<prompt> Human: Someone I was talking to made up a good point about 401ks vs pensions. Their main argument against the former is that theyre convoluted, its easy to Lose money if you dont exercise your right to sell or trade stocks, shitty fees, and it also feeds money into an unstable system that essentially means your retirement could be dependent on the success of certain companies, even ones you dont like.I had a nice pension set up from the government but ended up working in the private sector tech industry and kinda want to get back to government work because they take care of their own.I myself am not too knowledgable about 401ks but I dont like the idea of contributing to one because of the reasons stated by my friend who shed some light on some things. What are my options in the mean time? I dont have rent or a mortgage, my home Is paid off for and so is my car but I have no fucking savings or retirement plan. I just save all my money in my checking account because it has a higher interest rate them any savings account or Ira in the country and make a quite a bit in dividends... What are my options? Or am I too paranoid over 401ks? I also have stocks that were given to me and that I inherited and idk what the fuck to do with them...  <response>: Well, my thoughts on your criticisms:- Every 401k plan, in my opinion, was considerably less convoluted than any pension system Ive seen. Again, just my personal opinion.- Its easy to lose money in a pension, too. My wife loses money by getting letters saying weve reduced your benefit. At least with a 401k you can invest in a fund guaranteed to not go down money market, for example.- Some fees are shitty, true. Thats why you should invest in IRAs before 401ks after taking advantage of the match. My fees are 0.05. Sure TSP funds can beat that, but theres no reason to assume pensions do. You dont even know your fees when you have a pension.- Thats true for every investment. Pensions fund managers invest just like mutual fund managers do.What are my options?You can choose to invest or not invest. 401ks IRAs, SEP IRAs, Solo 401ks, TraditionalRoth, pensions, investment accounts, 529s, 403bs, etc all invest in things, and usually a healthy mix of stocks. If a fund youre invested in loses a bunch of money, its not going to matter what type of account you have. And if one or two companies do poorly, who cares? You should be invested in mutual funds anyway, which are funds of funds.If you choose not to invest, then yeah, stick it in an FDIC-backed account and lose money year over year due to inflation, plus what could easily be over a million dollars in potential gains. If youre going that route at least invest in something like I-bonds or TIPS - so you dont lose money to inflation.My point being dont think of it as 401k vs everything else. Its 401k and every other type of investment vs not investing. Pensions are a bit different, so you can split the first side up so its defined benefit vs defined contribution vs not investing, but the main enemy is not investing. I just save all my money in my checking account because it has a higher interest rate them any savings account or Ira in the country and make a quite a bit in dividends... That cant be true - are you sure its a checking account? And it returned more than 13 last year? And over 32 the year before? Those are typical returns on IRAs, not even good ones I picked the SP 500 return, as thats what I happen to be invested in. 