Plan Brief · For the Owner Who Signed the Plan
Three things your 401(k)
may be telling you.
You built this business by handling what's in front of you: payroll, customers, the next hire. The 401(k) runs in the background, which is exactly where these three items tend to live. None of them announces itself as a problem. All three are checkable. One is even visible from the outside: whether your plan offers a brokerage window shows as a feature code on its public Form 5500 filing, including the short form most small plans file. The other two rarely appear there; they live in your plan document and fee disclosures. Either way, the questions below are yours to ask.
Does your plan have a door beyond the menu?
Most small-plan lineups are a fixed menu: a few dozen funds chosen for the average participant. A self-directed brokerage window is the door past it: an optional account inside the plan that opens the broader investment universe to you, and to any employee who wants it: additional asset classes, real diversification, and room to manage risk as conditions change. Without one, every dollar in the plan is confined to the same short list, and the largest, most consequential balance in the plan, usually the owner's, is managed with the bluntest tools. The door costs nothing to those who never walk through it; employees who don't want it will never notice it's there.
ASK YOUR PROVIDER — "Does our plan offer a self-directed brokerage window? If not, what would it take to add one?" It's usually a plan-design change, not a new plan.
Who is actually paying the fees?
Plan fees get paid one of two ways: by the company, or out of participant accounts. If yours come out of accounts, two things happen quietly. The business may be missing a deduction it could take by paying them directly. And because account-drawn fees are typically allocated by balance, the largest balance pays the largest share, usually the owner's, with retirement dollars instead of deductible business dollars, compounding against you for as long as the plan runs. Public filings rarely show this clearly; your fee disclosure and your CPA will.
ASK YOUR CPA — "Are we paying plan fees from the company and deducting them, or are they coming out of the accounts?"
Do you know who your plan's named fiduciary is?
Every plan names one under ERISA §402(a): the person legally responsible for running the plan in participants' best interest, held to a prudent-expert standard, with real duties and real personal exposure. In many small business plans that person is the owner, designated in paperwork signed years ago and rarely explained since. The public filing may not name names; your plan document does: usually near the front, sometimes in the adoption agreement.
CHECK YOUR PLAN DOCUMENT — find the named fiduciary (usually near the front, sometimes in the adoption agreement). If it's you, the duties are manageable, once you know the seat you're sitting in.
Disclosed and explained so you understood it are not the same thing—and that gap is where the work has been sitting.
The backdrop to all three: the market's CAPE valuation ratio sits above 40, territory reached only twice in 145 years of data. Whatever the next decade brings, a menu-only plan holds no tool for it. That is what makes Tell 01 more than a convenience.A historical condition. Not a forecast, not a result we promise.
We'll look, so you don't have to guess.
Your plan's filing is public — we read it before any conversation, and it answers the first question outright. The other two usually live in your plan document and fee disclosures; we'll show you exactly where to look. The first step is a gift, not an ask: tell us your company's name, and we'll do the rest. No call required.