Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny by Orman Suze

Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny by Orman Suze

Author:Orman, Suze [Orman, Suze]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-02-26T16:00:00+00:00


Max Out on Your Retirement Bonus

If you—or your spouse or partner—is eligible for a 401(k) or other retirement plan that offers a match, you must take full advantage of it. Amazingly, about 20 percent of people who are enrolled in a 401(k) plan don’t contribute enough to get the maximum matching contribution from their employer. Big mistake! How big? Let me show you. If you turned down a $1,500 matching contribution for twenty years and that money earned an average annual return of 8 percent, you would have turned your back on nearly $75,000.

If you just haven’t bothered to sign up for the plan even though you are eligible, I want you to get on the phone with HR right away and start the paperwork. A new law passed by Congress in 2006 encourages companies to enroll employees in the retirement plan automatically unless the employee explicitly asks to opt out of the plan, but you still need to do a bit of legwork. When you are automatically enrolled in a plan, your employer chooses a contribution level for you—maybe 2 percent of your pay. The “default” contribution level your employer chooses for you might not be high enough to qualify for the maximum matching contribution. So it’s up to you to check with HR to see if you need to boost what you pay into the plan so you can be assured you are getting the maximum “bonus” contribution from your employer.

Important Note: If your plan does not offer a match, I don’t want you to make your 401(k) your first retirement move. Later in the plan for this month, I’ll go into detail about Roth IRAs, which are a smarter choice for you, but I still want you to read the following sections so you can educate yourself on how 401(k) plans work.



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