Having settled into that odd gray area between the last of the country's two big paid holidays, those of you still in a turkey and "A Christmas Story" marathon haze may be phoning it in this week. So let us not try to delve too deeply into the complexities of 401(k) financing and the slightly pathetic nature of the 11th hour fiscal cliff fixes – or lack thereof.
But it is indeed an appropriate time to look back (lord knows all the TV stations are preparing their own Year in Review highlight reels) and consider the great experiment – useful or not – that was this year's roll-out of the 401(k) and 403(b) fee disclosure regulations. For they were the closest thing the retirement industry is going to get to headline news, perhaps ever – even if that was just a fading blip on the mid-year news cycle.
And as many have noted, in retrospect, while you all worked hard to prepare for the disclosures – despite the DOL continuing to move the target, seemingly at whim, until the latest moment possible – the headaches, the wrangling and the rushing to meet the deadlines all seem to have been met with a collective shrug by the participant public.
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This may not be such a bad thing.
For, as you well know, the 401(k) is not the most easily understood savings instrument in the world. You have your own reasons for being involved in the industry – as an institutional advisor or someone working in the service field – and most plan sponsors realize it's a decent and humanitarian gesture to provide a 401(k) to their employees, as there don't seem to be a lot of other retirement security programs out there in modern America.
The biggest recurring theme I've seen this year in all of the dozens of industry research projects on America's pre-retiree public is the fact that no one really seems to know what to do about their retirement.
It remains one of America's biggest mysteries. We all work so hard all of the time, some of us so hard that we come in the day after Christmas or New Year's, but in the end, there's no formalized payoff for all that hard work – unless you take the time as an employee to figure it all out for yourself.
And given that most of us can't even figure out why we pay $100 a month for our cell phone bills, or how the remote works for the DVR, the reality of sitting down and figuring out our life expectancy, our perceived post-retirement daily living costs and the unknown factors of future health care costs and such … well, that's the kind of stuff that makes your brain hurt. A lot.
So as much of a collective nothing as the fee disclosure regs may have seemed to produce when they started hitting participants' mailboxes (I have a stack of 20 of them, next to my Harry & David's holiday catalogs), the good news is that participants who do care can indeed get a better picture of what lies ahead.
When the more detailed disclosures begin to appear in the new year with more details, some of those participants may also be infuriated – and may be calling you to do something about it. I still suspect this will be a rare occasion, but it's a great occasion to have a discussion about making real retirement plans. More than just a 4 percent deferral, a set-it-and-forget it investment scheme and a totally hands-off approach to the future.
And at least fee disclosure got the industry its 15 minutes in the spotlight. If it weren't for that, the retirement business would be even further in the shadows.
Let's hopen that, in the process of facing up to some of those holiday bills, your participants do at long last take a long look, and get the conversation going. It's the least they can do.
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