Back To Basics – Plan Loans And Retirement Leakage

Like many practitioners, we continue to monitor developments under the new Administration on various aspects of employment and benefit law matters, including the future of health care reform and the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule. While the new Administration develops its policies, we thought that we would revisit some familiar topics in this month's newsletter.

With the decline in defined benefit pension plans, the responsibility for saving for retirement and "building a retirement nest egg" has been placed squarely on individual employees. Despite this fact, most employers are concerned about the adequacy of retirement savings – whether it be paternalistic (which is often true based on our experience) or business reasons (i.e. ensuring that "older workers have enough and can afford to retire to make room for younger, less expensive workers" as suggested by the Wall Street Journal). Whatever the motivation, saving for retirement is important and studies show