Your Favorite Retirement Plan May Be Losing Its Appeal
For decades, we’ve been encouraged to contribute as much as possible to these plans, with the idea being that you will be in a lower tax bracket when you retire – and therefore you’ll pay fewer taxes on these funds than if you’d forgone the tax break upfront. Of course, our economic landscape has changed since the traditional IRA and 401(k) first gained widespread use, with IRA’s first becoming popular in the 1970’s and the 401(k) following in the early 1980’s. The highest tax bracket in the 1970’s was 70% and it dropped to 50% in the early 1980s, so we can see how workers believed they’d pay less once they retired and were taking less income.