this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Must be nice to have a job that does 401k matching. I had one for about a year, then boom, laid off. Back to part time work that doesn't match. 🤷♂️
I don't have a match but I still save in my pretax retirement account. If you don't have any available to you through your employer, please look into a Traditional or Roth IRA.
If you don't have an employer match, max out your IRA first. 401(k)s almost always come with fees while IRAs almost never do.
Your priority should be:
401(k) up to the employer match
HSA. No tax on income used to fund the account. No tax if withdrawal used for a medical purpose. After you turn 55, withdrawals are treated like a Traditional IRA/401(k). If you fund it via paycheck, no FICA either.
IRA
401(k)
The matching is meaningless nowadays. At most, some companies will match 1/2% for each 1% up to them giving you like 3%.
There is something to be said about not leaving money on the table, but it's not too different from reaching out to TDAmeritrade and setting up an IRA.
As a more general PSA: Even without matching, 401ks are still usually (but not always) superior to IRAs. The pros/cons work out differently by individual, so I'll summarize the major differences (This comparison applies to "traditional", non-ROTH accounts[^1]):
tl;dr: If you make more than $70,000ish or just want to save really aggressively, 401ks are usually superior. IRAs are mostly useful if you don't have the option of a 401k or prefer an IRA's flexibility over a 401k's higher contribution limit.
[^1]: What's a Roth retirement account? It's a type of IRA/401k where contributions are not tax-deductible. Why would anyone want to give up those sweet tax deductions, though? Because in exchange your future retired self doesn't have to deal with paying taxes when they take that money back out[^4]. This is good for two groups of people: those with low taxable income (<$40,000) & those with excessively high spare income (see "Mega-Backdoor Roth" above). Another side-benefit is that you can withdraw your Roth contributions early with fewer penalties compared to a traditional retirement account (though I personally don't think it's a good idea to opt for a Roth for the "just in case" factor [^5])
[^2]: People who earn less than this can actually make deductible contributions to both an IRA and a 401k, but that's only useful if you're already hitting the $22,500 401k contribution limit... which is kind of hard to manage even near the upper cutoff of $83,000!
[^3]: It's worth mentioning, however, that inactive 401ks (i.e.: 401ks from employers who no longer pay you) can also be freely transferred to any institution of your choosing via a "rollover" 401k account.
[^4]: FYI: with normal retirement accounts, they're actually "tax deferred" rather than "tax free". Basically, you still eventually get taxed when you take money out. Despite this, saving with a traditional retirement account is almost always worth it because putting in 20+% more money per dollar earned is a massive difference growth-wise.
[^5]: What's my beef with using a Roth account as a hybrid retirement/rainy-day account? Well... it's just not good enough at it to justify the opportunity cost of going Roth vs. Traditional. Keep in mind that usually only your original contributions can be taken out early -- any growth is hands-off (before you retire) unless you pay a big penalty. At that point, it's generally smarter to put your rainy-day savings into a high-interest savings account where you'll have full liquidity and immediate access to the accumulated interest. If you're really worried that you'll need more money than that... consider that you could just declare bankruptcy if things go so hopelessly ass-up that digging out becomes impossible -- your 401k is protected!
Damn.... well that's getting saved for if I ever have spare money again
One of the (exceedingly few!) nice things about personal finance is that the less money you have, the less complicated the advice gets. If all you've got is enough to get by, all you really need to know is this:
With a little luck, you can actually manage a surprising range of financial gymnastics using nothing more than credit cards. Credit cards enable you to avoid payday loans, enable you to weather short-term hardships, (potentially) help you access more affordable home/auto loans, and even (potentially) pay you in the form of cashback rewards/promos in exchange for nothing more than occasionally putting up a non-revolving balance. Don't get me wrong -- credit cards are dangerous... but so is fire. Don't play with fire, but don't fear it either. Knowledge is power here.
Beyond that... good luck and godspeed on your life financial journey. If you ever need further guidance, I advise exploring this Bogleheads article. Of course, you can also feel free to PM me anytime if you have questions... though, full disclosure: I'm just a confident nerd on the internet with literally no credentials whatsoever -- let alone finance credentials!
I have heard that some people like to have part of their income in a ROTH account as a mega purchase account. The reasoning goes: if you are planning to make a very large one time withdrawal (for example, to make a down payment on a second home), taking that money out of a traditional 401k will be taxed as income and may put you in a high tax bracket, while if you are paying with ROTH money, you already paid taxes, at whatever your tax rate was while working.
That's a very good point! Compared to using an investment account, using a Roth IRA to save for a down payment can potentially save you 15ish% in capital gains taxes. Much like the 401k vs. IRA distinction, however, there are tradeoffs:
tl;dr: If you're a first-time home buyer ~~and you have spare IRA headroom that you weren't otherwise planning on using~~ and you have a healthy enough emergency fund that you can handle the risk(?) of accidentally saving more than intended for retirement, then there's a Roth IRA out there waiting with your name on it.
[^1]: This assumes that your gross yearly income is already > $40,000. If for whatever reason the sum total of your income is less than $40,000 during the year that you plan to buy your home (including the gains from the fund that you're about to cash in!), then you'll actually already be exempt from paying any capital gains tax. For non-retirees this is a pretty rare situation (unless you've been hiding something from the IRS...), but it prooobably happens? If this situation applies to you (and you don't mind getting audited), then you're basically free and clear to load up an investment account with as much money as you please and still reap those tax-free returns when the time comes -- no IRA shenanigans necessary.
[^2]: This is actually a pretty interesting tradeoff, because it's an upside for some and a downside for others. Take a hypothetical person with a $5,000 budget to split between retirement and saving for a down payment, for example: If they need to back out of buying a home, it's actually perfect that their down payment savings are locked into their IRA -- they were already planning on locking that money in and they still get to reap nice tax benefits in retirement. On the other hand, if that same person was financially counting on escaping from a bad rent situation... now they're going to come up short of where they had previously expected to be in terms of cash-on-hand.
You will pay tax on the growth, but not on the initial deposit. But that's just because you would be taxed twice.
Actually, there's a carveout for first-time homebuyers that applies to Roth IRA distributions, assuming the account is more than 5 years old. Their example actually holds true even if the applicability of the strategy is a lot more narrow than the commentor first expressed.
Not usually, just very rarely.
Unless you declare bankruptcy or have high income, your first step is to fund your match but then max out HSA and IRA first. Once those are hit, then you should fund your 401(k).
401(k)s have fewer choices and come with fees. Pretty much all IRA accounts will allow you to choose any investment and have no fees.
Roth IRAs have a soft cap at $129K/$204K with the hard cap at $144K/$214K. This is also your MAGI, not your salary. Only Traditional has that lower limit. You can also use the non-deductible Traditional IRA for a backdoor Roth if you're over the limit.
FWIW, I do bring this up in my main post -- it's just that I'm drawing on my own personal experiences and... in my experience I've always been able to get the options I want without extra fees. In retrospect, that's probably just because of two things:
In any case, I accept your argument and apologize for the oversight.
Err... you can't deduct contributions to Roth IRAs, period. Moreover, I specifically say beforehand that I'm not talking about Roth accounts in the main bullet points: "This comparison applies to “traditional”, non-ROTH accounts". Forgive me for saying so, but I also felt no need at the time to explain MAGI for the purposes of this comparison -- that's probably on me as a careless layman, so thanks for putting that out there.
EDIT: Credit where it's due, I did mess up talking about the Roth IRA limit in a different part of the thread (here). The error is now corrected and the person responsible has been sacked.
Haha nice post i agree 100% just sharing that those without employment can still save to retire.
I've never had someone "Haha" in response to a tax code explainer before... but I'll take it
One potential advantage to IRAs is that you have a much broader choice of investments. To be fair though, the investment choices have been decent in the 401ks I’ve had.
Eh, it would be nice to get a larger match (and I did have that influence me in a job decision once) but I gladly make sure I always get the 4% match I have available at my current place. That’s hundreds of dollars a month straight into my tax advantaged investments.
I have to put 5% in to get that 4%. And I find it damn near impossible to leave that money on the table. So one side benefit is that even in a “fix my fucked up finances” situation like I am in now, that is still almost 10% of my yearly salary keeping retirement growing at some level.
Even if you don't want to save for retirement (which you should), ALWAYS go for the match. You'll still end up ahead if you withdraw the funds and pay the tax on it.
Place I worked at matched 1:1 up to 9%. It happens.