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How's Your 401k Doing?

horshack.sixpack

horshack.sixpack

Well-known member
Oct 30, 2012
9,068
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johnson86-1 said:
You should see whether there is a self management option. Not sure how common it is, but at one of my employers, I had the option of paying $500 a year and self managing. Could have bought individual stocks or index or mutual funds they didn't offer.

ETA: My wife has two retirement plans with her employer. One of them was actively managed, one of them you could opt in to having it actively managed. My dumb indexing strategy was up by almost $3k after two years, which percentagewise was a huge difference. Then they changed to where you could opt out and I did. Now certainly that was actively managed during a bull market, so maybe the actively managed accounts are doing better now that we're in a bear, but thought that was a terrible plan to have people locked into.
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Unfortunately I only get to pick from some crappy target date funds and some index funds. I think I've figured out the best mix relative to my options. If I would buckle down and do my real research on those funds, I could possibly at least understand which ones had decent fund managers but I bet there is a near 100% chance than none of them have a fund manager that I'd choose on my own anyway...
 
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johnson86-1

Well-known member
Aug 22, 2012
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horshack.sixpack said:
Unfortunately I only get to pick from some crappy target date funds and some index funds. I think I've figured out the best mix relative to my options. If I would buckle down and do my real research on those funds, I could possibly at least understand which ones had decent fund managers but I bet there is a near 100% chance than none of them have a fund manager that I'd choose on my own anyway...
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If the index funds aren't screwy on fees, they should be good options. The best managed 401k I've participated in offered like 3 different index funds (S&P, total market, and small cap I think?) and then target date funds. I'm sure they probably offered some bond funds but I don't remember them (probably just filtered them out when doing my investment selections). Default was the appropriate target fund and if you moved it, basically any stock fund you moved it to would be fine if that was your only investment. Not ideal, but no way for any of the employees (a lot of whom were unsophisticated) to screw themselves up. Well, I guess they could have put it all in bonds, but if they are going to take the time to move it out of a target fund and into bonds, I'm not sure there is anything else you can do for them.
 
horshack.sixpack

horshack.sixpack

Well-known member
Oct 30, 2012
9,068
5,072
113
johnson86-1 said:
If the index funds aren't screwy on fees, they should be good options. The best managed 401k I've participated in offered like 3 different index funds (S&P, total market, and small cap I think?) and then target date funds. I'm sure they probably offered some bond funds but I don't remember them (probably just filtered them out when doing my investment selections). Default was the appropriate target fund and if you moved it, basically any stock fund you moved it to would be fine if that was your only investment. Not ideal, but no way for any of the employees (a lot of whom were unsophisticated) to screw themselves up. Well, I guess they could have put it all in bonds, but if they are going to take the time to move it out of a target fund and into bonds, I'm not sure there is anything else you can do for them.
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Right. It's mostly American TD Funds and Fidelity index funds, so not tragic, just no good way to unpack and analyze those on the platform provided. I'm sure I could pull some CUSIPs over into my Fidelity platform and do some analysis, but I haven't felt compelled to do so. I'm always curious what is actually held in the TD funds but too lazy to do the work. My opinion is also slanted because i have some very high quality funds in my managed IRA and substantially more diversity.
 
coach66

coach66

Active member
Mar 5, 2009
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Preacher Franklin said:
The average 401k is down $34,000.
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Down 5 percent from high and retired since June 2020. I went to a high cash position about one year ago and it’s certainly helped. These are tough times especially on retired folks with down markets and raging inflation. Hopefully midterms will help.
 
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fairweatherfan

Member
Nov 24, 2007
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Preacher Franklin said:
The average 401k is down $34,000.
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You made me look at mine for the first time all year. YTD ROR is -25.1%. I'm limited in my selections so I split evenly between a target date fund, large growth and large value funds. That large growth fund has gotten hammered this year to the tune -39% but its not lost until I sell it... I've got some other IRAs being managed that aren't down as bad.
 
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