Showing entries with the topic “Retirement Readiness”.
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Mar 2020Putting Retirement Plan Losses in Perspective
I’m not thrilled with the recent market volatility, and I suspect that you’re not either! Like many, my retirement plan account has suffered, and, as someone in my 50s, this is not great news. However, it has not suffered as much as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (down 25.7% year-to-date, as of 3/…
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Mar 2020Looking to Buy an Annuity? You May Already Have One!
Annuities, a form of investment that can provide a future stream of income payments to their owners, are aggressively marketed in retirement plans. And, it appears that the recent market uncertainties will only exacerbate the situation. While annuities serve as an important component in retirement p…
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Mar 2020How to Delay and/or Avoid Required Minimum Distributions
While the SECURE Act raised the commencement age from age 70½ to 72 for required minimum distributions (RMDs), there are actually a number of other ways that retirement plan participants can delay and/or avoid minimum distribution requirements if they plan ahead. Consolidate pre-tax retirement plan…
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Feb 2020Random Nuggets I’ve Learned from the Internet, 2nd Edition
One of the benefits of constantly consuming retirement-related content is that, even after 28 years in the retirement business (yes, I’m old!), there is still an endless number of things to learn. In the second edition of “Random Nuggets I’ve Learned from the Internet,” I cover some of those.While i…
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Feb 2020Employee Deferral Trivia
A question in our recent SECURE Act webinar concerning a relatively obscure rule in 457(b) plans inspired a look into the absolute maximum that an individual could voluntarily defer into any combination of qualified retirement plans (403(b)/401(k)/457(b)) in 2020. The result was surprising: The 457…
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Feb 2020Decumulation Confusion: Social Security Claiming Strategies
In Part 1 of our decumulation series, we discussed the oft-overlooked topic of decumulation, or the spending of retirement plan assets during retirement years. In Part 2, we explored annuities as a decumulation strategy and the associated confusion for retirees. In Part 3, we examined the 4% rule, a…
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Jan 2020The Retirement Plan Terms to Avoid
At a recent That 401(k) Conference, I had pleasure of viewing a presentation on a defined contribution plan language study from Invesco that, to be frank, floored me. Common retirement plan terms, used by me and many others, scored terribly when deployed in participant communications – with some eve…
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Nov 2019How Much Does My Retirement Plan Cost?
Here’s an exercise for you: navigate to your recordkeeper’s website and see if you can determine the exact amount you are paying for your retirement plan. If you’re a plan fiduciary or someone who works with retirement plan benefits, you already know this cost, but play along anyway - you may be sur…
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Nov 2019Top of Mind Mailbag: Emergency Savings Accounts
In response to last week’s Top of Mind post on the merits of Automated Emergency Savings Funds, a reader shared a decidedly different viewpoint, which is worth sharing with our readers. He noted that, in general, those who are unprepared for an emergency are also less likely to be saving enough for …
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Oct 2019Automated Emergency Savings Funds: Why Retirement Plan Sponsors Should Consider Offering Them
Technology that automates after-tax savings has come a long way. From rounding up all purchases and saving the difference, saving when a raise is received, to monitoring spending patterns and automatically saving more when there is more money in an individual’s checking account(s), there are far mor…
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