Re: Balancing Retirement and Non-Retirement Savings

"Default User" <defaultuserbr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
E wrote
>>I will raise you that management likes not having to
>> match and likes even more having an automaton who just 
>> takes orders.
>
> My company started automatically enrolling new employees 
> in the plan at
> a rate to capture full match. They can opt out, of course.

Automatic enrollment is up not because companies want to 
look out for their employees. It is up because of pressure 
from lawmakers.

Notable is that, at the start circa 1980, 401(k)s were 
intended only for executives. Then 401(k)s became all the 
rage because companies, suffering the capriciousness of 
pension budgeting, sought a cheaper way to offer retirement 
benefits to all. The main reason companies offer 401(k)s is, 
as has been stated repeatedly here, to stay competitive when 
hiring employees. Everything else is an afterthought. Tad's 
explanation denotes the same: If  a cor****ation wants good 
upper management, then it has to offer a good retirement 
package, which means it has to follow laws (created for 
goodness sake not by companies but by Congress) to try to 
boost 401(k) bennies for lower income employees. 

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