READYSAVE‪™‬ 4+

(Don’t you hate it when the link to app support sends you to the website, instead of allowing you to send a message to App support directly?)

I am an administrator for my firm. I tried to use this app, and when I used the administrator login, I got a “sorry“ error. Seems that I shouldn’t be using the administrator account for this. I suggest you track down this particular situation, and leave a better error message like “this app is for … only”.

I’m not sure if Ready Save is a product by Vanguard or if it is a retirement services app that multiple players such as Vanguard can use, but either way, I am disappointed in both it and Vanguard's online experience. Understanding my yearly contribution limit and how I am tracking towards it seems like the absolute basics of a retirement service. My goal as a user is to know how much I’m allowed to contribute and then to do exactly that — no more so that I’m not getting myself into a tax paperwork mess, and no less so that I’m fully optimizing the tax advantages. So why is this SO HARD????? The app actually does have a help area that lists the limit which is nice, but you’d think it could be smart enough to tell me that I’m X% of the way there, scheduled to hit the limit at Y date, etc. Because this doesn’t exist, I’m left doing my own math to adjust my contribution percentages so that I don’t exceed this limit. It’s 2023 — you’d think a company that specializes in retirement would be able to do something so simple. My company switched to Vanguard from Guideline and Guideline had an absolutely spectacular UI for this — I miss it greatly whenever I have the terrible experience of having to use Vanguard.

There should be consumer protection laws and regulations against poor products like this one. At a very minimum, a retirement app should allow its users to track their annual 401k contributions against LEGAL limits set by the IRS. This app does NOT allow you to do this! You will basically be able to know how much is in your account, but don’t expect anything else useful.

For instance, if you want to know how much you have contributed to your 401k versus how much your employer contributed (for those with a match), good luck, this is not provided. Oh, you also want to know how much of the balance in your account was achieved through contributions versus returns from your investments? You’re out of luck….

I realize people reading this will most likely not have had a say in the choice of this app as it will, in many cases, be imposed to them by their employer/retirement plan. This is probably why such a poor product can still be on the market place.