Government Intrusion on Retirement

Traditional retirement is becoming increasingly harder than it was a few decades ago. It used to be that between social security benefits and employer-sponsored pension plans, most people would be able to leave work at 65 and live out the rest of their lives in peace and relative comfort. This is no longer the case.

Now, your retirement is something you need to spend your entire working life saving for, piece by piece, and there’s still a chance that at any moment, a crash to the stock market could wipe out everything you’ve worked for. It’s a difficult job. And yet somehow, the government is taking a number of steps to make it even harder. Here are some of the things they’ve done to make retirement more difficult.

Postponing the Fiduciary Rule

A lot of people, in putting together their IRA/401(k), will seek the help of a financial advisor, who can aid them in determining how to invest their savings to see the biggest returns in the long term. The problem is, by law, many of those financial advisors aren’t required to do what’s in your best interest. In fact, they can counsel you to do things that benefit them, at your expense.

The one exception to this is fiduciaries. If your advisor is acting in a fiduciary capacity, they have to do what’s best for you with your money. To this end, a law was passed last year, called the Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule. It requires all financial advisors to act as fiduciaries, all the time. It was scheduled to be rolled out gradually, beginning in April of this year, through January of 2018.

Unfortunately, the law has been delayed for at least six months, while it’s reviewed by the current administration. This is inconvenient, to be sure, but it’s not the end of the world. But that’s not all. There’s also been new legislation introduced in Washington which could delay the law from going into effect for an additional two years. All over something that would make it vastly easier and safer for Americans to plan their retirement.

Stopping Auto IRAs

A number of states have proposed a plan that would help ordinary citizens save for retirement, even if their company doesn’t offer a 401(k) plan. That plan is automatic IRAs. An Auto IRA would allow an employee to have money taken directly from their paycheck and put into an IRA, the same as with a 401(k). It would make things easier on both the companies and the workers, and provide a lot of people with retirement savings who don’t have them otherwise.

However, while a number of states support this legislation, the federal government is working to stop it. While the Department of Labor issued a rule that would make it easier and less costly for states to implement auto IRAs, Congress passed a law that overturned that rule, increasing compliance and liability costs and making it more difficult for the policy to go into effect.

These are just a few of the things that the government is doing to destroy your retirement savings. And that’s to say nothing of the disaster that is social security. Millions of Americans rely on a system that doesn’t nearly cover their expenses in retirement, isn’t increasing to match inflation, and is set to go broke by the year 2034. Doom seems inevitable.

So what can you do? I recommend investing a portion of your retirement savings in gold. A gold IRA will help protect your retirement savings, even while the government tries to impede it. It retains its value over time, and isn’t subject to inflation, so a couple of decades down the road, when you’re ready to retire, your savings will still have the same buying power that it did when you started.

When the government begins getting involved in your retirement savings and making it more difficult for you to build up a nest egg, there’s plenty of reason to worry. But with a gold IRA, it’s easier to save for the future and keep your retirement safe.