Post tagged with retirement

  • Employees Still Taking Huge Risks with Their 401(k)s

    August 19th, 201011:59 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    We've been writing for years about the huge risk employees take with their 401(k) savings when they invest a large portion in the company stock of their employer. And while the trends have improved over the years, this new Forbes report indicates a whole lot of employees have yet to get the message. For example, when we last wrote about this ...

  • Making progress by dollar-cost-averaging

    March 08th, 201008:59 AM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    Lots of number crunching has been going on since early January, as fund companies and related organizations compile data for the decade just ended. (SMI is no different: you can find our recently released 2000-2009 performance data here.) Fidelity, the top provider of employer-based retirement plans, has completed an analysis of the 10-year ex...

  • Good news for workers

    October 28th, 200909:46 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    There's been precious little good news for American workers over the past two years, but that may be slowly starting to change. Here's a good sign that things may be turning the corner a bit for some American companies. Last April, we noted that at least 200 companies had either reduced or suspended matching contributions to their 401k plans. The ...

  • Lobbying for more options in your 401(k)

    October 05th, 200910:39 AM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    "My company retirement plan has a lousy set of fund offerings. How do I convince my employer to offer more (and better) options?" One of our readers e-mailed with this question recently. Since there are likely to be other readers in similar situations, I've decided to publish my response to him here on the Editor's Weblog: The best possible...

  • The next bailout

    August 24th, 200908:29 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    Fortune's senior editor at large, Allan Sloan, says the next government bailout will be for a familiar program: Social Security. And if you thought AIG was bad, you haven't seen anything yet. Many people have painted grim portraits of this program's future. Few have ever made the case that it could go cash-flow negative as early as this year. ...

  • Fraud "not uncommon" in 401(k) hardship withdrawals

    August 12th, 200909:58 AM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    One result of the rocky economy has been a sharp rise in requests for "hardship distributions" from 401(k) retirement plans. Employers aren't required by law to allow for hardship distributions, but many do - or at least they have until now. That might change. The publication Workforce Management reports that hardship-withdrawal fraud (comm...

  • More index funds and ETFs coming to 401(k)s

    July 23rd, 200911:46 AM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    Ninety percent of 401(k)/403(b) money invested in mutual funds is in actively managed funds, even though, as a whole, such funds tend to perform less well over time than passively managed index funds. The main reason retirement accounts are way overbalanced toward actively managed funds is simply that - for various reasons - many employer-spon...

  • 401(k) / group annuity plans

    July 17th, 200910:21 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    Forbes has a disturbing article on certain 401(k) plans set up as "group annuities" by insurance companies. By their account, "Among 401(k) plans with assets of less than $250 million, group annuity-style menus account for 55% of the market and are sold by axa Equitable, Lincoln Financial and other insurers." These group annuity plans charge ridicu...
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