Thankfully you don’t have to “time the market”. You can use a simple investment strategy called dollar-cost averaging. This strategy reduces the risk of investing at the wrong time and actually takes advantage of the market’s ups and downs. When you participate in the City and County of San Francisco’s 457 Deferred Compensation Plan you already take advantage of dollar-cost averaging. Your contributions are invested every two weeks regardless of the markets highs or lows. Therefore, your contributions buy fewer shares when the market is high and more shares when it’s low. But what if you want to transfer money within your Deferred Compensation portfolio and still take advantage of dollar-cost averaging?

Now you can! ING Aetna Financial Services, the administrator of the City and County of San Francisco’s 457 Deferred Compensation Plan offers a program called the Systematic Allocation Option. This option allows you to reallocate monies within your Deferred Compensation portfolio by transferring funds from one of the Plan’s investment options (i.e. Aetna Money Market Fund) to another fund or funds in equal monthly installments.

The Systematic Allocation Option is offered to allow Participants to purchase shares of the second fund(s) using the dollar-cost-averaging method. The amount applied to Systematic Allocation Option must be no less than $100 per month over a period of at least 12 months. The Systematic Allocation Option does not ensure a profit nor guarantee against loss. Since the program involves continuous investment in funds regardless of price levels, you should consider your financial and emotional ability to continue purchases through periods of low price levels.

Please contact Tara Hagan, our Deferred Compensation Represent-ative, for more information. She can be reached at (415) 364-2017 or (888) 822-1211 ext. 2017. If I can be of any assistance please contact Dennis Kruger at Local 798 offices.

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