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You love your dog. Your dog loves you. In the unfortunate event that your dog should outlive you; you may wish to leave money behind to care for him -- a noble sentiment for your four-legged survivor. While you can arrange this though your will and a trust account please don’t try it with the beneficiary form for your 401(k). Rover won’t receive a check for the remaining balance in your account for a variety of reasons, including the fact that he can’t sign the back.

If you’re a participant in a 401(k) plan there’s a better than average chance that you have the option of investing in a stable value fund. There’s an equally likely chance that you don’t know what a stable value fund is.

Members of Congress, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Labor (DOL) have spent the past several years in on-again/off-again discussions regarding fees within 401(k) plans. The upshot of the debate is that requiring employers to document the fees charged against participant accounts might result in reduced costs for participants. How? Apparently all involved are hoping that shame will do the trick as no one is contemplating caps on fees. Employers must be gouging emplo

Is the average American ready for retirement? Between CNBC, Mad Money, Bloomberg, the Fox Business Channel and instant access to a litany of financial publications and websites, it is easy to think that people have all of the tools and resources necessary to be an informed investor. Tools, however, are useful only when preceded by training. Similarly, the ability to access nearly unlimited resources is a wonderful gift but, much like a visit to the main branch of the library, it’s not parti

In your life you have probably met someone who said they couldn’t make an IRA contribution because they made too much money. You may even be that person.

Over the past year a number of large financial institutions have been sued by their own employees for purported fiduciary breaches. The crux of these class action suits, which have been followed closely by the media, is that these large financial firms have nearly every aspect of their own 401(k) plan managed by subsidiaries and affiliates of that same firm. In short: they are managing the plan for the benefit of the firm versus the benefit of their employees. I applaud the sentiment, but the

One of my most common phone calls with a new employee typically goes something like this: “Hello?” “Yes, my name is Bob and I just started at Company ABC. The human resources person told me that you could help me with questions about the 401(k).” “Yes, Bob, that’s right. How can I help?” Big sigh. “I don’t know.” “That’s going to make it tough Bob. Can you give me hint? Do you have the enrollment paperwork?” “Yes. I actually got it several weeks ago but I got frustrated.

Investing mimics life in a number of ways. In particular, neither comes with any sort of guarantee. The same can be said of the various techniques touted to boost enrollment within your 401(k). Each employee population is different and, admittedly, there is no guarantee, but here are some fairly easy ways for you to potentially boost enrollment:

Quick question: can you roll your existing 401(k) balance directly to a Roth IRA? The answer: yes. Well, actually, maybe… The old rules stated that rollovers from traditional qualified plans (a 401(k), for example) could not be rolled directly to a Roth IRA. Instead, rollovers from a 401(k) had to go to a Traditional IRA as the first part of a two-step process.

As the 401(k) industry rapidly approaches its 30th birthday, record keepers and investment houses that offer 401(k) products are feeling the aches and pains of maturity. They’re charging less—at least in the context of 10 or 20 years ago—while offering more by raising the overall service standards of the industry.

Over the years I’ve received a lot of strange looks when I’ve asked people if they’ve considered how their spouse is invested before selecting their investments within the 401(k) plan. “My husband,” one nice lady told me, “does his thing and I do my thing.” Many other people have reiterated variations on this theme from “she won’t tell me” to “he’s already spent every dollar he’s even thought about.”

Retirement is similar to life insurance: it sounds like a good idea but who really wants to sit down and talk about it? It’s confusing; it’s probably expensive; and I, like everyone else, have a million other things taking up my time. I’ll get to it later. Maybe. If you want to have a meaningful impact on your employees your message needs to be simple, and actionable. The numbers also show that the message is best delivered in person, as the utilization of web based guidance products is m

If you have an interest in the retirement years of your employees and are willing to put some time and money around that conviction there are several ways that you can help employees avoid a misstep with the retirement funds they’ve gathered over the years.

We live in a world where both spouses very often work outside the home. It’s not unusual to find that both spouses work for companies that offer 401(k) plans. How does a couple decide which of the two 401(k) plans should receive the lion’s share of the amount they are able to save? Should they ignore one plan altogether and put all of their retirement savings towards the other?

Part II of this article discussed how investment expenses are divided between the fund family that runs the fund and the recordkeeper that provides administrative services when the fund is offered within a 401(k) plan. We also discussed the fact that sharing revenue is often a requirement if a fund is going to appear in a 401(k) menu. Those funds that refuse to share revenue with the recordkeeper face an uphill battle as overall expenses for the employer, and the participants, may increase if th

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume I participate in Employer XYZ’s 401(k) Plan through Recordkeeper EFG. I pay no fees for the account (at least that I see on the statement), and am delighted by the fact that Bond Fund Class A (the same fund I use in my personal IRA) is also one of the options available under the 401(k) Plan. Unlike when I purchase Bond Fund Class A in my personal account, I pay no upfront fees/commissions when I purchase Bond Fund Class A in my 401(k) with my salar

Let’s say that I own a particular mutual fund in an IRA or brokerage account. We’ll call this fund “Bond Fund Class A”. I have owned Bond Fund Class A for a number of years and, while I paid a sales charge on my initial investment, I now pay roughly 1% a year in operating expenses. Bond Fund Class A nets a portion of this charge from the net assets of the fund (on a daily basis), and everyone who owns the fund pays this fee.

You wake up and turn on the television wanting entertainment but instead hear a variety of dire news regarding the health of the economy, the housing market and, of course, the stock market. If you are lucky, this segment will be cut short with an update on Britney Spears and/or her estranged children.

Congress and the retirement plan industry are betting that greed will win out over increased expense – they’re wrong. Word quickly spread in October of 2007 that the final piece needed to make 401(k)s the perfect solution for American workers was in place. In case you missed it, salvation came in the form of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) final regulations regarding approved default investments.

What if your assumption is that your employees won’t attend workshops and that individual help with statements and goals won’t inspire them to increase their deferral rates? It may well be that inertia has been ordained as the king of your employee population. Congress, via the Pension Protection Act (PPA) of 2006, has now given you the tools to "auto everything": enrollment, investment selection, automatic increases in deferral rates, etc.