I’ve bashed company managed 401Ks in the past. Now it feels like I’m kicking a corpse. Let me get one final punch in.
Today I received the year end statement for my company 401K. When I say “my company”, I mean the one I worked for from January 2002 – May 2006 and again from September 2007 – April 2008. Both times I left the company, I had the balance of my 401K moved to a self directed account with Ameritrade.
Smart move.
I know people who can’t be bothered with managing their retirement money. They set the contributions and then hope everything works out. I didn’t believe the market was honest and exited before the crash.
Here were the 2008 returns for the 4 diversified funds offered by my company.
- -16.79% Conservative
- -26.14% Moderate
- -34.54% Growth
- -40.61% Aggressive
When I look back at the 3 year returns, all these funds are still negative. In fact, none of these funds beat the FIXED INCOME FUND over a 1, 3, 5 or even 10 year time span. But fixed income is so boring, who would ever advise something that boring?
Jim
Jan 24, 2009 — 6:35 pm
You must admit -40.61% IS very aggressive! 🙂
My wife had one of these plans at her last company. They wouldn’t allow straight cash, so we put her money in a 100% treasury fund. The primary goal was avoiding income taxes on the money …then transfer it to a self directed fund later.
Her other options were 7 stock funds and 2 bond funds (both of which had exposure to mortgage backed securities). What a joke!