Millions of Americans with damaged credit records are at risk of being unfairly denied job opportunities by companies that use credit histories to screen applicants. Faced with growing public complaints, seven states have rightly limited the use of credit histories by potential employers. Federal, state and local lawmakers who are considering similar legislation are on the right track.
There are more than 50 million Americans with investments in 401(k) and other defined-contribution retirement-savings plans. They’re about to be getting more information about the fees they pay.
By one estimate, it could be sobering news.
Retirement-plan administrators have to provide detailed information to employers by July 1 about the fees they charge. Employers have to share that information with workers in their plans by Aug. 30, and once a year after that. The charges include investment-related fees and fees for administering a plan itself.
The 2009 CARD Act has been celebrated for helping consumers: The law limits interest rate hikes, fees, and other frustrating aspects of the credit card industry. Now, on the three-year anniversary of the bill’s signing, a report from the research and advocacy organization Demos suggests that it has successfully helped middle- and low-income households pay down their balances and avoid fees.
The average American couple could pay nearly $155,000 in fees for their 401(k) plans over their careers, reducing their eventual nest eggs by more than 30%, according to a new report.
Americans are increasingly dependent on credit cards just to put food on the table and keep the lights on, a new study shows. Although we’re doing a better job overall paying our bills on time these days, many people are relying on more easily attainable credit just to keep their heads above water.
Do you know how much your 401k is costing you? I would wager not, nor have you ever asked your employer about costs or looked in fund documents to find out. Chances are, it’s far too much and it’s eating away your retirement nest egg.
Upcoming Labor Department regulations mandating disclosure of retirement-plan costs are long overdue. Even then (I haven’t seen the final version yet), they may be so bureaucratic that millions may ignore them.
As wary as the public may be of Wall Street, it is not wary enough because the financial industry rips people off even more than most of us realize -- specifically, in 401(k) fees.
If you think your employer knows more about your 401(k) plan's fees than you do, think again. Sponsors of some 401(k) plans don't understand the fees they're paying toward plan administration, says a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The GAO reported on one case, in fact, where a relatively large plan underestimated its recordkeeping costs by $58,000. And more than 90 percent of plan sponsors don't use free tools the government supplies to help compare costs among 401(k) plan providers, the report says.
Mutual fund fees in 401(k) plans can look tiny—a median of 1 percent of assets per year, says financial-data provider Morningstar. But over a lifetime of saving, they can really scramble your nest egg. A recent study by Demos, a research and advocacy group, found that an American household of two median-income earners will pay, on average, almost $155,000 in 401(k) fees over 40 years. Yes, you read that right.
Your retirement account statement likely does not tell you this, but fees are adding up on your IRA or 401(k) over time – and they can be substantial, as much $155,000 for a median income, two-earner family over a lifetime.
That was not a misprint. In many areas, that amount will buy you a nice home.
The research and advocacy group, Demos, outlines the cost of retirement funds in a new report.
Yikes! The advocacy group Demos reports that a two-income couple — earning a median income over their careers — spends an average of $154,794 during their working lives on 401(k) fees. Fees, Demos says, eats up nearly one-third of their investment returns.
A higher income couple pays even more in fees: $277,969.
The story as it now stands for Facebook's IPO supports a broader narrative depressingly familiar to most Americans: Which is that the stock market is a rigged game.
The J.P. Morgan Chase JPM -0.68% & Co. unit whose wrong-way bets on corporate credit cost the bank more than $2 billion includes a group that has invested in financially challenged companies, including LightSquared Inc., the wireless broadband provider that this month filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The full details of JP Morgan’s trading strategy aren’t known, but Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and currently a fellow with public policy think-tank Demos, doesn’t buy the bank’s explanation that it was simply hedging. “How can you possibly lose that kind of money on a hedge?” he asks. “The answer is, they weren’t off setting risk.
On the third anniversary of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act being signed into law, the average debt has declined, but many Americans are still using credit cards as a way to cover basic living expenses, according to a national survey from the policy center Demos.