Opening the Fed TSP to everyone would be a decent idea right? Very low fees and more people could only decrease those fees due to volume.
It would be a decent idea, but I'm not sure it would solve the whole problem. I feel like I remember Nords and other military mustachians talking about how the TSP is great, but many soldiers fail to participate in it to the extent they should.
I'd be interested to see a comparison of retirement outcomes among people with 401Ks vs. outcomes among people with TSPs, to see if the failure rate is actually any better.
My biggest problem with 401Ks is that almost everyone is expected to get retirement income from them now, but there isn't much education in our school system regarding something so important.
I don't know why people say schools don't teach this stuff.
I have specific memories of my high school algebra teacher making us repeat, "I want a simple interest, no pre-payment penalty loan" over and over and over. And I remember thinking, "This is important to remember." I specifically remember playing a several-week long game dealing with stocks; I remember I lost big and thought, "Uh-oh, I'd better do better when it's real."
I did a similar stock-trading game back in high school, except in my case it happened in my AP microeconomics class. (Actually, I might have done it a couple of times -- there might have been exercises like that in my gifted class in middle school or something.)
However, I strongly suspect that such a thing is
not part of the curriculum for non-gifted kids, at least in the school system I attended. They're so busy trying to "
teach to the test" that they probably don't have time for "extras" like that.