I’m newish (2nd yr) is our match unvested throughout the year and the cash is just held back until year end OR are we losing out on dollar cost averaging bc the match is all invested at once on one day at the end of the year?
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It's a really bad policy, the bank could at least prorate the 401k for people who are terminated involuntarily. I'm pretty sure this was done intentionally to save money.
So WF sold the retirement group (IRT) and we're leaving before year end. They won't give us our match even though we separated involuntarily. Most of us have jobs at Principal, but there's plenty who are unemployed. They s*ck so bad.
Re: @rdx+1aohobTc I wouldn’t consider a yearly match contribution as any kind of DCA even if retirement is generally processed over decades and not weeks. That is now a lump sum contribution.
To the overall situation, just consider it as you lost one year of DCA but now you’re front loaded for every year from then on that you remain employed. Plus this is only your match we’re talking about here. A whopping 6% of salary. Doesn’t even match the contribution maximum of $19500 (under 50) unless you’re making $325k/yr. I certainly am not and I would wager that no one surfing this site is up that high. Take a step back and look at this from 10k feet, with my low 6 fig salary the match accounts for less than 1% of my overall retirement portfolio. Free money so I want it and invest it how I desire, but it won’t make or break my retirement.
I recently moved to another large bank and they pay match once a year too.
Yeah, it saves $, but it's really only big money during a time of lots of layoffs. A few years from now it'll be a drop in the bucket each year. In any case, the key to me is maintaining the match. Frequency may suck, but no where near as badly as if they decreased the %. The 401k is far and away the most important benefit to me. Cutting it back to 3-4% or whatever would be a great way to mu—r morale. And yes, I get that the top wants some people to leave, but they don't want everyone that's worth anything to leave...and that kind of benefit cut would be how you get everyone good to leave.
A true match should hit your 401k the same day yours comes out of your check. But in these times of company stock price tops takin care of your employees, they got away with quarterly and now yearly messages. Will anyone stop them? Are you kidding? Our representatives have been legally insider trading for years when you would get thrown in jail. So what do you think?
An annual match saves the company big bucks. If 100 people making $100,000 leave the company before the match is made, that’s $600,000. I can guarantee that’s already happened in 2021. On a quarterly match, the company saves $150,000 if they leave in Q3. It’s a very easy way to avoid employee costs without completely removing the benefit.
That $350,000 is probably paying a Chase refugee executive salary.
If those people are replaced, the new match doesn’t kick in until they have a year of service. Complete win for management.
The employee loses all the potential gains, they aren’t investing it for you and releasing later, you just aren’t getting it.
It's still dollar cost averaged, just with a longer time horizon. It used to be a quarterly match, now it's annual. Still averaged over the long term, just not as frequently as it used to be, or should be. Be nice if it was monthly honestly. Other than making Dec 31st the "cool date to retire" I'm not sure what the company gains from this change. It annoys people, but I doubt anyone ever quit a job over match frequency so it's not a change to push attrition. About the only thing it does for the company is save a little $ when they downsize someone, but it's really not all that much savings in the big picture and it's mostly a short term benefit to the bottom line at best.
Yes, you’re losing the benefit of dollar-cost averaging over the course of the year.