Are You Losing the Retirement Gamble? Live Chat

Share:

April 23, 2013

For most Americans, traditional retirement is now a pipe dream. Six in 10 believe they’ll have to delay retirement. Yet, the financial services industry is making billions of dollars a year managing the funds we still have.

What’s going on? And who’s to blame?

In The Retirement Gamble, FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith investigates what happened to retirement in America and the role that financial services companies may be playing in draining your savings, year after year.

Through interviews with Wall Street executives at the helm of the mutual fund industry and former financial advisers who may or may not have their clients’ best interests at heart, Smith traces the remarkable rise of the 401(k)—a product Americans buy without knowing its true cost.

How much, exactly, are Americans paying in fees for their 401(k) accounts — and what are they getting in return? What happened to retirement in America — where did pensions go? And what are some of the biggest misconceptions consumers have about retirement?  What do we need to know?

We’ve asked Martin Smith and producer Marcela Gaviria to join us to take these questions — and answer yours.

We’ll also be joined by leading 401(k) expert Robert Hiltonsmith, a policy analyst at Demos who is interviewed in the film. Our guest questioner is Penny Wang, a writer and editor at Money, where she writes a monthly mutual fund column, Fund Watch.

Next Avenue senior editor Richard Eisenberg will also be dropping by to ask questions and offer commentary.

We’d like to thank Money and Next Avenue for partnering with us on this chat.

You can leave a question in the chat window below, and come by at 2 p.m. ET on Wed., April 24 to join the live discussion.


More Stories

From the Archives: An Iconic Tire Company’s Secret History in Liberia
FRONTLINE and ProPublica's 2014 documentary 'Firestone and the Warlord' is newly available to stream on FRONTLINE's YouTube channel.
March 23, 2023
Federal Reserve Raises Rates as it Juggles Fighting Inflation With a Banking Crisis
The U.S. central bank announced Wednesday it would raise interest rates by a quarter-percent. FRONTLINE’s documentary “Age of Easy Money” offers context on this moment.
March 22, 2023
Where Harvey Weinstein’s Cases, Trials & Convictions Stand Now
The former movie mogul has been tried, convicted and sentenced to nearly four decades in prison on multiple charges in two jurisdictions and faces additional civil lawsuits.
March 21, 2023
Citing War Crimes in Ukraine, International Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Putin
The court alleges there are “reasonable grounds” to believe the Russian president bears “individual criminal responsibility” for the deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
March 17, 2023