I was finally eligible to sign up for the 401k program from the Pittsburgh job. This isn’t really making money online, but at least it is bringing in some money. The Ohio job didn’t offer any kind of employer matching, but this one does.
I was talking to a friend about money and investments, and the only thing keeping him from being really negative was his retirement account. He was kind of cheating when it came to the numbers, but it’s the same thing I would have done.
He counted how much he put in and then took the current value to determine how much he made. That meant he took the amount he contributed and then took the value of the account including employer contributions and matching to get the value.
Even if the account lost money, the employer matching made up for it. With the whole idea of making money, I think not taking advantage of the matching is a bad idea. The matching isn’t the greatest, but it is better than what I previously had.
After rolling over my last retirement account, I started paying more attention to my retirement plan. I would really like to load up on rental properties to the point where they would be my retirement, but that sounds like a risky plan.
Having a few other options in play seems like the better strategy. Plus, there is always the possibility of some great investment or opportunity to come along where I could cash out the retirement account early, pay the fees, and then use that money to something great.
That likely won’t happen, and the main point of making money online was to have enough available where I wouldn’t need to cash out early, but having options is nice. I signed up for the maximum matching. I didn’t go more than that, though, since I also have my own brokerage account.
Being able to get some money to put in there and make my own investments only works out well since that money isn’t tied up until retirement. So realistically, if I don’t make any money online and I do need to come up with cash, I would go my brokerage account first and then my retirement account.