[Money Talk] How much are you contributing for retirement?

Just leave it there. Make sure they're not taking out too much for management fees but other than that, leave it there.

 

My company will match 2x anything I can contribute up to 6% so I contribute 6%.

 

Whenever I have left a company, I always rollovered my 401k into an IRA. I currently have one Vanguard IRA with monies from four different 401k plans.

Whenever I move, there is only one company (Vanguard) that I need to update my address with, versus four.

When I retire, there will only be one company that has all of my retirement monies. I will not need to track down my old and potentially out-of-business employers to get my money.

 

First, I contribute 8% to get company to match 4%. The fund is a Roth 401(k).

After that, I max out the 5k Roth IRA limit annually. Funds are low-cost high/mid cap index funds.

Finally, I invest (read: lose) rest of my money in the stock market.

 

You can leave it there for now and likely roll it into your new 401k when you get working again. If I did not want to do that I would roll it into an IRA.

 

Oversaving is not necessarily a good thing when the economy is so bad. I think the return rate on my 401k is probably 0% over the past five years.

 

13 % in 401k.. company starts at 2% and after 10 years is like at 12% matching. I also buy ~8k in company stock at below margins and company has a fat pension.

 

Just make sure you know absolutely everything possible about the financial health of your company. Talk to a consultant. Get outside opinions. I know more than one person who did what you are doing, thought they were "set" for retirement, and then were stunned when they lost it all.

 

I work for a Top 20 company in the world .. In a rather stable business...So i feel ok with it .. beggining next year i will sell the stock and max out a Roth every year.

 

I had the hammer down to the max amount but then I backed it off last week to just the match. Then I deverted that money to put the hammer down on our stock purchase program. I know I'm going to get taxed on gains less than 2 years but I'm going to get myself something nice while I can still enjoy it.

 

10% to get the max company match of 5%.

5% in Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Plan purchases stock at 6 month intervals. Basically a 15% discount on the purchase price.

 

If you put in 6% (random one I picked from this thread) and your company is doing a full match of 6% and the market does 0 percent for the year you got a return of?

100%.

Only idiots and people trying to steal your money tell you not to max out your employer match if it is a full 1 to 1 match. Heck, if you put in 6% for this one year and your employer put in 6% and then you never put anything into it and it did 0% for EIGHT years, you'd still have gotten a good return on your 6%.

This is very simplistic obv and ignores fees and the like which will reduce your balance if you really get 0% returns.

TLDR version: If employer matches, you'd have to see serious sustained losses for it to be a bad investment to contribute to the match.

 

Don't call people idiots over a possible misunderstanding of what it means to max out your 401k.
401k maximum is limited to $16,500 per year. Most employers match up to 6%. So unless you make $275,000 a year then 6% is not maxing out the 401k.
So what you're really saying is that people should at the very least put in that maximum amount that your company will match up to.
If your company matches 50% up to 5%, then that means you have to put in 10%... as long as that doesn't go over $16,500.
If your company matches 100% of the first 6%, then that's how much you'll put in.
If you have money to spare, you can max it out to $16,500 but at the very least take advantage of the company match.

 

Where do you work? Can you get me on?!? I'd give anything for a 12% match!

I keep my 401k at 10% most of the time, my company only matches up to $3,000 per year, so I'm well over that. Just to diversify a bit, I max out my Roth IRA each year as well.

Pugs

Edit: Oh, and FYI....I haven't read the entire thread so it may have been mentioned, but in 2012 the max will be going up to $17,500.

 

Open a Rollover IRA with Vanguard (the lowest fees you'll find), then roll that over to a Roth IRA (if you can afford to pay the taxes, if you're going to school then you may be in a low tax bracket), if you can't afford to pay the taxes, roll it into a Traditional IRA.

Pugs

 

Sorry I wasn't clear in my post, but I'm not talking about people in this thread, I'm talking about professional financial advisers or life insurance salesman who try to talk people out of contributing up to the employer match.

 

My employer contributes 8% regardless of what I put in. I can put in nothing and still get 8%. For my investment of my own money in 401k, I have seen zero return for the past five years. For this year I'm down almost 10%. Is not a good investment compared to putting money in a fixed return saving account?

 

On the contrary, you want to be putting in more money during a down market so you get the profit of the bounceback.



...whenever the market recovers :grin:

 

Well you are in a different situation. If you get 8% regardless of what you contribute, obviously your situation is open to different financial advice. I wouldn't dare try to start spewing out on this forum what you should be doing.

That's not the norm though. (Very generous!) If you had to put in 8% though to get 8% you would definitely want to put it in. There's nowhere else in the world where you are going to get that kind of rate of return with such high probability.

 

dude...u should consider going somwhere else bro...seriously....most companies esp in downtown match at least 4-5%....