Curious to hear what people who understand Bitcoin think of 401k, Roth IRA, or 529 accounts

Hi everyone,

I have been involved in Bitcoin for about 5-6 years now and I have spent thousands of hours learning everything Bitcoin from a technology, social, and political point of view. However, to better educate myself, I am starting to learn more and more about traditional financial savings tools. I am really interested to hear what other people who understand Bitcoin say about 401k, Roth IRAs, and 529 accounts.

I want to elaborate on my thoughts so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong or call me out if you disagree with me. For starters, the 401k has been the conventional retirement savings account in the USA. The government entices you to invest in your 401k by giving tax advantages to you as well as your employer by allowing them to match your contribution. The benefits sound good on paper, but are they actually worth it practically? Sure, you get a 100% guaranteed ROI if you only put in what your employer matches, but you have to hold your account until you are at least 59 1/2 years old. If you pull early, you have to pay a 10% fee, capital gains tax, and your 401k service provider withholds 20% of your account for income tax purposes. On top of that, the laws and regulation placed on the 401k can be modified such as percentages in income tax brackets or the age you are allowed to start pulling out. But what really frightens me the most about this account is that you have to hold your money with a custodian for 40+ years. Once I learned Bitcoin, the idea of anyone having custody of my money other than me frightens me. When someone holds your money for you, you have to play by their rules without rebuttal. I am still currently investing in my 401k with just the minimum amount to get my company match, but does anyone else just feel like they are never going to see that money ever again?

The Roth IRA is more appealing to me because you pay the tax upfront and don't have to pay capital gains tax. But I really don't think that these accounts are as crazy as they are made out to be. Everyone talks about how getting a 7-8% annual return will make it so you have X amount of dollars by Y date. But I have yet to see or hear from anyone any sort of questioning as to how much will those dollars be worth on said day. Sure you can turn 100k into 1 million dollars in 30 years, but what if everything you want to buy went up in price 11x in that same time period? Wouldn't your purchasing power actually be diminishing so you are getting poorer? Maybe I am overthinking it but I feel like people try that CPI core inflation is 'not that bad' so they don't have anything to worry about, but when you go back 30, 40, 50 years and look at those prices it blows me away. I guess the holding requirement in the Roth IRA of 5 years is a little bit better than 401k, but still I don't like being told what I can and cannot do with my money.

Finally, the 529 account. The perfect plan for saving for your kids college tuitions. Are people still actively putting money into these? With the growth of college tuition, I doubt that any of our children will be able to go to college without substantial amount of loans and putting money into a 529 is never going to grow as fast as that tuition grows.

Then when I look at Bitcoin, I see a money that cannot be manipulated or confiscated. The issuance is predictable and calculated into the future and the network has developed in such a way to minimize fragility. The only thing that is (currently) fluctuating is the market demand for Bitcoin as reflect by its price in USD and other government money.

Does anyone else feel this way about these traditional savings vehicles? No matter what anyone says, I cannot justify storing value in any of them over Bitcoin. I am putting into my 401k and I don't even know why. Thanks for reading, rant over.

Submitted September 14, 2023 at 09:01PM by Gorillahair2000 https://ift.tt/Unop5eL