Comment by JumpCrisscross
5 days ago
Guideline has an FSA/HSA product which is a walking CMMS and IRS violation.
I never bothered escalating my disputes, but simply said, their customer service agents have multiple times admitted in writing to their systems being designed to break federal and state law.
I never thought it was worth pursuing. But Gusto has deep pockets…
(Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services)
What specifically is violating policies?
> What specifically is violating policies?
Guideline materially and repeatedly breached their fiduciary duties under ERISA.
Their definition of when an expense is “incurred” varies materially from case to case and diverged substantially in almost all of them from IRS guidance. Multiple times, a customer service agent said—in writing—the last person I interacted with misrepresented something material that I had subsequently acted on.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am describing my personal experiences. Don’t cite this comment if you decide to pursue these fuckwits.
Do you have a concrete example of when their definition was different from IRS guidance?
Gusto has their own, so I can't imagine they'd keep Guideline's?
Gusto bought Guideline, migrated Guideline customers who also use Gusto directly to Gusto, and everyone leftover from the acquisition is now being served by Guideline under the name Accrue401k. The Accrue401k (formerly Guideline) dashboard is exactly the same, just a different name. And former Guideline customers who use Gusto for payroll now use Gusto 401k.
That’s my understanding at least.
Gusto basically acquired their mutual customers, seemingly.
Not using Fidelity for HSA and Vanguard/Fidelity for 401k is a sign of bad leadership. I have to assume management is getting paid off some way to subject themselves to an inferior and more expensive custodian.
> have to assume management is getting paid off some way to subject themselves to an inferior and more expensive custodian
I’ve done a startup that tried to run ADP for payroll. It was a mess.
Lots of startups avoid that problem by using Gusto. And until recently, Gusto integrated better with Guideline than other providers. So that’s what one got. No kickback needed.
(Like, constellation of shitty products users are locked into helped make Larry Ellison the world’s richest man.)
ADP seems to have a half dozen or more discrete variations on their payroll product, each with their own weird quirks. I’ve experienced some that were perfectly adequate. Some of them being trash also seems plausible.
1 reply →
I recently had to select a 401(k) plan for our small startup. For a startup, the _employee_ fees was significantly better on Guideline (0.15 - 0.3%) than Fidelity (0.5% + $100 bookkeeping fee). The _employer_ fees were slightly more expensive with Guideline ($1,778 on Enterprise plan for Guideline vs $1,200 for Fidelity) but offered more features.
Important for founders in the US to know: you can put up to $70k annually into your 401k using profit sharing, which only some 401k plans offer. Your startup does not need to be making a profit to do 401k profit sharing. Employees may also be able to negotiate this!
I was very happy when Fidelity added HSA. Much better than the 2 previous places I had HSA. Fidelity HSA just works, and is directly investable, including in the very competitive iShares index ETFs.
I wish more startups would find a way to use Fidelity or Vanguard (with access to the very-low-ER index funds).
I never did figure out how to track Guideline 401k in GnuCash satisfactorily. It was complex, when all I wanted was a balance of IVV/ITOT and AGG (or Vanguard equivalents).
And a different startup used Transamerica 401k, which looked like it had been forgotten on one person's desk in the basement of their skyscraper a decade earlier, and I didn't like their funds. As soon as I could rollover to an old Fidelity account, I did so.
Note that unless your start-up is matching, you can set up your own HSA anywhere you like. Very different from an FSA.
4 replies →
Having selected a 401k provider for a small (<15 person) company and also for a larger (>100 person) one, I can say that the big names make it prohibitively expensive for small companies to use them. And that expense ultimately comes out of peoples’ retirement funds in the form of fees. They frankly don’t want the business - too much compliance overhead for a small asset pool.
Believe me, I would prefer to have my own 401k at Fidelity too.
I have no dog in this fight, I just know from experience that setting up a 401k for your company is vastly different from setting up a brokerage account, and the reason a lot of small companies end up with off-the-run vendors is because those are the ones that will take the business.
Hey, fresh startup here. We use Gusto and selected Guideline out of the two options presented, mostly because we have a ton of things we're focused on. Always had a feeling it was a scam, but didn't have time to really dig into it (we're also pretty small at the moment)
What's the best way to transition to Fidelity / Vanguard? I assume Fidelity would be better for having a single entity to deal with rather than Fidelity for HSA and Vanguard for 401K?
Call Fidelity and ask them - they'll happily walk you through it!
1 reply →
Could you elaborate