It’s National Retirement Planning Week and Ben Stein– the Nyquil drinking, Clear Eyes-pitching, Ferris Bueller teaching, economist, speech writer turned columnist for Yahoo and the New York Times– is the spokesman for the campaign.

He even has video lectures on saving for retirement and how to take money out when you finally ditch the day job. Thing is, he’s known for his dry, monotonous delivery and I have to say I didn’t make it far into these videos. That’s not to say he’s not an interesting guy. I read his columns word for word practically every week.

Don’t let the review stop you from checking out the site. Here’s the campaign’s list of the top ten ways to prepare for retirement:’

1. Select a target date for when you want to retire.(That’s tricky when you’re 31, but I tentatively say 70).
2. Calculate how much money you need to accumulate by the time you want to retire. (Tricky again, mostly because there are so many assumptions you have to make to get to a good number.)
3. Find out about your Social Security benefits. (Not as tricky. Go to the Social Security web site).
4. Maximize your use of tax-advantaged plans such as employer retirement plans, individual retirement accounts and annuities.
5. If your employer doesn’t have a pension or retirement plan, ask that one be started.
6. Don’t touch your savings.
7. Diversify your assets.
8. Ask questions. Get help. Seek the assistance of a professional financial adviser.
9. Start now, set goals.
10. Do a retirement plan and monitor your progress.

Anything you want to add to that list?

A new Harris Interactive WSJ poll came out today about how couples discuss retirement.

Of the 2,321 surveyed, 24 percent say they’ve never discussed how much they need for retirement with a spouse or a partner.

Low income couples are least likely to discuss the issue. And no surprise, more older people have talked retirement than those 18 to 34, But if the younger demographic starts tackling the issue today, them maybe they’ll be better prepared and less anxious when the time comes to hang up the briefcase.

One interesting tidbit in the survey discussed partner conflicts. For instance,less than half of married couples or domestic partners agree on how much they are saving for retirement. Sound familiar?

How have you decided on how much to save for retirement? Did you calculate how much you’ll actually need? Rely on the 10 percent benchmark many use? Are you saving as much as you possibly can due to other expenses? Or just a wild guess?

Target date retirement funds or lifecycle funds have been mentioned in my columns almost as much as that little black dress of finance: the Roth IRA.

The idea behind target date retirement funds is that they are a basket of various funds that is managed by a manager and shifts over time based on when you plan to retire. The farther our your retirement day (2055 is the latest date I’ve seen), the more money you have in stock funds and the less in bond funds. That’s flip flopped for those planning to retire in 2015. Funds can also set based on risk tolerance.
Local mutual fund provider RiverSource, co-sponsored a study with Plan Sponsor magazine to survey what types of employers are offering such funds in 401(k) plans. Most major investment companies offering individual retirement accounts (T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, etc) have these options too.

They found that almost 90 percent of mid-to-large-sized retirement plans have at least one lifecycle fund in its midst.

Nearly 3 out of 4 of those employers said they just picked the fund that the investment company providing recordkeeping for the retirement plan had offered. I’d say that’s probably the biggest problem with these funds, which can be extremely useful for the average investor who wishes to set a plan in motion and come back to eat the chicken 40 years later. But the recordkeeper’s stink, then you might be better off picking your own mix modeled after what the target date plan does.

The other problem is that investors don’t get how to use them. These funds diversify for you, so you don’t need to put just a little bit of your money in them. Sure, set aside a sliver for emerging markets or gold or whatever you fancy, but the rest goes in the life cycle fund.

Do you have a lifecycle fund at your work? Like the idea?

A story in the Saturday Wall Street Journal said that retirement plan providers are seeing more workers borrowing from their 401(k)s.

The theory is that more people are feeling strapped thanks to ARMs or are unable to dip into their house-shaped piggy bank for needed funds like they could in recent years.

About 20 percent of investors have 401(k) loans. Some people love the strategy because you pay yourself back plus interest (although you’re paying yourself back with after-tax money so you’re pretty much taxed twice).

Thing is, if you can’t pay it back, you will have to pay taxes and the 10 percent penalty. And if you lose your job, you’ll have to pay the entire loan back within 90 days.Not only that, but money you borrow is not working for you in the stock market. Miss out on the best days of the market and that can mean a big hit to your bottom line in the long run, so the studies show.That said, borrowing money from a 401(k) works for some people.I considered it briefly a few weeks ago, when our rustmobile died. We’d been slowly saving for a new car, but then used a portion of that money for a new privacy fence (yes, even people who write about money all the time make dumb decisions). Fence looks nice, but you can’t drive a fence.

Fortunately, our mechanic was able to get the thing to run (the car, not the fence) and we’re hoping to get another year or two of use out of the stinky, noisy wreck (it only has to drive two miles a day). But would I have borrowed from the 401(k) if I had to? I’m leaning towards no. We probably would have robbed the Roth or taken out a small car loan (we’d be looking for one level above a rustmobile, not a Range Rover).

Share your reasoning for or against taking out a 401(k) loan.

I wrote a story for today about Ameriprise’s latest ad campaign. For those of you who missed it, here’s a link to the Hiiiilarious column from The Onion about the ads featuring Dennis Hopper.

Despite the fact that every independent blogger under the sun and every 11-year-old kid can embed a You Tube video, I could not get the ad to play on Ka-blog.

But here’s a link to the You Tube Ameriprise search, which finds both the ads and the parodies done by a critic of the company.

What didn’t make it into the story was the company’s collaboration with National Geographic called LifeDreams.