Afraid to blog about 401(k) retirement planning?
Posted by Andrea Vassiliadis on Wed, Dec 16, 2009 @ 12:44 PM
Many non-marketing people, like myself, are intimidated by blogging. Who will read my blog? What is the value of sharing my educated opinion and vast experience in the 401(k) retirement planning world? My director of marketing insists that there is a growing value and interest in using blogs as a source of information. In fact, she claims that it is growing exponetially! As people search the internet for answers, an educated opinion is going to be of far greater value than the results of a Google search or even using that new Bing! thing. So here goes...
Retirement Planning effects everyone, and can be especially frustrating for those who do not work in the industry. Whether you are a business owner, an employee working in HR, or are a participant in your company's retirement plan, it's hard to know what to worry about. And once you get worried, what to do?
In the beginning, no one envisioned 401(k) becoming the primary method of saving for retirement. Pension plans ruled the roost, and Trustees of the plans only had to worry about how to invest a single pool of money that only had to grow at a reasonable rate to be able to pay out benefits to employees at retirement age. Remember when people used to hold the same job for over 5 years?
Economic curves turned many of these into dinosaurs and catapulted 401(k) plans into the lime light. Then came the concept of employees controlling their own investments. It's their money, after all... All was well when you could throw a dart or hire a monkey and make a 40% return in the .com era.... but when the bubble burst, chaos began.
Who's going to educate folks to know how to make intelligent decisions about their investments? Who's going to look after them to make sure they're not killed with fees inside their Plan? Who's going to help the HR person who is responsible for overseeing all this? Who knows what fiduciary compliance means? And who's going to hold the hand of the Trustees who are actually liable and may not even know it?
Consulting on this stuff is why I started my firm 3 years ago to serve Boston, Providence and the MetroWest in retirement planning, and this is why I hired a marketing person to bug me about blogging! Since I've dreamt, eaten and drunk this industry for almost 18 years, I have a couple of useful things to say, so stay tuned...
I hope you enjoyed my first blog!