I was enjoying my Sunday morning coffee and paper a few weeks ago when I came across an article in the Boston Globe titled, “Warren’s Consumer Dream Dismantled.”  The story was about how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), under new Director Mick Mulvaney, was switching their focus from enforcement of rules and penalizing fraudulent financial institutions to educating those institutions on how not to screw their customers.  Besides that last little jab I’ll leave the politics aside, but my interpretation of this Boston Globe article was that our government is going to keep the status quo:  (1) Give you complete freedom….including the freedom to be coerced into terrible financial decisions by the entity looking to gain from said terrible decisions; and (2) create laws that technically protect people but lay the responsibility for that protection at the feet of often uninformed persons, again enabling the financial institutions to reap massive reward at your expense.  In the case of your 401(k) plan those persons entrusted with protecting you are your plan fiduciaries.  Spoiler alert:  in many cases, especially with small and medium sized businesses, your fiduciaries do not know their responsibilities and even if they did they do not have the education or knowledge to be making sound financial decisions for you.   We need to fix that and I’m going to show you how by first identifying who your plan fiduciary is and then the steps to take to enact changes in your plan.

Continue reading “Get to Know your Small Business 401(k) Fiduciary…….and Save Millions” →