Ew
Notice how the lady puts on some speed to get up those steps, and out of the line of fire.
Those are deep
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) May 28, 2026
Told ya pic.twitter.com/ZDlI8T0BfR
May 28, 2026
All Together Now
More Slippage
More workers are raiding their 401(k)s as average balances fall, Fidelity says
Key Points
- Retirement balances fell in the first quarter of 2026 amid severe market volatility sparked by the Iran war, according to a new report by Fidelity.
- At the same time, more savers tapped their accounts for cash out of financial necessity.
- Most financial experts advise against raiding a 401(k) since you’ll be forfeiting the power of compound interest.
Financial pressures pushed more savers to tap their retirement accounts in the first part of 2026, new data shows — potentially locking in losses during the early weeks of the Iran war.
Amid severe market volatility earlier this year, the average 401(k) balance fell by 4% to $141,000, according to first-quarter data released Thursday from Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest provider of 401(k) savings plans.
The average individual retirement account balance was also down 4% to $131,380 in the first quarter, Fidelity found.
The drop was due to the outbreak of the Iran war, which sparked a stock selloff, according to Kirsten Hunter Peterson, vice president of workplace thought leadership at Fidelity Investments. “Luckily, a couple of months later, we are trending in a much better direction,” she said, referring to recent market highs.
After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the S&P 500 lost 5.1% in March for its worst monthly performance since 2022. The Dow dropped 5.4%, snapping a 10-month winning streak. The Nasdaq declined 4.8%.
Markets have since rebounded from earlier losses. As of Wednesday’s close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up roughly 5.3% year to date, while the S&P 500 rose nearly 10% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 14.8%.
More workers are pulling money from their 401(k)s
However, more savers also tapped their accounts to free up cash during this time, which experts say is a sign of underlying financial strain.
The share of workers with an outstanding loan at the end of the first quarter of 2026 was 19.2%, up slightly from 18.8% a year earlier, according to Fidelity. About 2.4% of workers took out a new loan from their 401(k) in the first quarter, up from 2.3% in 2025.
The share of workers taking a hardship withdrawal, which is broken out separately, also rose year over year to 2.5% from 2.3%, Fidelity found. A hardship withdrawal can be taken from a retirement plan without paying an early withdrawal penalty for an “immediate and heavy financial need,” according to the IRS.
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Many households have struggled in the face of rising prices for necessities like groceries and gas due to the Iran war. As a result, consumers have had less room in their budgets to cover an unexpected expense or emergency, experts say.
In most cases, workers take hardship withdrawals for less than $2,000, Fidelity’s Hunter Peterson said, which is “not so significant.” But some are taking more than one hardship withdrawal in a year, which indicates a more precarious financial position. “Those are the type of savers we want to monitor,” Hunter Peterson said.
A 401(k) hardship withdrawal should be a last resort, according to certified financial planner Douglas Boneparth, president and founder of Bone Fide Wealth, a wealth management firm in New York City. Early withdrawals may trigger taxes and a 10% penalty, but “the long-term compounding loss is even larger,” he said.
Why 401(k) hardship withdrawals are on the rise
“The 401(k)-withdrawal trend … reflects broader pressure across household finances as inflation and elevated living costs continue squeezing consumers,” said Boneparth, a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.
Plus, pulling money out during a market downturn makes it harder to recoup losses in the long run, financial advisors also say.
The households best positioned to weather sudden affordability challenges are the ones with even a modest emergency cushion, Boneparth said. If monthly cash flow is tight, redirect a small amount — such as $25 to $50 a month — into a high-yield savings account as a buffer before cutting retirement contributions, he said.
Meanwhile, the majority of retirement savers continued to contribute during the first quarter, helped by features like auto-escalation, which automatically raises a worker’s savings rate each year, often by a percentage point at a time, Fidelity said.
The average 401(k) contribution rate, including employer and employee contributions, edged up to 14.4%, a record high and just shy of Fidelity’s suggested savings rate of 15%.
“While it can be tempting to make changes to retirement savings during market volatility, it is positive to see participants stay the course with their contributions — an approach that will ultimately strengthen outcomes as retirement nears,” Sharon Brovelli, president of Fidelity’s workplace investing, said in a statement.
Slipping
We're out here gettin' fucked with our pants on, while corporate parasites are pulling down some nice fat profits.
And no, it's not just that simple, but ask yourself - when was the last time you got a 17% raise?
The economy grew at a 1.6% annual rate in the quarter, down from the initial reported pace of 2%
The U.S. economy grew more slowly during the first three months of the year, updated government data showed Thursday.
Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the U.S., rose at a 1.6% seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate in January through March, the Commerce Department said Thursday.
The department previously estimated first-quarter GDP rose at a 2% rate. And economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected the pace to stay at 2%.
The downgrade to the GDP reading was largely due to a lower estimate for inventory investment, a volatile category that is often subject to large revisions.
Even so, consumer spending on services like healthcare was revised lower for the quarter. Overall consumer spending rose at a 1.4% rate, compared with a previous estimate for 1.6%.
A key measure of U.S. business earnings, profits after tax without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments, increased 3.3% from the prior quarter and was up 17% from a year ago. That was the largest year-over-year change in corporate profits since the final quarter of 2021.
May 27, 2026
Aaron Parnas
If corporations are people, then they can't own other corporations.
13th Amendment, bitches.
It's Not Getting Better
Momentary "relief" is not what it seems.
It'll get better after it gets a whole lot worse. We've prob'ly got another year or two of what could be some really bad shit.
The battlefield is still not about missiles and bombs.
Time For A Re-Work?
I think the founders were counting on honorable people, acting in good faith, to keep this little experiment going.
And maybe that turns out to be a fatal flaw, but holding each other to even loosely defined standards of decency, and honesty, and ethical behavior worked reasonably well for a coupla hundred years - certainly not for everybody, but for a lot of us anyway.
Madison and Hamilton worried out loud that what they were putting in place could be used as a guide book for exactly the kind of shitty maneuvers we've been seeing for over 50 years.
We have a metric fuck ton of hard work to do if we're going to get this thing back on the tracks and chuggin' along again.
But Wait There's More
As Americans confront a surge in prices at the pump, another inflation wave is headed for the grocery store.
The hit to US household finances from higher grocery bills is set to intensify just ahead of the November midterm elections, amplifying affordability as a defining issue. And to a greater extent than the surge in gas prices, the slower-moving food shock will be difficult to reverse quickly because the size of autumn harvests is determined by planting decisions made in the spring.
“It’s going to be a challenging year,” said Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University who previously worked at the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. “Food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it.”
The latest USDA food price outlook, published Friday, projected a 3.2% advance in grocery prices this year, while Volpe said he expects inflation more on the order of 4% to 4.5%.
James Giese of Madison, Wisconsin said he lives on his own but is making adjustments with rising grocery prices like cutting back on prepared foods and meat. Giese, 62, is even trying to grow potatoes in his backyard to supplement his food budget.
“I’m very concerned,” he said. “I’m probably considered middle-income, but it’s starting to pinch.”
Outsize price increases so far in 2026 have reflected a mix of bad luck, trade policy and slower-moving pressures linked to climate change. The weather in particular has not been kind to American farmers, who have endured outbursts of record-breaking heat, historic cold, ping-pong size hail and wildfires.
The US saw its warmest-ever start to the year, with temperatures running about 6F (3C) above average through the end of April, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. The early heat prompted some domestic crops to begin blossoming weeks ahead of schedule instead of remaining dormant throughout the winter, leaving them exposed to subsequent frosts, according to Brad Rippey, a USDA meteorologist.
Beef prices, among the most politically sensitive in the US, rose to a record in April thanks to the smallest cattle herd in 75 years, squeezed by drought and high production costs.
Tomato prices, meanwhile, surged 33% over the last two months after two winter storms brought widespread damage during the peak of the growing season in Florida — while shipments from Mexico were declining following the Trump administration’s imposition of duties on imports.
Heat and drought in the western and central US spell more pressures to come. California accounts for almost half of annual US vegetable and three-quarters of fruit and nut cash receipts, and diminished snowpack in the Sierra Nevada this year — to just 23% of typical levels as of mid-April — has raised concerns about irrigation supplies.
Drought has also spread across the nation’s breadbasket, where staple wheat crops that are typically used to make all-purpose flour or pasta have withered for lack of rain. As of May 19, 70% of US winter wheat production was in areas of drought, along with 25% of corn production, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
And forecasters now say an El Niño weather pattern is likely to emerge by August, with rising odds of an unusually powerful event that will persist into 2027 and push global average temperatures higher. El Niño can often steer extra rain to California, but it’s also been known to fuel drought outside the US in major growing areas for rice, coffee, cocoa and more.
Then there’s the war, which has brought a massive shock to global fertilizer markets due to the Middle East’s role as a major supplier of inputs.
Prices of fertilizer are up 20% since the war began, according to a Green Markets index for North America. That will likely mean higher prices come harvest time, and if farmers decide to scale back applications, that would also leave crops less able to withstand heat, drought or flooding.
The higher cost of fuel itself will also find its way into prices on store shelves as farmers and carriers pay up for diesel to power tractors and trucks, and petroleum-based plastic packaging becomes more expensive.
Major grocery chains have been trying to hold the line on pricing. Kroger Co.’s chief executive officer said it’s planning a price-cutting push to compete more fiercely with Walmart Inc., which has expanded its efforts to keep prices low over the last year.
Consumers are already worn out because prices have continued to climb even though the rate of food inflation has come down, said Andrew Harig, a vice president with the trade group FMI, the Food Industry Association.
At the same time, household debt is rising, the personal saving rate is falling, and real average hourly earnings fell in the 12 months through April for the first time in three years. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published data Wednesday indicating a “meaningful” increase in measures of food insecurity between October 2025 and February 2026.
“Lots of people, I think, still look at their pre-Covid grocery bill in 2019, early 2020 and say, ‘Wow, I’m paying significantly more,’” Harig said. “And so they’re feeling that stretch.”
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