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November | 2011 | Steve Butler Speaks Out
https://sjbutler.wordpress.com/2011/11
Steve Butler Speaks Out. Manage Your Benefits, Protect Your Future. Fee disclosure rules change 401(k) game. November 21, 2011. The new cost disclosure rules that will go into effect for 401(k) plans starting in May will have an interesting effect on the most common business model that dominates the retirement plan industry. Most 401(k) plans have an adviser from the financial services industry and then a separate company that performs the government-required testing and reporting. This effort results in...
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June | 2011 | Steve Butler Speaks Out
https://sjbutler.wordpress.com/2011/06
Steve Butler Speaks Out. Manage Your Benefits, Protect Your Future. Tipping point near for 401(k) investors. June 27, 2011. Last week, I wrote about the efficacy of solar energy for the home — especially if you looked at it from an unorthodox but accurate financial perspective. The law of unintended consequences was just oozing through the cracks in ways I hadn’t predicted. In the world of 401(k) plans, we may have the germ of a tipping point in the form of a popular uprising against unnecessarily high f...
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March | 2012 | Steve Butler Speaks Out
https://sjbutler.wordpress.com/2012/03
Steve Butler Speaks Out. Manage Your Benefits, Protect Your Future. Staying the course can pay dividends. March 19, 2012. What you see isn’t always what you get. But, you may ask, who has been earning 12 percent when the total stock market, over the past five years, has had a compound average return of 2.11 percent per year? On average, then, we had $3,000 invested for the five-year period. Calculating on a napkin, we can see that our so-called “internal rate of return” or the return base...When I do the...
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Making the 401(k) sacrifice for a better tomorrow | Steve Butler Speaks Out
https://sjbutler.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/making-the-401k-sacrifice-for-a-better-tomorrow
Steve Butler Speaks Out. Manage Your Benefits, Protect Your Future. Making the 401(k) sacrifice for a better tomorrow. March 19, 2012. My automobile license plate has read “MR 401K” for the past 25 years, so it’s not unusual for someone to approach me on the street and make conversation about — you guessed it — their 401(k) account. Last week, it happened at a gas station where I was filling up with what may soon be $5-per-gallon gas. 8220;How about $50,000? 8221; — my wild guess. Here’s a guy who ...
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May | 2011 | Steve Butler Speaks Out
https://sjbutler.wordpress.com/2011/05
Steve Butler Speaks Out. Manage Your Benefits, Protect Your Future. American retirement picture no so gloomy. May 24, 2011. The “Boomers” are all right. The latest information from Fidelity Fund and the Investment Company Institute, combined with a dose of common sense and deductive reasoning, leads us to the conclusion that the Baby Boomers are financially prepared for retirement. There is a total of $3 trillion today in 401(k) accounts — plus another $1.5 trillion if we count employer profit-...There i...
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July | 2011 | Steve Butler Speaks Out
https://sjbutler.wordpress.com/2011/07
Steve Butler Speaks Out. Manage Your Benefits, Protect Your Future. We can all contribute to the U.S. safety net. July 25, 2011. I was stunned by the recent article about the section of the Bay Bridge that was being shipped here from China. A Chinese welder working on the project earned $12 per day and worked from 8 am until 11 pm — seven days a week. The guy they interviewed was 55 years old! Here’s how I get to the 20 percent: the employee pays about 10 percent combined for Social Security and Me...
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February | 2012 | Steve Butler Speaks Out
https://sjbutler.wordpress.com/2012/02
Steve Butler Speaks Out. Manage Your Benefits, Protect Your Future. Fiscal lessons from mom. February 21, 2012. A few weeks ago, my mother died just short of her 92nd birthday, ending a life that embodies so much of what makes this country great. After returning to America, he organized the Finnish community and became a friend of Calvin Coolidge in the process. Mom actually shook hands with the president when she was 5 after traveling to his Vermont “Summer White House” on horseback. Within a few years,...
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December | 2011 | Steve Butler Speaks Out
https://sjbutler.wordpress.com/2011/12
Steve Butler Speaks Out. Manage Your Benefits, Protect Your Future. Young adults should save for their future. December 27, 2011. Let me guess. Young adults home for the holidays probably sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but am I right? With his last $250, he boarded a bus for New York City and joined the movement. Like early immigrants who arrived in New York City with nothing, this is a compelling story about people who are strug...
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