There’s an important deadline on the horizon if an employer has a SIMPLE in 2007 but would like a 401(k) in 2008. It’s November 1. The employer must provide notice to employees at least 60 days prior to the start of the next calendar year or no later than November 1, 2007 that the SIMPLE will not be maintained in … Continue Reading
That’s what Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue is calling the expected avalanche of applications from the post-World War II generation. The "first" Baby Boomer, a retired school teacher from New Jersey, born one second after midnight on January 1, 1946 ,applied for Social Security benefits Monday, signaling the start of an expected avalanche of applications … Continue Reading
A few days ago, I wrote about the Department of Labor’s new interactive website called elaws-ERISA Fiduciary Advisor which provides an overview of the basic fiduciary responsibilities applicable to retirement plans under the law. The Internal Revenue Service adds to the tools to help retirement plan sponsors deal with common 401(k) mistakes. It’s a 43 page PDF document … Continue Reading
The Department of Labor, the Federal agency responsible for overseeing the fiduciary aspects of ERISA, last week released an interactive website called elaws-ERISA Fiduciary Advisor. The website is designed to provide an overview of the basic fiduciary responsibilities applicable to retirement plans under the law. The intended audience is employers and third party service providers. Additional … Continue Reading
CPA firms – we’re aware – provide more than just traditional accounting and auditing services. And that includes providing investment and financial planning. So just how successful are they. In terms of money under management, pretty darn successful. You may be surprised to know that there are 11 firms that are have over $1 billion in … Continue Reading
Back in the day – before the Boomers were called Boomers and before choice entererd the employee benefit lexicon– the standard retirement plan was a defined benefit pension plan. The employer was responsible for the investment of plan assets, and the employee received a monthly income at retirement. Today the standard retirement plan is a 401(k) plan starting … Continue Reading
Asset protection now isn’t just about walling off assets from legal assaults. It’s now about walling off sensitive data from technological assaults. I’ve written about this issue several times before. Identity theft made simple. Just leave employee retirement plan data on a laptop. The big data security question: Have we met the enemy and is … Continue Reading
We’ve been here before. Back when employers were freezing or terminating retiree medical care plans, affected employees were suing based on conflicts between plan documents and employee communication materials. Now, it seems that there’s been a flurry of litigation involving conflicts between plan documents and Summary Plan Descriptions. Two blogging lawyers have picked up on … Continue Reading
That’s what Evelyn Venable who voiced the Blue Fairy told Pinocchio about liars getting caught. But that was in the Disney classic. Now it’s a little more high tech. The newest method is Voice Stress Analysis (VSA), a technology with the same objective as the polygraph: to determine whether the subject being tested is lying. It’s currently being used in … Continue Reading
I’m not talking about my generation, but rather Gen X; and the nobody who doesn’t want them are financial advisers. According to a study commissioned by Edward D. Jones & Co., as reported by Investment News, advisers prefer older and wealthier clients. This despite the fact that younger workers are ahead of other generations when … Continue Reading
TANSTAAFL is an acronym for the adage "There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. It was popularized by the Nobel economist Milton Friedman, but the phrase, "free lunch", has its antecedents in American literature from about 1870 through 1920. The phrase refers to a tradition once common in saloons in many places in … Continue Reading
Divorce, unfortunately, is a fact of life, and can affect an employee’s benefits in a retirement plan. Jimmy Verner, who practices family law, illustrates why there must be a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) to divide those retirement benefits in his newly launched North Texas Divorce and Family Law Blog. But a QDRO only comes … Continue Reading
"What was the number of mortgage foreclosures in July?" As reported,by Investment News citing Realty Trac, a marketplace for foreclosure properties. Foreclosure filing in the country increased by 9% between June and July and rose precipitously by 93% compared to the same period last year.… Continue Reading
I’ve written about retirement plan data security – or lack thereof – in the past, but always in the context of employee data on laptops that had been stolen. But as I read about a recent study cited by AccountingWeb.com, Pogo’s famous words came to mind, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Are … Continue Reading
Rush Nigot on his Rush on Business Blog provides valuable information for franchisees. But how do you finance it? There are a small number of trust companies that can help facilitate that process if you use self-directed IRA assets to invest in private equity, e.g., a franchise. It’s not just publicly traded securities that IRAs can invest in. There’s … Continue Reading
I recently wrote about retirees moving to Tibet, a metaphor for retirees moving from the “land of accumulation” to the “land of accumulation” and the new financial culture with which they will have to master. The “tour guides”, the financial industry, will have to solve the “annuity puzzle”, the investment industry term for the disconnect between … Continue Reading
It seems that there were these 2,500 traders surveyed by Traders Monthly who were asked whether they would parlay some insider information into a guaranteed $10 million trade. If they had a 50% chance of getting arrested, 93% said no; if they had only a 10% chance of getting arrested, 72% said no; and if … Continue Reading
If I remember my college physics course correctly, we used three space dimensions and one-time dimension to describe the “real world”. Today’s science uses the hypercube pictured here as the three dimensional cube extended in the direction of the fourth dimension. And so what does this have to do with retirement plans you ask. It has everything … Continue Reading
In volatile markets, investment managers go to cash. That’s happening right now because of the prime mortgage meltdown. But not all money market funds are the same. Just as there are enhanced index funds, there are also enhanced money market funds. "Enhanced" meaning the fund manager seeks higher returns by taking slightly more risk. And … Continue Reading
They’re called "vulture funds". They’re financial organizations that specialize in buying securities in distressed environments, such as high-yield bonds in or near default, or equities that are in or near bankruptcy. Take for example, Argentina whose external public debt was bought up in substantial measure by vulture funds at very low prices. Or in this … Continue Reading
Baby boomers apparently are thinking about retiring to exotic locations. I saw an article about this in one of our trade publications in which an investment advisor was quoted as saying that retiring to Cancun was no different than retiring to Arizona. Well, not exactly. Hurricane Dean aside, what about cultural, political, and legal differences … Continue Reading
Employee or independent contractor? Attorney Rush Nigot warns us about making the mistake of treating employees as independent contractors. It’s an issue about which the IRS has sacked the NFL and caused Microsoft to reboot. Penalties and interest can pile up if someone is incorrectly treated as an independent contractor. And in the case of … Continue Reading
Back in the day, I used to see Three-card Monte played on the Chicago "L". For the benefit of the uninitiated, Three-card Monte, also called Three-card shuffle, Follow the lady, Find the lady, or Follow the Bee, is a confidence game in which the victim, or mark, is tricked into betting a sum of money … Continue Reading
I started to think about that question after reading Jonah Leher’s post, Don’t Read the Business Page, on The Frontal Lobe Blog. Mr. Leher tells us to ignore the mass media coverage about the stock market and the growing liquidity coverage because it’s too much information. He writes about the experiment that Harvard psychologist Paul … Continue Reading
