The Quintes Blog

Your employees deserve every opportunity to reach their goal of an ideal retirement – and the Quintes blog is part of our goal to inform both employers and employees of the options and choices available to make confident financial decisions for the future.

Is Your Retirement Plan Leaking Money?

What do we mean when we say your retirement plan could be leaking? Well, there are features and costs to your plan that are reducing the account balances and benefits for your employees. Here are the three that we see most often: 1. Hardship distributions. A hardship distribution is a plan provision that allows an Read More…

Free Plan Review

We’re excited to talk about our free plan review offer today. This is a process where we examine the cost, services, and performance of your current retirement plan and do a live benchmarking to prepare it for other providers. What does benchmarking a retirement plan really entail? There are three main areas: cost, services, and Read More…

The Benefits of Automatically Rebalancing Your Portfolio

Today we are going to focus on your employees. Specifically, we will discuss how they can improve their investment outcomes. One of the things your employees can do is automatic rebalancing. This is a process to reallocate your assets within a portfolio to stay in line with predetermined percentages. Rebalancing makes sure that there is Read More…

Understanding Volatility in Your 401(k) to Avoid Excessive Risk

Today we are continuing our series on how to structure a successful 401(k) plan for you and your employees. Specifically, we are talking about risk reduction and what it means to re-balance your 401(k) account so you can keep your portfolio in line with a predetermined growth strategy. To understand how to avoid risk, you Read More…

What Do Rodeos and Retirement Plans Have in Common?

Today we are on-site at the California Rodeo Salinas, home of the biggest rodeo in California.  It was known as a “Wild West Show” back in 1911 when it began. So what does the Rodeo and Retirement Plans have in common? On June 21, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its mandate vacating the Read More…

Don’t Settle For an Average Retirement Plan

Let me tell you a story about a recent meeting I had with a prospective client. I was asking them questions about their current retirement plan—what they liked and didn’t like, etc. They told me there were no issues and that they thought their plan was average compared to other plans. When they said “average,” Read More…

Your Role as a Fiduciary and Your Responsibility as an Employer

If you’re sponsoring a 401(k) plan, you have a duty of loyalty and a duty of prudence to your participants and their beneficiaries. What does that mean? You must have a repeatable process and the selection and monitoring of your plan’s investment options. This means you need to hire and fire investment managers if they’re Read More…

What Is a Cash Balance Plan?

Today we’re excited to share one of our favorite retirement plan solutions: a cash balance plan. A cash balance plan is a different type of retirement plan, and it may be an option for you to add onto your existing 401(k). Many of our clients have recently been bringing up the changes to our nation’s Read More…