401(k)

How would you feel if you discovered that every time you put $10,000 into your retirement account, $4,000 or more of it ended up going to pay fees over the next 20 years? And another ten years later, nearly $8,000 of your initial investment had vanished into other people’s pockets? High Fees

I’m guessing you wouldn’t be a very happy camper. In fact, you’d probably be mad as heck.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is exactly what’s happening to most investors right now. Which means there’s a VERY good chance it’s happening to you.

You see, I’ve been burning the midnight oil researching the fees in popular mutual funds – including the ones in many 401(k) plans – for a new course in financial literacy we’ll be rolling out soon.

The course will give you a step-by-step plan for ending all your financial worries in as little as 90 days… and it contains breakthrough strategies you won’t find anywhere else. I’ll be giving you more details about it over the next month or two, so stay tuned.

But in the meantime, what I discovered about what experts have called “the silent enemy in our retirement accounts” – fees that compound against you that are charged by mutual funds and 401(k) and IRA plan administration costs – will stun you.

Let’s start with the cost of popular Target Date Funds or TDF’s,” the “default investment” in many 401(k) plans.

Ghouls, Ghosts and Goblins are so yesterday.

If you want to scare the bejesus out of home dwellers this Halloween, trying dressing up as an IRS auditor or a foreclosure process server.

In fact, an exclusive nationwide online survey conducted this month by my company, Bank On Yourself, finds that by a margin of almost four-to-one, many Americans would rather die than outlive their money.

The results are neither trick nor treat: They’re a sad commentary on the financial condition and current state of mind of so many of our family members, friends, neighbors and colleagues.

More than 500 adults took part in our Bank On Yourself Fear Factors Challenge: Personal Finance Edition. Like the popular television contest that inspired us, we presented players with some icky, gross, terrifying or truly embarrassing scenarios. We then quizzed them on what makes their flesh crawl more: Our scares or the frights associated with personal finance failures?