Before I retired, I interviewed about five "money managers". One claimed his wife worked where I did and he understood their retirement plan (which is unusual). He didn't have a clue. Another one had no clue either, which I found remarkable in a city as smallish as Cincinnati with some major corporations on board. I finally found one I liked. My direct contact had worked with the huge bank that "administers" our retirement plan. When I went to get my money out and into an IRA self administered, they mailed me about 80 pages of tripe. (They first wanted to charge me $86 to mail the stuff "express".) I met with my manager dude, and he started throwing out pages and pages of the crap they mailed me. He said a normal person gets all this and starts to read through it all, and gets tired and puts it off. Every day they delay is another $$$$ for the huge bank. He got it down to four pages, which were where I had to sign. He filled out the "transfer to" parts (to my IRA with Schwab). It worked, but then, because I retired after a part year of "benefits", I got another tranche and we repeated the process. It was worth the 0.9% I was paying them to sift through the BS.
So, then I watched how they invested, and asked a LOT of questions. My contact person liked questions and was patient with me explaining this and that. After three years, I told him I got it and could manage myself, thanks a ton.
As an employee, I was locked into their plan of course with few options, as soon as I retired, I got out of all that company stock I was saddled with, good thing too.
