Investor Education

Here’s How to Become a 401(k) Millionaire

Published

4 years ago

October 24, 2018

Jeff Desjardins

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

How to Become a 401(k) Millionaire

Here’s How to Become a 401(k) Millionaire

There’s nothing more definitive in the journey to financial freedom than hitting the $1 million mark in retirement savings.

A nest egg like that is a near-guarantee that you could surmount any curveball the world throws at you, whether it is an unexpected family emergency or anything else.

While $1 million certainly sounds like a lofty milestone to many, it’s actually quite a common achievement:

Millionaire households in the U.S.: 11.3 million (8.95%)
Total households in the U.S.: 126.2 million

And contrary to popular belief, to become a 401(k) millionaire, you don’t need to strike it rich with a lucky stock pick, or use a crystal ball to forecast the future of the market.

Your best bet is to simply focus only on the factors you can control.

What You Can Control

Today’s infographic is from Tony Robbins, and it covers key points from his #1 Best Selling book Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook, which is now available on paperback.

It shows that the biggest winners in the financial game know that they can’t predict the future, and instead titans like Warren Buffett or Jack Bogle focus intently on the factors they can control, knowing that with the right approach they’ll thrive in almost any market.

What are these crucial factors?

Factor	Description
Time	The force of compound interest is more powerful over longer periods of time.
Discipline	Staying calm and focused on the long term during periods of turmoil is key.
Diversification	Proper asset allocation and frequent re-balancing can position you to weather any storm.
Expenses	Expenses and taxes are silent killers, and must be minimized strategically.

By diligently working to take control of these four factors, your odds of attaining financial freedom are extremely high. Here is each factor in more depth.

1. Time

The power of compound interest is extraordinary, making time your best friend when it comes to building a battle chest of retirement savings.

The current maximum contribution limit for 401(k)s is $18,500 per year, not including what is matched by your employer. If you maxed out on contributions and started investing early, you can hit $1 million before retirement even in sub-optimal market conditions:

Starting age	Required returns for $1 million at age 65
30	2.20%
35	3.45%
40	5.40%
45	8.55%
50	14.50%

Time can make up for a lack of investing acumen. Wait until later, and things get very difficult – by age 50, you need market beating returns!

2. Discipline

If you’re taking advantage of the power of compound interest over a long period of time, whether that is 20, 30, or 40 years, it is inevitable that there will be bumps in the road:

Stock market corrections happen once a year, on average
Bear markets happen once in every 3-5 years, on average
Bear markets vary in length, but on average last one year

Through decades of investing, the fact is you are going to see bear markets – it is how you handle them that counts.

Even when it’s the most tempting to sell, remember these facts:

Bear markets become bull markets
The first 12 months of a new bull market can see crucial market gains
Nobody can successfully time the market – not even the experts

In other words, having the discipline to hold through the turbulence can be the difference maker – and a key factor you can control in your journey to becoming a 401(k) millionaire.

3. Diversification

Another factor you control is portfolio diversification, and here are four ways diversification can minimize risk:

Diversification Technique	Examples
Assets	Stocks, bonds, and alternative assets like real estate or gold.
Sectors	Consumer goods, tech, energy, financials, etc.
Markets	Domestic, international, emerging markets
Time	Add to investments regularly, because there is never a “right” time to buy

A properly designed portfolio can weather any storm, and re-balancing it on a regular basis will force you to sell assets at market highs, while buying at low points.

4. Expenses

The fees on your 401(k) statement might not seem like much, but even 1% or 2% can make a big difference over the long term.

For example: the value of $1 compounding for 50 years at 5% will be worth $11.50, but if it averages 7% it will be worth $29.50. That’s almost three times more!

Expenses, both seen and hidden, can be a silent killer any portfolio, so keeping them to a necessary minimum can help you get to the promised land.

A Final Word

If becoming a 401(k) millionaire was easy, everyone could do it.

But to be successful, you need to take control over factors like time, diversification, discipline, and costs – ideally with a qualified and experienced financial advisor and partner. Then, you need to stick to the plan and let the market do its work.

Investing is a game of inches. If your returns improve by, say, 2 or 3 percentage points a year, the cumulative impact over decades is astounding, thanks to the power of compounding.

– Tony Robbins

Related Topics:investing money wealth retirement millionaire 401(k)

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Technology

Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity

Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. Here’s what investors need to know about the future of cybersecurity.

Written By

Marcus Lu

Graphics & Design

Sam Parker

Published August 11, 2022 • Updated August 30, 2022 •

Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity

In 2020, the global cost of cybercrime was estimated to be around $945 billion, according to McAfee.

It’s likely even higher today, as multiple sources have recorded an increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks during the pandemic.

In this infographic from Global X ETFs, we highlight three major trends that are shaping the future of the cybersecurity industry that investors need to know.

Trend 1: Increasing Costs

Research from IBM determined that the average data breach cost businesses $4.2 million in 2021, up from $3.6 million in 2017. The following table breaks this figure into four components:

Cost Component	Value ($)
Cost of lost business	$1.6M
Detection and escalation	$1.2M
Post breach response	$1.1M
Notification	$0.3M
Total	$4.2M

The greatest cost of a data breach is lost business, which results from system downtimes, reputational losses, and lost customers. Second is detection and escalation, including investigative activities, audit services, and communications to stakeholders.

Post breach response includes costs such as legal expenditures, issuing new accounts or credit cards (in the case of financial institutions), and other monitoring services. Lastly, notification refers to the cost of notifying regulators, stakeholders, and other third parties.

To stay ahead of these rising costs, businesses are placing more emphasis on cybersecurity. For example, Microsoft announced in September 2021 that it would quadruple its cybersecurity investments to $20 billion over the next five years.

Trend 2: Remote Work Opens New Vulnerabilities

According to IBM, companies that rely more on remote work experience greater losses from data breaches. For companies where 81 to 100% of employees were remote, the average cost of a data breach was $5.5 million (2021). This dropped to $3.7 million for companies that had under 10% of employees working from home.

A major reason for this gap is that work-from-home setups are typically less secure. Phishing attacks surged in 2021, taking advantage of the fact that many employees access corporate systems through their personal devices.

Type of Attack	Number of attacks in 2020	Number of attacks in 2021	Growth (%)
Spam phishing	1.5M	10.1M	+573%
Credential phishing	5.5M	6.2M	+13%

As detected by Trend Micro’s Cloud App Security.

Spam phishing refers to “fake” emails that trick users by impersonating company management. They can include malicious links that download ransomware onto the users device. Credential phishing is similar in concept, though the goal is to steal a person’s account credentials.

A tactic you may have seen before is the Amazon scam, where senders impersonate Amazon and convince users to update their payment methods. This strategy could also be used to gain access to a company’s internal systems.

Trend 3: AI Can Reduce the Cost of a Data Breach

AI-based cybersecurity can detect and respond to cyberattacks without any human intervention. When fully deployed, IBM measured a 20% reduction in the time it takes to identify and contain a breach. It also resulted in cost savings upwards of 60%.

A prominent user of AI-based cybersecurity is Google, which uses machine learning to detect phishing attacks within Gmail.

Machine learning helps Gmail block spam and phishing messages from showing up in your inbox with over 99.9% accuracy. This is huge, given that 50-70% of messages that Gmail receives are spam.
– Andy Wen, Google

As cybercrime escalates, Acumen Research and Consulting believes the market for AI-based security solutions will reach $134 billion by 2030, up from $15 billion in 2021.

Introducing the Global X Cybersecurity ETF

The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (Ticker: BUG) seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Indxx Cybersecurity Index. See below for industry and country-level breakdowns, as of June 2022.

Sector (By security type)	Weight
Cloud	28.0%
Network	25.1%
Identity	17.7%
Internet	15.0%
Endpoint	12.8%

Country	Weight
🇺🇸 U.S.	71.6%
🇮🇱 Israel	13.2%
🇬🇧 UK	8.2%
🇯🇵 Japan	5.5%
🇰🇷 South Korea	0.9%
🇨🇦 Canada	0.6%

Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.

Investors can use this passively managed solution to gain exposure to the rising adoption of cybersecurity technologies.

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Investor Education

Countries with the Highest Default Risk in 2022

In this infographic, we examine new data that ranks the top 25 countries by their default risk.

Published

5 months ago

July 13, 2022

Marcus Lu

Countries with the Highest Default Risk in 2022

In May 2022, the South Asian nation of Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt for the first time. The country’s government was given a 30-day grace period to cover $78 million in unpaid interest, but ultimately failed to pay.

Not only does this impact Sri Lanka’s economic future, but it also raises an important question: which other countries are at risk of default?

To find out, we’ve used data from Bloomberg to rank the countries with the highest default risk.

The Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking

Bloomberg’s Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking is a composite measure of a country’s default risk. It’s based on four underlying metrics:

Government bond yields (the weighted-average yield of the country’s dollar bonds)
5-year credit default swap (CDS) spread
Interest expense as a percentage of GDP
Government debt as a percentage of GDP

To better understand this ranking, let’s focus on Ukraine and El Salvador as examples.

Country	Rank	Government Bond Yield (%)	5Y CDS Spread	Interest Expense (% of GDP)	Government Debt (% of GDP)
🇸🇻 El Salvador	1	31.8%	3,376 bps (33.76%)	4.9%	82.6%
🇺🇦 Ukraine	8	60.4%	10,856 bps (100.85%)	2.9%	49%

1 basis point (bps) = 0.01%

Why are Ukraine’s Bond Yields so High?

Ukraine has high default risk due to its ongoing conflict with Russia. To understand why, consider a scenario where Russia was to assume control of the country. If this happened, it’s possible that Ukraine’s existing debt obligations will never be repaid.

That scenario has prompted a sell-off of Ukrainian government bonds, pushing their value down to nearly 30 cents on the dollar. This means that a bond with face value of $100 could be purchased for $30.

Because yields move in the opposite direction of price, the average yield on these bonds has climbed to a very high 60.4%. As a point of comparison, the yield on a U.S. 10-year government bond is currently 2.9%.

What is a CDS Spread?

Credit default swaps (CDS) are a type of derivative (financial contract) that provides a lender with insurance in the event of a default. The seller of the CDS represents a third party between the lender (investors) and borrower (in this case, governments).

In exchange for receiving coverage, the buyer of a CDS pays a fee known as the spread, which is expressed in basis points (bps). If a CDS has a spread of 300 bps (3%), this means that to insure $100 in debt, the investor must pay $3 per year.

Applying this to Ukraine’s 5-year CDS spread of 10,856 bps (108.56%), an investor would need to pay $108.56 each year to insure $100 in debt. This suggests that the market has very little faith in Ukraine’s ability to avoid default.

Why is El Salvador Ranked Higher?

Despite having lower values in the two metrics discussed above, El Salvador ranks higher than Ukraine because of its larger interest expense and total government debt.

According to the data above, El Salvador has annual interest payments equal to 4.9% of its GDP, which is relatively high. Comparing to the U.S. once more, America’s federal interest costs amounted to 1.6% of GDP in 2020.

When totaled, El Salvador’s outstanding debts are equal to 82.6% of GDP. This is considered high by historical standards, but today it’s actually quite normal.

The next date to watch will be January 2023, as this is when the country’s $800 million sovereign bond reaches maturity. Recent research suggests that if El Salvador were to default, it would experience significant, yet temporary, negative effects.

Another Hot Topic for El Salvador: Bitcoin

In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. This means that Bitcoin is recognized by law as a means to settle debts and other obligations.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) criticized this decision in early 2022, urging the country to revoke legal tender status. In hindsight, these warnings were wise, as Bitcoin’s value has fallen by 56% year-to-date.

While this isn’t directly related to El Salvador’s default risk, it does open potential avenues for relief. For instance, large players in the crypto space may be willing to assist the government to keep the concept of “nation-state bitcoin adoption” alive.