Engineers Forum » Max Out your 401K Matchings

[Grant]

Many engineering companies will match some 401K contributions. For example, your company may match your contributions dollar for dollar up to 6%. Some companies may only match 50 cents on the dollar. Regardless, this is free money and I recommend you find a way to max out your company's matching. It may be difficult to put money in your 401K with you have significant debt that you accrued in college, but I recommend you to do the math and see how obvious it is to take advantage of company matchings. I believe you will find that regardless of your situation, maxing out the amount you contribute that is matched makes a lot of sense.

Note: You may also want to look into what the requirements are to have the company matchings vested. I left a job before working there for 5 years and by leaving I had to give up the matchings the company gave me.