401k Investing for Newbies and Nerds
There are 90 million American workers who have collectively own $14 trillion in their 401k accounts. They face both challenges and opportunities. The largest opportunity is that their accounts are investment accounts, not savings accounts, and for the past three decades, many have grown their balances in the low double-digit range.
The main challenge 401k owners face is that there are required to make their investment decisions by choosing from a limited menu of mutual funds.
The 90 million 401k account owners can be divided into 3 categories. The first are those who could care less about their money and are willing to just take what they are given. The second group, NEWBIES, are inexperienced in the investment process, but are willing to become engaged in the management of their hard-earned dollars. The third group, NERDS, are those who have a modicum of investment expertise and are willing to devote the time and energy to expand their investments skills.
My mission is to motivate 401k participants to become engaged in their account and then train them how to optimize their results.
I have a 62-years of stock market experience. I have been a stockbroker, finance professor and individual investor. I have no investment products to sell. All I have to offer are the objective observations of one who has been there and done that.
Episodes
37 episodes
Season 2 Episode 9 A Crummy Gold Watch and An Itty-Bitty Pension Check
To my parents' generation, financial security meant working for the same company your whole life. Then when you turned 65, they gave you a gold watch, and once a month you trundled out to the mailbox to get your lousy pension check. The size of...
Season 2 Episode 8 A Billion Here, A Billion There
During a 1963 debate on the federal budget, the Senior Senator from Illinois, Everett Dirksen proclaimed, “a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.” Dirksen didn't use exact numbers, and that was not h...
Season 2 Episode 7 Gen X 10, Wall Street Techies Zip
When I was a kid, our family car had air conditioning, It was a little triangular shaped window that you flipped around and it blew air on your face. Our family car also had power windows. There was a crank on the door and you were the power. F...
Season 2 Episode 6 An Interview with a level 10 401k Nerd
In this episode I spent time with Jake Olsen talking about his 401k experiences. Jake is a millennial and a Level 10 401k Nerd. I have known Jake for over 15 years. When we first met, Jake was a college student majoring in accounting &...
Season 2 Episode 5 New Menu Items Coming to a 401k Near You
In August of 2025, President Trump sign an executive order directing the Department of Labor to investigate how to include private equity and cryptocurrency on the investment menu of the nation’s 75,432 401k plans. There are a number of signifi...
Season 2 Episode 4 401k Investing for Newbies and Nerds
I have been meandering through the wonderful world of investing for over six decades. My main takeaway from these many years of market experience is that change is constant, and if you don’t embrace every new permutation along the way, you will...
Season 2 Episode 3 The Rockets' Red Glare and Your 401k
A week ago, the skies over the Middle East were filled with more rockets than Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The following Monday morning, the Wall Street Journal opined that there would be a massive response on Wall Street to the Middle East ...
Season 2 Episode 2 All That Glitters Is not Gold
During my second junior year in college, I took a Shakespeare class. I was a business major and wore a coat and tie to class. In a roomful of liberal arts majors, it was obvious that I was the class nerd. The only line I can remember from the l...
Season 2 Episode 1 Your 401k, The Gift That Keeps on Giving
The American economic engine is the greatest wealth producing machine the world has ever known. At the turn of the 20th century, it produced $4 billion in revenue for the American people. Last year it produced $30 trillion: A 4,000 percent incr...
Season 1 Episode 28 Who's Been Naughty and Who's Been Nice
Tis the season where we titillate our naïve young people with the story of a mystical elderly gentleman who rewards his followers with gifts, the quality of which is based on their year-to-date behavior. An argument can be made that...
Season1 Episode 27 The Wizard of Oz and Your 401(k)
The Wizard of Oz is about a Kansas farm girl who is traveling along a yellow brick road to get to the City of Oz, home to a person with special powers whom she believes can solve all her problems. Along the way she finds some odd characters who...
Season 1, Episode 26 Investing is Not Rocket Science or a Roulette Wheel, It's a Plow Horse
Investing is not rocket science, nor is it a roulette wheel. It's a plow horse, a giant animal who turns the earth over, step by arduous step, so that when harvest time comes, the earth pours out an abundant crop. Wall Street...
Season 1, Episode 25 At the End of Every Straightaway is a Curve
At the end of it every straightaway, there's a curve. But this exciting and informative episode of my podcast is not about auto racing. It's about how to preserve and grow the assets in your 401(k). In the last two years the S&P 500 has gro...
Season 1, Episode 24 Massive, Not Passive; The index Fund Revolution
During my 62-year journey with Wall Street, I have been a witness to and a participant in, many significant events. I was there on Black Monday, 1987. I enjoyed the ride of the once in a lifetime 1990’s bull market. I chuckled my way through th...
Season 1 Episode 23 Cryptocurrencies and the Fed - Voodoo and Snake Oil
Up until a few weeks ago I had no desire in delving into the mystic world of crypto currency. However, when Trump announced that he was going to direct the Department of Labor to allow cryptocurrency and private equity as an option to the count...
Season 1 Episode 22 Where are we, How did we get here, and Where do we go from here?
As we transition from summer into the fall months, the words of Will Rogers come to mind: “The worst month to invest in the stock market is September. The others are January, February, March…..November, and December. So fa...
Season 1 Episode 21 Trump's 401(k) Executive Order. Is the Juice Worth the Squezz
There are 90 million American workers with company sponsored 401(k)plans. These 7,143 plans have a cumulative value of $14 trillion. This figure is twice the amount of the federal budget and 25% of the total value of the US stock market. <...
Season 1 Episode 20 Who Wants to be a Millionaire??
Eighty million American workers participate in their companies 401(k) plan. Collectively, they have $14 trillion dollars invested in these plans. They make their own investment decisions by selecting mutual funds from a list prepared by an inve...
Season 1 Episode 19 The Weatherman, Tariffs and your 401(k) Plan
In this stop on my 62-year journey along Wall Street, I discuss the evolving nature of the stock market. Today’s market is not your father’s market. Sixty years ago, less than 3 percent of the American public owned stock. Today that number is n...
Who Is Getting the Biggest Slice of the 401(k) Pie
During a debate on the Federal budget, Herbert Humphry, the late, great Senator from Minnesota, said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon it starts to add up.” The same thing can be said for today's 401(k) program, except you need...
The Big Beautiful Bill and Your 401(k)
The stock market loves good news and hates bad news. The problem is that it has trouble deciding which is which. It also reserves the right to pause and change its mind midstream, without prior notice to the investing public. Last w...
Season 1, Episode 16 Half Time Score Stock Market 2025, Wall Street 2.7, Main Street 4.9
The normal half time segment of a televised football game, begins with a petite blond female reporter accosting the loosing coach with a mike and screeching at him, “Your losing by 49 points, what do you need to change in the second half?” The ...
Season 1 Episode 15 Why buy the cow when the milk is free?
Our lives are dominated by and consumed by technology. We can turn our house lights on from a phone in our car. Our car recognizes us. The best chess player in the world is a server farm. This has lead us to believe that all our problems can be...
