Retirement

Although most retirement plan sponsors train their laser focus on helping participants save adequately for retirement — and rightly so — one nonprofit group is encouraging sponsors also to pay attention to assisting pre-retirees in preparing for the income distribution phase.

In case you missed it, the East Coast has had an odd month or so with an earthquake, hurricane and flooding. In trying to find money to pay for repairs and clean up, some folks might look to their retirement plan savings as a resource. Here are the nuts and bolts of "hardship distributions."

The dot-com crash and the Great Recession have taken a serious and lasting toll on the risk appetites of Generation Y, according to the latest MFS Investing Sentiment Survey. This generation, between the ages of 18 and 30, are “investing more like their parents and grandparents, many of whom grew up in the shadows of the Great Depression,” says William Finnegan, senior managing director of U.S. retail marketing for MFS.

A new study from Fidelity Investments found that 401(k) investors who pulled out of the equities market during the 2008-2009 economic downturn experienced only 2% growth, while those who maintained their investment strategy eventually saw growth of 50% by the second quarter of this year.

With more older Americans delaying retirement to work longer and cutbacks looming in federal social insurance programs, many wonder what retirement will hold.

While there is projected to be a slight uptick in salary increases in 2012 compared to 2011, companies are continuing to place the greatest focus on variable pay, according to the U.S. Salary Increase Survey released by Aon Corporation. Aon Hewitt surveyed 1,494 large U.S. companies in June and July, which revealed a 2.9% base salary increase projection in 2012 for salaried exempt, executives, salaried nonexempt and non-union hourly workers. This is up slightly from 2011…

With employers increasingly embracing mobile app technology for delivering benefits information, more vendors are getting into the game to serve the growing market. Enter the latest, Left Coast Solutions, which has developed iJoin, an application for smartphones and other mobile devices that helps investors determine how much they need to save for retirement to replace their monthly income. …

They may long to give up their daily commutes and have wide-open schedules, but far too many baby boomers are largely unprepared to leave their jobs, according to a new report by the Insured Retirement Institute.

The U.S. Department of Labor has slightly delayed the deadlines on significant new affirmative obligations for fiduciaries of retirement plans subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Although the deadlines have been pushed back to April 1, 2012, employers should be preparing now to ensure that they are ready to comply with the new requirements. …

401(k) investors and sponsors are likely to stand up and take notice of the fees that will be clearly presented to them in April, particularly the fact that investors pay most of the administration fees. These administration fees, or expense ratios, cover not just fund management but also recordkeeping, auditing and broker commissions.