WASHINGTON, May 22- Pension funds- those old guaranteed-benefit retirement plans your grandma might have told you about- outperform those in 401 plans year after year, according to new research from consulting company Towers Watson.
"Delaying retirement leaves a worker with fewer years of retirement to finance, more time to save and earn returns, and higher Social Security benefits," says one financial planner.
Figuring out how much you'll need to retire — or how much you can expect to earn on your retirement dollars — isn't as simple as plugging numbers into an online calculator.
New 401K options and greater transparency over fees are designed to give workers and retirees more control over their retirement savings, with CNBC's Sharon Epperson.
The change partly reflects demographics but also government cost-cutting that has resulted in less generous pay and benefits, the New York Times reports.
Ameriprise Financial examined where consumers are most confident about retirement. Many expressed a nagging sense that they hadn’t saved enough money to keep them afloat. They’re right to worry, but they still have time for corrections.
Withdrawing money from a retirement account can carry a high price. Besides jeopardizing long-term savings, withdrawals can incur a 10 percent penalty. Still, if you’re in a financial pinch there are some options for cracking your nest egg that are better than others.
“Flexible savings accounts are today what the 401(k) match was 10 or 15 years ago, where people didn’t grasp that this free opportunity was sitting there,” says one financial expert.
Why risk your retirement investing in what others claim to know? Technically all retirement plans can be self-directed, but unfortunately the majority of plans are limited to the assets sold by the plan provider.
If your employer has automatically enrolled you in a 401 (k) plan at the beginning of this year, it’s time to take stock of your holdings. What your company has chosen may or may not be advantageous to you.
After plowing money into 401(k)'s and IRAs for decades, struggling over which investments to choose and how best to boost your returns, the time does come, eventually, to withdraw those funds. Here, tips on how to proceed.