Find out what the match is worth, what you are on track for, and when you could actually stop.
31 posts
Your contributions are always yours. The employer's may not be for six years. On a three-year cliff, resigning in month 35 leaves $14,200 behind and resigning in month 37 does not.
A 50% match is a 50% return before the money is invested in anything. On a $70,000 salary, not contributing enough to capture it leaves $2,100 a year on the table, which is $132,823 over a career.
They cost more than building it yourself, and they are still the right answer for most people. On $500 a month over thirty years the difference is $55,068, and here is who should pay it.
There is a rate above which paying the debt wins and below which investing does, and it sits exactly at the return you expect. Three households, $500 a month, ten years, and three different answers.
0.85% sounds like nothing, and for the first year it is: about $19. Over thirty years of $400 a month it is $70,624, which is more than fourteen years of the contributions themselves.
Total market, international, bonds. What each one is doing, what the ratio changes on $50,000 in a bad year, and why a fourth fund usually adds cost rather than diversification.
An index fund is a rule, not a manager. What the rule costs, what it buys, and why 0.85% instead of 0.04% takes $70,624 off a thirty-year balance.
One short email each week: a money move worth making, a number worth checking, and a trap worth dodging.