Upcoming Meeting with My Employer's 401(k) Administrator for Retirement Planning

Assuming you are in the 22% or higher marginal bracket, then you need to max the Pretax 401k and then put as much as you can afford into After-Tax 401k without going over the section 415 limit. Be sure to turn on automatic Roth In-Plan Conversions (aka RIPC). Plus catch-up contributions if you can afford that too. The advisor may be able to help you do the math on all that.

If you have a self-directed brokerage option in the 401k, make another post and we can help you build an ideal portfolio. If not, try to do 50% US Large-Cap Growth and 50% US Small-Cap Value. Cone back in a couple years since you’ll want to make some changes starting about 5 years before retirement.

Ask them what their built in assumptions are. Lots of advice (given by anyone!) has built in assumptions. Those assumptions don’t always match what is true for you. One example: a common assumption is that people want as much money as possible; many FI folks choose more time, flexibility, and/or other forms of freedom over more money. Also, perhaps go in with clarity about what your “enough” number is. Have your own goals and priorities clear so that you can express them and have THOSE be the assumptions you both are working from in the session.

My work used to offer a similar benefit and, just for context, it wasn't a lead-generating session so that we would start paying for financial management. It really was an included benefit that was included as a part of our managed retirement plan. We didn't even have the option of hiring the advisor full-time, even if we wanted to.

My advice is to send your questions to the adviser in advance (which would mean today, I guess) so that they have a chance to do a little research and prepare for the meeting. I found that when I attended these sessions at my work, the advisers I was paired with weren't super-knowledgeable about FIRE principles, but were happy to do research and learn when I asked direct questions. For example, my adviser didn't know much about ACA subsidies until I asked, but he was happy to do some research and ask around it his firm in order to answer my questions.

Be skeptical of the meeting. It's a sales/ lead development session, for sure. Do NOT pass management of your investing to them. Do not sign or agree to anything with a subscription or a follow-on meeting.

They will not be able to tell you anything better than what you already get, better in the FI community: x25 retirement expenses = FI Number, and to, in early Accumulation Phase, be 100% Equity via lowest fee, highly diversified (approaching global cap weight), passively managed, index funds. When you're 50+% to FI, you've got about 10 years left and should start transitioning 10% a year from 100% Equity to a high Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) portfolio, like the Golden Ratio Portfolio. Pre-tax or post- tax (Roth/Traditional) contributions, sure, should be figured out. You seem to be planning to retire around RMD time, so there would be probably precious little time to consider any Roth Conversions in the plan.

If you plan on utilizing the mega backdoor Roth, would be good to know how frequently the in-plan conversions are allowed.

To clarify, my 401k is at Fidelity, but there is a firm handling the admin aspect of this. It's that firm that offers the retirement plan, which will result in a "binder" with my numbers. My investment options at Fidelity are self-managed, so I've made all of the investment elections on my own (primarily index funds).

My understanding is that the purpose of this meeting will be to discuss retirement goals, measure where I am currently and options in terms of savings goals and any other aspects of retirement planning - so more of a big picture. I know AUM is an option with them, but that's not something I'd ever choose.

I would say to meet and find out the information they have but to be skeptical. The reason is that financial advisors are not legally required to act in your best interest the way fiduciaries are. This kind of blew my mind when I heard about this… how can they advise you if they don't have your best interest as the goal?

I think often financial advisors will put people into complex high fee portfolios without them actually understanding the fee structure or what they are invested in and why. This happened to my parents who had a "friend" from high school as a financial advisor. First whenever they put money they had like a 5% load fee. Then the funds they were in had high expense ratios. They were paying over $4,000 a year in fees from the expense ratios when I calculated it. They had no idea about these fees or what an expense ratio is since it was never explained to them.

It's the financial advisor model where the financial advisor "will just take care of it for you" and by take care of it they will take a lot of your growth away from you in fees.

Before you go into the meeting make sure you know what an expense ratio is and how to calculate fees based off of this. It's pretty easy if you do a google search. Then ask the advisor to see the prospectus of the funds that have the lowest expense ratio. Ask for funds similar to Vanguard's VTSAX or VFIAX and that you are interested in low expense ratio funds. Most people have no idea what an expense ratio and have no idea how much this can hurt the compounding of their investments. So as soon as you ask this question they will probably understand that you are not a pushover who can be fleeced.

I'm a little angry at financial advisors in general because of my parents situation and because I think they willfully take advantage of the ignorance of normal people and never explain how investing and how fees actually work. This is why I love the FIRE community so much. It is doing so much to improve the finances of normal people.

I'm happy to discuss more if you want to message me. I don't give out any "advice" but I will share my experience and what I learned about my situation. I helped my parents get a fiduciary and get into low fee index funds through Vanguard and they are really happy that they did this.

JDFI made good suggestions. I'll caution that you should take any investment suggestions by the advisor with a grain of salt as free planning sessions are very cookie-cutter.

Regarding LTC, episode 275 of the Risk Parity Radio podcast gives what I think is a very helpful perspective on LTC. TLDR; Outside of genetics, most people have a lot of control over whether we'll need LTC through the choices we make about our habits, diet and physical fitness.

While this is 401(k) scope specifically, I would recommend making sure you understand all fees (including any hidden fees) for all 401(k) investment options, and which investment options are closest to passive broad market index funds, as well as fees and glide paths for any target date fund options. Also, if the account offers a Self-Directed Brokerage Account (SDBA) aka a brokerage window.

Also, any self-serve retirement planning tools offered by the 401(k) platform, so you have tools you can work with on your own for scenario planning.

Since you said you were on track for a specific retirement age, would be good if you could confirm with advisor whether they concur, and why or why not. Not sure they would be able to do that on the fly in the free meeting, but if so, that would be good information to have.