alt Hacker News> 2 years from being able to retire with a pension > [..] > hoping to work there for another 20+ years to earn another pension
I don't understand that... If he was two years from retiring, then he only needed two more years of salaried employment somewhere lese - didn't he ? What country did he live in ?
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MisterBastahrd • 10/02/2024
The US. Your pension, if you get one, is tied to your employer. Most people have 401Ks.
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In the US, pension is short for “defined benefit pension”, most often a provided by a single employer stipulating that you work at that employer for a minimum number of years, and the longer you work at one employer, the greater the benefit.
They only exist at taxpayer funded employers or legacy businesses like oil and gas, but most everyone else has switched to defined contribution pensions, but those are referred to as “401k” or “401b” or some other letter for the appropriate section of the law that specifies the tax benefit of saving for retirement.
The latter are better ever since low cost index funds came about, as you get to skip paying the DB pension administrators and remove agency risk.