The pandemic accelerated the retirement of millions, forcing many to come face to face with the critically important question, “What should I do with decades of diligently accumulated savings in my employer’s 401(k) plan?” The stakes are high and challenge great.
Here are the top four things you should investigate to protect your savings.
Keep your investment management fees low
Investment-management fees are essentially invisible, but they compound at an alarming rate and can consume huge chunks of your retirement assets over time. Reducing these fees by just 1 percent per year on a $500,000 account over a 25-year period will save you an estimated $184,000 in fees.
When faced with the question of whether to roll your savings out of your employer’s plan and into an IRA, know that according to the 401(k) Averages Book, because a 401(k) plan typically purchases funds as an institutional investor, the average 401(k) plan’s investment-management fees are anywhere from one-half to one-third the cost of what an average retail investor pays.
It’s perfectly legal to leave your accumulated retirement savings in your employer’s plan after you retire, so before you jump at the first IRA recommendation that comes your way, understand what you are paying for investment-management services within your employer’s plan and how that cost will change if you move to an IRA. Once you know the differential, you can better evaluate if it makes sense to make a change.
Understand whether the investment advice you are receiving is conflicted
Conflicts arise when an adviser’s compensation is affected by what their clients do. You really should know if the organization from whom you are receiving investment advice has a financial interest in your decision before you ask, “Should I roll my retirement assets out of my employer’s plan?”
An adviser without conflicts gets paid the same amount no matter what the advisee does.
If your employer provides you investment-advisory services through your plan’s recordkeeper, there’s a good chance the advice is conflicted. That’s because 401(k) recordkeeping is a low-margin business. To meet profitability targets, most recordkeepers try to augment their revenue by persuading terminating plan participants to roll over plan assets into their proprietary investment products and services where individuals pay much higher investment-management fees.
Despite promises to do what’s in your best interest, when a recordkeeper’s profitability and their advisers’ annual bonus are affected by how much of your retirement savings ends up invested in their investment products or programs, many independent studies have concluded the cost of conflicted investment advice runs high.
