Excerpt: 401(k) plans save employers money because workers fund a portion of them. But a new analysis says 401(k)'s are an inefficient way to finance a secure retirement. The nonprofit National Institute on Retirement Security calculated that a 62-year-old with a final salary of $50,000 would need to have $550,000 in a 401(k) to have an adequate retirement income, determined by the authors to be $26,684 a year. To achieve the same income, a traditional pension would need to have only $355,000 set aside for that worker, nearly $200,000 less.

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