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| 3 | | Rick, I have to agree with you on the victim bail out idea. The vast majority of them failed to do their due diligence as always should be done when making such major financial decisions. It was much like the Petters case here in Minnesota. There was a story of a few investors and companies that actually researched Petters, his companies and his personal background and saw plenty of red flags for them to decline getting involved. Apparently most didn’t do that.
As you stated, rule No. 1 to investing for retirement is diversification. Even if you have a pension or 401K at work, you should have outside investments, perhaps in a Roth IRA. And even that should be diversified. Many investment advisors will say you probably should only contribute enough in the 401K to earn the company match because you are usually limited to what the company picks as your investment choices.
That frees you to invest other money in options of your choice.
While I do have sympathy for employees of companies that made the mistake of putting their employee retirement plans in the hands of Madoff, those employees should also have had outside investments they controlled outside of the company plan. What they did is a little like the Enron employees who had all their eggs in company stock.
It is amazing to hear people say “I had my whole retirement with him.” People need to get connected with their own finances and not leave it up to someone you known little about.
(Terry Davis is a Hutchinson Leader staff writer. E-mail him at [email protected].)
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