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Thanks to MaxedOutMama for the link to this article:
House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(k) Tax Breaks. Which means either taxing contributions, or interest and dividends. Also, there’s a little proposal mentioned about making retirement contributions into a government-administered account mandatory. Never mind if you want to focus on paying off debt first, or want to choose where to invest your own money.

Well, they can just keep their grubby little paws off our retirement money!! My generation already, as one factoid put it, puts more belief in the existence of UFOs than it does in the possibility of ever receiving Social Security benefits.

Hopefully public outrage will make them keep their hands in their own pockets. But it’s a troubling sign, one of the economic danger signs pointed out in Larry Burkett’s The Coming Financial Earthquake. So far his predictions as far as timing have been much too pessimistic, but I think that many of them are going to come true in the long run.

Anyway, I want to invest more in: a. God’s kingdom, through giving to ministries that spread the Gospel and help the poor, b. the knowledge and skills that I carry in my head (*–see below), and c. tools to achieve a higher level of self-sufficiency. For example, a good clothesline or even a wooden drying rack would pay for itself within a few weeks. (We’re in an apartment, so we’re stuck with the latter.) Also, we’re not planning to ever fully retire; MFH’s grandfather was still working well into his eighties, even from the hospital until just before he died.

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*This is completely an aside, but the local library has signs prominently posted at the entrance: “No dangerous weapons allowed in the library”. And I always smirk on my way in, because there I go carrying a working brain right past the signs, and there’s nothing they can do about it.