Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
1. People can't handle money. It's a sad but unfortunate truth to our society. I'll be ready to hear about how awesome you are with money, which totally disproves my point.
It's irrelevant. At most, the individual only has to select a fund for their contributions to go into. For 401ks and the like, you don't go shopping around for individual stocks- you pick a plan. I'm still fairly young, so I picked a plan that was heavily invested in stocks and fairly aggressive. When I'm closer to retirement, I would switch it to something more balanced. That's the extent of my involvement. You don't need to be a financial wizard.
I guess those that had decided to retire in 2007, 2008 and 2009 can be swept under the rug.
You don't take out your retirement in a lump sum. Their plans would have rebounded just like everyone else's.