How 401k Participants Can Handle Inflation and the Current Climate

Available for Interviews: Chris Janeway

Chris Janeway is Founder & CEO Fourth Point Wealth and coaches investors throughout southern CA.  He is also a national speaker, financial coach, and advocate for financial literacy.

What Chris Janeway can say in an interview about
Inflation and 401ks:

Some points to keep in mind are the following when it comes to managing a 401k investment:

• • Participants need to be sure they’re fighting inflation with their retirement savings. Many plans lack true education programs with real people helping coach the participants.  They may be using a default investment or be more conservative than they likely should be.  With changes in inflation, it’s a smart time to get educated and find out how long your money will last.  For some, it could mean more years in the office if they aren’t smart about how they invest.  Plan sponsors should prioritize finding vendors with advisor teams that can truly help educate their participants. The utilization rates of the online tools remain low but real change can come when real people help make the difference.

• • Participants generally know that inflation is the largest enemy for retirement. They’re worried now about how long-term this inflation period may be and if it’s going to add years to their working life.  They want to be sure that they can still retire on time and not outlive their money. 

• • Large employers have generally done a good job of driving plan fees lower by a large margin. With more participants and assets, they’ve been a big target of employee lawsuits over the last several years around fees.  Frankly, I think the small and medium-size plans have a long way to go. They often have smaller teams with fewer resources to dedicate to plan operation and we still see significant numbers of plans with higher fee structures than are necessary and plans with revenue sharing. Revenue sharing is a big conflict of interest that any plan should look closely at eliminating. 

• • We’re in the slow “education” period around PEPs right now. The PEP opportunity SHOULD equate to a seismic shift in the small/medium size plan market but so far it’s been slower than hoped. Plan sponsors have been targeted with sales materials and “hot topics” for so long and such high volume that they’ve really tuned out to anything that appears like sales. The other issue is many providers are choosing not to sponsor a PEP plan. They don’t want their clients to learn more about how much they could save in fees and time with the new PEP plans. The momentum will likely shift as we progress, however, because PEPs can make a massive difference in the fees and time allocation of HR professionals.

 

When Chris is away from the office, he loves to golf, coach youth sports, and enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife, Katy, and their sons, Brennan and Graham.