Jim Thomason's "The Business of People"

If you're older than 30 or ever attended a 401(k) educational seminar you've heard it. How we're not ready for retirement. How we haven't saved enough and how you need some astronomical amount of money you can't possibly save in order to afford retirement. While few people are saving enough, period, there are problems with the doomsday scenario. It is based upon an unrealistic retirement age established in 1935, manual labor, and the idea of employer pensions, now mostly a thing of the past. With no pension and a traditional retirement age, how do you possibly retire? Traditional retirement savings ideas are based upon the "three-legged stool" notion; your retirement is financed by your own personal savings, your private retirement benefits (pension or 401(k)), and Social Security. The doomsday Sayers project that without a pension your 401(k) and Social Security are all you'll have, and you'll be short. Well, if you perform manual labor and ...

I learned something today that should be passed along to our Nelson team, especially those 55 and older or who will turn 55 in the near future. The IRS guidelines allow maximum contributions up to $16,500 per year. This "maximum contribution limit" changes almost every year and is a feature in the law that prevents 401(k) plans from becoming a wealth building tool for executives rather than a retirement plan for all employees. If you're 55 and over you can also make additional annual deferrals known as "catch-up contributions." This feature allows older workers who may be behind in their retirement savings to contribute up to an additional $6,000 per year. In our plan, and most plans, the methodology for maximizing your contributions was cumbersome. You had to separately elect catch-up contributions. Then as Plan Administrators we had to wait until you had contributed your $16,500 maximum before directing the Record Keeper to accept your additional payro...

Okay, this is not investment advice. If it were, why would you take it from an HR guy when you have so many registered financial advisers at your disposal? This is just a set of observations about mistakes I've seen people make in knee-jerking to a falling market. Take this for what its worth, research your own 401(k) investments, get competent advice, etc...before making investment decisions. Meanwhile, consider this premise; that the market has been here before and come back, that Phil Graham is right in his assessment that as a nation we could be a little more resilient, and that television news coverage is sensationalism detached from the reality of the market. In other words, this isn't a market for the faint of heart but neither is it a meltdown, a historic depression, or any of the other hyperbole you've heard on television. 1. We've Been Here Before - Check out the historical chart of the Dow Jones averages starting in 1900 and continuing up to the p...