The poll of some 500 companies about employee participation in workplace 401(k) plans found that loans increased in 37 percent of the companies, down from 49 percent of companies in 2008. A quarter of the companies polled said they saw an increase in hardship distributions from plans, down from 43 percent of companies that reported this in 2008.

Hardship loans come with high fees and are often used for down payments on homes or to cover expenses when children are born. The drop in withdrawals may be due to an improved economy for employees, experts said. In addition, companies are directing more resources to communicate with employees about financial wellness, so workers may no longer see their retirement nest egg as the most viable option for instant funds.

“Companies are providing more financial advice such as debt management to employees and helping them to look at the whole picture,” said Lynn Dudley, senior vice president for policy at the American Benefits Council.

HIGHER PARTICIPATION

Since the Pension Protection Act of 2006 set out new requirements for employers that offer retirement and investment advice, 53 percent of companies said they provide such advice, and two thirds of those do so through independent financial advisers.

Most companies continued retirement plans and matches through the recession. According to the report, 88 percent of companies neither suspended nor eliminated their matching contributions during the previous five years. In all, 92 percent of the companies polled said they provide a match to contributions.

Companies with auto-enrollment features had higher participation rates than those without it – 37 percent of companies with auto-enrollment reported 80 to 90 percent participation. Only 21 percent of companies without auto enrollment reported participation in this range.

Companies are also building annuity offerings through defined benefit plans, which contain lifetime-payout options. About 12 percent of the companies in the study said they offer annuity options, and 21 percent said they are considering it for the future.

PROBLEMS LINGER

Despite this progress, overall savings still lag industry estimates of what people are expected to need upon retirement – which is to save 15 percent of current salary, according to T. Rowe Price, the Baltimore money management firm.

More than half of the companies said the average employee contribution is between 5 and 7 percent. For 22 percent of the companies polled, the average employee contribution is between 2 and 4 percent. Fewer than 10 percent of employees were contributing the maximum allowed contribution, which was $17,000 in 2012.

“Most savers feel they are doing as much as they can, and there is no way they can save 15 percent every year,” said Christine Fahlund, a financial planner and vice president of T. Rowe Price Investment Services. “That is where plan sponsors need to help by including auto-increase provisions in plans. Gradually is usually better when it comes to trying to change your savings behavior.”

Meanwhile, federal changes in fee disclosure, which were required to take affect by September of last year, have done little to educate people about their involvement with retirement plans. More than half of employers said that new fee disclosure rules did not make plans more clear to employees.

Instead companies are offering more advice. “More employers are focusing on financial well-being, adequacy, and communicating in a way that helps people take action,” said Dudley.

Policy makers may have avoided setting minimum default rates too high in the beginning, but now is the time to encourage making them higher, said Dudley. They could also include the ability to auto-increase when an employee gets a raise or a tax refund, for example.

“We must look to policy to support 401(k) plans,” which have been strongly accepted by employers, she said.

(Reporting by Heather Struck; Editing by Lauren Young and Phil Berlowitz)

Last year, 12 percent of 529 account holders took distributions to pay education bills, covering only about 6.6 percent of the total number of U.S. college students.

There were 20.4 million college students in the United States at the end of 2011, according to the U.S. Census, up from 17.5 million in 2005.

Earnings in the plans are deductible from federal and state income taxes as long as the money is used for qualified education expenses, including tuition, fees, and even computers and internet connections. More tax benefits are offered by various states individually.

The total number of 529 accounts increased 3.7 percent over the last year to 11.1 million, a modest growth rate that has held steady since the plans were introduced by the Internal Revenue Service in 1996.

“The word still needs to get out,” said Michael Fitzgerald, Iowa’s state treasurer and chair of the College Savings Plans Network.

ASSETS GROWING

The good news for families is that assets in 529 plans showed a sharp recovery last year. Total assets climbed 15.7 percent to $190 billion in 2012 after dropping to $104.9 billion during the recession, according to the report. Accounts reached a record high average of $17,174 in 2012 after falling 28 percent in 2008, to $10,690.

Americans are less likely to save in 529 plans for college than in bank savings accounts or CDs, according to a recent report from Sallie Mae, the government-backed student loan organization. Some even choose to use their retirement 401(k) accounts as back-up funds if they need it for college costs. Many choose to save for college in bank savings accounts or even use their retirement 401(k)s as back-up funds if they need it for college costs.

Only about half of 529 accounts received contributions last year – down from 82 percent in 2002. This was at a time when the children of the plan’s early adopters have come of age, and distributions rise to pay for college costs.

On the other hand, the pace at which new adopters open plans remains steady while college costs continue to rise, up 8.3 percent last year, according to a recent report released by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. The gain is likely to be the average rate of annual increase – about 8 percent – in the future, says FinAid.org.

The slow economic recovery has led states to cut funding for students in state-funded financial aid programs. The amount of state and local support declined by 9 percent in 2012 to $5,896 per student, the lowest level in 25 years, according to the report.

However, those who are actively using 529s are doubling down on contributions. This year is expected to see another solid jump in overall assets, due in no small part to a stronger stock market, according to Joe Hurley, founder of savingforcollege.com.

“The recent strong market may be causing some people to take money out of their bank accounts and putting it into 529s,” said Hurley.

(Reporting by Heather Struck; Editing by Dan Grebler)

American families are failing to reach their educational
goals as short-term budget needs and emergency savings take
priority in the household budget, according to “How America
Saves for College,” a closely watched study released Tuesday
from the education lender Sallie Mae.

Families said they are relying on federal and private
student loans to fund college costs, according to the study,
which polled 1,600 households in August 2012.

Families currently saving for college expect to sock away an
average $38,953 by the time their child is ready to enter
school. But according to their savings behavior, families will
probably only save an estimated $19,784, about half of their
goal, according to Sallie Mae. (Sallie Mae estimates the cost of
private four-year college to be $203,114 five years from now.)

The annual estimated cost of tuition, room and board for
college jumped by 84 percent at four-year public institutions
between 2000 and 2010, to $15,918. Costs for private
institutions rose 49 percent to $32,617 during the same period,
according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Parents have limited knowledge about financial instruments
such as 529 plans and Coverdell education savings accounts,
which produce tax-free earnings as long as withdrawals are used
for qualified education expenses. Of those polled in the study,
55 percent said they had never heard of 529 savings plans.

Sallie Mae, which administers 529 plans in 16 states, says
parents are more likely to use general savings accounts or even
their retirement plans instead of tax-advantaged government
sponsored plans to save for college.

Even so, personal savings have declined in the years
following the recession, dropping to 3.7 percent in the third
quarter of 2012 from 5.1 percent in 2010, according to the
Bureau of Economic Analysis. This means that the large number of
families – 68 percent – who consider higher education to be a
valuable investment for their kids are relying on reduced
savings to put their children through school.

In the last academic year, 61 percent of students received
one or more grants or scholarships that covered 29 percent of
total college costs. The remainder was paid with savings and
loans taken out by students and parents, Sallie Mae said.

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau looks into the
repayment landscape among the nation’s private student loans,
transparency is a top priority in Washington.

Sallie Mae, the largest student lender in the United States,
encourages families to start making interest payments in school
to prevent loans from growing larger after graduation. Half of
the families surveyed are currently taking this advice.

“We don’t want any surprises,” says Sarah Ducich, senior
vice president of public policy for Sallie Mae. “Surprised
borrowers are not good for us.”

From 2007 to 2010, the median debt of U.S. households headed
by people aged 35 and younger fell by 29 percent – from $21,912
to $15,473 – while debt of older Americans fell by just 8
percent, to $30,070, according to a Pew Research Center study
titled “Young Adults After the Recession.”

Residential property accounts for at least three-quarters of
average American debt, so much of the drop may be connected to a
decrease in home ownership. The number of Americans under 35 who
own their primary residence dropped to 34 percent in 2011 from
40 percent in 2007, Pew said. Meanwhile, the percentage of
homeowners over age 35 fell by 2 percentage points to 72
percent.

“As younger people invest in education and wait longer to
enter the workforce or start families, that may mean they will
wait longer to buy homes,” said Richard Fry, a senior economist
at Washington-based Pew and the author of the study.

Young adults are cutting back on credit card usage as well.
Young households with credit card debt fell by 10 percentage
points to 39 percent between 2007 and 2010.

Car ownership is an area in which younger Americans also cut
back. The number of households led by adults under 35 with auto
debt fell by 12 percent between 2007 and 2010. The typical
outstanding car loan fell to $10,000 from $13,000.

As unemployment drove many young people to return to school,
student debt increased during the recession. By 2010, 40 percent
of households headed by young adults had student debt, up from
34 percent in 2007 and 26 percent in 2001.

Squeezed by increasing student debt, younger Americans are
cutting debt in other areas. Their median level of debt fell to
$15,473 in 2010 from $17,938 in 2010, according to the study.

“I’m going to work forever” can signify worry about scant
savings or it can point to true job love. Whatever the reasons,
a lot of people are saying it, and a growing number of workers
mean it. Roughly 62 percent of baby boomers say they intend to
delay retirement, up from 42 percent two years ago, according to
figures released last week by the Conference Board, an
independent business research organization.

They are people like George Middleton, 61, a certified
financial planner in Vancouver, Washington, who loves his job
and says he expects to keep working as long as possible.

“I would much rather work on a financial plan than pull
weeds at home, so I sneak away to work on weekends sometimes,”
Middleton says.

Insisting that you’ll stay in the workforce forever doesn’t
let you off the hook when it comes to retirement planning,
however. Life, in the form of health problems or an unexpected
layoff, can get in the way.

About 18.5 percent of people over age 65 are still in the
labor force, according to AARP. That’s higher than the 1985 low
of 10.8 percent but still far lower than the growing number of
boomers who insist they want to keep on working.

That presents aging workers with dual planning challenges.
The “work forever” types have to lay groundwork that will allow
them to stay on the job, but they also have to plan for the
possibility that retirement could happen anyway, says Barry
Korb, a certified financial planner with Lighthouse Financial
Planning in Potomac, Maryland.

Here’s how to do both at once:

TALK TO YOUR SPOUSE

You may want to work forever, but your spouse may not agree.
He may already have big plans for trips or even relocating.
Perhaps he’s looked forward to retirement as a time for more
couples activities and socializing.

This may require compromise. You can factor in more vacation
time or seek a more flexible schedule. You can devote extra
earnings to special couples activities, or to underwrite a hobby
for the stay-at-home spouse.

STAY HEALTHY

Good health is key for those who wish to work as they age.
Of those who retired earlier than they expected in 2011, 51
percent did so because of a health problem or disability,
according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research
Institute.

If you must keep working for financial reasons, consider
purchasing disability insurance that will at least pay until you
are what the Social Security Administration calls “full
retirement age” – typically, 66. It can cost 3 percent of your
salary, but if you are sidelined by an injury or illness, it may
pay as much as two-thirds of your monthly income, according to
Byron Udell, founder of AccuQuote.com, a life insurance quote
provider.

STAY INVOLVED OUTSIDE WORK

Even if you have a busy work life, keep socializing outside
of work and at least keep a hobby on the back burner, suggests
Korb. That way if work doesn’t last forever, you’ll have another
life to fall back on.

Even if you do keep working, it’s healthier to have a
broader circle of friends and interests.

CONSIDER LONG-TERM CARE COVERAGE

The unexpected illness or injury of a husband or wife may
also throw a working spouse off track. A good long-term care
policy could cover daytime care and enable the working spouse to
stay on the job.

A conversation about long-term care insurance should be
started when a couple enters their 50s. That’s because policies
are cheaper then, and the older you get, the more likely you are
to have a medical condition that could hurt your ability to get
a policy.

Long-term care plans vary depending on when they are
purchased and the level of care provided. The premium for a plan
purchased at 60 that would pay out $6,000 a month (the cost of
many assisted-care facilities) for five years would be almost
$4,000 per year, according to Brian Gordon, president of MAGA, a
long-term care insurance agency.

HAVE A BACKUP PLAN

Save for retirement, even if you want to keep working. Make
the most of tax-favored savings vehicles such as 401(k) plans
and Roth individual retirement accounts. You can keep
contributing to both as long as you are earning money, even if
you’re 90 or 100. You can even take the mandatory minimum
distributions from your traditional IRA, which kick in at age 70
1/2, while you’re still putting money into your Roth.

Worst-case scenario? You’ll end up with extra cash while
you’re still happily heading into the office every day. That
just leaves more for fun vacations or driving to work in your
retirement dream car.

Follow us @ReutersMoney or at

This year might be the one in which more people ask: How much am I paying for all these channels, anyway? And why? With the growth of broadband streaming video and its pay-per-show approach, the idea of paying $50 to $150 a month for 1,000 plus channels via a neighborhood cable provider is no longer a slam dunk.

The cable industry that used to move in one direction — up — is now losing subscribers who opt for less expensive and more targeted broadband services. Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable provider, said it lost 117,000 video customers in the third quarter of 2012.

The firm still has more than 22 million paying customers, but the loss shows a change in direction. According to the Nielsen Company, the number of U.S. households subscribing to pay-TV services declined by 1.5 Percent, or 1.5 million, in 2011.

The Internet-streaming alternatives – Netflix, Amazon’s Prime, Hulu and Apple Inc.’s iTunes are leaders – have content that is less predictable than cable television, but it is also more efficient, with customers often paying per episode or show, instead of for the whole big multi-channel menu.

Here is how you should review your family entertainment budget for 2013, and how to manage it.

PAY FOR WHAT YOU WATCH

It’s hardest to give up cable if you love sports, news or other specialized offerings (like that addictive HGTV) that cable reserves for itself. And if you are hooked on a particular new show, don’t expect it to be readily available everywhere else — or maybe anywhere else.

The first step is to make a list of what you want to view, find each program and its cost.

Recent episodes of many shows are available on services like Hulu Plus ($7.99 per month) and iTunes (starting at $1.99 per episode), but the chances that every desired program is available through one provider are slim. When one goes to Hulu and searches for the latest episode of the CBS program, “How I Met Your Mother,” for example, disappointment follows. The show is available on CBS’s ad-supported website, but it is not available on all streaming devices.

If you want to watch old and new episodes of a show, you may need more than one service. For example, fans can find the first four seasons of the AMC series “Mad Men” on Netflix, and watch all of them in a snowy weekend or two. However, a fan of the show would have to use another service, like iTunes or Amazon Prime, to watch current episodes of the program, which are available one day after the air date.

SPORTS AND NEWS ARE SPECIAL

While many sports events are streamed online, fans who want to consume a lot of action across multiple teams or sports, or who want to save games for later, are probably best served by sticking with their cable provider. However, for people who never switch on the football game, the sports channels are part of what makes the cable bill so expensive.

Cable sports account for about 20 percent of the fees that providers must pay to carry channels like Disney’s ESPN and ESPN2, according to Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett. Those fees are passed onto all customers in subscription costs, including the sports indifferent.

Those who want to simply stream one team or one sport or one game should hunt for the smoothest running service, like fromBAR.tv; they aren’t found at the usual show-streaming providers.

News hounds face the same quandary, because you can’t get 24-hour news from a station like CNN without subscribing to a cable package. CNN allows users to stream live audio from its broadcast, but no video.

CHOOSING YOUR HARDWARE

If you still want to watch on your big-screen TV and not limit viewing to your computer, tablet or phone, you’ll need to spend more money on hardware, too. Many new TVs are Internet enabled; they can run Netflix, Hulu or Google TV.

Others require an intermediary box, like a Roku ($49.99-$99.99) or a Boxee ($99), that you’ll have to wire to the TV. (One more reason for technophobes to stick with tradition; streaming services won’t send a cable guy if your system stops working).

You can even hook up your laptop to your TV, and your added investment would be limited to a couple of cables.

Finally, once you’ve made all these decisions, you will likely have to re-evaluate, again and again. The cable industry is constantly working to stay out front of the alternatives, and may continue to block first-run episodes from appearing outside subscribing households — or find other ways to discourage cord cutters. For example, NBC reserved a lot of its streaming Olympics content last summer for those viewers who were already cable subscribers.

“It is definitely too early or uncertain for most people to switch,” says Hill. Once his wife can stream HGTV all day, though, it might be time.

(This is part of a six-story package on family finances.)

(Follow us @ReutersMoney or here. Editing by Linda Stern, Beth Pinsker and M.D. Golan)

This year might be the one in which more people ask: How
much am I paying for all these channels, anyway? And why? With
the growth of broadband streaming video and its pay-per-show
approach, the idea of paying $50 to $150 a month for 1,000 plus
channels via a neighborhood cable provider is no longer a slam
dunk.

The cable industry that used to move in one direction — up
– is now losing subscribers who opt for less expensive and more
targeted broadband services. Comcast Corp., the
largest U.S. cable provider, said it lost 117,000 video
customers in the third quarter of 2012.

The firm still has more than 22 million paying customers,
but the loss shows a change in direction. According to the
Nielsen Company, the number of U.S. households subscribing to
pay-TV services declined by 1.5 Percent, or 1.5 million, in
2011.

The Internet-streaming alternatives – Netflix,
Amazon’s Prime, Hulu and Apple Inc.’s iTunes
are leaders – have content that is less predictable than cable
television, but it is also more efficient, with customers often
paying per episode or show, instead of for the whole big
multi-channel menu.

Here is how you should review your family entertainment
budget for 2013, and how to manage it.

PAY FOR WHAT YOU WATCH

It’s hardest to give up cable if you love sports, news or
other specialized offerings (like that addictive HGTV) that
cable reserves for itself. And if you are hooked on a particular
new show, don’t expect it to be readily available everywhere
else — or maybe anywhere else.

The first step is to make a list of what you want to view,
find each program and its cost.

Recent episodes of many shows are available on services like
Hulu Plus ($7.99 per month) and iTunes (starting at $1.99 per
episode), but the chances that every desired program is
available through one provider are slim. When one goes to Hulu
and searches for the latest episode of the CBS program, “How I
Met Your Mother,” for example, disappointment follows. The show
is available on CBS’s ad-supported website, but it is not
available on all streaming devices.

If you want to watch old and new episodes of a show, you may
need more than one service. For example, fans can find the first
four seasons of the AMC series “Mad Men” on Netflix, and watch
all of them in a snowy weekend or two. However, a fan of the
show would have to use another service, like iTunes or Amazon
Prime, to watch current episodes of the program, which are
available one day after the air date.

SPORTS AND NEWS ARE SPECIAL

While many sports events are streamed online, fans who want
to consume a lot of action across multiple teams or sports, or
who want to save games for later, are probably best served by
sticking with their cable provider. However, for people who
never switch on the football game, the sports channels are part
of what makes the cable bill so expensive.

Cable sports account for about 20 percent of the fees that
providers must pay to carry channels like Disney’s ESPN and
ESPN2, according to Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett.
Those fees are passed onto all customers in subscription costs,
including the sports indifferent.

Those who want to simply stream one team or one sport or one
game should hunt for the smoothest running service, like
fromBAR.tv; they aren’t found at the usual show-streaming
providers.

News hounds face the same quandary, because you can’t get
24-hour news from a station like CNN without subscribing to a
cable package. CNN allows users to stream live audio from its
broadcast, but no video.

CHOOSING YOUR HARDWARE

If you still want to watch on your big-screen TV and not
limit viewing to your computer, tablet or phone, you’ll need to
spend more money on hardware, too. Many new TVs are Internet
enabled; they can run Netflix, Hulu or Google TV.

Others require an intermediary box, like a Roku
($49.99-$99.99) or a Boxee ($99), that you’ll have to wire to
the TV. (One more reason for technophobes to stick with
tradition; streaming services won’t send a cable guy if your
system stops working).

You can even hook up your laptop to your TV, and your added
investment would be limited to a couple of cables.

Finally, once you’ve made all these decisions, you will
likely have to re-evaluate, again and again. The cable industry
is constantly working to stay out front of the alternatives, and
may continue to block first-run episodes from appearing outside
subscribing households — or find other ways to discourage cord
cutters. For example, NBC reserved a lot of its streaming
Olympics content last summer for those viewers who were already
cable subscribers.

“It is definitely too early or uncertain for most people to
switch,” says Hill. Once his wife can stream HGTV all day,
though, it might be time.

Young people are discovering that the earlier they start saving for retirement and the longer they work, the larger the nest egg when they finally want to use it. And they are looking for ways to change their savings behavior accordingly.

This is an important lesson to hold dear for a generation, born between 1979 and 1991, that came into the workforce in the midst of financial turmoil. Now these young adults have to deal with prosperity issues as the economy improves, unemployment wanes and the country faces a myriad of tax and economic policy changes at the start of 2013.

Leading into these changes, more Generation Y members are seeking advice on how to manage finances than any other generation, according to a survey performed by Merrill Edge, which found that 84 percent of Gen Y is seeking advice on finance, compared with 76 percent overall.

“They want to take action,” said Alok Prasad, head of Merrill Edge, the investment management partner to Bank of America Corp.

A healthy 83 percent of Gen Y-ers are contributing to a 401(k) plan, up 8 percent from 10 years ago, according to Fidelity. And for those who are prevented from taking action because of apathy, there is auto-enrollment. The number of companies that have chosen to enroll employees automatically in 401(k) plans grows by 25 percent every year, according to T. Rowe Price.

MAGIC NUMBERS

This is what Generation Y is up against: In order to maintain a similar standard of living in retirement, they need to save 15 to 20 percent of their annual incomes beginning at age 25, according to Christine Fahlund, vice president of T. Rowe Price investment services.

While Generation Y is not achieving perfect success – average contributions are about 4 percent of current salaries, according to T.Rowe Price – even a little can go a long way.

When an investor starts young, as long as she is working, compounding interest can build even meager savings into a considerable sum. A 25-year-old making $45,000 per year who contributes 4 percent of her salary would likely save $160,500 by age 50, and $564,000 by 65, according to T. Rowe Price.

Someone saving 6 percent, by comparison, would save $240,700 by 50 and $846,000 by 65. This means that the difference in savings would be equivalent to a 50 percent increase in total savings, for only a 2 percent increase in contributions.

Yvonne Reed, 29, began contributing 10 percent of her salary to her 401(k) plan when she started working for a large entertainment company in Orlando, Florida, in 2007 at age 24.

“My thought was, I have more cash than I need to spend now, so what do I do with it,” Reed said. “I could buy a condo, pay off student debt or I could invest it.”

Reed used a calculator on Fidelity’s website to work out her daily spending and bills. So far, Reed has saved $50,000 in her 401(k) plan. With her current salary at $70,000, Reed is on track to save between $4 million and $16 million by the time she retires at age 70, according to a contribution calculator on Fidelity’s website.

Reed laughs when she receives emails from Fidelity projecting a fund in the multiple millions by the time she retires.

A DOWN MARKET IS YOUR FRIEND

How young savers are allocating their investments is as important as the mere act of saving. Financial planning firms like Merrill Edge and T.Rowe Price offer copious information on their websites about how to use their products. However, a focus on younger investors still takes a backseat to the boomer generation, who are preparing to retire soon.

To fill this space where the large players fail to connect, companies are offering low-cost financial advice for young investors. For instance, LearnVest, a site focused on educating women about financial decisions, started offering investment advice this year in addition to personal finance tips ( www.learnvest.com/ ).

The specialized approach is needed because Generation Y is in a different investment position than their boomer parents, who cannot put money into retirement markets when markets are down. They do not have enough time to recover, according to financial advisers like T. Rowe Price’s Fahlund.

But the younger generation seems more concerned about the possibly impact of the economy on their savings actions than the rest of the country. The Merrill Edge study found that 83 percent of the Gen Y group vocalized this concern, more than the 75 percent national average.

Young adults should not let this concern affect investing risk tolerance, Fahlund said. Gen Y should view down markets in the opposite way – when prices are down, investing returns will be better decades down the line.

Some Gen Y investors have proven adept at taking the long view.

“I am saving for the day when social security isn’t there,” said Katie Vojtko, 25, a college graduate with a major in finance who does marketing for a start-up technology company in Pittsburgh. She is putting away $5,000 (the maximum contribution allowed) each year into a Roth IRA, and she is planning to start a 401(k) – her company does not offer one automatically in its benefits package.

Investing during a down economy spooks her boyfriend, but Vojtko seizes the opportunity to save. “I may be investing in an economic downturn, but I don’t care,” she said. “One day, that money could pay for my kids’ college.”

(Editing by Beth Pinsker Gladstone and Matthew Lewis)

These 529 savings plans work like state-sponsored educational piggy banks, using a variety of funds and asset classes to help cover educational expenses. Plans can be targeted for long or short-term savings, depending on how many years there are until college tuition bills start to arrive.

They typically have low minimum contribution amounts and offer significant tax advantages. Though investors feed the accounts with after-tax money, the investment income they earn in the account is tax free if it is used to pay for college. In addition, some states give investors tax deductions if they invest in the plan sponsored by their own states.

But some plans are better than others, and it may be worth investing in an out-of-state plan if its fees are significantly lower and its investment choices better.

College savings plans are becoming more popular among savers, with assets in 529 plans hitting an all-time high of $158.3 billion last March, according to Boston-based Financial Research Corp.

While there’s a lot of diversity among the various plans – including performance, fees and management style – they have improved en masse, said Laura Pavlenko Lutton, director of funds research at Morningstar.

“The days of everything being expensive and the choices all being poor for 529 savings are over,” Lutton said in an article on the company’s website. “The likelihood that you are sitting in a plan that is a disaster right now is pretty low.”

A study released by Morningstar Inc on Monday ranked the largest 529 college savings plans in the United States by their investment choices and likelihood of outperforming their peers. Overall, most 529 plans received solid ratings.

Four 529 college savings plans were recognized as top performers among a group that holds about 95 percent of the total 529 assets. To rate these 64 plans, analysts at Morningstar considered factors such as investment strategies and performance, management, parent firms and the value of the offerings.

The College Savings Plan for Alaska and Maryland College Investment Plan, both managed by T. Rowe Price, and the Vanguard 529 College Savings Plan for Nevada, managed by Upromise Investments, were ranked “gold” by Morningstar, along with Utah Educational Savings Plan, which is self-managed.

Four funds – iShares 529 Plan for Arkansas, the Michigan Education Savings Plan, the CollegeAdvantage 529 Savings Plan for Ohio and the College America plan for Virginia – were rated “silver” by Morningstar. Another 19 plans achieved “bronze” status.

Morningstar labeled four plans in three states – Kansas, Minnesota and Rhode Island – as “negative” for factors such as high fees or questionable fund choices.

Higher ratings were awarded to funds that are inexpensive and likely to outperform their peers, according to the study.

More than half of the plans were rated “neutral” by Morningstar, meaning they are unlikely to exceed market returns over a full market cycle. “College savers who choose a neutral-rated plan should expect market-like returns, which is a reasonable outcome. But for those in states with no local tax benefits, it may be worth upgrading to a top-rated plan,” according to Lutton.

WHEN TO SWITCH

Does it make sense to switch out of an expensive or poor-performing plan? Keep in mind that some states such as New York and Illinois require you to pay back the money you deducted from state income taxes if you move money out of that state’s 529 plan. And you could also pay a fee of about $50, on average, to make the switch, said Joe Hurley, founder of SavingForCollege.com, a website that offers advice on college savings, particularly 529 plans.

“Sometimes you can find another 529 plan that has essentially the same make-up of mutual funds in another state, with lower fees; then it becomes compelling to make the move. You can expect the same pre-fee investment, for a higher post-investment outcome,” said Hurley.

There’s no prohibition against having multiple plans, either, so you could always just stop contributing to an in-state plan you don’t like and open a new plan in another state, without moving any money and incurring switch fees and taxes.

Before making a switch, it may be possible to improve savings by reallocating the funds that are invested in a 529 that is rated “neutral” or “negative,” Lutton said.

Many plans with options to allocate savings in large equity or bond mutual funds can be reworked to place all or most of the savings in one of these funds. A federal law allows reallocations as well as rollovers to take place no more than once a year.

Lutton said that Morningstar analysts’ concerns with some of the “negative” plans were due to the inclusion of a few weak funds. They also largely contained funds groups like Blackrock, however, which provided more stable investment options.

If you are making a small investment, chances are that you won’t get much of a tax benefit with your state’s deductions. It may be worth shopping for an out-of-state plan with better performance.

(Editing by Lauren Young and Steve Orlofsky)

Anything that resembles narrative or character in the Fifty Shades series, which starts with the title novel Fifty Shades of Grey, is forgone to get to the meaty stuff; that is, the sex. Our heroine, who is at times compared to the naïve beauty from Tess of the D’Urbervilles (a solitary well-employed allusion in the series), chooses the chiseled, sexy, young Christian Grey for her first, but definitely not her last, sexual experience. Skip to the revelation about Grey’s preferences in the bedroom, and within a hundred pages she is tied up, roped down, spanked, lashed and beaten in the pursuit of Grey’s satisfaction.

It is little surprise, then, that in the craze to read Fifty Shades, women have opted for the e-book version almost as often as they have for the paperback. In the U.S., the book has sold about 10 million copies in each category, passing the 20 million sales mark in July. But are people – women, especially – actually enjoying the book, or is the title simply enjoying a short-lived period of wild popularity? Within these questions another, older, question is buried: What makes a woman want to read a novel?

It is difficult to gauge who among the readers of the Fifty Shades novels are actually fans. The bad writing, the transgressive sex, and even the length of the books are points of many casual reviews on the Internet. Others see qualities to like in the novels. Roxane Gay, who wrote about them for The Rumpus, calls the series “a modern fairy tale with a dark, erotic twist.” So much has been said (a cursory search of the Huffington Post for “Fifty Shades of Gray” turns up thousands of pages of content) that it is difficult for anyone not to have a vague notion of the book’s content by now.

This may be part of the anomaly of the book’s success. Sales of the series accounted for 20 percent of adult fiction sold in the spring, according to Nielsen BookScan. One woman I talked to had put the first book down for good after reading a particular line that cannot be reproduced here about what Grey wanted to do to the protagonist’s mouth. For others, the bad writing was a turnoff. “I don’t believe anyone ever said ‘holy cow’ at the moment of her first orgasm,” said author Erica Jong in a recent panel in New York about the book’s effects on sexual culture.

The series’ unique popularity presents an opportunity to view the thousands of (mostly women) readers in the way that women have historically been regarded as readers of novels, and ask a question that academics have been trying to answer for decades, which is not only why do women read novels, but how?

The question has been ripe for academic study. The first consumers of novels in pre-industrial England were women, because they were the gender that was at home, and home is where people read novels. Even after their popularity exploded and crossed gender lines through serialization and the rise of popular fiction through dime novels for boys and men at the turn of the 20th century, women maintained a strong grip on the form. Maxine Rose Schur, in her introduction to the journal accompaniment to The Reading Woman: A Journal, describes women of the 19th century choosing to read popular works to “allow their hearts to beat not only a little more quickly, but also in rhythm with the hearts of others.”

Generally the post-modern woman has eschewed the notion that she needs to read in order to escape the domestic sphere, which is one reason that Fifty Shades has been referred to frequently as “Mommy Porn.” However for much of the previous century, researchers found that more women than men were reading novels, and that a significant reason for this was that it was a form of personal escape.

Janice Radway found that in the 1980s middle-class women were reading romance novels as a “compensatory activity;” in many cases, compensating for a lack of support and affection in their own daily lives.

A 2000 report by researcher Steven J. Tepper says that socially conditioned ideas of gender and leisure are most responsible for more women reading fiction than men. “Not only do men and women have different preferences for the types of books they read, but women, on average, read a greater variety of books and spend more time reading than men,” said Tepper.

If socially conditioned notions of leisure time play a big part in women’s reading habits, then the desire to read in a private space is easier to understand. If women read novels more often, then it might be the case that they are spending a larger portion of their leisure time in private spaces. In these spaces racy material like Fifty Shades can be explored and considered outside of the gaze of their spouses, children, or other sober onlookers.

The unclear connections between the books’ merits and the huge readership say something about the trust women place in their curiosity. It is entirely possible that many women are picking up the book after hearing about it from their circle of friends or reading about it, and then putting it down after finding they are not in the market for the sexual content, or they cannot hang on with the substandard writing.

The argument that the books may be re-engaging many women in their sex lives with their partners is a very plausible one. Fifty Shades is in no way comparable to the quick and careful prose of D.H. Lawrence, or even to the 1954 novel about the initiation of a sexual submissive, Story of O. However, some women are finding that the details of role play and submission are making their own bedroom more interesting. The only thing connecting these novels is that women take something from them after engaging with them in private – in the case of Fifty Shades, this is something more practical than spiritual. That can be as meaningful or as pointless as any individual reader makes it.

In the end, many women are simply coming to terms with the fact that they are consuming some pretty intense soft-core porn. Which is fine, if you’re into that. The books may provoke the most interested to seek out more (and better written) pornographic novels to bide their time. It is unlikely, however, that more women who would not previously have crossed the boundary to the S&M sexual world will do so now after reading the Fifty Shades series. The effects of the fandom of the books are likely to fade quickly. Those who see this book on the best-seller shelf at Barnes & Noble or Walmart find themselves making a strange kind of choice: whether to trust the group or not.