Click below to listen to Episode 170 – Picking The Right Investment Choice For Your Work Retirement Plan
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Picking The Right Investment Choice For Your Work Retirement Plan
This episode is great for anyone who has or wants to contribute to a work retirement plan, which is most of us! Using the analogy of a dismantled car, Bob and Shawn suggest that many people feel overwhelmed when it comes to deciding how to invest their retirement funds. They highlight common types of retirement plans like 401k, 403b, and SEP, while unpacking the differences (spoiler alert – there’s really not that many!).
As always, listeners are warned about the risks of making uninformed decisions and emphasize the importance of understanding the associated risks and rewards, which is why it’s so important to have a fiduciary based financial advisor. So, listen in and discover more about investing towards your retirement funds!
HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode
Christian Financial Advisors
Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
Shawn Peters
Bible Verses In This Episode
PROVERBS 15:22
Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers, they succeed.
ECCLESIASTES 4:9-10
Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Welcome to the Christian Financial Perspectives Podcast, where you will learn what the Bible says about stewardship and finance. Here you will gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge of how to integrate your Christian faith with your finances. Here’s your Christian financial advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. My name is Shawn Peters and I’m joined as always by my father-in-law, Bob Barber. And today we’re gonna be covering a topic that we hope will be very educational and helpful for those of you watching or listening. If you enjoy content on financial topics but from a Christian perspective, we’d love for you to hit that subscribe button and join the community that we’re building here of Christians who wanna glorify God through their investments and finances. So today our topic is helping people with investment choices for their work retirement plans. And for most people, their retirement is saved up in their work retirement plan. It’s pretty common for a lot of people, especially earlier in their career. So, we hope that this will be beneficial and helpful to you. Now I’m gonna pass it over to Bob and he’s gonna give us a little more info on this.
Bob:
Alright. So I want us to pop this picture up. So you see this car, it’s in a bunch of different pieces and by the way, Shawn, if you gave me a car like that, I would have no idea how to put it together. Alright. I mean, I think I see the seats there, I kind of know where that would go, but I just cannot imagine. And I see the engine block and some of those parts how we put this together.
Shawn:
Recognize some of the parts.
Bob:
But without any mechanical training, I would not know how to do this. And Shawn, I’m using this word picture because I see it truly as this is what is happening with people in their retirement plans. It’s like Greek to them.
Shawn:
So effectively, Bob, what we’re saying here is looking at the picture of the car and all the components and parts that go into it. And we’re saying for many people in their work retirement plan, that’s the same situation that they’re in. And so if you are involved in a work retirement plan, there’s a lot of options for that retirement plan. But just like the picture of the car, you’re expected on your own to figure out how to put it together and do it right. And that’s a little, can be a little daunting.
Bob:
So Shawn, the scriptures I picked today, ones I like is Proverbs 15:22. You’ve heard me say that one many times. Yeah, but I like it ’cause it says, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.” And Ecclesiastes 4:9-10.
Shawn:
“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”
Bob:
So Shawn, I’ve never met a person in my 33 years in the financial advisory business with a written investment strategy for investing in their work retirement plan. Not one.
Shawn:
Wow.
Bob:
Nearly 100% of a person’s retirement’s nest egg is often in their work retirement plans, which is supposed to generate an income once they retire for possibly 20 to 30 years. And Shawn, I call that insanity. That’s just crazy when I think about that.
Shawn:
Yeah. And it makes total sense because for most people they can put far more away per year into their work retirement plan because usually it’s just a percentage from their paycheck and you’ve got the employer match compared with your own personal IRA. There’s a limit on how much you can put in those and it’s a lot less.
Bob:
Yeah. And there’s a limit on these too, but it’s a lot. But we’re talking $50,000 limits per year. So what are work retirement plans? For many of you, if you are with a corporation that’s gonna be a 401k’s.
Shawn:
By far the most common I would say.
Bob:
Yeah. Well it is, but there’s a lot of government employees, too. So for the government employees, it’ll be a TSP. Now those are a little bit more simple ’cause they’ll just give you eight or nine choices there, where on many of the 401ks you have 50 or 60 different choices or more. And that’s where it gets mass confusion. Then we have 403b plans that are for hospitals, schools, nonprofit organizations, and then for like small businesses a lot of them will use a SEP or Simple IRA plan. With all these plans, they’re very similar as far as what you can put into them. I don’t know why the government doesn’t just come along and just say qualified retirement plan, why they call them 401ks, 403bs, TSPs, SEP, and Simple IRAs is beyond me. Basically, they’re all the same things. So if you have a work retirement plan, the rules pretty much are the same across the board.
Shawn:
Okay. Sure. There are some, maybe some slight differences. But I wouldn’t get too worked up in it. But Bob, you said something really interesting. You said, why doesn’t the government come in and just simplify it? Have we ever known the government to actually make improvements overall?
Bob:
I don’t think so.
Shawn:
I mean, maybe a few rare circumstances. But usually it’s how can we make this more complicated and less efficient? .
Bob:
Yep. Exactly. So we have the typical retirement plan investment choices. And I’ve written this down so I don’t miss anything. Because basically, just listen to this Greek to you. This is not Greek to us. We understand it, but you have specialized equity mutual funds consisting of large, mid, or small cap companies and growth value and blend style boxes or a blend of several or all of these. Did that just make sense to you?
Shawn:
So that’s the first one.
Bob:
Okay. So these are all the different choices you have. Then you have your bond funds that are from long term to short term to immediate term to high, mid, and low quality.
Shawn:
Number two, everyone following along, right?
Bob:
Yeah, sure. Exactly. Then we have our international and global funds. Then we have our sector funds like technology, healthcare, energy, consumer staples, et cetera. Then we have the assortment of ETFs, exchange traded funds. And then there’s a combination of all of the above.
Shawn:
You might have some funds…
Bob:
Depends on which way you wanna go.
Shawn:
Exactly. You might have some funds that are some combination of some or all of those.
Bob:
Shawn, this is just mass confusion. It’s like looking at that car engine all apart. And nobody really knows what to do and they’re guessing. The average person…
Shawn:
Well, Bob gets worse. Because then from from one 401k, 403b to another, even if that retirement plan is with the same custodian or the same administrator like type company, it can still be completely different choices from one company to the next or from one organization to the next. And then each of those custodians, when you’re trying to compare, they might have large cap for the S&P 500 or, or the DOW or whatever. But they’ll have that and they have a name for it, but another custodian has a different name for it. So even then it’s like, unless you know what you’re doing, you can’t say, oh, I’ll talk to my friend. ’cause he’s doing pretty good. And what did you go into? Well, it’s not the same names. So it’s a little confusing.
Bob:
I was talking to Teresa this morning about this too, and she said, yeah, I mean somebody says, oh, that’s a growth fund. Okay, well I’ll go into that growth fund. Growth sounds good. Well, okay. Do you understand the risk and reward of that? Do you know if it’s small cap growth? Is it large cap growth? How’s it gonna feel with the different markets? I mean, there’s just total confusion about what to choose for the average person. And it’s overwhelming. They really don’t understand all of these choices, the risk and reward behind it, how they’re gonna react to all the different market scenarios, bull markets, bear markets, up/down markets.
Shawn:
What kind of risk is actually, in simple number terms, what kind of risk is actually associated on the positive and negative side with these different options.
Bob:
So what do you think they end up doing?
Shawn:
Throw a dart at the wall or guess.
Bob:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly what they do. They end up guessing because really there’s no one there to help them, Shawn. There is just, there’s just no guidance. I think there’s supposed to be guidance, but okay, if somebody gives you just, here’s this prospectus. They don’t know how to read that. Most people don’t know how to read that. They don’t know what to look for.
Shawn:
And, well, most of the way the administration is done on these 401ks, 403b’s, et cetera, it’s effectively, “Hey, I just wanna make sure you’re signed up. I’ll help you make sure you can log in. I’ll make sure that you’re you know how much you’re actually contributing. And here’s the ones that are available.” But when it comes to actually ascertaining what level of risk are you comfortable with? What is your long-term goal and what should you actually invest in? Good luck getting any help from HR or the plan administrator, because I mean, there might be a few exceptions, but overall the industry standard is, yeah. Good luck. You’re on your own.
Bob:
Folks. I know. I know this because I talk with you every day of the week all year long for many years. And you feel lonely when it comes to this. You really don’t know. Maybe you’re gonna ask a few friends. That’s like asking for a stock tip from somebody on the golf course. . There’s just no one who’s guiding you. There’s a total misunderstanding of all the asset classes, the risk and reward. You don’t even know how to build an investment model with this. You might as well be looking at a 20 page menu in a restaurant that’s written in Greek and you don’t understand.
Shawn:
Assuming you don’t speak Greek.
Bob:
Yeah. Assuming. Exactly. So since I’ve really never met a person with an investment strategy for their work retirement plan, they have no blueprint. There’s no target, there’s no financial analysis or how to do it. No understanding or risk or reward. You know, Shawn, I think…
Shawn:
Okay, Bob, I think everyone might be thoroughly either depressed or frustrated or feeling very triggered maybe. But like Yeah. I feel that way. I’m done. With the point, Bob, what do I do?
Bob:
I’m going to another.
Shawn:
So what do we do? What are the best choices for the majority of people?
Bob:
So I think that the best choices for the majority of people is to look inside your plan and look for a target date or lifecycle fund, if you understand the risk and reward of it.
Shawn:
Yeah.
Bob:
Okay. And they’re gonna automatically adjust the mix of investments for you as you get closer to retirement. And it’s like putting your investments on autopilot. So you have professionals putting together this complete asset allocation model. The one thing that you gotta understand is the risk and reward of that, the second word being reward. Because the farther you go out, the higher the risk. The closer the date, the lower the risk. So let’s say somebody picks a target fund, that’s a 2025. Well, here we are in 2023, that’s gonna be a very conservative portfolio.
Shawn:
Exactly. ’cause we’re talking less than two years from theoretical retirement. I think that would be a good way to look at it, too. I noticed just in the last couple weeks, we had a few clients that I was meeting with and I did take a look at their 401k because I just wanna make sure they were contributing enough, things like that. And between those, of the four, three of them had completely different names for the target date funds. Two of them were from the same custodian, which was, I couldn’t figure that one out. But the easiest way to identify it is they’ll typically have some sort of name, they might say target date, they might say lifecycle something of that nature, but they’ll have a number and it’s usually either every 10 years or every 5 years. So, like Bob mentioned a little earlier, you see one that says 2025, 2030, 2035. Just think of that as, okay, if I retired in that year…
Bob:
That’s correct.
Shawn:
That’s the one that you want to go with. And I would say probably would make sense that if you’re kind of in between the options and you’re retiring in 2030, but they only have a 2025 and a 2035, you should probably go with the 2025, Bob?
Bob:
Or until you really understand the risk and reward, correct. And then Shawn, you also have to play this into, like you say, how far are you from retirement?How does it mix with your other investments? So you have to look at this as a holistic approach, which you can’t… for many people, maybe this is it, this is all they have for retirement. So that’s easy, but which is pretty common. But for others maybe one out of three that I’ll meet with, they have a lot of other investments. So all that has to really play into where are those investments and how are they invested? Are they aggressive? Are they growth? Are they blend, are they conservative and how this is going to to play into it. So really all this, you need the help of somebody that understands how to do it. And that’s where we’re coming to you today. We talked about this yesterday when we were putting this together. There’s, like you say, there’s a lot to consider and we’re going to offer from this program today a $200 consultation in which we will give you a risk assessment through our Riskalyze program, which is very thorough. We’ll explain that to you and then we’ll look at your 401k or your 403b or your…
Shawn:
Your work retirement plan, whichever it is.
Bob:
Work retirement plan. And we’ll look at how this is gonna integrate and help you to understand what you are investing in. I think this is a very fair price to do this for. I mean.
Shawn:
It’s a small price to pay for peace mind.
Bob:
It is, I mean, I think $200 is very reasonable for that, especially if you have even over $40,000 or $50,000 in your retirement plan. It is worthwhile to do.
Shawn:
And that risk assessment, just so you know, it’s not subjective of like, well, what are you comfortable with? It’s very mathematical where we help you look at some questions and figure out what you are or aren’t comfortable with. I think the easiest way to look at it is you want to be as aggressive as possible to meet your goals, but not too aggressive where you’re gonna make the decision of, oh, I need to go more conservative when the markets are down.
Bob:
Yeah. Volatility.
Shawn:
And there’s gonna be volatility no matter what you’re in, but using an objective approach, we can help you see and visualize, okay, in a given six month window, what kind of positive/negative might you be seen in something like this?
Bob:
And can you take it?
Shawn:
Yeah. And are you comfortable with that? And then we can determine, okay, well what might be the best option for you within that plan.
Bob:
So we hope you found this useful today. I know it was, it’s kind of an interesting topic. It’s kind of hard to talk about, but we’re here to help you and you can get a ahold of us to do this risk assessment and look at your 401k by giving us a call at (830) 609-6986. You can text that as well, (830) 609-6986. Or you can go to our website www.christianfinancialadvisors.com and you can book an appointment right from our website with either Shawn or I. Any last minute things?
Shawn:
Well, we’ll have a link to our contact form in the description of either the video episode that you’re watching or if you’re listening, it’ll be in the description for the podcast, the podcast episode, either way. And you can use that to get in touch with us. I think that’s all. Thank you and God bless.
[CONCLUSION]
That’s all for now.
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.