The New Commonsense Guide to Your 401(k): Rebuilding Your Portfolio From The Bottom up

Chapter 25. Where to Get Help

SO BY NOW YOU KNOW that you are expected to take responsibility for your retirement, for setting goals, and for saving money. But you don't need to start from scratch. Lots of information has been pulled together to help you in your quest for savings and security.

The human resources department is a logical place to start. Many employers hire benefit consulting firms like Hewitt Associates or Watson Wyatt or Mercer to answer participants' questions and to provide information on how to get into the plan and choose investments and so forth. Some hire mutual fund vendors to help employees sort through what they need to know. Other employers hire companies like Financial Engines, founded by Nobel Prize-winning economist William F. Sharpe, which provides online research to help participants plan for retirement and computer analytics that can help an employee look at different scenarios to determine how much money she will need to save for retirement. Other employers ask the mutual fund company that provides the investment options to handle questions about investing.

The Department of Labor issued final rules on advice-giving in January 2009, yet the topic remains controversial, with one side arguing that the advisers must be totally independent and objective, and the other saying that an adviser who represents an investment vendor can still be objective. Employees may be able to meet with someone in their company's human resources department or talk to someone ...