Christmas is a wonderful time of year. Personally, it’s one of my favorites! Each year it’s a time to remember the things we’re thankful for and spend time with loved ones. For this article, I wanted to take a different approach to both share some blessings and hopefully a funny anecdote.

This year has been filled with blessings but among those for me are welcoming our new son into the family, sharing great times, and creating new memories with family as they came to visit and making progress towards my personal goals. We are also thankful for you! We are so blessed to spend time with you and your team and it’s a privilege to work with you each and every day.

That being said, sometimes life throws you a curveball. It wasn’t too long ago that my wife and I were hosting a holiday meal for the first time at our house. The night before was filled with prep for the big day ahead so we threw dinner in the crock pot for ourselves so we could focus on the big meal. There’s always a last-minute thing that’s forgotten so we had to run to the store, leaving the prep work and crock pot behind. Now…depending on who you ask, the crock pot “was set to low.” We were only gone for around an hour. But when we opened the door, smoke billowed out the door and we knew something had gone terribly wrong. Luckily, it was just the crock pot that had somehow thrown itself onto “high” and burned all the contents beyond recognition. For the life of me, I can’t even to this day tell you what we were supposed to be eating that evening. I can tell you we ended up eating pizza.

What’s the lesson here? Don’t get burned like whatever that meal was supposed to be! See the Top 5 Year End tips to keep your retirement plan away from the heat.

1. Make sure all contributions are in participant accounts
2. Make sure you deliver all required notices to employees by December 1^st
3. Review your plan document to make sure you don’t need to make any changes before the end of the year
4. If you’re an audit plan, double check any and all required documentation is easily accessible
5. Check in with your plan providers to ensure everything is complete

Managing a retirement plan can be a lot of work, managing a burnt one is even harder. Having great plan providers in place makes all the difference. If you need help with any of the above reminders, or you want someone to take a second look at your plan to make sure there isn’t an unmanned crock pot around, reach out to us! We’re happy to provide a no cost assessment of your plan.

Happy Holidays from The Joseph Group Retirement Plan Services Team!!!

Written by Matt Kruckenberg, Manager of Retirement Plan Services. Matt can be reached at 614-907-8639 or matt.kruckenberg@josephgroup.com