GlacierWealth
The Uncomfortable Truth Client Login
Independent investment counsel · fiduciary · fee-only since 2001

Your 401k is likely
missing the Code...

The largest balance in the plan is almost certainly yours—the result of years, often decades, of work. Yet in most small-business plans, that money sits in a preset menu of funds: no one managing it in real time, nothing able to move until the market closes. There is just the menu, and a fee. The fix is one code on a public filing, 2R on your Form 5500, that unlocks a brokerage window. Most plans are missing it. So ask the question your public Form 5500 already answers: what, exactly, is being managed?

Request your 5500 review Complimentary · one page · yours to keep
For owner-led companies of 10-50 employees with $1–5M in 401k plan assets
The 90-second version

Three tells. One verdict.

Each is a sign of who your plan was really built to serve, and each is fixable the day you decide to fix it.

No feature code 2R, no brokerage window. Every dollar is confined to the plan's fund menu, where no real-time management is possible. That constraint might have been tolerable at low to normal market valuations, but at today's, among the highest on record, it is a significant risk. And it falls hardest on the largest account in the plan: almost certainly yours. Most plans pay administrative fees out of participant accounts. This means the business misses a deduction it could take, and because fees are allocated by balance, the largest account that is almost certainly yours, pays the largest share. Money that could have stayed in the plan compounding, growing tax-deferred, and building toward your retirement is being given away, year after year. ERISA §402(a): every plan names a fiduciary, literally the “Named Fiduciary”, who carries personal responsibility for managing it compliantly and solely in participants' best interests. In most small-business plans that's almost certainly you, the owner, designated in paperwork signed years ago. The duties and requirements were rarely explained, leaving you and the plan exposed.
GlacierWealth mark — engraved moose before a teal mountain

Every one of these fixes has an easy half and a hard half. The easy half is a form. The hard half is a job—real-time management, fee optimization, fiduciary responsibility.

The hard half is what we do.

Request your 5500 review Complimentary · one page · yours to keep Prefer to talk first? 800/416-1063 · Email Edward directly
Slow is not the same as still · independent since 2001
The first step, and the whole ask

A complimentary 5500 review.

Send your company's name and we pull the filing. The one-page review answers the brokerage window question outright from the Form 5500, then marks the two questions the filing can't answer — fees and the Named Fiduciary — and tells you exactly where to find each in your own documents.

Sample review output Anonymized · three minutes to read
Finding 01 — Access · from the Form 5500

No feature code 2R: the plan has no self-directed brokerage window. The largest balance is confined to the same fund menu as everyone else.

Question 02 — Cost · confirmed from plan documents

Administrative fees are paid from participant accounts. Because fees are allocated by balance, the owner's account pays the largest share — and the business misses a deductible expense.

Question 03 — Responsibility · confirmed from plan documents

The owner is the Named Fiduciary under ERISA §402(a). The duty is personal, and the standard is higher than most owners realize.

Edward G. Rainford, AIF®

Reviews come from Edward G. Rainford, AIF®.

Fee-only · independent since 2001

Start with the name on the door.

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Fee-only fiduciary counsel for owner-led companies of 10–50 employees with $1–5M in 401(k) assets. Independent investment advice since 2001. Prefer to talk first? Call 800/416-1063 or email Edward directly.

For owner-led companies of 10-50 employees with $1–5M in 401k plan assets

Onboarding is currently full · reviews continue · the waitlist holds your place
Canoes racked on a lake dock, teal duotone
The pace is the point · est. 2001
GlacierWealth mark — engraved moose before a teal mountain Why the name, and why the moose

In 2001, at the height of the tech bubble, I found a pineapple on my desk at one of America's largest brokerage firms — a prop for pitching a tech IPO. I left that year and started this firm with my wife and a mechanical typewriter. Twenty-five years later, the conviction is the same: manage the money ourselves, answer only to the client, respect the cycle. The full story →

The moose suited the temperament. He is solitary, unhurried, and hard to move.

Edward G. Rainford, AIF®

Built for a specific owner

Done right, this work doesn't scale.

So we don't pretend it does. We work with owner-led companies with 10–50 employees and $1–5 million in 401(k) plan assets, a few new clients at a time, in the order reviews arrive. Past a point, another client isn't growth, it's dilution. We stop before that point, and a waitlist protects the work.

Onboarding is full at the moment. The waitlist is open, and reviews continue in the meantime.

Reserved means attention, not a velvet rope