Check for High Fees on Your 401(k)

As 62-year-old Jerry Schneider approaches retirement from his job as an engineer at a Portland, Ore.-based engineering firm, he has begun to worry about how he's being charged in his retirement plan.

He noticed in recent years that he was seeing lower fees on some of his outside investments in mutual funds, such as those from Valley Forge, Pa.-based Vanguard Group, and he wondered why he couldn't get a similar deal in his 401(k).

But he struggled to find out exactly what his plan really cost him.

"It's just so difficult to get the information because they bury it," Schneider says. "You get into all this crud about financial stuff and what markets are charging and this gobbledygook which means nothing."

The problem of making 401(k) fees clearer to everyone has gotten so serious, Federal legislators have been haggling over new proposals that aim to ensure that consumers have more complete information about what they're being charged.

"There'll be more effective fee disclosure probably in the next year or two, but now you have to get the prospectus [or statement] and look up the numbers and apply the arithmetic yourself," says David L. Wray, president of the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America. "It's good to look."

So, how do you do that?

It isn't easy, but there are a few preliminary steps you can take.

For example, experts say you should ask your company or provider for a breakdown of the fees in your plan. Plan providers are often divisions of companies such as Wells FargoWFC, WachoviaWB, Principal FinancialPFG and JPMorgan ChaseJPM, and can usually help with this sort of thing.

Should you find it challenging to get details about the administrative, record-keeping, brokerage or investment management fees, it might be a clue that you really should be digging deeper. Also see if your provider will tell you how your fees compare to others in the market.

"A sponsor who is generally interested in providing a benchmark probably would be willing to make that benchmark available," says Jeff Acheson, director of retirement planning at Schneider Downs Wealth Management Advisors. "If you're not getting the information, then put pressure on the sponsor to do what's in the best interest of the participants."

If you want to arm yourself with information first, your employer is required to report some of the expenses incurred by your plan to the Department of Labor. You can find a copy of that form here.

When you register with the site and do a search under your employer's name, you can choose the most recent 5500 form filed. This form includes information such as the number of participants in the plan, how much the company reported it had in total expenses, how much it had in contributions and so on.

Your prospectus or statement might contain other important details.

For example, if your plan provides mutual-fund investment options, you'll want to figure out what the share classes and ticker symbols are of those offerings. If you can't find it in your documents, ask your sponsor to tell you.

Then, you can use information in the fund's prospectus to find the expense ratio. The smaller the expense ratio, the better.

Some people can belong to a plan provided by an insurance company whose prospectus includes information about a variable annuity, a type of contract that allows for investments in various portfolios that can include mutual funds in and of itself.

If that's you, you'll want to look up information about the annuity instead of each individual mutual fund. And ask about how much you're paying in fees not only to the underlying mutual fund companies, but also the insurance company that's providing the annuity.