They dubbed Henny Youngman “The King of the One Liners,” but for our money that title belonged to Rodney Dangerfield. It was Dangerfield, after all, who said:
When I was born I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother
and
My mother never breast fed me, she told me she only liked me as a friend
and
The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I would be honest.The point being, any financial headline that references Dangerfield gets our respect. That’s what drew us to an interesting Paul Katzeff piece for investors.com headlined IRAs: Retirement Planning’s Rodney Dangerfields? Excerpts from the article:
“IRAs are the Rodney Dangerfields of retirement planning. They don’t get no respect! At least from a lot of people surveyed by TIAA-CREF. In the financial services firm’s fourth annual IRA survey, 24% of Americans said short-term goals, such as paying for a vacation or a household appliance, are their highest priority for use of savings.
“That was triple the number, 8%, who said contributing to an IRA is the most important way to allocate their savings.
“In contrast, 25% said contributing to a company-sponsored retirement plan like a 401(k) is their top savings priority.
“But many people do appreciate how IRAs can turbocharge their retirement planning, and they make hefty use of IRAs.
“IRAs held $7.3 trillion in assets as of Sept. 30, 2014, according to the Investment Company Institute.
“That represented 30% of total U.S. retirement market assets.
“And it was up from 18% two decades earlier.
“401(k) plans — whose formal debut was in 1981, after the 1974 start of IRAs — accounted for 19% of total U.S. retirement assets at the end of Q3 2014. That was up from 11% in 1994.
“Both types of retirement plans offer people an opportunity to build nest eggs by investing in securities that grow, such as stock mutual funds and individual stocks, inside a tax-sheltered account. They can also build up holdings in income-oriented assets such as bond mutual funds and individual bonds.
“Mutual funds alone make up nearly half, 48%, of the assets in IRAs.”