later for when it's not enough.

Yep, I get that part. Thanks for the clarification though.

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