Larry Fink’s 2024 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors
Time to rethink retirement When my mom passed away in 2012, my dad started to decline quickly, and my brother and I had to go through my parents’ bills and finances. Both my mom and dad worked great jobs for 50 years, but they were never in the top tax bracket. My mom taught English […]
Larry Fink is Founder, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock Inc. This post is based on Mr. Fink’s annual letter to investors.
Time to rethink retirement
When my mom passed away in 2012, my dad started to decline quickly, and my brother and I had to go through my parents’ bills and finances.
Both my mom and dad worked great jobs for 50 years, but they were never in the top tax bracket. My mom taught English at the local state college (Cal Northridge), and my dad owned a shoe store.
I don’t know exactly how much they made every year, but in today’s dollars, it was probably not more than $150,000 as a couple. So, my brother and I were surprised when we saw the size of our parents’ retirement savings. It was an order of magnitude bigger than you’d expect for a couple making their income. And when we finished going over their estate, we learned why: My parents’ investments.
My dad had always been an enthusiastic investor. He encouraged me to buy my first stock (the DuPont chemical company) as a teenager. My dad invested because he knew that whatever money he put in the bond or stock markets would likely grow faster than in the bank. And he was right.
I went back and did the math. If my parents had $1,000 to invest in 1960, and they put that money in the S&P 500, then by the time they’d reached retirement age in 1990, the $1,000 would be worth nearly $20,000.[1] That’s more than double what they would have earned if they’d just put the money in a bank account. My dad passed away a few months after my mom, in his late 80s. But both my parents could have lived beyond 100 and comfortably afforded it.
Why am I writing about my parents? Because going over their finances showed me something about my own career in finance. I had been working at BlackRock for almost 25 years by the time I lost my mom and dad, but the experience reminded me — in a new and very personal way — why my business partners and I founded BlackRock in the first place.
Obviously, we were ambitious entrepreneurs, and we wanted to build a big, successful company. But we also wanted to help people retire like my parents did. That’s why we started an asset manager — a company that helps people invest in the capital markets — because we believed participating in those markets was going to be crucial for people who wanted to retire comfortably and financially secure.
