A speaker who lived through the 2008 financial crisis watched retirement accounts drop to 60-70% of their value. Real estate entrepreneurs told him they skip IRAs and 401(k)s entirely, building wealth through property and businesses instead.
I lived through the great financial crisis, and I saw in 2007, 2008, a lot of Americans, their retirement portfolios, I'm not going to say were completely wiped out, but especially those that were setting themselves up for near retirement or were actually in retirement, where they had to take draws from their retirement accounts when those plans were at 60, 70% value of where they were at prior to the great financial crisis. The founders of this company that I was working for that were in the real estate business, I started asking them question, you know, why don't you have IRAs or 401ks or other retirement plans? And they said, well, John, we don't have those types of accounts because we don't believe in the stock market. We believe in real estate as a wealth creation tool. We believe in investing in businesses, starting businesses. That's all they had ever done.
Physicians and High Earners — What Real Estate Can and Can't Do for Your Taxes
