401(k) plans
You may be throwing money into your employer-sponsored retirement plan - let's hope you are - but do you know how much estimated monthly income your plan will provide over your lifetime?
About to change jobs? If you have a 401(k) account, you're at risk of getting bad information when you ask the company managing your retirement plan about your options.
Call it generational rebellion at its finest: It seems all the gloomy retirement forecasting for boomers has been inspiring their kids to save more. Workers in Gen X and Gen Y are both starting retirement savings earlier and more likely to make automatic contributions than members of the boomer generation, according to a new survey.
What's a worse financial plan than taking a loan from your retirement savings? Taking a loan from your retirement savings and not paying it back. Yet a growing number of Americans are doing just that, according to a new study from financial services firm Navigant Economics. Defaults on 401(k) loans totaled $37 billion in recent years.
More 401(k) plan sponsors are offering to pay benefits in a form that guarantees a set level of monthly income, regardless of how long you live. And more employers are beginning to offer these plans, Time's Dan Kadlec reports. "Before long your 401(k) may look a lot more like your dad's pension," writes Kadlec.
401(k) plans were supposed to fill in the gap left by the decline of traditional pensions. But retirement experts largely agree that the 401(k) plan has been sort of a failure.
Employees contributed more to their 401(k) plans in 2011, according to Fidelity Investments, and matching contributions from employers were up, too. But despite this uptick in contributions, the year-end average for Fidelity's 401(k) participants was down.
Retirement savers, take heed"”these developments may not have made major headlines in 2011, but they're still important to your retirement planning efforts. And while a diet high in sodium does increase heart disease risk, even more important is the ratio of sodium to potassium in your diet.
Savings Up, Market Down: Workers are putting more money into 401(k) retirement savings accounts, the stagnant economy notwithstanding. A recent survey from Mercer Workplace found 41 percent of 401(k) holders had increased contributions to their plans in the previous year (up from 31 percent in 2010). Participants also took a more active role in managing their plans' stock portfolios, with 40 percent having reallocated their existing portfolios that year. And a greater number said they plan to contribute the maximum allowable amount.
A new study published in the British medical journal Lancet says a host of factors, such as Medicare reimbursement, location and the availability of hospital beds, weigh more heavily on a doctor's decision to operate than a patient's needs, wants or whether surgery will improve their quality of life. And a growing number of 401(k) plan participants are bringing lawsuits against their employers (who administer the plans) for allowing poorly-performing and/or overly-expensive funds into their retirement portfolios.