Yikes.
I worry about what is coming as all these boomers retire. Even the ones that have saved often used the evil 401K. That's where you put up 100% of the money, take 100% of the risk, and if you are lucky you might get 30% of the profits.
The future is poor friends.
Are you being facetious or serious in your terming of the "evil 401k?" Are you an advocate for an alternative system?
I think they have become a legal scam. (Ok, maybe not evil).
But many 401Ks are a bad deal for investors. They have
many hidden fees and are mostly for making sick money on Wall St. Because of the employer contribution you may think that you are racking up the dollars. But you probably end up leaving a third of the money on the table that you could make with an index fun, for example.
There is also the risk that is not talked about much. Some people seem to think that a 401K is a surefire way to fund your retirement. In fact the market could drop 50% next year or next week. If that happens as you get ready to retire... Well it's back to work for you Grandpa.
I have a 401(k) and am charged about $13.50 per quarter, which comes out to about $50 a year. If I'm actively trading, I incur the normal transaction fees. I don't find that unreasonable. I don't know what other people do with their 401(k)s or what fees other people are paying, but I don't have any basis to support the claim that Wall Street is getting fat off the meager fees I'm paying. I can put my 401(k) funds in an index fund if I want, so I don't understand the criticism of the system. Since
your retirement is
your responsibility, if you don't save enough during your working life, you wait longer to retire. It seems pretty straight forward to me.
As for the market turning down, there's risk in everything. Don't invest if you don't like risk, but the risk in holding cash is it depreciates. There's risk in action and there's risk in inaction. There's no such thing as a risk-less investment. The 401(k) isn't designed to make you rich though, it's designed to allow you to save and grow your retirement funds tax deferred over several decades so you can live off of it after retirement. You save for 50 or 60 years to fund the 20 years of your life you're not working. If you think it's designed to make you wealthy upon retirement, I think you misunderstand the system. It's not designed to be "foolproof" (as I stated, in investing nothing is); it's the most practical option that puts everyone's responsibility for their own retirement on themselves.