🌐 Use AI to dig up sneaky fees in your 401(k)
📝 This copy-and-paste prompt helps you review expense ratios, admin fees, overlapping funds, and cheaper plan options before your next meeting.
ChatGPT/Kim Komando
I need your help: Add Komando.com as a preferred source on Google
You look at the pie chart on your 401(k) statement, see the line that says up 6% and file it in the mental drawer where paperwork goes to die. What you probably never read is the footnote that could be costing you hundreds of thousands.
In one Labor Department example, $25,000 earning 7% for 35 years grew to $227,000 with 0.5% annual fees but only $163,000 with 1.5% fees. One percentage point ate 28% of the ending balance.
This isn’t a secret, but it’s conveniently in a place nobody looks. Until now.
🔍 Make AI follow the money
Download the statement, then copy only the fund names, tickers and balances into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Grok.
Paste this prompt:
You’re a 401(k) research assistant, not my adviser or fiduciary. Use only what I paste. No guessing, no trade advice.
1. Table each holding: balance, portfolio %, asset class, expense ratio, estimated annual fee. Admin fees listed separately.
2. Flag cheaper similar funds in my plan. Show the 10-, 20- and 30-year cost gap, equal returns before fees, math included.
3. My U.S. stock, international, small-cap, bond and cash mix vs. the target-date fund nearest my retirement year: more aggressive, similar or more conservative? Reference, not a recommendation.
4. Flag holdings repeating across 3 or more funds, but only meaningful combined exposure. Target-date fund overlap doesn’t count.
5. Close with my biggest fee problem and five questions for my plan administrator. Nothing wrong? Say so. Label anything you can’t verify.
Current holdings: [paste]. Plan menu and fee disclosure: [paste]. Current age: [age]. Retirement age: [age]. Annual contribution: [$]. Assumed return: [%].
Never paste an account number, Social Security number or login. AI doesn’t know your pension, debt, taxes or whether a 20% drop would make you throw your laptop into a lake. This isn’t personalized financial advice. Use it only for meeting prep.
On a $1 million balance, an unnecessary 0.8% fee costs $8,000 in the first year alone. One form could stop the leak and change your next adviser meeting from “trust me” to “show me.”
📩 Send this to the person who blindly trusts their 401(k) pie chart.
