Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 9/4/26

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Jim Cramer (1:02)

My mission is simple, to make you money.

I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a boom market somewhere, and I promise to help you find it.

Hey, I'm Cramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Cramerica. My friends, I'm just trying to help you make some money. My job is not just to entertain, but to teach you. So call me at 1-800-743-CMBC or tweet me at Jim Cramer. There is a gaping hole in the American education system, although I hesitate even to call it a system. When you go to high school, they teach you chemistry, they teach you geometry, they teach you physics. You have English classes, history classes, foreign language classes. You can graduate from college speaking three languages with a deep understanding of quantum physics or ancient philosophy.

But you know the one thing they almost never teach you in middle school or high school to say nothing of college? Financial literacy. And I'm not talking about economics here. You could be an econ major and still learn nothing about financial planning or retirement readiness, let alone investing. Money is just not talked about. Frankly, it's become the third rail of American education. You're a thousand times more likely to read Marx's Das Kapital than to read anything about planning a budget or certainly picking stocks. And that's why I want a constant mission to teach you how to manage your money, which is what we do every day in the CBC Investing Club, with the Childhood Trust providing a constant source of examples. And when it comes to managing your money, nothing is more important than retirement. Sooner or later, you're going to stop working, hopefully sooner rather than later, unless you really love your job. So I'm betting most of you, even if you don't own individual stocks, still have some money in a 401k plan. Now decades ago, corporate pension started going the way of the dodo, and now the 401k is the main way that Americans save for retirement. They're offered by your employer, and they're among the greatest tax-deferred investment vehicles out there. Along with the IRA, and I'm not talking about the Irish Republican Army, I'm not even talking about the Inflation Reduction Act for that matter. I mean the individual retirement cap. For those of you who are about to change the channel because the whole idea of saving for retirement puts you to sleep, hear me out, darn it! You need to know this stuff. Your future self will thank you for getting your retirement funds in order. And while you may think you know everything you need to know about these tax-favorite accounts, the truth is, there's a lot the so-called experts don't tell you or don't want you to know.

For example, the conventional wisdom says that you absolutely must invest in your 401K. You'd have to be a fool not to contribute. Many experts will even advise you to max out of your 401K contributions every year if you get a fortune. Right now, the maximum contribution is over 20 grand, with room for an additional 7 grand if you're over 50 But it tends to rise gradually over time, usually a little faster than inflation. Now, in 2004, it was $13,000. By 2023, it was $22,500. Either way, serious chunk of change, even with these contributions coming from your pre-tax income.

However, sometimes I think it could be the wrong approach. I'm not going to sing the praises of the noble 401k planner, tell you it's the key to your financial salvation, because 401k plans could be a real mixed bag. Sure, they have a couple of really great features, but they also have a lot of bad ones. And those problematic features will eat away at your returns.