401k Match = Free Money

401kA few weeks ago, something amazing happened. When my husband came home from work, he handed me a magical paper. I couldn’t believe my eyes…my dreams were finally coming true.

Honey has worked with the same company for well over ten years, but their benefits were always lacking. Their health insurance still sucks, I doubt that will ever change.

But now, after all these years, the company is finally offering a 401k match. Woohoo for FREE MONEY! I am so happy, I’ve wanted this for close to 5 years now. It’s not as great as I had hoped it would be, but it’s much better than no match at all.

What they’re going to do is match 50% of our 401k contributions up to $2,000. That means, that if we contribute $2,000 this year to our 401k, they’re going to throw $1,000 into our account.

Right now we’re only contributing 1% to our 401k, down from 8% last year. We had reduced it because 1) we were planning to buy a house and needed to save as much money as possible 2) we didn’t get a match, so it didn’t seem too bad. Of course this was supposed to be temporary, but we decided to continue for a while since we’re saving up the cash for a second car this year.

Now, I’m wanting to get our 401k contributions increased gradually so that we can take advantage of the match this year. The first thing I said after reading the paper (about the new match) he brought home, was to tell him we need to increase it at least 1% the next day.

Unfortunately, nobody can seem to get a hold of anybody at the main office. Apparently there’s some kind of drama going on and whatnot. They aren’t answering phones, replying to emails or faxes, nothing. It sure makes it difficult to increase our contributions when we can’t get a hold of those who do it.

Even though our expenses are ridiculously close to our income, we can stand to increase it 1%. It’s pre-tax income, so 1% really won’t make that much of a difference paycheck-wise. But on the flip side, an extra 1% into our 401k really means an extra 1.5% because of the match.

I hate missing out on free money, so if I just gradually increase it 1% here and 1% there, we should be able to earn the full match, either by the end of this year or sometime next year.

 

Does your job offer a 401k match?
Would you take advantage if they did?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/76657755@N04/7027595775/

About Jen Perkins

Likes: saving money, being debt free (aside from our house), zombies, travel, getting money, blogging and dogs. Dislikes: debt, being broke, bunnies, wasting money, not having enough money to travel the world and paying interest. Facebook  ♥  Twitter  ♥  Google+  ♥  RSS

Comments

401k Match = Free Money — 20 Comments

  1. I only contribute 1% as well. It adds up. We have a pension as well as a 401k that matches up to 100% up to 7% of contributions per pay period. It gets to be a lot when you have your HSA, health insurance, Dependant Care Savings AND taxes taken out of your check!

  2. The companies I’ve been at offered for the first five thousand dollars they would match. But yeah if given the opportunity I definitely would.

  3. My company took our match away this year. I still contribute as much as I used to just because I don’t even notice it missing at this point. I was planning on increasing what I put in, but have put that into an IRA in light of the cut.

    Congrats on getting the match finally! Trust me, anything is better than nothing!
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