"Most 401(K) Plans Stink," Jim Cramer.

Some quotes about 401(k) Plans from CNBC's Jim Cramer:

"Sometimes it feels like the whole 401(k) system was set up to benefit the financial services industry, not you."
"If your employer matches your contribution up to a percentage of income, then a 401(k) deserves your attention."

"But, only put as much money into the 401(k) as your employer will match."

"... the rest of your retirement investing should happen in your IRA until you hit the upper limit on what you're allowed to contribute in a given year. Unlike most 401(k) plans, an IRA gives you the freedom to invest your money in whatever way you want," Cramer said.

Trouble and Worry

One of my favorite financial commercials with music by Ray LaMontagne. Some more of the lyrics:

Trouble...
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul since the day I was born
Worry...
Worry, worry, worry, worry
Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone
We'll I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now

Trouble...
Oh, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Feels like every time I get back on my feet
she come around and knock me down again
Worry...
Oh, worry, worry, worry, worry
Sometimes I swear it feels like this worry is my only friend

...

The Wizard of Oz Was A Fraud

The was a great Op-Ed piece in a recent NY Times by one of Bernie Madoff's investors (not many of them have, understandably, said much). Michael Kubin gives his hard-won lessons for investors:

Make sure the accountants are reputable, the results transparent, insist on meeting the managers in person. Keep in mind that risk and reward always travel together, that if something sounds too good to be true it usually is, that the law of gravity cannot be repealed, that you’re seldom warned the floor has just been waxed. Remember the Wizard of Oz was a phony.

Lesson learned! Unfortunately, the lessons were draw from the well-known words of Lord Polonius in the Tragedy of Hamlet:

And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

The 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz was, of course, made during the Great Depression.