Eliminating the Phone-A-Friend Retirement Plan

I read an article earlier this morning informing me that employees don't really understand 401(k) plans. News Flash: that's not news. In fact, looking at behavior of employees and overhearing casual conversations between otherwise intelligent 401(k) participants about the value of their 401 plans, their 201k (when they are underperforming expectations), their 501k (when they are overperforming expectations), and the ways that they choose investment options, this sounds like a statement from Captain Obvious.

How did 401(k) plans get this way? In their earlier incarnations, typical 401(k) plans gave employees an option to defer. In most plans, employees that did choose to defer got a match from their employers. Employees could then invest those assets within the plan in usually about five to eight options.

I recall a conversation back in the early 1990s with an individual who is now on every list of the great minds of the 401(k) world and the great innovators in the 401(k) world. This individual told me that no defined contribution plan needs more than six investment options ... ever .. and that any plan sponsor with more than six should be lined up with their adviser before a firing squad (the words are not precise, so no quotation marks, but they are pretty darned close). The same individual later became one of the leading proponents of a 'full menu' of options with at least one and often more than one from each asset class and each investment style within that asset class.

How exactly do employees benefit from such choices? They don't.

Suppose I choose three highly rated large cap funds from US News's report:

• T Rowe Price Institutional Large Cap Core Growth Fund
• Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund
• JP Morgan Intrepid Growth Fund

Let's imagine that they are all in my fund's lineup. How do I choose?

Intrepid sounds like a cool name. Maybe I should pick that. Blue Chip? My grandfather told me to invest in blue chips. I wonder if that's still true today. And, that long name? If it does all those things, it must be really good, too.

I could read the prospectuses. I could do research on performance history. I could look at investment styles and drift whatever all that means. I could phone a friend.

The simple fact is that for most of us, it's a crap shoot ... plain and simple. 

Because of that, despite all the forecasts in the world from 401(k) lovers, this should not ever be a primary plan for employees. As it was intended back in the late 70s and early 80s, this should be a supplemental savings plan -- an addition to what you get in your primary plan.

Your primary plan should be just that. It should be employer-provided. It should not be confusing. There should be no need for a phone a friend option. 

I don't care what kind it is although I have my biases. My bias is that the plan should provide for the ability for participants to take distributions in lump sums or wholesale-priced annuities (my term for annuities on a fair actuarial basis without middle men making profits at your expense). My bias is that the determination of your benefits in the plan should be simple. My bias is that assets should be professionally managed. 

I don't care what label you give to such a plan. I don't even care what label ERISA or the Internal Revenue Code gives to such a plan. What I do care about is that you not lose sleep over whether Intrepid is better than Blue Chip or conversely. What I do care about is that if you choose to annuitize your account balance that you get an annuity that is 100% of what you deserve not some number closer to 80%. 

And, for your supplemental savings, you can have your Phone-A-Friend ... oops, I meant 401(k) plan.