This past week was National Save for Retirement Week. This is something that didn’t get a whole lot of play. However, it is still an important topic. According to the 2009 Retirement Confidence Survey presented by the Employee Benefits Research Institute, 53% of all workers have less than $25,000 in savings and investments, excluding home ownership and defined benefits plans.
This lack of savings is a real issue for the future. It should be noted that Social Security was never meant to replace income — merely supplement it. And it may not even be available to do that for younger workers. …read more

Avoid making these major 401k mistakes that can ruin your retirement plan.

Retirement is a great time to start that small business you’ve always dreamed of running, but never had the courage to jump in and take a chance on. My in-laws are retired, and have been running a successful concession business for quite a few years. They work really hard for a few months of the year, and travel most of the winter.

If you enjoy something, starting a small business is definitely an avenue to explore, especially with retirement accounts in the dumpster with the stock market, and pension plans in jeopardy. As the baby boomers are hitting retirement age, social …read more

Much has changed in financial markets over the past several months. Have the market’s changes changed you?
I received a quarterly statement from my retirement plan last week. Over the weekend, I decided to check things out on-line and I encountered a couple of problems: username and password.
It had been so long since my last login that I couldn’t recall either item!
Once I logged in, I saw last quarter’s losses had been recovered in the two weeks since the statement’s closing date.
That’s nice, but after yesterday a portion of those gains were reversed. For some people, the ups and downs can cause them to be stressed out …read more

Timothy Geithner wants to increase government regulation of such investment vehicles as derivatives, money market mutual funds and hedge funds. The thinking is that deregulation and opacity in many financial instruments is one of the reasons we’re in the middle of a financial meltdown. Since it was impossible for regulators and evaluators to assess a value for some of these assets, and since transparency was not a priority, the heavy leveraging eventually led to insolvency.
But perhaps it’s time to take a look at all investment vehicles — not just those we think of as complicated. It’s nice to change the …read more

If you have a 401(k) plan it has probably taken a beating in the past year.
As of late, reporters (especially CNBC’s Rick Santelli) have referred to 401(k) plans as 201(k) plans because of their shrinking values. The poor performance is no laughing matter, but neither is the poor participation by American workers.
I found the following statistics on retirement plan participation in Vanguard’s How America Saves 2008.
Approximately half of American workers have  a retirement plan.
Approximately 66 percent of Americans participate in 401(k) plans.
Only 10 percent contribute the maximum amount allowed.
Sixty percent of employees cash out all or a portion of their 401(k) when they change jobs.
Note: These figures …read more