Your Survival Guy wants you to pay attention to what’s happening with your retirement accounts, namely IRAs and 401(k)s. And you may want to share my thoughts with someone you care about before it’s too late.

As you may know, I’ve been writing to you recently about how major firms, including, surprisingly or not surprisingly, the Vanguard Group and Wellington Management, that are teaming up with private equity behemoth Blackstone to stuff IRAs and 401(k)s with non-publicly traded assets.

In an excellent piece by financial columnist Jason Zweig in The WSJ titled, “The Ivy League Keeps Failing This Basic Investing Test: Elite universities are again stuck with illiquid assets just when they badly need cash,” the so called smart money is looking for an exit from private investments or alternatives just as this stuff is being offered to Mom and Pop and young savers.

Taking a trip down memory lane, during the market crash of 2008-2009, endowments were selling stocks at the worst time just to meet costs. The same rush for liquidity is happening today, in a major bull market, with endowments offering to sell non-publicly traded assets at a discount. Imagine how this will look in a bear market? And they want to sell to Mom and Pop, and young savers right now? No, thank you.

Action Line: The allure of outsized returns was too tempting, especially so for the so-called “smart money.” And they paid the price, but are still loaded up with this crap, with two-thirds of their endowments in these non-liquid assets. Let your loved ones know, or have them email me at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com to review this ticking time bomb.

Read more in my series: Private Equity Is the Next Big Thing Coming for YOU

Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.