Retirement plan "frozen"? (borrow, company, money, salary)

[rlrl]

I just heard a rumor that our retirement plan has frozen and may not recover until 5 years. I also heard that those employees who were affected were spoken to by appropriate administrators. I was not spoken to so I don't know if i am affected

i went online and called the company's autromated line that manages my company's retirement plan. According to the info the balance is still there. However under the "rate of return %" column it is noted to be "0%" since june of last year. There is no customer service line, you just have to leave a message for the operator

Rumor had it was that our employer stopped contributing but from what i know they stopped contributing about 5 years ago and instead gave us a choice of putting our retirement balance in aggressive mutual funds or letting it default to a non aggressive account which is what i did. Mine is in something called a stable value account.

I'm told employees used to borrow against this plan but that they no longer can do so

I'm not sure what's going on. I am going to speak to someone at this company but in the meantime can you shed some light into this, anyone who knows how this works?

This was originally coined a "profit sharing plan? where you started investing 10% of your salary and became vested in the plan once you had 1000 hours of employment at the company. I started in 9/1990 so i became 20% vested in 1/1992, 40% in 1993, 60% in 1994, 80% in 1995 and 100% vested in 1996. The employer supposedly contributed 100% (unlike our 403 b where the employee contributes) to this plan

Around late '03 or '04 our employer told us they were going to leave it up to us employees to make our balances grow and gave us the option of putting our $$ into more aggressive funds or let it default to a non aggressive fund(as noted above)

Any ideas?

[Heiwos]

You did good by choosing the "stable value account". The "aggressive" funds are for suckers. I don't know what it means that your account's frozen; hopefully it's not fraud.

[rlrl]

who would have done it? our boss is the trustee of the plan which means if you want to borrow against it he signs the paperwork and the payback plan

i left a message asking the company that manages our plan to get back to me.

my balances show up on the website and automated phone service. i don't tknow if it means the money is there or not. there are no other notations on the account

[Heiwos]

Not good to have the boss be the trustee of the plan! I hope this turns out okay. The SIPC may protect your account against fraud, up to $500K.

[FarNorthDallas]

I hope it's not that an investigation of some kind is going on which is why the accounts are frozen. That's just weird. And some employees are impacted and others aren't? Mmmmm. Are the ones impacted the one who went into the aggressive fund?

[rlrl]

reading an article about freezings. It looks like when there is a freeze or the employer stops contributing(also part of the rumor) you still get what you have earned(say in a lump sum) but the long term benefit is reduced in some way. It seems to affect middle aged workers in their 40's and 50's more. I just read this a few minutes ago and plan on finishing this tomorrow AM

i heard they spoke with those affected but i was never called. i still don't know much yet

[Donn2390]

If your boss stopped contributing five years ago, he is on his way to jail. Several of the things you mention he did are illegal.
I'm guessng you are reacting on unfounded rumors...