Smart401k Blog

I wanted to let everyone know that our Chief Investment Officer, Adam Bold, has put together an impressive panel of mutual fund managers for his radio show this weekend.  I  think this is a great opportunity to learn about the market from the perspective of the guys who are making the buy/sell/hold decisions for their funds.

Scheduled to appear are the following managers:

Dan Fuss – Loomis Sayles Bond and Loomis Sayles Strategic Income

Don Hodges – Hodges

Kent Croft – Croft Value 

Michael Cuggino – Permanent Portfolio

If you aren’t a regular listener go here to find out when it will air in your area. If you aren’t able to listen on Saturday, they typically post excerpts from the show within a day or two on the show website www.mutualfundshow.com.

Good listening,

Scott H

Last week, we conducted some focus group sessions to see how people who didn’t know anything about Smart401k reacted when presented with our website and our service.  What was unique about this group from our perspective was that they didn’t ask to find out about our service – we were coming to them to gauge their reactions and understand their needs and values regarding retirement savings and investing. 

We learned a lot, and not only about the strengths and weaknesses of our website and how we describe our service.  We also learned that people have different perspectives about what the most important things are you can do when saving and investing for retirement. 

Instead of just telling you what our focus group thought, or what we at Smart401k believe the best practices are, we’d like to ask you what you think – In your words.   Just tell us what you think are the three most important actions you can take to positively impact your retirement savings investments and why.   At the conclusion of the survey we’ll send a  $50 Starbucks Gift Card to the person who gives us the best response (in our opinion).

In addition, we’ll put a selection of the responses as comments to this blog entry.  Let us know if you don’t want us to publish your name and we’ll be sure to exclude it before posting your response.  If you are more comfortable just emailing us your response rather than commenting on this blog entry, please send it to info@smart401k.com. 

We’ll close this contest/survey on Monday, September 22nd and send out the Gift Card shortly afterwards.  Thanks, and good luck! 

As more and more people are signing up to have the blog delivered by email we noticed that many of you aren’t fully completing the registration process. So, I thought it would be helpful if I walked you through the process:

1. Click the link “Get the Smart401k blog delivered by email” in the right hand column of our blog.

2. Go through the verification process for Feedburner (Feedburner is the software company that gives us the ability to have our blog delivered via email). This involves providing your email address and typing in a few letters/numbers into a box and clicking “complete subscription request”.

4. Click on the link and that’s it. You will now receive an email of each post we make on our blog.

Hope this helps and please let us know if you have any other issues/concerns.

Today we updated our Smart401k allocation recommendations to reflect how we believe our clients should currently invest in their 401(k).  (Note to current clients:  you view your updates by signing into your account at  https://www.smart401k.com/Login.aspx)

I’m telling you this because one of the most frequently asked questions we get at Smart401k is regarding how often we update client recommendations.  The answer is that we make an allocation update whenever we think market conditions warrant a change from our current recommendations, but at least on a quarterly basis. 

An allocation update is a change to the relative percentage holdings of the investments we recommend.  Our changes are based on intermediate-term economic trends (not short-term market ups and downs) and our perception of imbalances in different market segments (i.e. asset classes).  We also review fund recommendations and make changes when necessary during our regular plan fund reviews.

If you’ve been waiting for a good time to try our Smart401k service, now might be it. 

To learn more or sign up, please go to http://www.smart401k.com/Individual.aspx.  Anyone that is a client by July 7^th will receive our client-only newsletter that includes our 2^nd quarter recap and current market commentary, including an update from Adam Bold, our Chief Investment Officer.

Note that Smart401k serves clients with investments in any employer sponsored retirement plan, including 401(k), 403(b), 457 deferred compensation plans, and the Federal Government Thrift Savings Plan.

Scott Revare

CEO, Smart401k

I wanted to let you know that we recently posted two new articles in the Smart401k Insights section of our Tools & Resources page.  The first article ”A Primer on Annuities“ was written in response to numerous inquiries from our clients who had questions about annuities.  We tried to cover everything from “what is an annuity?” to “what should I be aware of before buying an annuity?” and everything in between. 

The second article titled “Smart Savings: Start Now“ is the first in a series of articles about how and where to save during different life stages.  With graduation upon us we decided to start the series by addressing new college grads and those who are just starting to think about saving.  The article provides an introduction to several different savings vehicles and a step-by-step plan on how to get started.  If you know someone who is in this situation you might want to consider combining the article with a gift certificate to Smart401k so they get off on the right foot with their 401(k).  To purchase a gift certificate click here.

We hope that you find the blog interesting and useful.  Most of the articles have been about issues that we hear about from you or see in the news.  We would like to start answering more questions from you and addressing topics that you find interesting.  You can email us directly at info@smart401k.com or post a response/question to one of our posts if you’d like to know more about a specific topic.  As always, our advisors are here to answer any questions you might have.

Scott H

We know a blog is normally meant to spawn discussion with its readers, and to illustrate that we are keeping up with trends in the world. We have heard you all asking for our take on this volatile market, and want you to know we are listening. Check out these articles on the Insights page of our website – Risk and Investing and 10 Do’s and Don’ts of Your Retirement Plan, and please continue to let us know what you want to read.

A couple of quick notes on future blog content:

First, I hope you enjoy the “A Week in the Rearview” entry just posted below.  The purpose of this entry is to provide our blog subscribers with a weekly summary of the economic or market related events from the week that we believe are most likely to have an impact in some way (short-term or longer-term) on the markets and your retirement account.  We hope it becomes a quick way for you to cut through the clutter and get a quick synopsis of major company and economic events that can have an impact on you. 

Second, we want to start making our blog more interactive by addressing the questions you have – right in the blog.  In this spirit, we are going to select from the hundreds (thousands?) of email questions we get a week from customers or people just interested in our opinions.  We also want to invite you, our blog readers to submit any comments or questions you’d like answered – whether it be through this blog or directly to you in private via email.  Please send us your questions regarding the markets, the economy, or your specific investments or situations.  We’ll answer you one way or another. 

If you have any other suggestions for us on what you’d like to see in the blog – please let us know by dropping us a line at info@smart401k.com.

Scott

Just a reminder to those thinking about signing up for the Smart401k service, if you sign up (risk-free for 30 days) before the new year, use the promotion code “holiday” to receive $20 off of an annual subscription. We’ve only done this deal once a year in the past.  To sign up, go to www.smart401k.com and click on the “Register Now” button.

Note also that we are updating our recommendations the first week of January.

Scott Revare, CEO of Smart401k appeared on the TV program “Your Investments with Adam Bold” on Friday, October 19th.  To view the segment on the web, go to:

http://www.yourinvestmentsshow.com/shows.shtml

Be sure and watch the October 19th show (Scott’s segment is at the beginning of the show).