Vitriolic Humor

1. I contribute to the 401K plan my company participates in.
2. My company matches a certain percentage of my contribution with immediately fully-vested matching funds.
3. Those matching funds go into a [Company Name] Stock Fund in my 401K account where they cannot be transferred or removed until I am 50 years old (~20 years from now), or quit the company (at which time I can roll-over my 401K.)
4. That stock fund is not a regular mutual fund, is not publicly tracked, is "not a diversified or managed investment option", and doesn't have a stock symbol outside of the 401K service provider.
5. There is very little visibility into the fund's holding other than checking the value reported in my 401K account periodically (i.e. there are yearly average figures, but the daily trading details are not publicly available unless I record them manually, daily.)
6. This stock is highly volatile, nearly doubling and halving its value in the course of a year.

The problem is that I am essentially locked into investing my matching funds into this [Company Name] Stock Fund, which currently has a -8.71% average return for the life of the fund (since 1988.) Is this arrangement legal? It seems to trap the "matching funds" into propping up the corporate stock as well as nearly assuring that these funds will be lost on the employee's account instead of the company's. Do I have any alternatives that I'm not considering?

This January, our company is removing the requirement that the matching funds can only go into the [Company Name] Stock Fund and will allow us to assign the matching funds to investments of our choice(!), but matching funds already in the Stock Fund are stuck there until I turn 50. At the current rate of negative return, this money will eat itself away before I turn 50. Things may change, but the 18-year historical average of -8.71% say otherwise.

Does anyone else out there find themselves in this same situation with their employer and their 401K plan? What options do I have?

Tags: financial fund market strategic strategy economics long-term money stocks retirement economy problem tactical mutual business company invest 401(k) investing politics shortterm longterm trade investment 401k finance stock managed question personal finance short-term trading mutualfund

Posted by speedeep at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just placed a pre-order for the new DVD Rush DVD R30 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (includes two Rush guitar picks and a souvenir backstage pass) on Amazon. Their price was $27.99, free shipping, and I had a gift certificate balance of $11.71. My total should have been $16.28 that I need to pay Amazon. Instead, the checkout page displayed the following:

Looks like Amazon owes me $9,999,999,971.01 (that's a negative total.) I'm still wondering who bought me a $10 (big-B) Billion dollar gift certificate. By the time they credit this amount into my account, their profits this quarter will be significantly impacted, so I figured I put this notice out. :-) I'm not sure I can handle a refund that large on the card I'm using, maybe I should use the American Express...

(Yes, this is a real screenshot taken at 11:50am on Tuesday, November 15, 2005.)

Do you suppose this reveals the upper dollar limit Amazon designed their e-commerce software to handle? I can't imagine the programming error that would cause a problem like this. I hope this doesn't foul up their systems or my accounts... Click...

If you'd like to try your luck, or just want to pre-order a copy of Rush's (the band, not the man) new DVD (release date is next Tuesday, November 22, 2005) please use the links below.

Tags: neilpeart rockandroll progressive alexlifeson rush canadian progrock error geddylee amazon

Posted by speedeep at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)