401K people ..

[The Golden Child]

http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/moneymatters/9492

[ShooterMcGavin]

hmmm, i need to start up a roth soon...

[The Golden Child]

i still dont know anything about this 401k stuff ..

[ShooterMcGavin]

u still young and got time to learn, it's not all that complicated.

[The Golden Child]

explain to me my ninja brother ..

show me the secret to this 401k ..

[silver]

I have an issue... My 401k doesnt seem to be going anywhere.. it seems like maybe I am even losing money, and I am not in a high risk profile thing either or whatever you call it.. I guess I am in moderate or something.. what does someone in my position do in this case?

[ShooterMcGavin]

explain to me my ninja brother ..

show me the secret to this 401k ..

ok in a nut shell....your basic 401k savings plan is typically offered by a company you work for. you get to put away pretaxed money from your paycheck into a retirement savings account. a lot of companies do matching, such as they'll match say up to x% of what you put in (ie, my company matches me $1 for $1 up to 3%, then they match it $0.50 for $1 for the next 2%). this just encourages ppl to save.

also at the same time you get to choose what "plan or track" your 401k is. that has to do w/risks and what the money you're saving is going into. for younger folks such as you and i, we typically go for the higher risk/reward portfolios, growth is higher, but there is also more risk (most of these portfolios contains more stocks than other equities).

the roth ira is a fairly new ira plan that basically let's you put money away for retirement, but the money is POSTtax. basically you want to do this banking on the fact that tax now will be less than when you actually retire, so when you take the money out whenever you do retire, you won't have to pay taxes then.

hope that helps :goodjob:

[ShooterMcGavin]

I have an issue... My 401k doesnt seem to be going anywhere.. it seems like maybe I am even losing money, and I am not in a high risk profile thing either or whatever you call it.. I guess I am in moderate or something.. what does someone in my position do in this case?

that's is entirely possible. it's very important to know who is managing your 401k (mine is managed by vanguard, one of the bigger better ones out there). also like you had said, it depends on what risk profile you've selected, although in your case it seems like even though your portfolio is not high risk, it's still not doing that well. if i were you i'd find out who exactly it's being managed by and what other options you have to choose from to see what segments your money is going into. if you got the time and effort you can also research to see what segments the company offers has been doing the best over the past several yrs. hope that helps as well.

[The Golden Child]

ok in a nut shell....your basic 401k savings plan is typically offered by a company you work for. you get to put away pretaxed money from your paycheck into a retirement savings account. a lot of companies do matching, such as they'll match say up to x% of what you put in (ie, my company matches me $1 for $1 up to 3%, then they match it $0.50 for $1 for the next 2%). this just encourages ppl to save.

also at the same time you get to choose what "plan or track" your 401k is. that has to do w/risks and what the money you're saving is going into. for younger folks such as you and i, we typically go for the higher risk/reward portfolios, growth is higher, but there is also more risk (most of these portfolios contains more stocks than other equities).

the roth ira is a fairly new ira plan that basically let's you put money away for retirement, but the money is POSTtax. basically you want to do this banking on the fact that tax now will be less than when you actually retire, so when you take the money out whenever you do retire, you won't have to pay taxes then.

hope that helps :goodjob:

well that sucks for me cause my job doesnt do 401K .. LIRL !!!

but thanks for sharing some of the info my ninja brother ..

* throws smoke bomb *

* escape *

[ShooterMcGavin]

^^^u can put money into a roth ira at any point though, even if u don't have a traditional, keep that in mind :goodjob: :D

[The Golden Child]

or i can just sell alot of drugs and dont use the money and stack up bread ..