Page 71 - Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money

trust with our money. The following is an excerpt from an article that
appeared in the March 14, 2007, edition of the Wall Street Journal (Eleanor

Laise, “What Is Your 401[k] Costing You?”):

401(k) plans aren’t required to make clear how much participants are
being charged in fees. And there can be a lot of them, including charges

to cover independent audits; tracking and maintaining accounts; advisory
services; as well as help lines, and of course the basic expense of
managing funds in a plan . . .
The growing tension over 401(k) expenses spurred federal lawmakers

. . . last week to probe whether spotty disclosure of fees make it difficult
for employees to know if they are getting a good deal.

The problem with these fees is that even your employer can’t understand

them. In fact, your employer doesn’t even know about some of them
because they are hidden. So how can you be expected to know or
understand the fees? The article goes on to say:

Now some employers are hiring outside consultants just to help them
understand the fees . . .
One area of concern [is] the high fees, complexity and potential
conflicts of interest associated with so-called revenue-sharing

agreements. These often involve payments by a mutual-fund company to
a 401(k) plan provider to compensate the provider for services such as
account maintenance. These costs are often built into the expenses of the

funds offered in the plans, and help to increase the cost to plan
participants.

In reading the excerpt above, it becomes apparent how easy it is for
retirement fund providers, that is, bankers, to grow rich off your money. As

I mentioned earlier, banks were created to protect your money. Now they
work to take it from you. The tragedy of the situation is that we make it so
easy for them. We don’t even have to walk into the bank anymore (in fact

they might even charge you for that!). Instead, money is taken directly from