Fiduciary Is Fun!
(a.k.a. I heart taxes)
(a.k.a. I heart taxes)
I was meeting with a prospect last week and we were discussing his business and the current challenges of finding good talent. The business requires a number of technology savvy folks, although the actual business is not a “tech business” per se. Indianapolis has in recent years become a bit of tech hub as SalesForce has expanded here and is now one of the larger employers in the area. Suffice to say that if you are a young technology person, the idea of working for SalesForce or any one of the many start-up tech companies has a slightly greater appeal than working with my prospect.
We discussed ways in which we could address my prospect’s challenges, and one of the options that he has used in the past, and continues to use now, includes signing bonuses for the right talent. These bonuses are not six figure bonuses, of course, but they are generally several thousand dollars. He feels he needs to continue to strategically use these bonuses to compete against the more tech centric competition in town. However, one of the problems with these bonuses has been that employees that do come on board often don’t stay very long. Many move on after a year or two, which is obviously frustrating. Is there a better way, he asked? Well of course there is! I mentioned to him that he could continue to keep signing bonuses part of his offering for key employees but instead of paying them out in cash, he could put them into the retirement plan and make them subject to a 5 or 6 year vesting schedule. He was surprised to hear that he could do that as he thought this might be discriminatory when in fact it is perfectly legit. Moreover, by putting these bonuses into the plan and making them subject to a vesting schedule, he and the employee avoid paying taxes on these contributions. He can even make the bonuses more generous because if the employees leave before fully vested, he can repurpose those forfeited dollars for other employees. Was my prospect happy about this idea? Naturally he was. Is he a client yet? Not quite, but things are looking positive. If you are an employer looking to partner with an advisor who can think outside the box to help you with a business problem, give me a call. I would love to have a discussion! Pete Welsh a/k/a 401kGuy
0 Comments
Here is what would seem like a simple question – What kind of college graduates do CPA firms hire? When I came out of college the answer was pretty simple – accounting graduates. Duh. Well, according to a new report (“Trends”) from the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts (“AICPA”), 31% of the new graduates in 2018 that public accounting firms hired were non-accounting majors. Almost 1 out of every 3 new hires was not an “accountant.” Does this surprise you?
These numbers are actually causing many in the CPA profession to reevaluate things, including the actual CPA exam itself – what it should look like, who can take it, etc. As a CPA, I have found these changes to our profession interesting. CPAs have always been on the leading edge of business changes as consultants and advisors to clients. However, as Barry Melancon, CPA President of the AICPA said of the Trends Report, “Increased demand for technology skills is shifting the accounting firm hiring model.” With more and more of the accounting profession becoming automated and technology focused, the old fashioned debit and credit skills are becoming less valuable on their own. I suppose all of this makes sense when you think about it, but what has this shift required of accounting firms and their hiring practices? It’s caused them to think differently in many areas. The traditional career paths are changing. Incentive structures are changing. Work habits of these new non-accounting graduates are different. How is your business model changing and have you considered what these changes mean to your recruitment and staffing model? All business models change. In fact, if the CPA profession can change as fast as it is doing, I am quite sure that almost every other business is changing as I type this. Are you a leader in your organization, and are you thinking about how your next new hire could be different from your last? Do you post positions simply to fill the same role of the prior person? Or are you thinking strategically about how your business is changing and adjusting accordingly? I would suggest that a growing business needs to constantly be considering what it will look like and need 2 to 3 steps out. Part of that analysis should include your benefits program including your retirement plan(s). This could be both your qualified plan – 401k – and non-qualified plans. Just because you haven’t done something in the past is no reason not to consider it in the future. If you want to have a discussion around the next generation of retirement plan and planning for your organization, please give me a call. I would love to talk to you about the unexpected. Pete Welsh a/k/a 401kGuy Employment/Unemployment is double edged, correct? Too much unemployment is bad for everyone; on that I presume we can all agree. But is too much employment bad as well? It’s not bad in the same way, of course, but I will put forth that it isn’t all good either.
I was with a client of mine last week and because of the nature of their business, they hire a meaningful number of seasonal workers at the end of summer and into the fall. The positions are relatively high paying for the work involved, and in the past they have never really had any issues filling the spots. This year they believe things will be different. There is certainly a lot of data out there supporting my client’s concerns. The Unemployment Rate, according to the Department of Labor currently sits at 3.7%, and there were 7.3 million job openings on the last business day of June this year. That’s a lot of unfilled jobs! And all these opening can be distracting. CareerBuilder says that 32% of US employees plan to get a new job in 2019. According to the same research 29% of employees say they regularly search for new jobs and 78% say they are open to trying something new if the opportunity arises. I think it is fair to say that approximately 1/3rd of an employer’s work force is ready to jump ship on any particular day. What does this say about our work environments! Moreover, what do all these surveys suggest to my client who needs some workers…and needs them now! Well, we spent some time talking about that. The recruitment conversations are usually focused on full-time employees. What type of packages can we put together for Full Time Employees? However, sometimes it is just as important to spend some time to think about what can be done for those part time employees. Clearly, we are not talking about 401k programs and health programs in the traditional sense, but can we do something to stand out from the crowd? Well of course we can! There are any number of options available to part time employees outside the traditional employer sponsored benefits programs. Many of these incentives are in the form of cash in one way or another, but not all of them. One item that we discussed involved leveraging the health program to bring in a nurse practitioner and wellness coach to work with these seasonal workers. The conversation was very dynamic as we involved the health insurance broker into the conversation who had several ideas. The point of this post? In a tight labor market we need to be thinking outside the box to attract and retain (for whatever length of time is needed) the right employees. Are you working with an advisor willing to help you? If not, give me a call. I would love to visit on your challenges. Pete Welsh a/k/a 401kGuy I saw some recent research from ValuePenguin that suggested 63% of Americans do not understand how a 401k plan works. This is as recent as May of 2019. Does this surprise you?
Last week I did a number of enrollment meetings for a client of mine. They are a Charter School here in Indianapolis and recently hired about 50 new teachers for the upcoming school year. They are technically a public school which allows them to sponsor a 403(b) plan. I started each meeting by asking for a show of hands of how many in the room understood what a 403(b) plan is. What do you think was the percentage of hands that went up? If only 37% of Americans understand a 401k plan, I can assure you that even less understand a 403(b) plan. In fact, most people in the room were surprised to learn that both types of plans get their name from the corresponding section of the Internal Revenue Code. For my part, I do not find it surprising that the majority of employees do not fully understand how a corporate retirement plan works. After all, why should they? It’s not their job to understand how these work, it’s mine. And it’s my job to help them understand how to fully take advantage of these plans. A key challenge to doing this is a practical one – time. Most enrollment meetings are designed by the employer to last 20-30 minutes. It is enough time to cover the basics, but do you think that everyone walks out of the room with a full understanding? What’s the best outcome that can come from an in-person enrollment meeting? For my part, the goal is not to provide a complete understanding of everything about the plan. My goal is to get the employees to take at least one step forward on their investing journey. Especially with younger folks, I encourage a modest percent of their income – 2 or 3 pennies on the dollar in the retirement plan. Once they get started, they can always increase. Certainly deferring to the match is optimal, but many employees starting out struggle with deferring 6% or so of pay. 2% or 3% is at least a start. So after the meeting, what are the next steps? I encourage employees to contact me directly, and many do. I always find it interesting to visit with employees regarding their own situations. Exploring their own challenges allows for another learning opportunity to explain how the plan works and why they need to take advantage of it. If you want an adviser for your employees that understands the financial future of your employees requires a long term journey and not just a 20-30 minute drive-by, give me a call! Pete Welsh a/k/a 401kGuy I was recently reading an article from the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School of Business and came across this little nugget from Olivia Mitchell from the School, “the baby who will live to be 200 has already been born.” Does anyone think this is a good thing?
Regardless of whether or not Ms. Mitchell is correct, the key point she is making is that people are living longer than they once did. On the whole, this is probably a good thing, right? However, it also raises some obvious issues. The first one, and one that has been noted many times in the financial press, is how are individuals going to plan for what could be a prolonged period of retirement? 100 years ago, retirement was a relatively short period of time. If Ms. Mitchell is correct, retirement in the future could last 100 years?! The truth is probably somewhere in between, of course, but what will be the consequence for those who have not saved enough for a prolonged retirement, whether that be 20, 30, or even 40 years? Many people say they want to continue or will continue to work into the years that would otherwise be defined as their “golden years.” This is great, if they are able and allowed to do so. Let’s explore that last point . According to a study by ProPublica and the Urban Institute, between 1992 and 2016, 56% of older workers reported either being laid off or pushed out of a job at least once in their older years. Once reemployed, only 1 in 10 reported earning at or above the rate they were making. Rehiring older workers has always been a challenge, and remains so today, even though there are more and more older workers desiring to work! What’s it going to take for employers to get more comfortable hiring older workers? Obviously there will be a large pool of such older workers available who need and want to work in the future. If we continue to harbor a bias against older workers, how are these individuals going to support themselves in their older age? This situation is going to get uncomfortable for all parties in the not too distant future . We can’t change society in a blog post, but we can at least take accountability for ourselves. If the thought of a prolonged retirement has you concerned and working into retirement is not your first option for several reasons, it is probably time to put together a plan. After all, no one wants to be 150 and standing in line for a job . Give me a call. Pete Welsh a/k/a 401kGuy Every employer wants satisfied employees. After all, the opposite doesn’t sound very appealing, does it? How an employer works to create satisfied employees can take numerous avenues. Some of the obvious Management 101 principles include having a boss that cares about their employees’ growth and development, providing an appropriate work/life balance, properly recognizing a job well done, and providing a healthy work culture. These are just a few means of valuing employees on which an employer should focus if the goal is to create satisfied employees.
Nevertheless, even when an employer tries to do everything possible to support employees, not all are satisfied. Some new research from the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute sheds some interesting light on how you can tell if your employees are Satisfied, Settled, Resigned, or Restless (this last one is not good, by the way). What I found interesting about this research is that it didn’t just simply ask employees how satisfied they are with their employers, but rather looked at specific things employees do and value after they have been identified as Satisfied, Settled, Resigned, or Restless. Satisfied employees are defined as Enthusiastic, Passionate, Positive, and Proud. Just the kind of employee we all want! What is particularly useful about this employee classification is that employers are able to look at the behaviors and values of their employees and get a sense of how successfully the employer is creating Satisfied employees. So, what were some of these behaviors and values that Satisfied employees have that less-enthusiastic employees don’t? Well, 99% of Satisfied employees feel that workplace benefits are critical to their financial security. And, not surprisingly, Satisfied employees are twice as likely to be participating in the company’s retirement plan. The first takeaway here – if you have many employees not participating in your retirement plan, they might be Restless. Restless employees are unengaged in the employer’s mission and have one foot out the door. If you find yourself with several employees not involved in your retirement plan, working to improve their satisfaction with your company is a good place to start. Getting them involved with the retirement plan is also a positive sign. Restless employees are more financially stressed than Satisfied employees and tend to be less secure about their future. Helping these Restless employees become more financially secure and involved in the retirement plan is one step an employer can take to move Restless employees toward Satisfied employees. Want to learn more about how to build a staff of Satisfied employees? Give me a call! Pete Welsh aka- 401kGuy I have long given up believing that investors are “rational” as I was taught in college. As a Finance major, I learned that investors are rational and make decisions in their own best interest. People don’t voluntarily make decisions that do not favor them, I was told, but rather “optimize” their decisions to benefit themselves. HA!
Some new research from Bankrate.com would leave some college professors scratching their heads. The survey asked 1,000 individuals about their investing preferences for 2019 for money that they would be investing for more than 10 years. Obvious categories were Stocks, Cash, Real Estate, Gold, etc. (Real Estate was #1 for 2019, by the way). What was really interesting, however, was a question about how falling interest rates would affect their investing decisions. Now for a “Rational Investor” falling interest rates should have a profound effect on where they put their money for 10 years or longer, just as rising interest rates should affect such a decision. Entire financial empires wobble on whether the Federal Reserve Board will raise or lower interest rates by even tiny percentages, for example. Certainly, a rational investor would factor declining interest rates into their investment decisions for the long term, right? Nope. Not going to happen. According to BankRate.com’s research, the survey respondents would make almost no changes to their investments in a declining interest rate environment. It appears that people pick a preferred investment and then decide to stay with it regardless of what is happening around it that would impact their long-term returns. In fact, only 33% of the respondents said that if interest rates were declining would they put more money into the stock market. 67% of the respondents are “not rational.” Surprise! So, what can we make of this information? If people should be making changes to their long-term investments as a result of macro changes in the economy, and the vast majority won’t, we obviously can’t rely on people making their own decisions in their best interest. Rather, the obvious takeaway for me is that investors need to have some distance from their investments and the decisions on those investments. What does this distance look like? To me, it looks like a competent investment advisor. Someone skilled in taking the emotions out of the decisions and applying financial analysis to the situation. It looks like someone who will act in your best interest. I guess, it looks sort of like me. Give me a call so we can discuss your situation. Milliman, an actuarial and consulting firm (and a very good one by the way), recently released a report suggesting that the “average” healthy 45-year-old couple that retires at age 65 can expect to pay $1.4mm out of pocket in their retirement years for retiree healthcare. Before anyone gets excited, let’s think about this.
Milliman is full of excellent actuaries who are skilled at “running the numbers.” The problem with running numbers out over many years is you can get some crazy results. I would like to suggest that the results of this report are indeed crazy. I am not going to argue with the way the numbers were calculated; Milliman’s actuaries are much better at math than I. Rather, I am going to suggest the numbers simply don’t make sense from a practical standpoint. Milliman suggests that the average couple will have $1.4mm in just retiree healthcare costs. However, I can tell you that the average retiring couple will not have $1.4mm in TOTAL, let alone for just healthcare costs. I can appreciate the point being made which is healthcare in retirement is going to cost A LOT of money. Got it. But it’s not going to cost $1.4mm per couple on average because on average couples don’t have $1.4mm. So, we have come to an impasse. Milliman calculates $1.4mm in cost per couple, but most couples don’t have this amount of money. What do we do? Something has to give, right? And don’t forget, these costs are after Medicare has paid because we are talking about a retired couple. Nothing like pointing out a problem without offering a solution. I’m not going to suggest that I have the answer to this one, but I can tell you that couples are not going to pay what they don’t have. What is the best that you can do today to plan for this less than rosy future? You can certainly start maxing out your Health Savings Account (“HSA”) assuming you have one. This might be one of the best long-term vehicles to fund retiree healthcare costs. You can also start planning for Long Term Care needs, as a significant portion of retiree healthcare costs are expected to fall into this category. Want to learn more about how to prepare? Give me a call and let’s have a conversation. Apparently, we do. At least you should talk about your parent's retirement with them, according to some new research from TIAA. The research just released last month indicates that 53% of Gen Xers and 66% of Baby Boomers are concerned about their parents’ financial security in retirement. The reason why this is a concern is because we get STRESSED OUT about our parents financial situations as they age. I suppose we didn’t actually need any survey to tell us this.
However, the more worried we get, the more it takes a toll on our own health and financial preparedness. The research seems to suggest a trickle down effect showing the more we are concerned about our parents, the more likely we are to lack confidence in our own retirement prospects. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this lack of confidence that we develop flows down to the next generation. Is there any hope to break out of this cycle? The good news is yes, and it’s not that complicated, but it’s not that easy either. Evidently, we need to talk about our parents retirement WITH THEM. Having a discussion, and the sooner the better, allows both the parents and the children to understand the realities of retirement better. Discussing begets understanding, which begets planning, which, when done well, can alleviate our concerns. It’s not always a full proof strategy, but it is better than doing nothing and presuming the worse. Now I said those discussions while simple on paper might be difficult in reality. How might such a conversation begin? I would recommend engaging with a good financial planner to who can assist leading a multi-generational discussion at a neutral location. These types of conversations are never easy, but better to have them with a financial professional than over Thanksgiving Dinner. Those never work out well. Apparently, Required Minimum Distributions (“RMDs”) are a lot harder than you would think. A new survey from TD Ameritrade finds that only 38% of Americans actually know that RMDs are required from tax advantaged qualified retirement accounts, e.g. IRAs, 401ks. And if we are to believe that the Baby Boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000/day, it’s safe to say that this could become an issue in the not too distant future.
Not taking RMDs is a problem because the penalty for missing one is 50% of the amount that should have been with withdrawn, in addition to the income tax due! If that seems like a pretty steep penalty, that’s because it is! The good news is that these accounts are generally at financial institutions that are aware of the need to make the RMDs and notify the individual of the amount that needs to be withdrawn. Nevertheless, this doesn’t necessarily always mean things go well . For example, do you know when you MUST begin your first RMD? The first one is due by April 1st of the year FOLLOWING the year in which you turn 70 1/2. That’s all well and good, and many people (or at least some people) actually know this. A problem can surface, however, if you wait until April 1st because delaying doesn’t mean you don’t need to take another distribution by December 31st of that same year. Consequently, you could get two distributions in one year which could do some things to your tax bill that you would rather not happen. Another common challenge folks face is when they have multiple tax advantaged accounts – IRAs, old 401k balances, etc. Any idea how to calculate what is required there? The math isn’t necessarily that hard, but the actual distributions can be tricky. For instance, if you have multiple IRAs, you can take the total required distribution from 1 IRA or mix it up. No problem as long as the total for the IRAs is distributed. Does it work the same for 401ks? Nope, it does not. Each 401k account stands on its own. How about 403b balances left with old employers. Seems like they should be treated like 401ks, right? Wrong. Now we are back to the IRA method. Don’t worry, if you get it wrong the penalty is only 50%! There is some legislation that will be changing the RMD rules again if it gets passed this year, which seems like a real possibility. Will the new rules make things less complicated? Maybe…maybe not. You should probably talk to a professional about this. You should probably talk to me. . Give me a call and let’s have conversation. Pete Welsh aka 401kGuy |
Archives
July 2020
Categories
All
|