We Know Nothing About Our Most Important Purchase
The average buyer spends nine hours researching a car online before purchasing. In the US, home buyers spend 124 hours and visit 19 properties before making a decision.
The average 401k enrollee spends minutes — if that — choosing their investments.
Think of your onboarding experience at your last job. Sometime during the first week, the HR rep talks about benefits. If the whole presentation is an hour, be impressed! You may have an excellent person, well-versed in benefits, available to answer all your questions.
Then it’s time for 401k enrollment, and no one can tell you shit.
Your friendly HR person isn’t licensed to give you information.
Go online. Pick some stuff. Add a beneficiary. Be gone.
No!
The average 401k plan offers about 15 investment options. They have names like growth, value, balanced, stock, bond, large, mid-cap, and small-cap. Some have dates in the titles.
People have no idea what they’re looking at. They don’t know the difference between a stock and a bond, let alone market capitalization.
