
It's unfashionable these days, actually saving for retirement. Most people prefer to trust faceless men in suits to look after their life savings, or to gamble them on risky things like EV stocks and crypto currencies. Long ago the banks, wall street, and the financial industry in general began a marketing campaign. In essence it said "You are stupid and can't be trusted with your own money, so give it to us and we'll manage it for you." Concomitant with this lie was the concept of inflation and the need for high single digit compounding returns on the money. Because if you didn't have that, your money would be worth a lot less in the future. Well that was half true, certainly the inflation aspect of the claim. But the idea that an investment needed to "earn" interest every year to keep pace only worked if the market was stable or at least was UP at the time you wanted access to your money.
Like between 2000 and 2006?

That was a time of HIGH inflation, in Food, Houses, Everything except computers basically. What if you wanted to pull out a large chunk from your retirement account to buy a home or pay a medical bill? When the market recovered you'd be down that amount, assets sold at a discount, and you're retirement account is now well behind. Silver is actually a solid investment though still volatile over longer time-frames. Gold is much more secure.
Gold over the last 20 Years +$4,549.34 +811.49%
811%/20 = 40% per annum. What stock portfolio has achieved that over the past 2 decades? You don't need compounding returns if your money is achieving that sort of gain year after year. And sure it wasn't 40% every year, some years were quite low and others high, but look at the time-frames for this.

Inflation was non-existent during much of the 2010's so if you did pull money out you weren't doing so at a loss. Then when inflation took off after 2021 with covid, your savings investment in Gold was keeping pace with it. There is no difference between drawing down a Gold reserve and a pension fund account, both will eventually get depleted. But you don't want to be losing money in a time of inflation. What is the main problem with the Private pension? Parasites basically. Fund managers bleeding your account, greedy corporate owners faking data like the EV complex, like the Rebuildable complex. Offering a home for your retirement savings that cannot hope to deliver the returns promised. It was a setup from the get-go. Just another way to milk the masses so the rich could get richer. Just ask Elon Musk.
Tesla, a darling stock, is $326 today. It was $280 back at the peak of 2021, then $400 later in that same year. Unless your pension fund had bought it long before that the investment has gone nowhere really. Musk knew the score, he sold out billions worth right near the top at $430, after all the little people put their savings into it. Search average returns on an IRA over the past 5 years and you'll get investment twaddle claiming an average or 5~10% is possible with certain... But look for specific examples and you find horror stories.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') have a Roth IRA that has not grown hardly a penny in two years. What do I need to do to make it grow besides putting more of my own money?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')y Roth IRA has barely increased in value since opening it almost 3.5 years ago. Am I doing something wrong? (2 years ago)