I guess definition of “interact with them directly” matters. Like people I would present to on a steering committee for one of my projects, yes. People who I just met at a company event or in the elevator, I wouldn’t. I’d want them to actually be familiar with my work in some respect.
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This is super helpful!
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How big is the company? Better than even chance LI is going to suggest connections to people that work there as well.
My new employer is offering a 401k plan with an advisor fee of 0.235% and recordkeeping 0.080%. Fund options are the usual mix of high expense ratio trash and the basic fidelity low ER funds, looks like nothing extra tacked on there. Are these good fees for a 401k? Obviously it’s my only option so I’m going to take it but I’m wondering how it ranks. I’ve also got this other guy I got hired with saying he wants to roll his old plans into the new plan and I’m like “you should really put it into an IRA instead” but idk how trash these fees actually are. Obviously I can calculate the dollar amount and that’s enough for me but in relative terms I don’t want to go trashing my new company’s plan if they’re comparatively low fees.
Are the matching any of it? If they aren’t then those numbers become even more important.
Those fees are well below average.
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I started work for a 3rd party tech recruiter recently. Always fun. To my surprise, they offer a 401k with match!
Oh except.
You need to be working there for 3 months to be able to contribute.
And also.
They match up to… $250. A year.
Yeah that’s nuts. It’s one thing to put up with a high-fee 401k if that’s the only option you have (somebody once said “even bad 401ks can eventually become good iras”). But you shouldn’t voluntarily roll extra money into it. The only upside would be the convenience of consolidation and that’s not worth it.
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Yes, 75% up to 7% (so I contribute 7%+ to max and they give 5.25% free money)
Ty, that’s what I gathered. It’s still never worth putting in more than necessary though, right? Like it’s good for a 401k, bad relative to low cost IRA’s with zero percentage based fees. Contributions should be to 401k up to max match, then HSA, then IRA (trad or Roth), then back to 401k as a last resort when everything else is capped? (not bragging, I won’t get to this step) And free the 401k money into an IRA if/when possible.
Even worse is this guy has a traditional and Roth IRA on the same login as our 401k (it’s Fidelity, they link employer and personal accounts)
This is a totally reasonable approach. That said. .3% for low cost fidelity index funds isn’t a major leak.
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Made me wonder, so I have my main employer pre tax retirement account with match/etc but then because being partially employed by non-profit/quasi governmental also have access to additional accounts that I can choose pretax or Roth for additional contributions. I’ve set it up just to split half and half so I have an account growing that is half Roth and half pretax.
I know there arguments to go all pretax but is it going to cause any logistical shenanigans in a couple decades if I have this account with half Roth half pretax when it comes to get withdrawals?
I’d assume they’re doing the appropriate recordkeeping and they’ll make it easy to specify which side you want to withdraw from. Ideally it will be just as transparent as if you had separate pre-tax and post-tax accounts. The arguments for going all pre-tax aren’t very good unless you’re in an extremely high tax situation now and expect to be lower in retirement. Having both gives you a lot more flexibility with tax planning in retirement.
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Yeah my tax rate actually quite low right now especially with having little kids so seemed wise to me to have some balance
My employer when I first moved to PA had John Hancock retirement accounts. Their “annuity” that supposedly tracked the S&P Catullus underperformed by about 1% of the fee was about 1%. Not even real mutual funds.
I got a match but half of it was sucked up by this nonsense. They eventually got a better plan through Voya.
That seems like a really good match? I have limited experience, but both 401ks I’ve had were 100% capped at 3% I think. Free money is free money though, so I just make sure I’m contributing more than enough to max the match.
That sounds like a good match offer, but this whole discussion really makes me appreciate my employer’s plan. I’ve never even heard of recordkeeping fee in a 401k.
I’ve seen some truly absurd retirement matching (in addition to very generous cash comp) from big tech companies now doing massive layoffs. I’ve gotta imagine it’s going to be a tough transition for a lot of those people.
I’ve come to expect 4% as standard and this company advertised 7% so I was like whoa so I’m a bit disappointed in the actual numbers but yeah I guess it’s ok. There are of course some industries that are/were doing this:
And I thought airlines were doing some absurd matching but I just tried to find exact numbers and I think it’s a misleading percentage like I got. Still quite high though.