Why do Employees Cash Out their 401(k)/403(b) When They Leave?

I was talking to a retirement plan participant the other day who had terminated employment with his employer and had a small amount in his 403(b) plan - not so small that it would be automatically cashed out (if the plan had a cash-put provision), but not a giant amount, either. The employee’s first…

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Why Auto-Enrollment is Always a Good Idea

Auto-enrollment has seen increasing adoption among plan sponsors of retirement plans. And for good reason: It is hard to find a reason why auto-enrollment is a bad idea! Yet, there have been some concerns. Some plan sponsors worry about the disruption auto-enrollment may cause employees. Since empl…

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A Conversation About Financial Wellness

At the recent 2019 PLANSPONSOR/PLANADVISER Excellence in Retirement Awards Dinner, I had the opportunity to discuss financial wellness with fellow advisers at a pre-dinner roundtable. Here are some of the key takeaways from that session: “Financial Wellness” is not the best term to use - People do …

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It’s Never Too Late to Start Saving

J. Money, who runs the uber-popular Budgets are Sexy personal finance blog, received a note from a reader that confided he: “just started saving at the ripe old age of 52 - so crazy. I am a late bloomer." Truth be told: while I started saving for retirement in my early 20s due to my job, other savi…

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Recordkeeper Financial Wellness Portals: My Personal Experience

As you might imagine, I access the website of my own retirement plan from time-to-time - not so much to check on my personal account, but to see the latest and greatest participant offerings from the recordkeeper. Upon my latest visit, I noticed that there was a “financial wellness” tab. As Top of M…

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The Best Reason to Save for Retirement

One of the most popular excuses as to why someone can’t save for retirement (right behind, “I can’t afford it”) is: “Retirement is so far off in the future; I could be dead by then.” This “living for today” mentality generally entails the premise of enjoying life to the fullest - which, apparently m…

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The Retirement Plan Raiders are Back!

The anecdotal signs were there: increasing calls from “advisors” requesting instructions on how to roll over plan assets from a qualified retirement plan to an IRA (generally with the participant to whom the IRA was just sold in the room). Often, the participant to whom the advisor is providing “gui…

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Social Media Update

You may have noticed that we have made some exciting changes to our Cammack Retirement Group reader experience! In our constant effort to improve, I am excited to announce the following social media enhancements: We launched a new podcast called Revamping Retirement! Hosted by yours truly, Revampin…

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Why Borrowing from a Retirement Plan to Pay off Debt is a Bad Idea

It sounds like a no brainer: you’ve racked up high-interest credit card debt, so to pay it off, you plan to borrow from your 401(k)/403(b) plan at a low interest rate that you (in most cases) pay back to yourself. Thus replacing high-interest debt with loan interest debt - and saving tons of money i…

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Beware of these Heavily-Marketed Recordkeeper Products

I often have retirement plan sponsors ask me, “What is your opinion of Product X?” More often than not, it is a product that has been aggressively promoted by their retirement plan recordkeeper. Now, to be fair to retirement plan recordkeepers, with lower fees and declining margins, they are in an i…

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