On 1/8/05 1:20 AM, in article ,
"Karen C - California" wrote:

In article , Brenda
writes:

While changing won't be mandatory, you know people who really don't even
understand how simple interest works will be under a lot of pressure to
change.

Yep. And if they're working with a stockbroker who gets paid for every trade,
the naive may end up broke. Mom's neighbor didn't understand the market the
way her late husband did, so she signed something giving the broker the right
to make any trade that he deemed acceptable, thinking he'd make better
decisions than she could. He apparently made a trade every half-hour until
most of her account had been drained by those per-trade fees.

When we got a 401k plan, the company brought in a financial advisor who met
with each of us individually. The less-sophisticated were steered toward the
guaranteed interest fund (at that time, paying much less than the skyrocketing
stock funds, but they have not lost a cent of their principal, which some of
the stock funds did). To get into the riskier emerging markets fund, I had to
discuss international politics and international economics to prove I
understood what I was doing. If only all financial advisors were that honest.


Do you remember which "firm" handled that? Sounds a lot like the people
Raytheon had in to speak to the exempt employees in their first year of
employment. Excellent descriptions of how to invest, when to change your
game plan, etc. I think it was AG Edwards. We didn't get full company
pension benefits until the 10th year.

The hourly (different from the union) employees accrued pension benefits
after 12 months and hourly got the 401k option after 5 years.

I suspect both were ways of keeping people at Raytheon - engineering
turnover was horrific, hourly not quite as bad.

Cheryl