In some ways, the second most popular post on my blog in 2025 was my favorite – and objectively likely my “best” – post of the year, in any venue. It hit early and accurately, and provided actionable advice to an at-risk population, namely employers who sponsor 401(k) plans and the fiduciaries who operate them.

This is the latest in a series of posts, always published on Friday, discussing five articles, topics, videos, podcasts, blog posts and the like that crossed my desk during the week just ended. Some weeks, the post has a consistent theme, such as last week when it turned out to be essentially “all ERISA, all

I am continuing with the countdown of my top ten most popular blog or LinkedIn posts of 2025, and we have now made it all the way to number four. For those of you new to the countdown, you can find the rules of the contest here.

The fourth most popular post of 2025

I am determined to finish my countdown of my ten most popular posts of 2025 while we are still within sight of the beginning of the year – in other words, before the calendar flips over to February.

So with that said, I am taking a break from drafting a number of complaints that I

Continuing with the countdown of the top ten most popular blog posts, LinkedIn posts and articles I published this year, we come to the ninth most popular, an article on LinkedIn from the summer which asked the question of “How is Private Equity Like a Coffee Frappe?

In addition to explaining that frappe

Boxing Day is my favorite post-holiday holiday, similar in many ways but better than the day after Thanksgiving, because the latter has, over the years, been overtaken by pressure to either shop or get started on end of the year rushes for work. Boxing Day, at least for me, suffers from none of that.

Boxing

Financial expert turned professional writer Susan Mangiero has a new article out on the issue of adding alternative investments to 401(k) plans. It provides an excellent summary of the issues and is particularly helpful if you are new to the topic – it will get you up to speed quickly.

I make a guest appearance

Fred Reish has an excellent article out on the technical and substantive aspects of the executive – and soon to be regulatory – efforts to open 401(k) plans to alternative investments, with a particular focus on the targeting (pun intended) of target date funds as the channel for bringing them into the investment holdings of

In earlier posts in my Plan Sponsor and Fiduciary 2.0 series I promised to provide a cheat sheet for fiduciaries confronting the push to add private equity and other alternative assets to 401(k) plans.  Here it is, with a focus on private equity assets, because that is where most of the initial action currently is