Are You Paying 30 Percent?

Recently, I wrote about how retirement investment plans will have to disclose their fees and expense ratios this summer. For the first time, both business owners and their employees will get a chart showing how much of the retirement savings is drained off to pay administrative and investment costs.

This week, we got a preview in the form of a disturbing study showing average 401(k) fees reduce total retirement savings by 30 percent. Industry disputes those findings, but everyone seems to agree that the costs are too high and there's too little transparency.

This summer, that's going to change as part of a trend toward better financial information getting out to Americans. Do you have an employer-sponsored retirement account? If so, do you know how much you pay now? If not, do you track expenses in your IRAs or mutual fund investments?

I was always told to look for overall expense ratios of 1% or less in my self-employed accounts. I'll be interested to see how our employer-sponsored plan shakes out.

Staying Small

Not every entrepreneurial venture follows the same trajectory. Take Lee Loree, inventor of the SleepTracker.

He has a $3 million company, selling an innovative tech product, yet he still works from home, has no employees and runs his entire company on an iPad.

Sure, he could scale up, hire employees and bring on private equity investors intent on securing a big payday down the line. But Loree's happy with his 10 to 20 percent annual growth, the challenges of selling internationally and the lifestyle he enjoys as a dad-entrepreneur.

Read more about him in my column this week.

Get It For Free

Ever looked over a website and wondered: Just how do they make money at this?

Of course you have! It's part of a paradigm shift called the Freemium model. Here's a little explainer I found helpful:


Price of Free

IPO Job Boost or Bust?

An oft-cited statistic that links job growth to initial public offerings is overblown, my colleague John Tozzi reports this week.

He took a look at new research that undermines one of the major lobbying points for the JOBS Act recently signed into law that legalizes equity crowdfunding for small biz and startups.

How Much Are You Paying?

If you have a 401(k) or another type of employer-sponsored retirement account, do you know how much you pay in expenses and fees, or how much your employees pay?

Starting this summer, the U.S. Department of Labor is requiring pension providers to lay out that information in a comparative chart for employers and employees. The rules, reportedly long fought by the financial industry, may bring a shock if you find that your administrative fees and fund management expenses are taking a big bite out of your retirement savings.

Yes, the information can probably be found in the fund prospectuses (prospecti?) for all the investments you own. But lots of people do not know that or do not take the time to dig it up. Yet it may mean a 40 percent difference in how much you have saved up when you retire.

Americans' confidence about their ability to retire comfortably is at a new low. So finding out how much you're paying - and getting a better deal if you're overpaying - is one step in the right direction. Look for your disclosure form no later than July 1 if you're a business owner; Aug. 30 if you're an employee.

Buy A Business...

...not a job.

Fatigued, Much?

Women and people of color are not yet at parity in business, yet when we should care about race and gender, diversity fatigue has set in.

Read why and what to do about it - and why you should care, in the first place - in my column this week.