retirement accounts--John oliver

[PTM]

nice piece from John oliver on his HBO show "last week tonight" about retirement accounts and the hidden fees, etc.  You all probably know about all of this but still pretty funny, and informative.  If your friends are too lazy to ready this site, maybe they'll watch this clip.  https://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight

FYI: contains some questionable language

[acsing]

Just watched this 20 minutes ago - great piece, but I agree that if you are a frequent reader of this site, none of the information was new. Still, John Oliver takes on important topics relevant to the majority of the US population in a funny and informative way.

[Dicast]

Definitely worth 20 minutes of your time if no one around you minds a bit of language.  I'm pretty sure John Oliver will never be working for an investment firm.  He makes a good point about what a fiduciary is which may help some people navigate the world of investing.

[litovskyassetmanagement]

Dicast wrote:

Definitely worth 20 minutes of your time if no one around you minds a bit of language.  I’m pretty sure John Oliver will never be working for an investment firm.  He makes a good point about what a fiduciary is which may help some people navigate the world of investing.

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When it comes to retirement plans, things are definitely lacking, and are not getting any better.  For one thing, there is a huge amount of liability, and legal language essentially makes it so that an adviser can only be a fiduciary in a very narrow space (primarily in the selection of investments).  But that should be absolutely the last thing on the list of a retirement plan sponsor.  Yes, low cost index funds are important, and so is participant education, but there are significantly more important matters to attend to. Who will be able to help the plan sponsor a) decide on which plan to open, b) assist them in opening their plan and c) provide ongoing support with their plan?  For personal advice, Registered Investment Advisers are supposed to act in a fiduciary capacity, so every step of the way they are fiduciaries, starting with the initial engagement, creation of a comprehensive plan and its implementation.  With retirement plans, this 'advice' (if I can call it that) is provided by those who sold the plan sponsor the plan, therefore this is conflicted advice that is often not of the highest quality (to put it mildly) simply because plan providers are not fiduciaries and plan sponsors are on the hook for making sure that any advice they receive is in their best interest.  With this arrangement, no wonder that retirement plans are still in the stone age when it comes to quality and cost.  Bundled platforms of all types are sucking asset-based fees out of participant accounts, and high cost mutual funds rule the small plans space.  One-size-fits-all plans that are appropriate for a typical run of the mill business, but not for medical/dental practices.  These problems are never going away.  Especially medical and dental practices will always need custom-designed plans and high quality advice due to the complexity of their plans, and asset-based platforms are going to cost them disproportionately, so using open-architecture platforms and selecting top notch TPAs and fiduciary advisers is key.

[jfoxcpacfp]

LOVE THAT! (except for the bond part at the end, of course)

If you'd like a 30-second version, watch this ad.