My cofounder (hn:roger_lee) and I started working on Captain401 because we both had bad experiences with 401k accounts. As an employer, he kept putting off setting one up because of the time and cost involved. As an employee, I became frustrated by the archaic web interface my Fidelity plan had, and felt overwhelmed by the task of choosing investments.<p>Captain401 is designed to make both sides of the 401k experience as pleasant as possible. We offer paperless administration to employers and automatic ("robo") advising to employees. We hope a tool like this will bring retirement savings to startups that had previously considered themselves too small or too busy for a 401k.<p>We're especially interested in hearing from HNers who run their own business: have you set up a 401k plan for your employees?
This looks really nice. Probably revealing my inexperience, but I have to wonder: is it possible for an employee to set up their own 401k account, and then have the employer donate to that account? Or is it only ever possible to get a 401k through an employer. It seems weird to me that something so tied to a single person (the 401k account) is provided again and again by different employers. If you work multiple places, do you end up with multiple 401k accounts? Is there some easy process to merge them all?<p>Never been able to find this information online, figured I'd ask in this thread, but apologies if this is all blindingly obvious. Would be happy to RTFM if someone could point me to the M.
From:
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2015/05/15/what-the-heck-is-a-401k-and-other-investing-questions-youre-too-embarrassed-to-ask/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2015/05/15/what-th...</a><p>"Only about half of American workers have access to a 401k, which is a workplace savings plan that lets employees invest a portion of their paycheck before taxes are taken out. The savings can grow tax free until retirement, at which point withdrawals will be taxed as ordinary income. A large majority of employers will match an employee’s contribution – up to a point – thereby boosting the employee’s savings rate."
I always wondered why my brokerage account felt so modern (Wealthfront), but my 401k feels like it's from the stone age. Makes complete sense.<p>Do all employees have to use the automatic advising, or can they invest independently if they want?
Could save big companies a lot of time educating their employees about 401k and on-boarding them to the plan. It could actually take away the role of an HR generalist who is always shuffling employee docs around. Very cool--looking forward to using you guys when my company offers a 401k.
This looks really interesting. How does this compare to Honest Dollar (<a href="http://www.honestdollar.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.honestdollar.com/</a>)?
Awesome - right now it looks like you are beating the other small business 401k provider that I know of (theonline401k) which i think charges around 525/quarter+4 per employee on it.<p>Are you 100% managed investments? Or can an employee opt to pick their own investments? Do you have access to the admiral funds and are you allowing the company to chose which funds are available?
How does this compare to Ubiquity [1] which also seems to target smaller companies with a paperless 401k system?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.myubiquity.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.myubiquity.com/</a>
If you have money in a 401(k) account you deserve what's coming to you soon. Again.<p>EDIT: don't listen to people talking about compound interest. If you have a 401(k) <i>you</i> will be paying this interest to the government bonds your 401(k) holds when we are finally in NIRP. Look at Greece today, they are going to have to pay $71M on July 17 which is just the <i>interest</i> on their 2014 3-year bonds.<p>If you are young, learn from the bad advice coming from the old folks.<p>EDIT 2: owning US stock, no matter when purchased, is a bad idea now in these times of share buyback, yes. So yes, it cannot be a good idea to hold stock now since we're due a crash (which got caught yesterday by a "system update glitch" at NYSE which curiously affected United Airlines and Wall Street Journal as well). Holding some gold and cash, as Bank of America advises NOW, is a very good idea: <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-18/bank-of-america-markets-are-in-a-twilight-zone-and-it-s-time-to-hold-more-cash-and-gold" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-18/bank-of-am...</a>