By the Madison Pension Editorial Team
As we addressed in Part 1, your options for implementing a retirement plan for yourself and your employees extends beyond the typical 401(k) plan. Retirement plan sponsors should investigate popular retirement vehicles, even to supplement their 401(k) plans, to ensure they are maximizing benefits for participants based on the unique needs of their organizations.
In Part 1, we covered a defined benefit (DB)/defined contribution (DC) combo plan, which can help businesses lower their income taxes and make up for lost time in putting aside money for retirement. In this segment, we will highlight one particular DB plan known as a cash balance plan, which also contains many elements of a DC plan. A few of its elements also closely resemble those of a 401(k) plan. If this all sounds a bit confusing, read on to see how it all irons out.
While cash balance plans are the fastest-growing retirement plans in the country, only about 10,000 such plans exist in the United States, compared to about 500,000 401(k) plans. Yet, cash balance plans grew in popularity by around 500 percent during the 2001-2011 decade. Why? These plans allow owners of small firms (50 or fewer employees) to avail themselves of considerably higher tax-deductible contribution limits than 401(k) plans allow.
Let’s look at how cash balance plans compare to other types of plans noted above:
