FreedomWorks Looks Out for Your Retirement Future

Key points

• The media portrays free markets as a force that oppresses.
• Free Markets provide the “little guy” with financial opportunity.
• Submit retirement-related questions here to be answered in future blogs.

A real revelation surfaced in the last couple of weeks – coincidentally at the start of the Biden administration. The stock market experienced some disturbing volatility around activity in a few highly speculative stocks. When the smoke cleared, it seemed a small investor group, ”WallStreetBets,” on a social media platform, Reddit, significantly rattled the positions of some hedge funds, resulting in multi billion dollar losses.

And Surprise! The media discovered there are “little guys” who make money by taking risks and understanding sophisticated trading opportunities. Those “little guys” care about investing – and although much smaller than the financial titans – can be successful at accumulating wealth. As are the tens of billions of patient, long-term equity holders!

The liberal narrative has long been that the “little guy” is continually under attack by Wall Street; can not make any money; does not know about saving, investing; and worse, does not care about profit. So, we have gone from the days of Occupy Wall Street to an army of Davids dominating the Wall Street Goliath. Hurray!

Sadly, what the mainstream media continues to get wrong is patronizing and underestimating everyday people. We are smarter, savvier, and more pragmatic about money than ever before. Our free market powers the private sector to create new technologies in every field – including illuminating paths to more prosperity than ever for those on the road to retirement. The little guy has far greater opportunities and more innovative tools to independently gather information and make investments…as long as bad policies do not detract from potential gains.

Today, there are 8,775 financial technology (Fintech) firms in the U.S., and there are thousands more in Europe and Asia. Fintechs are financial companies that use a range of online, automated technologies to make services more accessible, cheaper, and more efficient for tens of millions of users.

For example, Robinhood, which has recently been in the news, is a trading platform used primarily by millennials that has grown from 1 million subscribers in 2016 to over 13 million users in 2020. As cutting edge and functional as these digital platforms are, they — as well as mainstream news, social media, and Washington’s endless regulatory snake pit — can and will create confusion for the little guy.

So we at FreedomWorks Retirement readiness want to help with clearer answers to questions about your nest egg security. FreedomWorks Foundation does not give financial advisory advice but we can give you policy clarity and insight on how good and bad proposals may impact your essential savings.

We will share your questions along with our responses on a regular basis in future retirement blogs. Whether your concerns involve 401K reforms, Social Security changes or solvency, payroll tax or potential capital gains tax increases, caregiving tax credits, or other areas, we hope to provide guidance by sharing facts and giving you more ability to keep a steady course on your retirement plans.

To submit questions to be answered in future blogs please follow this link: https://www.freedomworks.org/content/retirement-readiness-qa