Retirement Account Updates

CREF Money Market R2 Accounts

The Wake Forest University Retirement Plan (the “Plan”) offers a mix of mutual funds and annuities to help you save and invest for retirement. One of those investments is the CREF Money Market R2 account (Expense Ratio: 0.235%), which was closed to new contributions in 2016. All accumulations in this account are controlled by plan participants. The CREF Money Market R2 account is likely to produce a negative return in January 2022 due to the expiration of a management fee waiver.  The Plan offers the Vanguard Federal Money Market fund (Expense Ratio: 0.11%) as another capital preservation or cash-like investment option. It may be beneficial to evaluate your Plan investments to determine if you have any accumulations in the CREF Money Market R2 account and, if you do, whether you should make any changes in your Plan investment elections. If you would like assistance or additional information about this topic, please contact TIAA at (800) 842-2776 or at tiaa.org.

Vanguard ShareClass Merger

On September 28, 2021, Vanguard announced a fund merger that impacts the Wake Forest University retirement. The Vanguard Institutional Target Retirement Funds (Institutional TRFs) are being merged into the Vanguard Target Retirement Funds (Investor TRFs), which is expected to result in a lower expense ratio of 0.08% (8 basis points) for each TRF following completion of the mergers. The mergers will occur in February.