Your 401k: The Danger Within

Does your 401(k) plan offer the investment options and features that are best suited to provide you with a secure retirement income? The danger that may lurk within your plan is that available options are imprudent and that you are paying excessive expenses that eat away at investment earnings. This guide brings a novel approach to help you answer that question. Employers have many responsibilities to meet before employees enroll in a 401(k) plan and many of these continue throughout the life of the plan. As a participant, you generally see only the results of your employer's decisions. The process your employer undertakes in making those decisions is rarely described. Yet if the employer's process was more transparent, you would have better tools to evaluate your plan and available investment options, building more confidence in the process. On the other hand, if you saw opportunities for improvement in the plan, you could bring these to your employer's attention. Within this guide, you will follow the prudent steps that your employer should take in managing a 401(k) plan's investment process, with easy questions to ask your employer if any of these matters are unclear to you or seems amiss. The foregoing matters are described in Part One of this guide. In Part Two, you will learn the basics of financial and retirement planning. Of necessity, this includes discussion of some of the material found in Part One, in case a reader should skip to Part Two first. In addition, because this guide may find its way into the hands of employers, there is a Message to Employers at the end of the guide, to explain the relevance of this guide to employers' fiduciary responsibilities. Finally, while the guide refers to 401(k) plans, it applies equally to work-place 403(b) plans