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Investment Tips: How much should I have in my 401(k)?

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Part of planning for financial freedom is making sure that you are financially protected when you hit retirement. However, only a few know how to maximize their 401(k) in a retirement investment account as part of their overall portfolio.

If you want to explore the basics of investing your 401(k) to increase your retirement benefits, no worries. This article provides you with a summary of the five (5) most useful tips on how your 401(k) can help you retire with more financial security.

What are 401(k) Investments?

Before going into the details, you should know that a 401(k) investment is basically a retirement savings tool sponsored by your employer. This tool allows you to invest a portion of your paycheck into a retirement investment account. Your money will grow tax-free until you are retired, and that’s when you can use it.

The question that many ask is about the portion: how much of one’s paycheck should go into this retirement investment? In addition to that, here are some tips about putting a part of your paycheck to your 401(k) investments.

Invest Early

It is true that you can begin your retirement investment later when you are older. However, the earlier you start investing, the better. In fact, it is best to start contributing to your 401(k) as soon as possible. In doing this, you earn more. That’s just how compound interest works: you gain more interest when you start earlier. If you are a young worker, you have the advantage of the time that older folks will never ever have. Invest early.

See How Much You Can Set Aside

As a rule of thumb, you need to invest a percentage of your earnings that is equivalent to the difference between 100 and your age. For instance, if you are 20 years old, you need to invest 80% of your earnings as savings or into your retirement fund. This is based on the assumption that, at an early age, you still don’t have many responsibilities and can afford to invest more money.

If that amount or percentage is too high, you can decide on a fixed annual amount. For example, you can contribute a max of $19,500 to your 401(k) in 2020 if you are under 50. All you have to do is calculate a fixed amount below the threshold of $19,500.

Hire a Portfolio Manager

Still unsure or want to maximize your investments? You can explore other options such as using a robo-advisor such as Wealthfront or Betterment. This is one of the best options for someone who is unsure or does not know how much they should invest.

The robo-advisor will run the numbers for you to determine the best combination of investments in your 401(k) fund. You can set the target amount you need for retirement and the algorithms will compute how much you need to set aside every month or year so that you can have that amount when you retire.

Match Your Employer

Another way to determine how much you should contribute in your 401(k) is to look at how much your employer is contributing. For instance, if your employer only offers a maximum of 10% of your salary, then you should match your employer and contribute at least 10% as well to get the most out of your 401(k) investments.

Check Investment Types

When you contribute funds to your 401(k), you have to choose which investments it goes to. With each kind of investment, there is a specific percentage of return based on the risk profile. Since the percentage of return is different for each investment, your choice will affect how much you need to contribute in the 401(k) so that you can reach your target retirement funds.

If you have enough in your 401(k), before you start computing, consider the types of investments that you will choose. For instance, if you choose to invest in the stock market, you will earn more and faster but the risk is higher. If you want to do this, you might want to invest a lower amount.

On the other hand, you will have more stable returns if you invest in mutual funds. However, interest will be less so you want to contribute a higher amount to achieve the retirement fund levels that you want.

Takeaways

For dignity and independence, you want to retire with enough funds so that you won’t need to depend on help from your children or other people. With the investment tips summarized in this article, you can think about your best options to save and invest money in your 401(k) for your retirement. The five (5) points summarized in this article should help you begin to find the answers to all your basic questions and concerns.

For more great articles from The Free Financial Advisor, consider these:

Financial Planning Basics – The Financial Pyramid

How Long Should You Keep Financial Records After A Death

What Advantages Are There To Saving Money In The Bank?

How To Recover Paystubs From Your Old Job

Just Entering The Workforce? Let’s Talk About Retirement

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Can you remember the first day you worked and earned money? It might have been babysitting for your neighbor’s kids or a retail job at the local mall. As a kid, you might have imagined your parents going to work as something that just happened. You didn’t think of the financial ramifications or why going to work was important.

The older you got, the more likely you were to start seeing the value of money. Want to go to the movie with your friends? Want to purchase a new video game? All those things cost money.

So, you got a job and chances are, you weren’t the best saver. Money was for activities and fun.

But now that you’re entering the real workforce, there are lots of other things your money is going to such as rent, groceries, utilities, and retirement.

Retirement? But you just started working!

Even though you might be 40+ years from retiring, it’s never too early to start thinking about the day when you hang it up. Below, we have some tips and questions you should be asking yourself and those around you when it comes to your retirement.

Does Your Work Have Retirement Benefits?

While a pension was the norm for your grandparents and maybe even your parents, roughly just 54% of businesses these days offer pension plans for their employees. While that may seem like a solid number, the financial crisis of 2009 put a real dent in those numbers and they have been slow to recover.

While your work may not offer a pension, they may offer other benefits like a 401(k) or a 401(a). 401(a) plans are typically offered by government or nonprofit institutions and participation in these plans is often mandatory. Contributions are determined by the employer and can be either pre or post-tax.

401(k) plans are the opposite. They are more popular in the private sector, don’t have a contribution limit, and participation is not mandatory (although it might be).

Contribution is pretty simple, that you take X amount of money out of your paycheck and put it towards these plans each month. Money accrues and grows over time.

Let’s say you need the money, can you take it? Of course, it’s your money but it comes at a cost. The IRS will take a 20% as a penalty for early withdrawal. There are certain stipulations to withdraw money without the penalty, but they are never guaranteed.

Your Personal Savings

Hopefully, you aren’t living paycheck to paycheck and you’re putting away a certain amount of money each month. That could be saved for an emergency or saving up to make a big purchase.

It’s important to set up a personal savings plan because that money could be put into an individual retirement account (more on that later).

Budgeting is boring but highly necessary. Whatever you’re putting away each month should be treated like your 401(a) or 401(k). It should be untouchable. Make sure to take a certain percentage of your savings and plan to put that towards your retirement.

Individual Retirement Accounts

You might have seen this written as IRA and they are pretty common. The idea is that you yourself put money into a non-Roth or Roth IRA each year (up to $5,500 maximum) and that money is invested.

Many people seek out the advice of financial planners to help them plan a strategy for their IRA. The biggest difference between the two lies within the taxes.

Traditional IRAs mean your contributions are taxed in the year they are made. With a Roth IRA, you’re not going to be taxed when you start making withdrawals.

It’s important to note that not everyone is eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA and access can be restricted if you are using a 401(k).

The best thing to do is to meet with a financial planner and discuss your options. Ask your parents or others who might have a contact they can set you up with. They can help you do much more than just manage your retirement, but help manage your entire portfolio as well and give tips on sound money management policies.

Even though it may seem silly, it’s never too early to start thinking about your retirement.

Image source: Flickr.

How Will You Generate Income In Retirement?

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Retirement income sourcesHow are you planning to generate income in retirement?

The first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people will be Social Security. That’s OK, but most people will need to have more than that if they want to retire comfortably (and there are those who are concerned that at least some of those benefits may not be there for future retirees when the time comes). Other people might be looking forward to pension income, though that’s less common than it used to be.

It’s useful to step back and take stock of the various potential sources of retirement income. Certain sources have more to recommend them, and certain asset class combinations will work better for some folks than others due to the assets’ risk profile, tax characteristics, and other qualities.

Interest

A recent Bloomberg story quotes a chief investment officer at Credit Suisse saying that treasury yields at 3.5% would pull people out of stocks and into fixed income. As we’re writing this, the 10-year Treasury yield is on the rise and the highest it has been since 2011 at nearly 3.1%.

Nobody knows for sure which way treasury rates are going, but those rates are worth paying attention to, for a few reasons. First, higher interest rates almost surely would lead to poor performance for bellwether retirement equity investments, such as those in the utility and telecom sectors. (More on this in a bit.) Second, a risk-free interest rate would be tough to ignore at some level as a source of income in retirement. We would probably put that level at around 4% (after all, why get a bond paying less than 4% when you can buy stocks that pay more than that and have been boosting the payout annually for 20 or 30 years?), but that will vary by individual circumstance and risk tolerance.

Not that treasuries are the only way to get interest income, of course. The best proxy for junk bonds, the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG), yields 4.7%. The investment-grade version (the iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) is around 4%.

Dividends

We mentioned utilities and telecoms earlier. These kinds of firms are generally big dividend payers. As such, when interest rates rise, their stocks often sell off, as suddenly there are other, less volatile sources of income–bonds–that compete with those dividends.

Now, if you are able to make ends meet on dividends alone (or close to it), the volatility may not matter. Stocks can bounce up and down and all around, but the dividends will keep coming (and even growing) regardless. In fact, when stocks are down, it could be time to consider adding to those holdings, assuming the companies’ businesses are still sound.

You may not be able to get to a place where dividends are your main source of income. But counting on dividends for some portion of retirement income makes sense for a lot of retirees. The year-in-year-out nature of the payments (for a lot of companies), the potential for growth in those payments, the potential for capital gains on the shares, and, not least, the taxes (which are 0% on qualified dividends for a lot of people) all add up to a compelling income source.

Principal

By definition, at retirement, full-time employment income stops, and it’s probably time to start spending down on all that money you saved over the years. That’s hard for a lot of people to get their heads around. After all, it means making a complete 180-degree turn to what you have been doing for probably decades.

So that’s worth thinking about in advance and preparing for. If seeing that balance dwindle each year is a concern, you might want to start conservatively on how much you plan to take out each year. It used to be a 4% drawdown rate was considered safe for most traditional retirees, but that’s no longer conventional wisdom. You might run some scenarios that target something closer to 2% or 3% and see if that allows you to sleep at night.

As with so much in retirement planning, though, much will depend on individual circumstances and sources of income. Someone with a solid pension and low living costs will probably need to take less out of their principal than others.

Capital Gains from Rebalancing

Rebalancing your portfolio isn’t controversial, though reasonable people can disagree about how often it should be done. Rebalancing refers to the simple concept that, over time, a portfolio of investments will have winners and losers, and the initial (presumably target) asset allocation–this much in growth stocks, that much in short-term bonds, and so on–will get out of whack. So, periodically, a portfolio needs to be put back into whack.

What’s not mentioned as often is that it’s possible to think of rebalancing as a source of income as well. Retirees could keep the piece that is a long-term gain and use it for living expenses, and still rebalance to the optimal asset allocation.

The obvious problem here is that markets don’t just go up; they go down too, sometimes for quite a while. So there’s an unpredictability to this source of income that makes it too undependable to be a core source of income for a retiree. But it is a source, and one that’s sometimes overlooked.

Income in Retirement

In the end, which sources you depend on for retirement income will come down to risk tolerance, personal preference, luck (at least a little bit helps), and how diligent you have been about saving through your working years. Knowing what those potential sources are and planning on how you might use them will take some of the surprises out of the process, and help make retirement go more smoothly.

 

How Long Are You Going To Live?

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How long are you going to live? Figuring out your life expectancy is arguably the first step in creating a successful retirement plan–and also arguably the toughest number to figure out. [Read more…]

Will Social Security Completely Disappear Before You Retire?

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Planning for retirement includes assuming that Social Security might not be able to cover all of your expenses. — but you should know that the benefit program probably won’t disappear either. [Read more…]

Will Your Retirement Plan Keep up with Inflation?

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When planning for retirement most people start with the basics: their budget, their retirement age, life expectancy and their expected retirement income. Usually the inflation rate assumption is more of an afterthought. We all know that our expenses generally go up each year when inflation is greater than 0%. What so many don’t understand is that higher inflation rates usually mean higher tax bills.
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Will My 401(k) Last for the Rest Of My Life?

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If you’re starting to think about retirement, and your career has largely been in the private sector, your 401(k) balance could be the most important factor in determining whether you’re on track to retire or not.

Whether your 401(k) will cover your spending needs until the end of your life will depend on a lot of factors. It’s important to not just pin your hopes on a certain target for an account balance–a million dollars, two million dollars, whatever–and instead look at the whole picture. So let’s start with a few other questions that are just as important.

Are You Saving as Much as You Can in Your 401(k)?

There’s almost no way around it: You have to save money to make money. There is often a bit of a free lunch–call it a free appetizer–when it comes to 401(k)s, though: The amount your employer matches your own contributions. It could be a dollar-for-dollar match up to point, or some percentage of what you contribute yourself that increases over time. Either way, you definitely want to contribute at least this amount, or you’re leaving that free appetizer on the plate.

But that should really only be the beginning of any 401(k) savings plan. Fidelity advises saving 15% of pretax income.  If you’re 30 or 40 years old and haven’t given the issue much thought until now, that number should serve as the minimum you should save.

Get into the habit of increasing your contribution percentage each year. Psychologically speaking, if you never see it hit your paycheck (because it’s going straight to your retirement account), you won’t miss it. Set an annual calendar reminder to increase that contribution, even by a half a percentage point. Between the contribution increases and salary increases, you should be able to put your contributions on a sharp upward trajectory.

What Else have You Got?

Once you have your plan for annually boosting 401(k) savings in place, consider what other sources of income you are counting on at retirement. Social Security is an obvious one. If you’re lucky you might have a pension of some sort. Brokerage accounts, rental property, or the planned sale of some asset like a business should all be taken into account as well–and will almost certainly affect how long you can expect your 401(k) will last.

Will you run out of 401(k) money in retirement?

Another reason not to simply come up with an arbitrary hit-your-number mark: Spending matters. At the risk of stating the obvious, your 401(k) and other investment assets will generally last longer if you plan to sip rather than gulp.

You’ll want to have a very solid grip on your plan’s MPG–that is, your projected spending in retirement–to get an accurate reading.

Will your 401(k) plan last long enough?

What Is It Costing You?

Even if you are diligent about saving to your 401(k), you probably haven’t considered what the plans might be costing you.

And why would you? The plan administrator’s fees–in addition to the fees paid to the fund companies themselves–are largely out of your control.

But it’s important–especially the further you are from retirement. Fees can really chip away at account balances over time. Consider a 401(k) returning about 7% annually. Here’s what happens if we modify the fees by half a percentage point and assume contributions of $18,000 per year.

Will Your 401(k) Plan Last Long Enough

Your main recourse here is to talk to your HR department and start asking questions. What are the fees of running the plan? How do they compare with fees offered by other plan administrators for companies of your size? Making sure the HR team has done their due diligence on this could mean tens of thousands of dollars to you.

You can also look at the fees charged by the funds themselves. Funds have expense ratios; actively managed funds generally have higher expense ratios than passively managed funds. To keep things really simple, consider a target-date retirement fund, which shifts its asset classes toward less risk the closer you get to retirement. (And if your plan does not offer a target date retirement fund, it should.)

Your 401(k) Is One Piece of a Larger Puzzle

A large 401(k) balance could have a big effect on when you can retire and your living standard when you do. But looking at it in the context of everything else we’ve talked about here is more important than an absolute dollar figure. Total savings, where you plan to invest your assets, the cost of those investments, and your spending habits are all complementary forces that will factor into a successful retirement plan.

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The Worst of the Free Financial Advisor: Episode #11–Julie Clow, Author of The Work Revolution, Freedom and Excellence for All

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What a great show! We’re fired up about this interview…if you’re passionate about workplace improvement and efficiency, this is the interview for you.

Not familiar with podcasts and how they work? Here’s a link to the Apple page on podcasts: Apple – iTunes – Podcasts

Hoping to subscribe to our show so this goodness is waiting on iTunes every week? Try this link to subscribe: Worst of the Free Financial Advisor iTunes page.

<Open> Quick show agenda & OG not here.

<> Author Julie Clow interview

The book: The Work Revolution: Freedom & Excellence for All

<23:25> Fractional Sense w/ PK from DQYDJ.net. Topic: Risk Modeling

<27:44> Roundtable: Ford employees are being offered retirement packages soon…what should people retiring think about that they may have overlooked?

Around the Blogosphere:

Dr. Dean @ the Millionaire Nurse blog: Retirement Investing: We’ve Got It All Wrong!

Dominique @ Your Finances Simplified: A Guide to Broke Fancy: How To Fake It Until You Make It

Len @ Len Penzo dot Com: 100 Words On: Why I Hate Slow Drivers Who Cruise in the Left Lane

Carrie @ Careful Cents: May Debt Goal Update (Auto Loan): I’m Debt Free!

<57:38> Our Giveaway! One easy step to enter….

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Worst of the Free Financial Advisor, Episode 7: Top 5 Annuity Traits

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This week we’re talking about annuities!  

Wait, don’t fall asleep yet, the episode hasn’t even started. Actually an annuity is an oft-misunderstood beast, so OG and I do our best to set the record straight.

Who knows, you might even enjoy learning a little about them!

PK from DQYDJ.net talks innumeracy. He calls his site “high on statistics and low on personality”….sure, PK. That’s what we have in common. No personality…. I still don’t know what innumeracy is…I think he’s swearing at us.

The roundtable team tackles an article by Sam from Financial Samurai on streams of income for retirement. How is your retirement vision? Is it close to Sam’s?

On the Sites (here are the articles mentioned in the segments):

Carrie Smith redesigned her site working with a friend at Careful Cents.

Dr. Dean talks coffee and tea at the Millionaire Nurse Blog.

Len Penzo made a list of 20 things he’s willing to spend more money for

Dominique Brown from Your Finances Simplified discusses how financial planning is like weight lifting

Show Notes:

<Open>  We begin the “I don’t want to say I told you so, but….” routine we often use when pretending we’re not bragging.

<14:30>  Fractional Cents with PK from DQYDJ.NET

<21:00>  Roundtable discusses Financial Samurai’s Achieving Financial Freedom One Income Slice at a Time

<51:50>  Top 5 Annuity Traits

The show continues, but as usual, if you’re still listening after the Top 5, you’re here for our general hilarity, not because you’re looking for more tips.

Thanks again to all of our contributers and listeners. I think you’re gonna love this show!

 

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Goal Setting and Pretty Retirement Charts – Our Cuppa Joe Discussion

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Every Thursday we grab a cup o’ Joe and talk opinions on financial matters…..today we’ll chat about goal setting and workplace retirement plans.

My opinion: Do you know those 401k asset allocation charts in the front/back/middle of your workplace retirement plan booklet? They’re color coded circles of slick graphics, and are often found at the conclusion of a survey about the amount of risk you should take in your investments.

Those pie charts are nearly irrelevant when it comes to financial success.

Each day in a workplace somewhere in America you’ll find a fast-talking 401k-hocking yahoo teaching a group of people how to use these silly charts to determine how much risk they “want” to take.

How much risk you “want” to take?

“Want” and “financial success” rarely coexist when talking about money management. Most people want zero risk and huge returns. They also want Santa Claus to be a little more kind next year than last.

Is “how much risk do you want” really the question you should be asking with your 401k plan?

 

I have a better question.

 

Try this one on: How much risk do you need to take to reach your goal?

Isn’t that the question these surveys should be asking?

I know this doesn’t sound like rocket science, yet you’d think so if you’ve ever read workplace retirement plan guides. In many cases, risk tolerance charts and savings guidelines are presented as two entirely different discussions.

Huh?

Let’s be clear about what I’m discussing here. If you’re going to achieve financial success:

Find out how much you need to save.

Then learn what return you need on that savings.

 

If I had control of these workplace pie charts, here’s what I’d do

 

I’d gather everyone in the conference room and show the group how to determine the amount they need to save to reach financial success. I know that’ll differ for everyone, so it’ll be important to focus on goal calculators. With the boss’s permission, we’d follow this up with generous portions of alcohol. We’ll call it “Some of You Will Be Happy” Hour.

Second, I’d help everyone determine what return they need on that savings to achieve the retirement goal.

Sounds like I’m repeating myself, doesn’t it? I’m not.

 

Here’s where we finally insert the silly quiz

 

Third, the employees would be presented with the risk tolerance quiz. Everyone could see if the asset mix they (historically) would have needed to reach financial success matches their risk tolerance.

If so, more Happy Hour.

If it doesn’t: Houston, we have a problem.

 

The real problem

 

If you aren’t going to reach your goal, you have a choice to make: either save more money or raise your risk tolerance. One requires sweat, the other education.

Which path would you follow?

I believe that once we begin presenting 401k plans this way, instead of with some inane chart about your “risk tolerance” (lots of people very comfortably missing their goals out there), we’ll finally begin to realize that every goal can be met through a simple equation:

 

Savings x Return = Goal

 

How you approach one side will affect the other.

 

Okay, discussers, let’s go:  Do you have a workplace retirement plan? Did it come with a silly risk tolerance chart…or did they present retirement in the brilliant manner I have above?

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