401k is up to yourself to decide what you like to distribute every month. there are limitations, you have to start to distribute at certain age and etc.

4000 a month is not enough. For preparation, i would recommend you to completely give up any hope for get money from ss and medicare. so basically if you pay off your mortgage already, then what you will need is:

basic food + utility + property tax + house maintainence + some travel + long term care expense (when you are much older) + helath care expenses.

I say for a couple, they will probably need 3000 - 4000 to begin with (no mortgage), and increase that amount annually 10% the least. for our generation, it will be much harder te retire if you do not want to burden your children.

我是个比较喜欢argue 的人， 请你不要介意。

反对声浪太大只能说明目前抵抗势力稍稍强大一点，不足以说明问题不严重

而且你要看 反对的是什么人， 支持的是什么人。反对的大部份是年纪大的， 退休的和接近退休的， 因为直接损伤他们的利益， 而且他们是选举投票中最主要的， 为什么民主党那么大声的反对ss私有帐户， 很大程度上市为了拉选票

年轻人大部分是支持的， 我希望完全私有话， 这样我可以自己manage, 政府ss的投资是及其没有效率和回报的， 因为不是他们的money, they will not care how much return they got from investment.

ss 必然破产， 因为它建立在一个flaw 的assumption 上， 这个假设在ss设立之初， make perfect sense, not any more. 学science 的知道， 很多理论都是建立在假设之上的， 假设不成立的化， 这个理论就完全错了。 从以前的退休金计划， 到现在的ss， 其实我们在重复自己的错误。

medicare, neither republican or demacrat will even tough it! it is the biggest problem I can forsee..

global warming I am completely with you on that.

however, for ss and medicare etc, my understanding is on the opposite side. because it is in deep trouble, that's why it can not be easily fixed or can not even be touched because so many resistances. 

SS based on the assumption that, people have 20(have to check the number, but something like that) after retirement, and more people enter labor force than people retire. it's basically a pyramid system. none of those assumptions holds any more. highly industrilize makes people have less babies, and with modern science, people live much longer now. so we basically have something that doomed to collapse sometime in the future. How can we fix it? force people for have more babies, or prolong the working time of individual. retire after 70 maybe.

remember there used to be pensions? it didn't work any more, so ss was created. ss will not work at some point, government will create something else, well 401k is sort of something that created to deal with retirement problem, isn't it?

and btw, i strongly disagree with u on the "However democratic party, as the representative of poor people". politicians just want to be re-elected. whichever side they see fit.

you know, i am not sure why rich people have to sacrifice and be punished? I personally think that is so wrong.

they are the ones created jobs, paid lots of taxes directly and indirectly. Many of them are the pioneers in lots of field, many of them invested in fields when nobody dared to and thus created the foundations of many things.

I like businesses, I do not like government. In company strategy, we often need to downsize, lay off, but have you really see a significant government downsize? do u know in real life, when u deliver a government project ahead of time and below the budget, you will never get the project again? government is the least efficient machine i've ever seen. that;s why we have the current ss issue and have not solved it. If a company has similar issue, it bankrupted long ago or it has long ago solved it. 

it's the mentality that thinking being poor is because of the rich, and this is so harmful. The mentality that thinks society and government should take care of you is very dangerous.

aside from some disability or health issue, being poor and rely on ss and medicare and think there is nothing wrong to think like that is a mental disease.

democrat, or republican, if you look at their history, republican's philosophy was more like democrat today (not strictly speaking). so parties change their policies often.  

保有希望没什么问题， 但是依据它来计划退休就有可能会失望了。

我现在计划退休是完全排除了ss 和 medicare. 任务艰巨啊