Pressed by his Wall Street supporters, President Trump is moving to liberalize the types of investments Americans can make with their individual retirement accounts. Instead of betting their retirement savings on plain vanilla stocks and bonds, account holders would be allowed to move their funds into sexy sectors like private equity, private credit and cryptocurrency — no matter their complexity, risk and illiquidity.
Supporters of the switch make the case that individuals should have the same access to private assets with potentially higher returns as institutions and the wealthy. But this argument rests on the false premise that most Americans are equipped to evaluate these complex, opaque investments. They are not. And expanding access to them risks doing more harm than good.
All in all, the proposal, put forth by the Labor Department to fulfill a recent Trump executive order, is a consequential mistake. It could well exacerbate the challenges already posed by individual retirement accounts, a flawed replacement for the traditional corporate pension plans that many Americans used to enjoy.
At their core, today’s retirement accounts turn everyday Americans into money managers, faced with a dizzying array of choices for how to invest their money. What is an “Allspring Special Mid Cap Value Fund — Class R6”? Or a “Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund — Admiral Class”? (Both are among the many mystifying choices in my 401(k) plan.)
I don’t know how a salesman or doctor or even an accountant could successfully sift through every flavor of stock and bond funds (like the aforementioned two), let alone navigate the bewildering world of alternative investments.
I’ve been a professional investor for decades and am still daunted by the challenges.
The obstacles are even greater for those who try to boost their retirement returns by betting on individual stocks or other single investments. In 2024, the average stock retail investor earned about 16.5 percent picking mutual funds, compared to 25 percent for the S&P 500, according to a study by Dalbar, a leading independent expert. In other words, most investors would have achieved markedly better performance by just putting their savings into an index fund designed to track the performance of the S&P 500.
If individuals have so much trouble parsing ordinary stocks, imagine them trying to untangle a private equity fund offering.
Faced with this incomprehensible menu of choices, many rely on a financial adviser. But conflicts abound, with many traditional stockbrokers often pushing particular products that are often more remunerative to their employer.
And how, even, to pick a financial adviser? Barron’s recently published a list of 1,500 favored ones.
The other significant problem with individual retirement accounts is that they eliminate the social insurance aspect of traditional pension plans. Under the old regime, retirees didn’t have to worry about how long they might live; their pension benefit would steadily arrive in their bank accounts month after month.
Now, the elderly must make tough decisions about how to parcel out their assets. Use the money too quickly, and they might become impoverished. Spending it too slowly could mean unnecessary reductions in their standard of living. Already, personal finance columns are peppered with headlines like: “Even Rich Retirees Fear Outliving Their Money” and “Record Numbers of Americans Are Raiding Their 401(k) Savings.”
In theory, the Trump-supported proposal has one benefit: It could modestly ameliorate the fact that the current system works far better for the wealthy than for those further down the economic ladder. (Again, that presupposes that individuals will be able to pick through the many offerings, which will come with exceptionally high fees.)
Numerous other problems remain. Many studies have shown that lower-income workers save less and borrow (or withdraw) money more often than the rich. They also have less of the financial sophistication needed to make sound investment decisions.
According to Federal Reserve data, the average retirement account balances of Americans in median households by income have barely budged (after adjusting for inflation) since the late 1980s, while Americans in the top 10 percent have seen their retirement account more than quintuple in value.
But the answer isn’t to invite Americans to dabble in private equity, private credit and cryptocurrency. Other countries have done better at protecting their retirees without such risky schemes. Australia, for instance, requires participation in national retirement funds that are managed professionally on behalf of its account holders. (Australia has socked away $3 trillion in these funds, about $110,000 per citizen.)
So, what to do in the United States? At the very least, individuals should work with a registered investment adviser who is only compensated by their investors. You may think that those fees cost you money. But with the right adviser, your retirement savings are likely to end up larger.
While I’m not arguing for trying to turn back the clock to the old days, I do believe we need an ambitious rethinking of the architecture of our retirement system.
We’ve had a little tinkering recently. SECURE 2.0, passed in the Biden administration, made a couple of important improvements, like mandating that employers automatically enroll workers in retirement plans. Last week, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that would create Individual Retirement Accounts for workers who lack employer plans and use the Saver’s Match from Secure 2.0 to contribute $1,000 in federal matching funds to those with lower incomes.
These improvements only address a sliver of the gaps. Our system should require contributions from employers and employees, managed by public-private partnerships. We need truly universal coverage for everybody, including gig workers, part-time workers and small businesses. We need to incentivize and improve those annuities which offer set benefits for a retiree’s life in order to protect individuals against outliving their savings.
And we must strengthen Social Security. It is the only large program that guarantees seniors a fixed monthly payment until they die, but it is expected to become insolvent in just over six years. That means raising taxes to shore it up. And rather than encourage average Americans to sink their money into private equity funds and other exotic investments, we should allow the Social Security Administration to hire experts who will help it make those investments. As it stands, it is stuck investing only in low-yielding Treasuries.
Economic dignity in old age should be a promise — not a luxury.
