Am I wasting money by putting them into my 401K? What I like about 401 K are 2 things: 1) I can borrow money in a big emergency 2) it lowers my taxable income because I will make this year around 140K if no more with all overtime Here are the problems: 1)I do have debt. I am going though custody battle and already spent about 16K, probably will spend another 15-20 K within next year or two... so I am paying about 600$ per month just in interest on credit cards... 2) I have been putting 2 k per month into 401K. In july of this year I had 49K, today I have 47. I guess the market went down...But I feel like, 2k per month putting there, it should grow and it did not, it went down...I should of had at least 55-56K. even if the market went down few percent, I still should have more money in 401K... What should I do? I hate paying 600$ in interest monthly... But I dont want to pay more taxes because I am contributing less to 401K...
@ptahm22 I suggest you straighten your credit woes first and your facts a bit before deciding to contribute 2k per month to a 401k, if there is such a plan in your country. If you're living in the US, I believe you can't do that because you're going to exceed the annual limit set by IRS for 401k contribution. Credit cards interest can easily gobble up whatever gains you can expect from savings accounts or stock investments so it is always smart to pay them off completely. Once that is accomplished, then you'll have even more money to put into your savings or retirement funds.
Well when it comes to decisions like this you might want to take things slow and do a good amount of research. I have heard so many different things and they tend to vary depending on a lot of things, but certainly it is better than some of the other things people do.
