Whether you need guidance on specific issues or you’re not sure what to tackle next, working with an objective advisor can help you in key areas of your financial life.
An objective financial planner or advisor is one who has minimal conflicts of interest and always has your best interests in mind.
An objective advisor doesn’t receive commissions …
As people approach retirement, they often take a look at their projected retirement income and the expenses, scrutinize their findings, and then heave a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, all they have really gotten from that exercise is a false sense of security. While at first blush, it looks like they will have enough income to enjoy a comfortable retirement, in …
Last week’s op-ed piece by Greg Smith regarding his former employer, Goldman Sachs, was another example of a large financial services company being incentivized to make as much profit as possible at the expense of the client.
But I think that, perhaps, the key reason is that most investors fail to understand the inherent conflict of interest when using a …
One of the primary responsibilities of operating a retirement plan is the selection and monitoring of the investment options. Unfortunately there is great diversity in how well these processes are executed.
Plan sponsor does not understand the fiduciary responsibilities of selecting and monitoring.
When a young child misbehaves, the parent takes action to correct the inappropriate behavior and encourages the better behavior. Working with adults when dealing with their 401(k) or other investments is a bit the same. The only problem is that inappropriate investment behavior not only impacts the retirement income of the participant but can also impact the beneficiaries.
Here are …
When researching on the Internet for a blog post, I ran across an article published in Pensions and Investments in November of 2009. Richard Glass, the author, laid out some steps for plan fiduciaries to minimize the likelihood of successful lawsuits against them.
For small to mid sized companies, (less than several hundred participants) the likelihood may be perceived as …
A client recently remarked that she was happy about the choices in her 401(k) but did not know which classes of shares were being offered. She was shocked to learn that she was paying commissions on every contribution.
Many mutual funds have 4 to 6 different offerings of the same fund, all with different costs and fees and commissions. Here …
As the utilization of traditional pension plans fades like the setting sun, understanding the projected retirement benefits from your 401(k) is more important than ever.
There are some important questions to address to determine if your 401(k) retirement income will provide the level of income you will need to maintain your lifestyle.
How much income will I need in retirement?…
Some of the most interesting events to watch at a track meet are the hurdle events. There are highly trained sprinters that not only have to run fast but jump at set distances. The result is that the runner could stumble at any time and never finish close to the goal in mind. It is much the same with 401(k) …
Choosing the investment options in your 401(k) can be daunting. To help make it easier for investors and capture larger amounts of participants’ monies, financial services companies have increased their offerings of what is known as the Target Date Funds (TDF).
A TDF is a mix of investments including domestic stock, foreign stock cash and bonds. The intent is that …