I just realized, I have 18 months to go before I am fully vested at my current job. WOO HOO!
I was IMing with SF Money Musings on Meebo the other night. She asked me about my 401k investments because I was keying them into Quicken while chatting with her. I am very close to hitting the $20K milestone in my account, however, that is the fully vested balance.
That got me to thinking about how long I’d been at my company and I realized that I only had another 18 months before I was fully vested! That will take me to the end of 2008 and then at that point, if things look good, I’ll stay through the 2009 bonus season. That’s kind of crazy for me since my average tenure is less than 2 years. If I stay through the 2009 bonus season, that will be about 3.5 years. Might as well stay for four!
If my company keeps incentivizing a long tenure, I might never move back to CA till I actually do have to retire.
On a side note, I was trying to explain why a company match is so fantastic. At my old company I made peanuts, but I managed to put away 3% of my income into the 401k plan, with 1.5% of my salary in matching funds. That means I got a 50% rate of return automatically, on top of any other gains I had on my contributions. (Of course if I had losses, it would only cushion the blow rather than sit like the cherry on top.)
If I contribute the maximum amount of 20% of my salary, I only get 2.5% matching at my new company, but that’s still a 12.5% return. Not to shabby since I’m only looking for an 8% rate of return on my retirement investments.
Of course I could ride the market down horribly in stock funds in my 401k plan, but to each their own when it comes to risk. I’m 100% into stock funds at the moment having sold off all my bond fund holdings. I’m uber-aggressive. I expect to live to 95 with technological advances in medicine, so I will probably stay 100% in stock funds till I’m close to 50, heck maybe even 60. I have to make that money last me another 35 years!
ps- I usually don’t have spring allergies in DC, but for some reason, this spring, I am miserable. Gotta love generic Claritin, i.e. Loratadine. I get mine from CVS primarily for evil cat allergies, but Target has 120 tablet bottles if you are desperately sick. It costs about $20 bucks there, which is way cheaper than branded-Claritin in wasteful single blister packaging.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Sorry to hear about your allergies being bad this year. My GP warned me that this is going to be a really bad year for pollen allergies. I’ve been okay so far, having “just” returned to the East Coast and I’m not used to the pollen. Yet.
The CVS near us has 240 tablet bottles of loratadine. Lately I’ve had some never-ending post-nasal drip, so I’m downing one every day.
I wish I had your fortitude and resolve on sittin 100% in stocks. I always have that nagging feeling a downturn in the market is coming. It hasn’t done me a ton of good but I tend to hedge a bit even though I’m still quite young.
Retire to California….That’s what I keep dreaming about too. The problem is I just can’t figure out how I could live in an area with relatively low cost of living and low salaries and then retire to a place with high cost of living.
Have you thought about how much more you’d need to save in order to be able to retire to someplace more expensive? Tell me how you plan to do it, please, cause I’ll be in the little retirement cottage next door if we can both pull it off.
Retire in sunny California, what a dream that would be!
I like your approach being 100% in stocks. It’s definitely a very aggressive investment and risky but you’re young so there’s time.