Currently our only carrier for the RMC Retirement Account (RA) is TIAA-CREF.
You may hear other faculty & staff members discuss Vanguard as an option, however, Vanguard can only be used as a separate account (i.e. contributions beyond the College’s 9% and your 5%).
Develop an initial retirement plan goal - i.e. the income level in retirement, time you expect to be in retirement & the desired age you want to start retirement. If you are young when you start your plan, it may be wise to limit dependence on Social Security (reduce reliance to 50-60% of current projected benefits)
Determine how much risk you think you can tolerate, evaluate your goals and then determine the level of risk you are willing to take to meet retirement income goals.
During the application process you will need to select from different investment options. This would be a good time to talk with your Retirement Benefits Coordinator and to ask other faculty and staff about their thoughts on how to allocate retirement plan contributions. Most participants with TIAA-CREF now allocate their contributions amongst several investment categories to include: Equities (stock mutual funds), Fixed Income (Bond funds), Real Estate, Guaranteed (TIAA), and Multi Asset (TIAA-CREF Life Cycle funds), etc.
See the options on the Randolph-Macon College and TIAA-CREF website:
http://www.tiaa-cref.org/rmc
Your final chore in starting your retirement plan is to fill out the appropriate application and sign a salary reduction form to initiate your monthly contribution.
Many retirement plan participants believe they are finished with their retirement planning at this point. It’s your money, it’s your retirement, make sure you continue to evaluate your progress toward your goal. Remember to look at your investment options/strategies at least once every year or two. Take full advantage of the great opportunity of investing and saving, tax-deferred. If you find yourself in the position to invest more at a later date, always consider using the maximum limit given by the IRS (adjusted annually, but is scheduled to be $15,500 for all, and an additional $5,000 for those age 50 or older in calendar year 2007).
Note: When and if you decide to contribute more then 5% of your salary, consider establishing a Separate Retirement Account (SRA). You have the same tax benefits but you have a little more flexibility with the money in an SRA.
Your Benefits Coordinator is available to discuss any of your questions and help you make your choices.
Tom Copler, ext. 7263
Retirement Benefits Coordinator