401K rollover/waiting question (paying, business, lawsuit, investments)

[Moonwalkr]

10% plus a match is what most people do, if you want to be like most people. Or you can just max it out, the more you have taken out of your paycheck the better your tax situation and the less likely you'll spend it.

[wheelsup]

How much do you make a year? Do you save anywhere else? What is your employer match and specifics of it? What will your budget allow?

For many middle income earners, personally, I'd rather do a IRA vs a 401k due to choices if the employer doesn't have a match.

Not really enough info on here.

[Bridge781]

my current company does: dollar for dollar match up to 6%

Is that good?

[Bridge781]

I have my old 401k which i am planning to roll over into the new employers. I also just opened a traditional IRA which i might move over to a roth

Now i've just opened up a new account with my new employer.

I make 70k a year.

[wheelsup]

You can directly put $19k a year into your 401k (plus extra on top of that with an after tax portion) so like I said how much can you afford?

6% match is OK, I get 16% now and got 8% at a prior company. But it isn't bad per se.

Ideally what it means is anything less than a 6% contribution on your part, you are leaving money on the table.

I'm not a financial advisor and again you really haven't posted enough background info on your total picture (ie a case study) to tell you what you *should* do.

Personally, if I were you, before making any more knee jerk reactions I would read up on basic investment/retirement vehicles and come up with a plan. Then choose a select group of funds (maybe not their specific tickers, but what they are made up of example SP500, total market, bond, etc) and determine what % of each account will be devoted to those funds.

Once you have a plan in place, act on it using the resources at each specific company to auto invest incoming funds.

[Bridge781]

i'm not even sure what i can afford at the moment. but i will do the 6%.

[Bridge781]

also my last company only matched up to 5%

16% seems really good.

[hikernut]

Originally Posted by Bridge781

but it asked what i want to contribute for both:

Pre-Tax per paycheck:
After-Tax (Roth) per paycheck:

i had to enter in two different percentages. Why? I didnt have to do that at my last job. They just asked for the amount i wanted taken out.

Also what percentage do most people have taken out? At my last job i put 5% but i dont think that's enough

Your previous employer probably did not offer a Roth 401k, so they only needed to ask how much.

The percentage is a matter of how and when you want to retire. As a general rule of thumb I'll suggest a minimum of 15%, and you can include your company match in that number. You'll find a lot of opinions on this, of course.

As to the pre-tax vs after-tax decision, it's probably good to have some assets in each. Honestly, you will not know with any degree of certainty what sort of mix you want until you're 5-10 years from retirement.

I'm assuming you are not going to be getting a pension. If that's not correct then my advice would be different.

[Bridge781]

so pension is another questions i have at my last company i did have a pension. I can still see my account and i have 25k in there. I called and spoke with someone and they said i could leave it there or move to a Roth IRA i believe it was. Not sure what to do with it.

[wheelsup]

Spend some time with a simple excel spreadsheet and some computations on compounding. What you'll figure out is by far the most gains are had at the end of your working career, and why it's soooo important to stuff as much money into your accounts when young and let it grow vs trying to play catch up later. Even at the expense of sacrificing your living conditions when young.