Author Topic: Help with Voya 401k fund choices  (Read 3022 times)

conpewter

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Help with Voya 401k fund choices
« on: October 03, 2016, 12:28:08 PM »
So I've been at my job a few years now and will continue to work here for the next 3 and then perhaps part time after that.  I have no in-plan rollovers so a good portion of my retirement funds are stuck in their 401k.

There is no index option currently in our plan (but I'm going to ask for one... we'll see how far that goes)

Any suggestions on what I should have my investment in given the options? (attaching an excel sheet)

NESailor

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Re: Help with Voya 401k fund choices
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2016, 12:42:06 PM »
Ouch...those are some crappy choices!  I'd go for the cheapest large cap fund and be done with it.  It should be correlated with the market unless it's really mismanaged (quite possible...)

Could you "quit" for a month, roll over to an IRA, then go back?  If I had enough FU money tied up in that 401(k) I'd run the numbers on that.

Good luck!

conpewter

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Re: Help with Voya 401k fund choices
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2016, 12:54:07 PM »
Thanks you,  I don't have enough tied up yet to look into leaving, but that might be something I'd consider in 3 years.
Currently I'm leaning toward either one of these
Dodge & Cox Stock Fund
Voya Growth and Income Portfolio - Class I

More so the voya growth and income since Dodge & Cox top holdings are banks (wells fargo..) and Voya growth and income is tech stocks

I'm also going to at least ask for them to add the Voya US Stock index fund
https://investments.voya.com/Investor/Products/Variable-Portfolios/Profile/index.htm?psc=1218&p=280&tab=Prospectuses%20%26%20Reports

but I'm also going to see if #1 can we buy vanguard funds through voya, #2 can we just switch to vanguard?

I'm trying to research on how to get your HR department to look into vanguard, perhaps if I throw around "fiduciary responsibility to employees" I can get some traction.

LAGuy

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Re: Help with Voya 401k fund choices
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2016, 05:19:27 PM »
Voya is probably the worst 401k I ever had. I just dumped it in the LifeCycle fund. There's not much else you can do other than get a new job.

LAGuy

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Re: Help with Voya 401k fund choices
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2016, 05:27:36 PM »
Oh, and HR isn't going to do shit about it. The reason being that Voya is "free" for them. They just handle all the 401k administration head aches for them while the fee comes out of your hide. Something like Vanguard would require them to handle their own 401k administration. And the government does consider this to be them performing their fiduciary duty - they're using an approved manager of 401k funds to administer the plan. Yeah, those of us here know that charging 1% fee to come around and pester you to invest in your retirement account once a year is ridiculous. However, this is the exact sort of thing that the government is encouraging right now.

See, that's the problem with "fiduciary duty." Your employer and the administrator have that duty to their employees, writ large. Unfortunately what's good for the gander isn't always what's good for the goose and you as an informed investor get screwed. Welcome to the wonderful world of government retirement accounts.

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: Help with Voya 401k fund choices
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2016, 01:44:44 AM »
LAGuy, conpewter - I half agree with LAGuy that HR won't act on complaints from an individual.  But don't forget the power of a class action lawsuit by employees against the 401(k) plan.  The plan isn't searching for lower expense ratios, which violates their fiduciary duty.  But it gets worse for them - the Supreme Court ruled that failing to look for lower expense ratios extends the statute of limitations.  To put it another way, if they keep high expense ratios for the past 20 years, they can be sued over 20 years of violations.

The other annoying thing about Voya is their marketing fee.  It means if you put in the $18,000 max contribution then Voya spends $45/year of your money on ads.  And they do it by building the 0.25% marketing cost into the expense ratio, so most people don't see it without research.  Voya is not alone to charge this kind of fee, but they do it very consistently where other firms don't do it at all.

conpewter

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Re: Help with Voya 401k fund choices
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2016, 07:14:19 AM »
Hmm good things to think about.  I didn't know about Voya doing all the work for HR, that.... makes sense. 
I'm not feeling like it is currently worth it for me to try to get everyone riled up for a class action lawsuit, but it may make more sense when I'm on my way out
For now I've asked if they can add their crappy stock market index to our choices (.25% expense) which would be better than anything they are currently offering me.  Hopefully HR puts me in touch with the 401k admins.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!