Are You Maximizing Your 401k Employer Match as a Couple?

Here’s an article about the question “Do married couples efficiently allocate their retirement contributions across their retirement accounts?” Since employer match rates differ, even if you both for example set aside 5% of salary, that may not be the most efficient usage of your potential bonus money.

Roughly 20% of couples are not efficiently using their employer match. Of these couples, the average could have earned $757 more in employer match simply by shifting some of the deferral amount from the account of the spouse with the lower match rate to the account of the spouse with the higher one. Legally, retirement account wealth accumulated during marriage is treated as a marital asset that is equally divided in divorce regardless of which spouse made contributions. Practically, perhaps a household with separate finances will prefer keeping 401k balances separate even if happily marri...