Most individual company 401(k) retirement plan participants have this quarterly song-and-dance down to a science. It is truly a thing of beauty to behold every three months.
Your company 401(k) retirement plan quarterly account statement turns up in your mailbox. From there is makes it to the kitchen counter. Next, the unopened envelope shows up on your desk with your other “financial stuff.”
Finally, the envelope gets filed away in your “401(k) file.” If the envelope is opened at any point along this journey, it’s a miracle.
Since March 2009, individual company 401(k) retirement plan participants have successfully ignored their quarterly retirement plan statements. The stock markets were up, and interest rates were down. Company-matching and individual contributions added up each year.
Every time the stock market went down, it very quickly went back up. Most of the time to new all-time highs.
That historic “set-it-and-forget-it” environment ended with January’s all-time stock market high.
Welcome to the new world. For the remainder of your working career you might never see a better company 401(k) retirement plan investment environment than over the last nine years.
The days of always making money in your company 401(k) retirement plan account are officially over. From now on, you are going to have to make some real-life investment management decisions.
You are going to have to pay much closer attention to your individual company 401(k) retirement plan account balance going forward. Even more important, you are going to have to have an investment management strategy in place to preserve the last several years of your stock and bond market investment gains.
Forget about your quarterly paper company 401(k) retirement plan account statements. Make sure you are completely comfortable with online access to your retirement plan monies in case of a financial emergency.
The speed of change in both the stock and bond markets has increased over the last few years. The attention you need to pay to your retirement nest egg has to keep up.
Ric Lager
Lager & Company, Inc.
