The market is about flat this year. You are hopefully getting dividends so you should have made something.
Transferring retirement funds is easy. Just log into vanguards website and they give you the option to do a 401k account rollover. Their website will ask you a few questions, like account numbers and such and then they will move your money over after a week or so. Typically it forces a selling of your current mutual funds to buy ones in the vanguard profile. If you have individual stocks then that gets a bit more complicated.
Depends.
If you're not past a certain age limit, you likely can't do a 401k rollover unless you leave your job. Otherwise, you'd have to do it as a withdrawal and pay taxes on it.
I checked my 401k, this is what I found;
I am currently invested into and contributing to T. Rowe Price 2050 R (RRTFX is the ticker).
Expense ratio is 1.25%.
I seem to have a lot of options to invest in, and am also allowed to do a self directed account, except there is a disclaimer that says there may be an ongoing fee.
I can list the options here if that helps, but it's a lot. Or maybe upload a screenshot.
As far as Vanguard goes, I have small cap, midsize cap, and large cap funds available. Seems the large cap (VFIAX) has the lowest fees at .05%.
What are those other options?
VFIAX is a very nice option to have at that price. It tracks the S&P 500 index. It's 100% stocks though. A Target Retirement fund is a mix of stocks and bonds. It starts heavy on stocks, and then as the target date approaches, the mix automatically shifts toward holding more bonds in order to try to reduce volatility into retirement.
But some TR accounts are pricey for that service.
You can be lazy and still invest well.
If you split it out into a few mutual funds and do it yourself, every year or two or three you can check in and twiddle with the distribution, shifting more toward bonds as the years go on. If you have very cheap funds, you can save a
lot of money in fees this way. You're supposed to be investing in your own future, not T. Rowe Price's or Fidelity's. As the amount of money in the fund increases, the fee amount keeps growing as well.
My 401k is sapping away around $1k/year in fees right now. :\ The funds are actively-managed, but they behave very much like expensive index funds.
EXACTLY.
I get totally lost and my eyes glaze over, and it's just not fair
I put money into the 401K, company matches, but I have no idea how to "maximize" my return. It just sits there and sometimes grows... a little.
Try to mirror the overall holdings of the market using index funds, if available. You're likely to get market average, which is historically not a bad thing at all.
Sometimes the small-cap (small companies) sector does well, sometimes large-cap does well. Sometimes they all suck, sometimes they're all good. Unless you can predict that stuff reliably (in which case, enjoy your many hundreds of billions of dollars), you're likely going to do more harm than good by trying to chase returns.
I don't pay super close attention to mine just because I'm kinda financially retarded (I'm pretty thrifty and don't waste money but I don't know anything about the markets and whatnot) and I'm probably not gonna retire until 2050-2055 (FML).
I just looked at mine from Fidelity NetBenefits and my contributions are going to the Target Year 2055 Fund. Here's the expenses listed for it:
Code:
Expenses & Fees More Information
Exp Ratio (Gross) 1.14%
1/1/2016 ($11.40 per $1000)
Exp Ratio (Net) 1.14%
1/1/2016 ($11.40 per $1000)
Distribution and/or service fee(12b-1) Fees 0.50%
Do those look high? Do you smart guys think I should put the money in some other available fund?
>1% isn't good.
If you assume a long-term annual return of 7%, that 1% fee is actually >14% of your annual average return.
12b-1 fee: Basically a charge so that they can advertise their services at you and others.
What other options have you got?