Help me with my 401K?

[Carl_William]

"My company matches up to 10% I want to put in 15% for a total of 25% of my Annual Income."

Dear Humphrey,

I am a little confounded on the above statement.

I presume you mean:

You mean that you can shelter 15% of you income in a 401(k), and your company will match 100% the first 10% of your pay, but not the additional 5%. If this is so, then your company has one of the far best 401(k) plans in the USA. I consider you very fortunate to have a 401(k) plan so generous. My company (an aerospace company) matched 8%, and permitted employees to put in an additional 4% (that was years ago). At the time, this was about the most generous 401(k) plan in the industry. I will mention that some of the higher paid employees were not permitted by the government to shelter the additional 4%. Also….

Years ago; IBM would only match 50% of their employee’s 401(k) contributions; and even today -- many smaller companies don’t match anything for their 401(k) plans. I will mention that the recent tax shelter saving plans are much more generous today than 10 or 15 years ago.
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