For four decades, patient savers able to grit their teeth through bubbles, crashes and geopolitical upheaval won the money game. But the formula of building a nest egg by rebalancing a standard mix of stocks and bonds isn’t going to work nearly as well as it has.
I wonder if it’s a difference in the industries we work in. My worst experience was with a small company (<50 people), which had crappy fees (like 0.80% for an S&P 500 fund), and my current company is mid/large (something like 3000 employees, and like 90% of that is in our mfg plants; 0.10% asset fee, and the funds I picked have <0.10% fees each). I’ve also done HSA trustee transfers and IRA rollovers at a variety of HSA orgs, and that has been relatively painless (in fact, I do an HSA trustee transfer about 4x/year).
If you pick a good custodian to receive your funds, you solve half the problem.
I mean I like my custodians and they never seem to be the pain in the but part. except for the name thing when it occurs. My worst one is one im stuck with from working at a public university where you have to continue with their person as there is a small, probably not worth it realy, health benefit that I lose if I move it out. So my account basically just shrinks slowly. Its like im paying some sort of long time insurance.