How to find a good third-party, 401k management/advice service?
Any fee based financial adviser should be able to help you. I don't think you need to worry about finding a 401K specific adviser. I'm not even sure that's a thing. A good place to start is the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. The reason I specifically mentioned a fee based adviser is that the free ones are working on sales commissions, which may influence them to give advice that is in their own best interest more than yours. Another option to a human advisor is FutureAdvisor, a web service that (if it supports your 401k plan) gives personalized algorithmic advice on what you should hold in your 401(k) and other retirement accounts.  If it doesn't support your 401(k) plan just yet you can sign up to be emailed when your plan is added.  [Disclosure: I work here, but I believe in the product and it's designed to solve this exact problem so I'm mentioning it here]  Note from JoeTaxpayer - bolu's disclosure is much appreciated. The fee is $39/yr, with a free trial. Consider that a commissions based advisor won't even take on a $10K level account, and at $100K, you'd be hard pressed to gain by more than his 1% fee. So while I've not dug deeper into this site, a rules-based methodology is likely to be worth the cost if over time it gains you even a fraction of a percent compared to what you'd have done blindly. The vanilla advice is investing your age in bonds and the rest in stocks (index funds, of course). So if you're 25, have 75% in stock index fund and 25% in bond index. Of course, your 401k is tax sheltered, so you want keep bonds there, assuming you have taxable investments. When comparing specific funds, you need to pay attention to expense ratios. For example, Vanguard's SP 500 index has an expense ratio of .17%. Many mutual funds charge around 1.5%. That means every year, 1.5% of the fund total goes to the fund manager(s). And that is regardless of up or down market. Since you're young, I would start studying up on personal finance as much as possible. Everyone has their favorite books and websites. For sane, no-nonsense investment advise I would start at bogleheads.org. I also recommend two books -  This is assuming you want to set up a strategy and not fuss with it daily/weekly/monthly. The problem with so many financial strategies is they 1) don't work, i.e. try to time the market or 2) are so overly complex the gains are not worth the effort. I've gotten a LOT of help at the boglehead forums in terms of asset allocation and investment strategy. Good luck!
"To first understand exactly how collection agencies work it is important to know the background of the industry. The industry started shortly after the great depression. consumers were no longer able to pay for their accounts and companies did not know how to collect. As far-fetched as it seems one of the booming industries was the mafia. Pa and ma shops were paying for protection; some because they were not given a choice.  Since the ""protection"" industry was doing well some of the ""employees"" (for lack of better terms) had the idea of collecting debt from the companies that were not getting paid. Sears, Macy's and several other creditors decided to sell the unpaid debt to these collectors. Remember, during this era there was no FDCPA to protect consumers. The FDCPA was actually created because the mafia collectors were going door to door to collect and they were not nice about it.  In the meantime there was another industry (for lack of better words)   rapidly expanding around the eastern part of the U.S. - none other   than the mafia. Did the Godfather go and introduce himself and make a   sales pitch to Sears offering to collect monies due to them? Not   hardly. But as with any business, ideas were made and created that   spurred from the main ideology of the original business. Associates of   the mafia marketed to the stores such as Sears and offered to collect   the past due debt. The big sell on this.. creditors did not have to   pay for the services - the customer did. Originally this “protection”   industry was all about protecting the small ma and pop shops for a fee   but this time ma and pa did not have to pay - the debtor did. The idea   of collecting  past due debts spread like wildfire. It was easy money   and there was nothing illegal about it. The actual idea behind   collecting past due debt from creditors was genius. It was a legit,   collectable debt… for a price. This is why and how the FDCPA was created. So when you deal with a third party collection agency you need to know that you are dealing with the dirtiest of dirtiest people. The people that are hired as debt collectors are your typical ex-felons. There is a reason for this. The good news is now there are laws put into place to protect your rights and your safety.  Agencies purchase what is called ""paper"". There is ""good"" and ""bad"" paper. Good paper are accounts just sold from the original creditor. This includes all good information on the debtor such as phone number, address etc. Sometimes the debt is collected and sometimes not. Either way it is common for a collection agency to resell the paper to another collection agency. This is called 3rd placement." The compound interest argument is a good one.  While you are young, it is important to save, since time is on your side for compounding of interest.  I think the 401K is a good idea, but not for all of your savings.  Think about saving a percentage of your income, but put it in a couple places. Your Roth is also a great thing, since you'll be able to remove money without paying tax again.  The 401k (tax deferred) is a good idea if your company matches any of it (FREE MONEY!), and because it lowers your taxable income now, and it's taken out of your check before you see it, so you don't miss it.  It's still important to save other money that you can have for ready cash (unexpected dead car, for example, or medical bills, or what have you.) I find that I don't want to be managing my investments from minute to minute, or doing my own trades (I'd rather do other things), so I have a mix (Roth, 401k, cash savings) of automated contributions for savings, and I think hard before buying new stuff.  The point is to save, and if possible, try to save at least 10% of your income. The other answers are good, but not UK-specific. You need to look for an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA). These are regulated by the FCA and you pay them a time-based fee for their services, they do not take commission on the products they recommend to you.  The Government Money Advice Service page (hat tip to @AndyT in the comments on the question for the link) tells you how to go about finding one of these and what sort of questions to ask. Contrary to the note in the answer by @Harper, in the UK many IFAs do have perfectly nice offices, this is not a sign that should put you off.  Personal recommendations for IFAs are usually the best way to go but failing that there are directories of them and many will have an initial conversation with you for free to ensure you are aligned with each other. I think better advice would be always max out your 401K at least to the level that the company provides a match. For example, my company will match 50% up to 10% of your salary. Good luck finding another investment with a guaranteed immediate 50% return. Beyond the company match, it is probably good advice to put as much in the 401K as you can afford if you aren't disciplined enough to invest that money on your own. Otherwise it depends on a number of factors as to whether it is better to invest on your own or in the company plan. "Your employer could consider procuring benefits via a third party administrator, which provides benefits to and bargains collectively on behalf of multiple small companies.  I used to work for a small start-up that did exactly that to improve their benefits across the board, including the 401k.  The fees were still higher than buying a Vanguard index or ETF directly, but much better than the 1% you're talking about.   In the meantime, here's my non-professional advice from personal experience and hindsight: If you're in a low/medium tax bracket and your 401k sucks, you might be better off to pay the tax up front and invest in a taxable account for the flexibility (assuming you're disciplined enough that you don't need the 401k to protect you from yourself).  If you max out a crappy 401k today, you might miss a better opportunity to contribute to a 401k in the future.  Big expenses could pop up at exactly the same time you get better investment options.   Side note: if not enough employees participate in the 401k, the principals won't be able to take full advantage of it themselves.  I think it's called a ""nondiscrimination test"" to ensure that the plan benefits all employees, not just the owners and management.  So voting with your feet might be the best way to spark improvement with your employer.  Good luck!" "Fred is correct ... MOST financial advisors (but not all) are paid either for managing your assets or for selling you financial products. But success at anything, especially building wealth, is all about PROCESS, not products. I applaud your desire to find a financial advisor to help you because this is not something that most people have the education, experience or capacity to do themselves (it is impossible to get the perspective you need to make the best choices). Start with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER professional - they have an ethical duty to do what is in your best interests ahead of their own (the ""fiduciary standard"").  You might interview two or three.  Work with the one who is transparent about how they are paid and whose process is focused on helping you achieve your goals ... not following any rule of thumb or standard boilerplate.  Your goals are different.  Your financial life is different. Find someone who can help YOU follow YOUR agenda ... not their own." Fire your fund manager. There are several passive funds that seek to duplicate the S&P 500 Index returns. They have lower management fees, which will make returns lower than S&P, and they have less risk by following a broadly diversified strategy (versus midcap growing stocks). There's also ETFs, but evidence is growing that they're not as safe as hoped. But here's the deal: the S&P has been on a tear lately. It could be overvalued and what looks like a good investment could start falling again. A possible alternative would be one of the Lifetime funds that seek to perform portfolio adjustment with a retirement decade target; they're fairly new which mostly means nobody knows how they screw you over yet. In theory, this decade structure means the brokerage can execute trading cash for stocks, stocks for bonds, and bonds for cash in house. Also, my wealth manager doesn't like to discuss my money with me. To some extent, I understand this because finances are not my forte This is akin to porn surfing all day at your job instead of writing code, fire him ASAP. For now I would stick it in a bank account until you are comfortable and understand the investments you are purchasing.   Here are some options to consider: The last one is tricky.  You might have to interview several in order to find that one gem.  With you being so young it is unlikely any of your friends have a need for such a service.  I would concentrate on asking older work colleagues or friends of your parents for recommendations.  Ask if they are educated by their adviser.   In the end it would really pay for you to educate yourself about finances.  No one can quite do as good as a job as you can in this area.  You recognize that there was a problem with your current guy, that shows wisdom.  If you have an interest in this area, I would recommend attending a Financial Peace University class.  All my kids (about your age and older) are required to take it.  It will help you navigate debt, mortgages, insurance, and investing and will cost you about $100.  If you don't learn enough the first time, and you won't, you can repeat the course as many times as you wish for no additional cost.