This is for RNs, LVNs, CNAs, techs, therapists and everyone else who keeps a hospital running at three in the morning. The problem is rarely that you do not earn enough. It is that your income arrives in uneven pieces, your retirement plan changes type every time you change badges, and no one has told you that per-diem and travel work paid on a 1099 opens a retirement plan you can own outright.
What is actually different about your money
Start with the plan itself, because it is the thing that keeps moving. A nonprofit hospital sponsors a 403(b). A for-profit hospital sponsors a 401(k). A public hospital district may run a CalPERS-covered plan, and the University of California health system runs its own retirement programme that looks like neither. Move between them — and healthcare workers move constantly, often without leaving a ten-mile radius — and you do not carry the plan with you. You leave it behind. Three employers in eight years is three accounts, at three recordkeepers, under three logins, at least one of which is a company that has since been acquired and renamed. The 2026 elective deferral limit of $24,500 is a limit on you, not on each plan: if you deferred into a 403(b) in March and a 401(k) in September, the IRS adds them together, and it is your job to notice, not either employer's.
Then the pay. Base rate, night differential, weekend differential, charge pay, call-back, and overtime at time and a half on top of all of it — which is why two paychecks in the same month can differ by forty percent. That matters more than it sounds, because almost every hospital plan takes your contribution as a percentage of pay. A 6% deferral is a different dollar amount every fortnight, so the year you work heavy nights you quietly save far more than you planned, and the year you drop to straight days you quietly save far less. Neither is wrong. But nobody set it deliberately. Note too that Social Security tax stops at $184,500 of wages in 2026, so a heavy overtime year does not buy proportionally more Social Security — it buys more taxable income and, if you let it, more deferral room used.
And then the part almost nobody has been told. Travel contracts, registry shifts and per-diem work are frequently paid on a 1099 rather than a W-2. If that is you, and you have net self-employment income from it, you are eligible for a retirement plan of your own — a solo 401(k) or a SEP-IRA — that sits alongside whatever your staff job offers. A SEP-IRA takes up to the lesser of 25% of compensation or $72,000 for 2026. This is the single most valuable sentence on this page, and in fifteen years of hospital work most travel nurses have never had anyone say it to them. Whether a 1099 is the correct classification for the work you did is a legal question for employment counsel, not for us; what we can tell you is what to do with the income once it lands that way.
What you are usually sold
The 403(b) market inside hospitals has historically been a sales channel as much as a benefit. Vendors get access to the building, set up in the lobby or the break room during benefits week, and the products on the approved list often include fixed and variable annuities with multi-year surrender schedules and internal costs that are not printed on the enrollment form. The people staffing those tables are usually decent, frequently licensed only to sell insurance products, and paid when you sign. That is not a scandal. It is a distribution model, and it is worth knowing which one you are inside of.
The second thing sold to healthcare workers is the rollover — a call, sometimes within days of a resignation, offering to move your old plan somewhere. A rollover is often the right move. But it is a decision with four options, not one, and the person making the call is usually compensated only if you choose theirs. The four options, laid out · what goes wrong.
None of that is illegal and not all of it is wrong. But you are entitled to know how the person recommending it is paid, and to compare. Our standard · our fees, published · the difference between an RIA and a brokerage.
What we do instead
First we find the accounts. Not metaphorically — we sit with you and list every employer since you qualified, and chase the plan for each. Small balances do not sit politely waiting: under the 2026 rules a former plan can force out a balance of $7,000 or less without your agreement, and anything above $1,000 goes into an IRA the plan administrator picks, typically into cash, where it can sit uninvested for years. The U.S. Department of Labor now runs a Retirement Savings Lost and Found for exactly this, and it is worth searching before you assume an account is gone. Then we consolidate by direct trustee-to-trustee transfer, never by cheque — a distribution paid to you is subject to 20% mandatory withholding even if you fully intend to roll it over.
Then we set the deferral deliberately rather than by accident. That usually means choosing a percentage that funds the target on base hours alone, so differentials and overtime become the surplus rather than the plan — and then deciding on purpose where the surplus goes, because a heavy-overtime year is precisely when a Roth contribution or a taxable brokerage account earns its keep. If you have fifteen years with the same 403(b) employer, there is a separate catch-up worth checking that most people never claim.
For 1099 income we build the second plan. Which one depends on how much net self-employment income there is and whether you want the employee deferral as well as the employer piece — the plan chooser walks it. We do not compute your deduction; the contribution arithmetic for a self-employed person is genuinely fiddly and it belongs with your CPA. We build the account, choose what it holds, and keep it funded. And we meet in the evening or by video, because a firm that only takes appointments between nine and five is not a firm that works with nurses.
The retirement structures that actually apply to you: 403(b), 401(k), CalPERS (public hospitals), UCRP, 1099 for travel/per-diem. Which of those fits depends on how you are paid and whether anyone else is on your payroll — the plan chooser walks through it, and this guide compares them honestly.
A first conversation, at no cost
Fifteen minutes on the phone. If your question has a short answer you get it on the call, and if we are not the right firm for you we will say so.
Where nurses and healthcare workers are in Los Angeles and Orange County
We work across both counties from a principal office in Norwalk. These are the county guides, each naming the cities where this audience actually concentrates:
Our fees, published
No competing advisor page in this area publishes its fees. Here are ours.
| What | Fee |
|---|---|
| Investment management | 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year; Advisers may set a rate below the standard schedule, as low as 0%, at their discretion — and whatever rate applies to you is disclosed in writing before you engage. Our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5, states the fee as up to 2.00% of assets per year, subject to negotiation; the firm may waive all or part of it. Generally billed quarterly in arrears |
| Account minimum | No minimum account balance |
| Commissions and product fees | None — we are fee-only |
| Solicitor compensation | May be received or paid under disclosed arrangements |
| Initial conversation | Free, 15 minutes, no obligation |
Complete fee details in our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5.
Questions
I changed hospitals mid-year. A 403(b) at the first, a 401(k) at the second. Did I over-contribute?
Possibly, and neither payroll department will catch it. The $24,500 elective deferral limit for 2026 applies to you as a person across every 401(k), 403(b) and SIMPLE you participate in, not to each plan separately. Add both W-2s. If the total exceeds the limit you have an excess deferral, and there is a correction window with a deadline attached — take the numbers to your CPA promptly rather than at filing time. Governmental 457(b) plans are counted separately, which is why some public-hospital staff can do more than they think. 457(b) plans.
I have a 403(b) somewhere from a hospital I left in 2019 and I cannot remember the vendor.
Start with the hospital's benefits office and ask for the recordkeeper's name as of your termination date, not today's — plans change vendors. If the employer no longer exists or will not help, search the Department of Labor's Retirement Savings Lost and Found. Also check your own mail from that period: if the balance was small it may have been force-transferred into an IRA opened in your name without you doing anything, and that IRA is real money sitting in a cash-equivalent. The rollover guide.
I take travel contracts paid on a 1099. Can I actually open my own retirement plan?
If you have net self-employment income from that work, yes — a solo 401(k) or a SEP-IRA, in your name, funded from the contract income, and it does not interfere with the plan at your staff job beyond the shared elective deferral limit. For 2026 a SEP-IRA accepts up to the lesser of 25% of compensation or $72,000. The self-employed calculation runs off net earnings after the deductible half of self-employment tax and is not something to eyeball, so we build the account and your CPA sets the number. How a solo 401(k) works.
My hospital was bought by another system. What happens to my plan?
One of four things, and which one is not up to you: the plan is merged into the acquirer's, frozen and left standing, terminated with distributions, or left alone entirely. The plan documents will say, and you are entitled to a summary of material modifications when it changes. What matters practically is that a plan type can change — a 403(b) at a nonprofit becoming a 401(k) at a for-profit owner, or the reverse — and that prior service does not automatically carry into a new employer's vesting schedule. Read the notice when it arrives instead of filing it.
I work nights and every other weekend. When are you actually available?
Evenings and video, and we will say that plainly rather than making you ask. We are a principal office in Norwalk, on the 5 and the 605, which is a reasonable drive from most of the hospital corridor in southeast Los Angeles County — but nothing about this requires you to be in a room. Book a time that is not lunchtime.
What does this cost, and is there a minimum?
There is no minimum to open an account. We ask for $50 a month of continuing deposits, because a plan you do not fund is not a plan. Investment management is 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year, billed quarterly, and it is published on the site — which is more than most firms in this market will tell you before a meeting.
Do I have to have a lot saved already?
No, and that is deliberate. Most firms set a minimum precisely to avoid people at the start of this. We built the opposite: $0 to open, and the same fiduciary standard whether the account is four figures or seven.
¿Atienden en español?
Sí. Atendemos en español, y buena parte de nuestro material existe en español, escrito originalmente, no traducido por máquina.