comment: >
  
  And that society won’t have already collapsed by the time you’re 65.
context: This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.
  Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"
  (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)
  Rule-breaking posts may result in bans. >
  
  Going to work is low key gambling youll still be alive when they pay you! >
  
  Ok but I get my paycheck every 2 weeks. You can't withdraw funds from a retirement account until you're 65 (in the USA). Come on now, it's not the same level of risk at all.
  Edit: You can withdraw before 65 but there is a penalty, so I consider that the price of the gamble. >
  
  Isn’t that the point of your post that some things are really low risk gambling and i found something even lower risk than yours but in the same vein? >
  
  Sure, but my point seems more practical than yours. By your logic, walking out the front door everyday is a gamble. That's technically true, but you'd literally not be able to go about life if you thought that way. Same with your counterpoint: work for income is practically necessary. Putting money into a retirement account technically isn't. >
  
  Yeah, technically everything you do is some micro level of a gamble with an expected outcome that may or may not come true.
  Sounds like you agree but for whatever reason you’re saying one example is more valid than another but i don’t think thats the case. >
  
  Yea my feelings are more in line with yours on this matter. >
  
  This is now the second time in my life when the gamble is not "will I be around" but rather "will there be an economy left to back the gamble" >
  
  The outcome is worse if you bet on dying before retirement and then you live on >
  
  Sounds like a lose/lose.... Can't spend money while your alive, but if you do spend the money your fucked later... Don't worry, corporations will make record profits whatever you do though. Long live the corporations! >
  
  My family tends to live long lives so it’s really a question of whether I can win enough to not die homeless. >
  
  How about life insurance?
  If you don't die within the term you lose everything! >
  
  That’s why anything but term life is a sucker’s bet. It’s insurance, not an investment. >
  
  (Not sure how it works) If it goes to next of kin if you die early, maybe you can just have a really lit funeral. >
  
  I consider that my accounts will transfer to my wife and kids to offset my lost income in the event of my passing before retirement which helps me with this fact. >
  
  You can withdraw it at any time before retirement, even though there is usually a penalty. >
  
  In a Roth, you can withdraw your contributions at any time* with no penalty for any reason even before retirement age. The only real "risk" is that your investments go down, then you have less you can withdraw
  *any time after 5 years >
  
  You're also really limited in how much you can contribute to a Roth per year. >
  
  That's not exclusive to a Roth, all tax-advantaged investment accounts have contribution limits. A 401k is like $19k per year and an IRA is $6000. And either of those can be Roth or traditional. >
  
  A life insurance policy is low key gambling that you’ll have someone to give the proceeds to >
  
  Yes, it is. >
  
  The 401 dove this past year. I might have had less of a loss taking it out. Sometimes I wonder about that. >
  
  It's generally best not to time the market even when things seem obvious. >
  
  Also the way retirement accounts work is that your money gets put into a portfolio which has a chance to go down in value. So even if you could reach your money, you are gambling just about as much as if you just took your money and put it into the stock market.  
  That's why I always take 5 percent of my paycheck and put it in pokemon cards. If I'm going to gamble I want some pretty cardboard for it >
  
  Now that I think about it...it does seem sensible. However, in retrospect, I think most of the time, people tend to use their retirement savings for family support (if they have any) or at least when they are indeed retired. It is indeed a gamble if there's no a plan for the future use of the savings, yet I think it will still have a huge advantage when the time comes for retirement--there's so many uses of it. >
  
  My landlord worked his entire life with the plan to retire 2 years early and travel with his wife. He pinched penny's and worked tons of extra hours and scraped and saved money everywhere just so he could enjoy it when he was done.
  He died earlier this year unexpectedly from a heart attack and the knowledge that it was all for nothing has driven me to enjoy life now and think about retirement later. >
  
  Yep. I max my 401K and Roth IRA every year. Keep a modest emergency savings account. Every other penny I make goes to just living how I want to. I don’t save other than that. Only debt I have is a new vehicle. Only debt I take on is something I could pay off by liquidizing some assets. >
  
  Also you’re betting it all on the stock market. What the fuck >
  
  Yeah, I really don't like that some rich cocksuckers that I don't know literally gamble my 401k by investing it into stocks. I put money into an account intended to help myself when I retire, if I even am able to retire, and my own money I put into that account gets fucked around with in the name of "possibly increasing your retirement funds, but also possibly losing everything" >
  
  Have you ever had a 401K? Generally you select which funds you want to invest in within the account. Most people, I would imagine, just stick it in a target date fund or something like a Total Stock Market or S&P 500 index fund, which is really just an affordable way to own a small piece of many, many companies. 
  The only real gamble in "betting" on what is essentially a representative sample of the entire market is that the entire global economy won't collapse or there won't be a major paradigm shift away from the entire concept of a growth economy. Those things may happen, but if they do I'd say your retirement accounts are not likely to be your biggest concerns anyway. In the former case, everyone would be fucked and even cash would be worthless. In the latter, I'd imagine this paradigm shift would involve some sort of socially progressive sentiment and so the idea of everyone just being left in the lurch seems unlikely but who knows. 
  Not a financial/economics professional, these opinions could be misguided but that's my take on things broadly speaking. >
  
  At least you're betting on yourself being alive. With life insurance, you're actually betting that you'll die >
  
  The biggest casino is the Social Security Administration. They’re betting that rather than taking your money when you are eligible at 62, they’re betting you will hold off until you’re 70 so you’ll get a bigger monthly check but are hoping you die first. >
  
  They're not even betting, they KNOW with pretty good accuracy the number of people who will be dead by 70 vs 62, just not the specific people. >
  
  Actually, it's also a good way to give yourself a loan that you subsidize and will pay back so it's available when you retire.  I've done it many times to pay off bills.... always paid it back.