204¾ lb., 24.0% body fat (yay!)

I wanted to open up with §401(k) of the United States Internal Revenue Code. Really, really I did.

But try as I might, I couldn't find a copy of it online for me to cut & paste. Rest assured that it exists written down somewhere, else I'd have misplaced about $2600 in what should have been a retirement account.

My office is switching 401(k) plan providers today. Er...30 days from today, actually. Dropping MetLife for the CPA firm that already does the books for DEII. I think. I'm not sure, as I'm not in that area of the office, physically or hierarchially.

In any case, a new 401(k) with new mutual funds to pore over. I actually got this paperwork yesterday, and, for the sake of an argument (not really an argument, but just using the expression, y'know), my picks are listed at the end of this entry.

A 401(k) is a retirement fund administrated by a company for the sake of its individual employees. A portion of an employee's salary each pay period is deferred into a tax-exempt (for the time being) account in the name of the employee, with the restriction that it cannot be accessed without penalty until the age of 59½ years, extreme or hardship circumstances excepted. The money in this account is generally invested, at the employee's discretion, in stocks, bonds, mutual funds or money market accounts. This is done in hopes that the rate of return on the money set aside might offset inflation and/or cost-of-living increases that will have occured by the time the employee reaches a point that he/she retires from the active workforce. Any money above $15,500 deferred to the 401(k) account in the 2007 calendar year is subject to tax, however, that tax-exempt ceiling is raised $20,500 if the employee is over the age of 50.

Okay, perhaps to put it in more direct terms:

A 401(k) is a special sort of savings account, kind of like a certificate of deposit (you can't get your money out before a certain time), and kind of like a passbook savings account (you're able to put money in very regularly). It can gain money quickly, by making money off of the stock market, or it can lose money, like when the stock market goes down, but it's more often that, when looked at over the course of 5-10 years, it grows in a bumpy fashion.

It's important to save for retirement because, odds are, even I won't have Social Security upon which to rely in 2045, when I turn 66, much less any of you all. (Binkmeister excepted. )

BEFORE anyone comments, I want to say that this is not an accusation of the U.S. government that the Social Security System will not be fixed. I didn't say that, and I didn't want to imply it either. I'm not trying to start a "How to fix Social Security" discussion or debate here.

I would like to volunteer, though, that if Social Security does survive into the middle of the 21st century, a Social Security check alone makes for a very inadequate standard of living. It would be very wise to have your own means for retirement, regardless of Social Security's future.

It's not terribly important that one start saving for retirement while at a fast food job in high school, but that paycheck does bear the noting of three things (butchered verb construction, bear with me):

• Do you really want to be making that kind of money when you don't have parents to rely upon?

  Continue your education so you can make some decent money, not $8.00 at Wal-Mart. (Trust me, you can't live comfortably on $8.00 an hour. Not in the USA at least. Especially if you've got to have your own computer hooked up to the internet, like I understand most of you do now.)

• By the same token, live within your means. It's hard to save up money when you spend every penny you make. Payroll deferral plans (like this 401(k) savings, and the similar Individual Retirement Account (IRA)) help take away the temptations: you can't spend what you never got in the first place. But you must still have an element of self-control with the pocketbook, especially with the allure of credit cards that let you do just that: spend money you never got in the first place.
• If you get offered a retirement plan from your employer, jump on it. It will only be to your eventual good.

I'm just going to give the ticker symbols for the mutual funds I selected: if you've made it this far, you obviously have the drive to look these up yourself.

IMDRX: 15%

RGAAX: 17%

MMSRX: 10%

JSVRX: 27%

TEDRX: 18%

RSLAX: 13%

(It's a very aggressive growth setup that is about 30% international.)

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Total deferral per paycheck: 6% (Hey, I still have those loans to pay off, remember?)

-KIE