Guideline has been acquired by Gusto

I'd love to move the account (especially after this!), but unfortunately I can't because of what is basically an annoying side-effect. My current employer doesn't offer a 401k plan, and the only option I have for contributing to a Roth IRA is via backdoor contributions. Such backdoor contributions (which are basically an IRS-sanctioned loophole) have to start in a Traditional IRA account, and you cannot have any other/pre-existing Traditional IRA funds at the time of the contribution. So, I have nowhere to move the 401k funds besides an IRA account, but I have to leave my traditional IRA accounts empty so that I can do a backdoor contribution.

I wish the federal government would just get rid of the salary cap for direct contributions to a Roth IRA, since they basically already allow it via the obnoxious and convoluted path.

If you work for a large company it is possible that they have negotiated better pricing for their 401k plan than what Vanguard or some other brokerage offers off the shelf. For example Vanguard charges 0.08% for its target date retirement funds, but the one I get on my old employer's plan (BlackRock LifePath) is just 0.037%. And the retail price for that LifePath fund is a whopping 0.17%.

I tend to agree. However, Guideline (an excellent service imo) has admiral class vanguard funds which aren't always available in rollover IRA accounts. I hope Guideline doesn't go away or become exclusively Gusto (irrespective of what they said in the announcement).

Something no one else mentioned so far is that, depending on your state, some IRA funds can be subject to judgments or non-exempt from bankruptcy, whereas 401k accounts are untouchable for anything except federal tax liens and divorce.

I’ve always followed this advice as well, but rolling a 401(k) to an IRA limits your ability to do a backdoor Roth.

Unless your Vanguard has a 401(k) account and it already then your golden, I’d advise rolling your previous balance into your current employers account first

Well they sold some retirement accounts to Ascensus which you have to have your own account and login for so maybe they will move your 401k too some day and you will be in the same boat as these guys.

The process is somewhat archaic (often involving mailing around paper checks) and I imagine many people just don't want to deal. Rolling over pulls your money out of the market which means you could miss a good day (or a bad day).

I left a trail of 3-4 accounts until just recently, when I rolled them all over to my current Vanguard 401k. They were all invested in the same Vanguard fund so there's not much change other than simplicity.

My old company’s 401k has a (now closed to new investors) fund that has returned 3-4% above the index average for over a decade.

My guess is your different experience is precisely because you use Gusto as your payroll provider. My previous employer does not, or at least they did not when I was working there. This was truly the first and only email I've gotten about it, but I have always gotten regular transactional and notification emails from Guideline just fine, including yesterday with a confirmation that I'd changed my asset allocation!

This is common for mortages, too. Mine has been sold a handful of times (as are most peoples') and more than once I've had to triple-verify that the dashboard website the new servicer is telling me to go to is legit. They often have extremely dodgy URLs like "mymortgagedash.com" that have no obvious association with the loan servicer whatsoever.

> What specifically is violating policies?

Guideline materially and repeatedly breached their fiduciary duties under ERISA.

Their definition of when an expense is “incurred” varies materially from case to case and diverged substantially in almost all of them from IRS guidance. Multiple times, a customer service agent said—in writing—the last person I interacted with misrepresented something material that I had subsequently acted on.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am describing my personal experiences. Don’t cite this comment if you decide to pursue these fuckwits.

Gusto bought Guideline, migrated Guideline customers who also use Gusto directly to Gusto, and everyone leftover from the acquisition is now being served by Guideline under the name Accrue401k. The Accrue401k (formerly Guideline) dashboard is exactly the same, just a different name. And former Guideline customers who use Gusto for payroll now use Gusto 401k.

That’s my understanding at least.

Gusto basically acquired their mutual customers, seemingly.

> have to assume management is getting paid off some way to subject themselves to an inferior and more expensive custodian

I’ve done a startup that tried to run ADP for payroll. It was a mess.

Lots of startups avoid that problem by using Gusto. And until recently, Gusto integrated better with Guideline than other providers. So that’s what one got. No kickback needed.

(Like, constellation of shitty products users are locked into helped make Larry Ellison the world’s richest man.)

I recently had to select a 401(k) plan for our small startup. For a startup, the _employee_ fees was significantly better on Guideline (0.15 - 0.3%) than Fidelity (0.5% + $100 bookkeeping fee). The _employer_ fees were slightly more expensive with Guideline ($1,778 on Enterprise plan for Guideline vs $1,200 for Fidelity) but offered more features.

Important for founders in the US to know: you can put up to $70k annually into your 401k using profit sharing, which only some 401k plans offer. Your startup does not need to be making a profit to do 401k profit sharing. Employees may also be able to negotiate this!

Having selected a 401k provider for a small (<15 person) company and also for a larger (>100 person) one, I can say that the big names make it prohibitively expensive for small companies to use them. And that expense ultimately comes out of peoples’ retirement funds in the form of fees. They frankly don’t want the business - too much compliance overhead for a small asset pool.

Believe me, I would prefer to have my own 401k at Fidelity too.

I have no dog in this fight, I just know from experience that setting up a 401k for your company is vastly different from setting up a brokerage account, and the reason a lot of small companies end up with off-the-run vendors is because those are the ones that will take the business.

I was very happy when Fidelity added HSA. Much better than the 2 previous places I had HSA. Fidelity HSA just works, and is directly investable, including in the very competitive iShares index ETFs.

I wish more startups would find a way to use Fidelity or Vanguard (with access to the very-low-ER index funds).

I never did figure out how to track Guideline 401k in GnuCash satisfactorily. It was complex, when all I wanted was a balance of IVV/ITOT and AGG (or Vanguard equivalents).

And a different startup used Transamerica 401k, which looked like it had been forgotten on one person's desk in the basement of their skyscraper a decade earlier, and I didn't like their funds. As soon as I could rollover to an old Fidelity account, I did so.

Hey, fresh startup here. We use Gusto and selected Guideline out of the two options presented, mostly because we have a ton of things we're focused on. Always had a feeling it was a scam, but didn't have time to really dig into it (we're also pretty small at the moment)

What's the best way to transition to Fidelity / Vanguard? I assume Fidelity would be better for having a single entity to deal with rather than Fidelity for HSA and Vanguard for 401K?

They just said shareholder

(Author of the comment you are talking about) To be clear, they DID link to the same FAQ, but hosted and branded on the new domain and name. I had to go digging to find the same info on the Guideline site I was already familiar with.

Huh, yeah that's not good. Trust is so important around financials like this. I'm surprised that no one thought through the branding and communications. Missing something like "hey, they've never heard of this company or domain" feels like a pretty easy catch.

Also, I can't find any mention of Accrue on any previous Gusto or Guideline communications or any of their online FAQs about the acquisition. "Accrue 401k" seems to barely exist outside of its own website and a few third-party posts from today about the confusing email.