Comic Strips

So you're supposed to do 50-30-20 Meaning 50% on needs 30% on wants 20% investing

You might be thinking "Ericbomb, how does one keep their needs below 50%, when the median rent in the US is $2,000, and median household income after taxes/withholdings is near 40k?"

Wonderful question!

I've never owned a gun in my life. The day I go to buy one is the day I start planning for my "retirement."

I'm still doing the 401k thing and trying to save on the side, but just like homeownership, retirement is for "other people," not me :/

So, as it turns out there are a few big reasons.

• it's a cosmic felony

• causing improbable events creates a new timeline which increases entropy in all probable realities, which can have some drastic (and usually negative) effects.

• most time travel agencies (which is what most people can afford) use technology that doesn't actually allow for free will, that's why it's mostly sold for vacations.

  • you can alter/push some decisions, but for most people it's not gonna be successful stocks.
  • older technology was advanced calculation in a realistic simulation. Most people just wanted an old memory or to get closure. Some people just try a different meal or movie choice, the experience is all that matters.

• time mercenaries. We're actually not sure who these guys are, but we also don't wanna know either. Some say they're who cause spontaneous combustion and embarrassing deaths.

• most forms of actual time travel leave the user stranded, with chronic or terminal illness (and sometimes amnesia), and in some cases fading/poofing out of existence when certain thresholds are crossed.

  • On top of that, new timelines of you typically aren't experienced by you. It's a different you. So that was nice of you.

• time spiders. You don't want to know.

Who knows if you really want to have much much wealth in the future.

Maybe he would have made the deal of his life the next week if his future me wouldn't have intervened; but 30 years later everybody that ever had more than a million gets killed by the revolutionary movement that swapped across the world after society almost collapsed due to greed.

But he managed to reach a time machine, and now he calculated that if he saves a maximum of 15% he will only ever reach 975000 bucks and therefore survive the revolution

Maybe they're really risk-adverse and don't trust they haven't fucked everything with the butterfly effect just by being there.

Maybe the butterfly effect is greater than we possibly can imagine?

Young Johnny should ask old Johnny why they don't simply buy a sports almanac

Well. I assume this guy is actually from the future. So in theory wouldn't he know that in the future 401k's have not been taxed into irrelevance? I feel like if he's coming from the future with this advice it's because he feels it's still good advice in his future.

And then one day you wake up and you are that "old" person. Then you realize you're screwed: the health problems that aren't a big deal if they're treated are debilitating because you can't afford treatment. Those issues you assumed are going to kill you don't, and instead you linger for decades with a garbage quality of life.

The worst part is you aren't even that old: mentally you're still pretty much the same person you were in your 30s, just trapped in a body that's slowly falling apart and needs constant maintenance.

Yes, you need to strike a balance -- but not doing what you can to financially plan for old age is fucking stupid.

Agree a lot can't spare it. Getting to 15% is pretty tough. You can do the math though and see that even 10% will likely make it tough to maintain your current lifestyle with inflation accounted for in the absence of active cash flow. Don't forget when you have more leisure time you are more likely to find things to spend on and also reserves for health issues / other surprises is important too. Sorry to sound like a dad / investment advisor, but I don't think it's a ploy so much as the terrifying reality that most of us are under prepared for.

I don't have a match but I still save in my pretax retirement account. If you don't have any available to you through your employer, please look into a Traditional or Roth IRA.

So if you have a 401(k) you agree to have part of your paycheck go to a fund and your employer matches however much you put in up to a certain percent. It helps get around some taxes when you eventually pull the money out for retirement.

Originally it was supposed to be a supplement for pensions but pensions meant less profits because they need to be fully funded, so over the years big corporations pushed 401(k)s as an alternative to pensions because they can just push that responsibility onto us.

It's like an RRSP.

As a Warhammer fan, I’m telling you it is wild.

That happened in the previous loop. This time-traveller ruined his life with hookers and blow, so instead of giving his younger self quick riches, he gave solid financial advice instead.

Yeah, future him is a fucking moron.

Generally you can put in as much as you want but they only provide matching for some percentage. Usually like 1-5%. There is a total contribution limit but that won't affect most people.

The limits on 401k contributions are federally regulated and are set as a nominal amount.

Employers often have employees select a percentage of their income to contribute, and for very high income earners, 15% might be over the federal limit. Also, employers can match employee 401k contributions. That is usually a percentage match of annual salary up to a given limit (e.g. 2% of salary up to $3000).

You can put in however much you want, the company only matches up to a certain low percent though. Typically less than 5%. I personally put 17% of my income into my 401k since I didn’t do anything for about a decade that I should’ve been doing 10% and now I’m trying to catch up, company only matches 3%

Any company that pays you less than $150,000.