How can I chose the best investment for my 401 k plan.?

Answer 1

I have 15 years in this industry and thought the below info did a good job of explaining your question. Most 401(k) providers offer different levels of education specialist, on-line asset allocation models, and are moving into the direction of offering financial advice. If you want someone to make the decision for you and don't mind paying a higher fund level fee ... the personalized independant advice may be worth the cost.
3. How should I invest my money?

If you've ever asked your employer this question, you probably found that no one is really willing to answer it. At best, you may have walked away with a brochure or an educational tool.

The reason is this: As plan fiduciary, your employer has to select investment options for the plan and continue to make sure that these options are good, prudent investments. By shifting the responsibility for deciding how the money should be invested to you, the plan participant, plan sponsors avoid the liability of being held responsible for individual investments, too. Plan sponsors don't want to give investment advice because if they do, they could be held liable for the outcome of the investment allocations they've suggested.

Many companies are turning to independent advice firms like mPower, the publisher of this site, to provide investment advice to their 401(k) plan participants. mPower takes over fiduciary responsibility for the plan and provides participants with the answers they seek. It's a win-win situation -- participants get personalized investment advice and plan sponsors get the peace of mind of knowing their 401(k) participants are in good hands.

To learn more about investment options that are available to you, you could visit Web sites such as MSN Money (http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/home.asp), CBS Marketwatch (http://cbsmarketwatch.com), CNNfn (http://money.cnn.com/), or Individual Investor Online (http://www.iionline.com). The below link answers most frequently asked questions that 401(k) participants asked.

Hope this helped.

Answer 2

If you are in a "plan", you are probably limited to a number of funds that the "plan" offers... you can check the performance of funds on Yahoo finance... picking what's "best" is the hard part...you may be able to divide your money into different funds ...Big American companies are " safe" but don't grow fast... smaller companies and foreign companies are "riskier" but can have great spurts( profits) ...Most plans have a couple of " blended funds" that include bonds( very safe but not for young investors) BUT you can put your contributions into anything until you can do some studying....just DO IT....AND put the max in every chance you get. When it starts to add up you will find its very interesting to study the funds( and stocks if your plan allows) and then pick what's BEST right now and how things change( oil prices, housing, foreign relations) and how you change to keep an optimum amount growing.

Answer 3

You can either pick someone to guess for you or you can guess yourself on what to invest in. I like to watch Fox Network for four shows on Saturday morning. Each is one half hour and has tons of good info. Central time they run from 9:00 am to 11:00 am. So find out by watching and then get your money into Scottrade or Ameritrade or something similar. They charge a low per trade price with no other fees. I use Scottrade for $7 per trade. You will have enough info to make a few hundred dollars per week some weeks. But regardless if you do your homework regularly, you will probably outperform the mutual funds and even the companies that charge you a lot for their advice. The primary cost is two hours per week. If you can't be there, record the four shows.

Answer 4

looks at your options and see what kinds of returns they are getting. Higher returns are generally more risky and more variable, lower returns are generally less risky. However your investment strategy should depend on your risk tolerance (are you willing to take big gains/losses depending on market fluctuations), age to retirement (if you've got longer until you retire you could handle more risk now and not need the semi-guaranteed lower return funds) and what options you have. You should have a decent mix in a few funds. Most 401(k) plans have funds in different areas. Try to invest in different markets (for instance: international and S&P 500 index). You only need to diversify into 4 or 5 funds since mutual funds are so diversified already that over-diversification can eat your gains up.

Answer 5

by using fact there are human beings of each and every age who choose the two aggressive long-term enhance, or stable short term earnings, there are often inventory money (intense threat, greater long-term) and bond money (particularly stable, assured earnings). fairly some the companies that service the 401K has approaches that may assist you go with for what's the superb mix of investments to your subject.

Answer 6

Vary things...domestic and overseas......less money in bonds if you are young