I’m in a company 401K, managed by Fidelity
I’m not in any of these no brainer choose your retirement date plans. Here is how they did in 2008. I did worse than they did choosing my own, but I’m not blaming anyone but myself.
FID FREEDOM 2010
-26.00
FID FREEDOM 2020
-32.34
FID FREEDOM 2030
-37.04
FID FREEDOM 2040
-38.81
FID FREEDOM 2005
-24.91
FID FREEDOM 2015
-27.45
FID FREEDOM 2025
-33.85
FID FREEDOM 2035
-37.87
FID FREEDOM 2045
-39.29
FID FREEDOM 2050
-40.78
Your employer’s plan usually gives you a choice of something like 12 max mutual funds that you can move your savings between.
A company like Fidelity would have several hundred mutual funds you could move your money around in (including a gold fund.) And of course, you can always move your money to another company if you didn’t like Fidelity’s results. Something you can’t do with an employer plan.
Everyone did bad in 2008, so pointing out that certain Fidelity funds did bad as well isn’t really news. (No, this is not a Fidelity ad, I just used them for an example.)