Attaining a satisfactory retirement experience is dependent on sufficiency of post retirement income. In an attempt to identify current attitudes in this regard the *Alliance for Retirement Income surveyed pre-retirees between the ages of 56 and 75 (with a minimum of $100k assets) regarding their anticipated timing of their retirement. https://www.allianceforlifetimeincome.org/feature/americans-more-pessimistic-about-retirement-plans-due-to-pandemic/Here are some highlights resulting … Continue reading Retirement Income Survey

Does your plan require an annual audit? If your eligible participant count (including terminated employees who maintain an account balance) exceeds 100 at the beginning of your plan will you be required to conduct a benefit plan audit including financial statements attached to the Form 5500 (the one exception is the *80-120 rule.) The audit … Continue reading Annual Plan Audit: An Auditor’s Perspective

This month’s employee memo encourages employees to conduct a regular examination of their retirement plan to determine whether any changes need to be made. Download the memo from your Fiduciary Briefcase at fiduciarybriefcase.com. Please see an excerpt below. There are all kinds of “rule of thumb” numbers floating around for how much income you’ll need … Continue reading Participant Corner: Budgeting for Retirement

Many ERISA plan sponsors are unclear regarding a primary fiduciary responsibility concerning plan document retention (which and when documents may be purged). Most plan sponsors adopt an assumed “reasonable” amount of time to retain documents prior to purging them. Unfortunately, IRS rules may not always be complicit with what may be assumed to be “reasonable”. … Continue reading Plan Documents… Save or Purge?

Empower recently announced an agreement to acquire MassMutual’s retirement plan recordkeeping business. The acquisition is expected to capitalize on both firms’ experience and expertise to the benefit of retirement plan participants and plan sponsors. Plans currently utilizing MassMutual are being notified of this action and should expect no changes or disruption to current operations during … Continue reading Defined Contribution Recordkeeper Consolidation Continues

Many Defined Contribution retirement plan participants are uncertain as to benefits of allocating their contributions to traditional vs Roth options. This is for good reason. There are two key major determiners as to the benefit of contribution to Roth:1) Will they be in a higher or lower tax bracket in retirement?2) Will tax rates increase, … Continue reading To Roth or not to Roth

1. Don’t Cash Out Retirement Plans When Changing Employment When you leave a job, the vested benefits in your retirement plan are an enticing source of money. It may be difficult to resist the urge to take that money as cash, particularly if retirement is many years away. If you do decide to cash out, … Continue reading Four Tips for Increasing Your Retirement Dollars

Employers have heard a lot about financial wellness. However, employers don’t always recognize the connection between financial wellness and improved retirement savings behavior as well as a more productive workforce overall. All employees, no matter what generation they belong to, want to work in a friendly environment where they don’t have to stress about their … Continue reading Are You Hearing About Financial Wellness?

Phased retirement includes a range of flexible retirement approaches that would allow employees approaching normal retirement age the option to reduce the hours worked while phasing into complete retirement. For employees, phased retirement may be seen as a benefit by many older workers. It allows them to gradually ease into retirement while maintaining a higher … Continue reading Have you ever considered offering a Phased Retirement Program?

T. Rowe Price did a deep dive into its recordkeeping data and surfaced with a few important points. Its “Reference Point Report is an annual client data benchmarking report so plan sponsors can review trends and benchmark their progress and participant behavior across the firm’s client base… 'We continue to see the importance and significant … Continue reading Good News 401(k)