Stacking Pennies . . .

I still can't sign up for my company's 401k, but not because I'm ineligible. You are eligible immediately (and vested immediately too!), though they a pension plan too which takes a year to be eligible and 5 years to vest.

I can't sign up because the website doesn't recognize my userid. I'm not "in the system" despite already getting a huge packet of information from them. Since I'm not in the system, when I call them, they are totally helpless:
"I can't take your password over the phone, you have to go through the system and punch it in"
"I did. But I wasn't given any menu options, so I pressed zero for help."
"Well. I can put you back through the system, and you can enter your password."
". . . But that obviously didn't work."

Gah! They did say it may take 7-10 days to become active. If they mean business days, it has been seven. If they mean actual days, it has been 11. I'll give it until the end of the week....

But I'm really anxious to start contributing! I'm going to see if I can handle contributing 15% of my income. If I do that, I'll be able to get about $10k in my 401k and 5k in my Roth, for a total of 15k of my money in retirement contributions for 2008, just over 21% of my gross income. There also should be roughly 4k from the company match. Barring an ever declining market, that should almost double my account value in 2008! However, with such a shaky market and all this recession talk, I specifically set my goals in dollars of contributions, not account value. Go long term investing!

I think 15% will be a stretch for me, at least while I'm growing the e-fund. I varied between 12% and 15% at my last job, and rent was much lower. We'll have to see how it goes. My budget says I can do it, but I'm not much of a budgeter.

While I'm waiting, I've been putting a little extra in my Roth IRA to get the year started off on the right foot.

I still can't sign up for my company's 401k, but not because I'm ineligible. You are eligible immediately (and vested immediately too!), though they a pension plan too which takes a year to be eligible and 5 years to vest.

I can't sign up because the website doesn't recognize my userid. I'm not "in the system" despite already getting a huge packet of information from them. Since I'm not in the system, when I call them, they are totally helpless:
"I can't take your password over the phone, you have to go through the system and punch it in"
"I did. But I wasn't given any menu options, so I pressed zero for help."
"Well. I can put you back through the system, and you can enter your password."
". . . But that obviously didn't work."

Gah! They did say it may take 7-10 days to become active. If they mean business days, it has been seven. If they mean actual days, it has been 11. I'll give it until the end of the week....

But I'm really anxious to start contributing! I'm going to see if I can handle contributing 15% of my income. If I do that, I'll be able to get about $10k in my 401k and 5k in my Roth, for a total of 15k of my money in retirement contributions for 2008, just over 21% of my gross income. There also should be roughly 4k from the company match. Barring an ever declining market, that should almost double my account value in 2008! However, with such a shaky market and all this recession talk, I specifically set my goals in dollars of contributions, not account value. Go long term investing!

I think 15% will be a stretch for me, at least while I'm growing the e-fund. I varied between 12% and 15% at my last job, and rent was much lower. We'll have to see how it goes. My budget says I can do it, but I'm not much of a budgeter.

While I'm waiting, I've been putting a little extra in my Roth IRA to get the year started off on the right foot.

I still can't sign up for my company's 401k, but not because I'm ineligible. You are eligible immediately (and vested immediately too!), though they a pension plan too which takes a year to be eligible and 5 years to vest.

I can't sign up because the website doesn't recognize my userid. I'm not "in the system" despite already getting a huge packet of information from them. Since I'm not in the system, when I call them, they are totally helpless:
"I can't take your password over the phone, you have to go through the system and punch it in"
"I did. But I wasn't given any menu options, so I pressed zero for help."
"Well. I can put you back through the system, and you can enter your password."
". . . But that obviously didn't work."

Gah! They did say it may take 7-10 days to become active. If they mean business days, it has been seven. If they mean actual days, it has been 11. I'll give it until the end of the week....

But I'm really anxious to start contributing! I'm going to see if I can handle contributing 15% of my income. If I do that, I'll be able to get about $10k in my 401k and 5k in my Roth, for a total of 15k of my money in retirement contributions for 2008, just over 21% of my gross income. There also should be roughly 4k from the company match. Barring an ever declining market, that should almost double my account value in 2008! However, with such a shaky market and all this recession talk, I specifically set my goals in dollars of contributions, not account value. Go long term investing!

I think 15% will be a stretch for me, at least while I'm growing the e-fund. I varied between 12% and 15% at my last job, and rent was much lower. We'll have to see how it goes. My budget says I can do it, but I'm not much of a budgeter.

While I'm waiting, I've been putting a little extra in my Roth IRA to get the year started off on the right foot.

I still can't sign up for my company's 401k, but not because I'm ineligible. You are eligible immediately (and vested immediately too!), though they a pension plan too which takes a year to be eligible and 5 years to vest.

I can't sign up because the website doesn't recognize my userid. I'm not "in the system" despite already getting a huge packet of information from them. Since I'm not in the system, when I call them, they are totally helpless:
"I can't take your password over the phone, you have to go through the system and punch it in"
"I did. But I wasn't given any menu options, so I pressed zero for help."
"Well. I can put you back through the system, and you can enter your password."
". . . But that obviously didn't work."

Gah! They did say it may take 7-10 days to become active. If they mean business days, it has been seven. If they mean actual days, it has been 11. I'll give it until the end of the week....

But I'm really anxious to start contributing! I'm going to see if I can handle contributing 15% of my income. If I do that, I'll be able to get about $10k in my 401k and 5k in my Roth, for a total of 15k of my money in retirement contributions for 2008, just over 21% of my gross income. There also should be roughly 4k from the company match. Barring an ever declining market, that should almost double my account value in 2008! However, with such a shaky market and all this recession talk, I specifically set my goals in dollars of contributions, not account value. Go long term investing!

I think 15% will be a stretch for me, at least while I'm growing the e-fund. I varied between 12% and 15% at my last job, and rent was much lower. We'll have to see how it goes. My budget says I can do it, but I'm not much of a budgeter.

While I'm waiting, I've been putting a little extra in my Roth IRA to get the year started off on the right foot.