Will I need the missing information in retirement?

Submitted by Amar Patel on Sat, 2018-01-06 19:23

I’ve posted this question on another forum online, but that is a general finance site. So I figured to copy the question here, to see if a retirement-oriented audience may have more/different answers for me to consider.

The basic question is, with a high likelihood of missing statements for some early years in my current 401(k), but a full record of statements over the past few years, am I going to miss any information I might need once I’m in retirement? Specifically, in my present 401(k) plan (which is probably my most important retirement asset), I do seem to be missing statements from 2009, 2010, and parts of 2011. But, in my last statement from 2017, I do clearly see 3 category of balances by type of contribution: employee pre-tax, employee Roth, and employer matching. And even if I don’t have my statements or individual paystubs that far back, I do think I have all my W-2s from the beginning of my tenure with this employer. And so I think I can piece together how much I’ve contributed pre-tax and Roth, and then figure out, if needed, how much of the balance is in the form of a gain or loss versus my contributions.

But, I don’t know how to uncover that level of detail for the employer match category based on the documents I have. I have a vague recollection from a few years back where I made an attempt to uncover such details with the plan provider (John Hancock). They told me that statements/details were not accessible that far back (or something like that). It took several attempts for them to send me anything resembling a statement for that period. And when they did, it wasn’t what I expected, so I let it go at the time. I can perhaps badger my employer’s benefits/payroll department for said details all the way back to when I started. But for the moment, I’m saving any political goodwill I have with my employer to drive for present-day changes in our 401(k) program (lower cost investment options!), so such details mentioned above would be a priority for a future initiative.

But… is that detail (knowing what and when my employer contributed, and how much gain/loss is associated with their contributions) even useful or needed in retirement, if I otherwise know the total balance in that category (and knowing that it is all considered pre-tax)?



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Sat, 2018-01-06 20:21

  • You do not need that amount of detail. This is a large professional administrative firm so it is highly unlikely that anything was mishandled that you would not have noticed when you received the original statements. If you have made Roth elective deferrals, those and their earnings must be maintained in a separate account within the plan and the current statement gives you that breakdown. All matching must be made to the pre tax account. If you ever made non Roth after tax contributions, then those contributions and their earnings must also be kept in a separate sub account, so if the current statement does not show a balance for that it means you did not make any non Roth after tax contributions. In the Roth portion of your account, the plan must also keep a record of the first year you made Roth contributions and also provide another breakdown if you ever did an in plan Roth rollover (IRR), by year and amount. Of course, if you ever did an IRR you would have a 1099R for it breaking out the taxable and non taxable amounts of the IRR.
  • So, assuming you have not done any IRRs or made non Roth after tax contributions or have a current 401k loan, there is no need for any additional detail unless you want to do an analysis of the amount of gain over certain periods of time compared to common benchmarks. That might indicate how much of a drag the plan fees have produced if you are invested in something that tracks the S&P 500 or other common market index. Of course, you could also do this with the most recent years in which you DO have the statement data.
  • If you want to determine the cumulative breakdown between contribution and gain in the 3 categories and have all the W-2 forms, you could add up your pre tax and Roth contributions from the W-2 coding of contributions and the excess of value in the last statement over that total would be your gain. But the W-2 would not have a similar box showing the company matching contribution, but gains on those should be comparable to the others unless the matching is going into a specific investment such as employer stock shares.
  • The short answer is that there is no retirement related tax filing or other info that you need, but if you want to study the plan investment results over time for the investment options you selected, you could probably accomplish much of that yourself with the W-2 contribution data. If you leave the company or otherwise at a certain age rollover the Roth portion to your Roth IRA, the 1099R must provide the data you would need to update your Roth IRA accounting if you ever took a non qualified Roth IRA distribution before your Roth IRA had 5 years and you reached 59.5.

Submitted by Amar Patel on Sun, 2018-01-07 00:58

  • Thanks for the detailed answer!
  • Something you said did prompt me to add a clarification here. Our current 401(k) provider is ADP. In fact we’re on our 3rd plan within ADP, and momentum is building to move us to a 4th plan (or platform… I’m unsure of the terms), where better/lower-cost funds would be available to us.
  • Before ADP, we were at John Hancock, and before John Hancock we were at ING
  • I’m not certain why our employer moved us around so much, but I do recall seeing the occasional error, like fees being taken out that shouldn’t have been taken out.  Or maybe even where pre-tax contributions were made but only Roth deferrals were to be made.  I cannot not recall which provider would have processed it, but I do recall that each error was seemingly fixed.
  • Would that give you enough concern to forge ahead with ING and/or John Hancock and/or my employer to pull the detailed transaction records now, before the records from 2009, 2010, and 2011 are lost for good?

Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Sun, 2018-01-07 20:28

Fees are one issue, but if too high would have a general effect on all participants but would not cause the type of record keeping error you might be concerned with. Firms like ADP have alot of internal audits and other controls, and any error that was made across the board would have been discovered and corrected long ago. What you are left with would be a unique error that only affected your account or perhaps a very few others. An error like not following your contribution type direction you likely would have noticed at the time. If you requested Roth elective deferrals your taxes would not change, but if the deferrals were made pre tax in error, you likely would have noticed the immediate increase in your paycheck. You can do the basic checking with the W-2 forms you already have, and unless you discover something strange with that testing, there should not be any value in pressing deeper into old missing statements.

Submitted by Amar Patel on Tue, 2018-01-09 02:01

  • In this case, the fees were something like a fee that was supposed to be paid by my employer but it was taken from my account instead. But it was corrected everytime I saw something like that.  I nagged my payroll department each time until it was corrected.
  • From the quick check I just completed of all the W-2 forms I have from my current employer, the contribution figures seem correct.  Initially, I was only doing pre-tax contributions.  Not long after starting, I then I split – unevenly, it seems, between pre-tax and Roth contributions.  Then I went completely Roth a several years back and its been that was ever since.  And, per my latest statement, the employee pre-tax balance is indeed signficantly smaller than my Roth balance, so that seems to make sense.
  • It just gnaws at me that I’m missing statements, but I supposed I can get over that if all I’m going to miss is information needed to calculate returns and drags by fees
  • I suppose it doesn’t hurt or cost much to write ING and John Hancock and ask for copies of my missing statements… but at least I’m hearing that if I fail again in that attempt, I’m not missing much

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