Last year I had my wife enroll in her company’s 401 (k) plan at work. For the first year I had her hold off on enrolling because the plan is not very good. The investment choices and the company match are substandard. After we bought the house our next goal was to focus on enhancing our retirement nest egg so I had her enroll. She contributes only to the extent of the employer match is in effect. We do that because we still do not have income that can easily fund these retirement options. Plus, I would rather pay taxes on income now than in the future because I do not believe taxes will ever be this low again. So her 401 (k) is up and running and is at a low amount, but that is ok.
On the other hand, my 401 (k) plan at my job offers much better investment options, although the employer match is poor. Even though the match is bad I have contributed 10% because some of these options are investments I had wanted to do in the past, but could not because they were not open to me.
So by the end of 2007 our 401 (k)s will add about 15-20% to our retirement nest egg and at the same time we hope to max out our Roth IRAs so that will be another $8,000 we contribute. With this I think we will be on our way to catching up on our retirement accounts.