Helpful New Retirement Planning Tools
For the majority of Americans, who do not work within the financial industry, a lot of investment jargon can sound like the teacher in Charlie Brown cartoons (wa wa wa wa wa wa wa) – it just sounds like blather. Even if you understand the investment-speak, there are so many other obstacles to understanding your investments, like knowing your investor type, establishing your investor goals, knowing when to save and how much to save, differentiating between investment plans, understanding the structure of different securities, and on and on. Some people enjoy the research and analysis needed to have a good investing plan – and more power to them. For everyone else, it’s nice to have someplace to find good information quickly. During the past four months, Smart401k has released three new educational tools: The Retirement Education Center, the Asset Allocation tool and the Retirement Outlook planning tool. I’d like to talk a little about who should be doing what with each resource.
Retirement Education Center
This is near and dear to my heart. The education center is a resource for investors of every level. We’ve provided a detailed six-step blueprint for investing in your work retirement plan, advice about budgeting and information about saving for your child(ren)’s education. There are definitions for advanced investment concepts, like options contracts. And there are comparisons between employer retirement plans – how is a 401(k) different from a 403(b) or the federal Thrift Savings Plan?
Check it out at www.smart401k.com/educationcenter, and bookmark it . We’ll add to the Retirement Education Center on an ongoing basis, and we invite you to make suggestions about content you would like to see. You can talk to us about your suggestions or questions via email (info@smart401k.com) via telephone at 877.627.8401 via live chat (go to our website) or on our Member Forum.
Asset Allocation tool
This tool is simple and easy. If you’re already a Smart401k member, you won’t need it because we perform a more detailed analysis for you. But the tool is a great guide for readers (and your friends and family) who are interested in learning about asset allocation based on investor type.
Users answer a few questions to learn whether they are conservative, moderate or aggressive investors. With this information, the investor can research funds available to him/her and select a fund lineup that suits the investor type. For someone who wants to take the time to handle his/her own investment allocation, this tool is an initial step (see the education center Six Steps article for the entire process).
Retirement Outlook
This is a members-only tool . To give you a basic idea about what Retirement Outlook does:
- you take a few minutes to enter information about your financial situation,
- we use your inputs and the information from your Investor Profile and
- Retirement Outlook gives you results, like
- the amount of money you need to have when you retire and
- the amount of money you could have when you retire if you contribute to your retirement plan(s) at your current rate.
You input information about your current contributions to your work retirement plan, your partner’s retirement plan, other investments and retirement savings, social security, your retirement employment plans, your desired age of retirement, life expectancy, desired standard-of-living in retirement – you get the picture. Despite your ability to enter a lot of relevant information, Retirement Outlook takes ten minutes or less to use. You see the results in the form of six simple graphs. And here’s the brilliant part: you can adjust each graph to see how alterations affect the other graphs. For example, if my results show that I’m going to come up short on money, I can illustrate an increase in annual contributions by adjusting my graph. And voila, I see the enormous effect that a small increase in my contributions can have. Alternately, I can adjust my desired lifestyle to become more modest (a lifestyle that requires less money). This is a really helpful tool to play with for a few minutes. And your results are always saved for next time.
Get planning
Our CEO talks to us a lot about finding new ways to help people become more involved with their own retirement planning, so we’re going to keep on developing educational tools. If you have any questions about our tools, or ideas for new resources, please contact our adviser team to let us know.
Carolyn Humpherson, Financial Communications Specialist
About Smart401k
Smart401k is a Web-based investment adviser providing unbiased advice to help employees invest in their employer-sponsored retirement plans. Smart401k provides service to almost 11,000 clients who collectively have more than $1.5 billion in assets. Individuals receive personalized investment recommendations based on the funds in their plan and support of professional investment advisers available to answer all investment questions. Based in Overland Park, KS, Smart401k can be found at Smart401k.com.
