Saver tips & resources

Retirement planning isn't easy—you can make all the right decisions, but your savings are always susceptible to market volatility. Unexpected world events can influence your savings by seemingly drastic amounts, causing an unsettling feeling that can leave you questioning if your financial future is secure.

It happens far too often: workers saving in a retirement plan leave their jobs and decide to take their 401(k) funds with them as a distribution, only to be caught off guard when their distribution is subject to a variety of fees and taxes. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will be looking for the income taxes on funds that have been accumulating tax-free, and recordkeepers will be charging a fee for processing the distribution. These taxes and fees apply whether you leave the plan and take your money, or your employer closes the plan and pays you out.

If you're trying to locate an old 401(k) plan from a previous job, you're not alone…not by a long shot. The good news is that the Department of Labor (DOL) has established rules for protecting money put into a 401(k), so the money isn't necessarily lost—just waiting for someone to claim it. However, that doesn’t mean your old 401(k) account will always be easy to track down. It may take some digging, but there are a variety of ways you can find it.

There’s never a bad time to audit your retirement savings account and make sure there are no major discrepancies between the amount of time you’d like to be retired and the amount of time you can afford to be retired.

There's an old, well-known adage that says, "There’s no time like the present." We've all heard the phrase at one point or another, and while it probably wasn't referencing when to start saving for retirement the first time it was uttered, it may as well have been.

With countless rules enforced by the Social Security Administration (SSA) and many potential strategies for collecting Social Security benefits, it’s no wonder pre-retirees and retirees alike often feel overwhelmed and confused when it comes time to claim benefits.

Saving for retirement sounds simple enough, and your employer-sponsored 401(k) allows you to make convenient contributions to save for your future—but making decisions about how to invest in your plan can be overwhelming if you don’t understand the language used to describe your options. Whether you’re saving in a 401(k), IRA, 403(b), or any other type of retirement plan, we’ve collected some of the key terms and jargon you may see in your plan to help you feel empowered and knowledgeable about your investment decisions.

Your company’s retirement plan is just one of a collection of useful tools for successful retirement planning. As is the case with any tool, you have to use it for it to work.

A 401(k) or similar retirement plan can be an incredibly useful tool for workers looking to save for retirement without the intimidation that can come with solo exploration of the open stock market.

Enrolling in (and starting to contribute to) your 401(k) plan can seem like a daunting task—especially if you aren't overly familiar with the inner workings of the financial industry.