The big thing will be to look what your 401k is actually invested in. It will probably be a company account with a 1% managing fee. Your first step should be to transition your holding to a vanguard etf mirroring S&P, VOO is a popular one offered through most brokerages with negligible management fee

how do i find this out? once i actually start putting $$ in it?

Yeah just a call to your brokerage managing the account

This post was edited by Bazi on Nov 1 2023 12:32pm

Check out this documentary on 401k, it’s worth knowing this stuff going into investing in the 401k. A lot of companies don’t give you very great flexibility for changing the fund you / they contribute to.

This is pretty old now, published in 2013 and information for the video gathered well before that. I mean the video is talking to people who lost their 401K because it was all in Enron. There's been the massive rise of ETFS since then to protect investors from their own bad decision-making. Almost any type of employer sponsored 401K can be invested into a Vangaurd ETF that is low fees.

This post was edited by SBD on Nov 3 2023 09:29am

True points. I think the general point is not to put all or majority of your egss into 401k, not to mention the other life circumstances that arise and prevent people from fully retiring when they want. A lot of people invest in a 401k and sort of set it / forget it. You have to be more involved in your 401k and understanding fees, risks, and the reality that you can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars very quickly when markets take a turn for the worse.

I think this is the point though

If you’re someone who CAN financially afford to max your 401k contribution, and you have appropriately set where the contribution is going to (some vanguard etf mirroring major index)

You should be just setting and forgetting and not attempting to micromanage it

When you get to late 50s /60s you can play more conservatively but if we are all in 20-30s we should be contributing without watching - as long as you can still comfortable pay your bills /manage debts etc

But that's when people get stupid and draw down out of panic. We're emotional beings, and irrational as a result. You're not going to beat the market so just invest into the total US market via a Vangaurd ETF. We can't predict the future so use historical market data to put yourself at ease when it comes to major market downturns.

That's my take, its fairly well backed since there's an abundance of studies of time in the market vs. timing the market.

Rather than Reddit which you mentioned got you involved in investing, try something like Bogleheads if you like to read up on investing. The forum layout sucks but go to the Subforum key and go from there.

This post was edited by SBD on Nov 3 2023 11:15am

If the 401k fund allocation is set up properly (I.e in a low fee well diversified indexed fund), that’s the whole idea—something you can set it and forget about it until retirement. Surely, one can log in once in a while to make sure no big changes to fee and structure. Actively managing your portofilio due to market volatility is proven to underperform market in the long run, just contribute regularly and the return will surprise you when you get to that retirement age.

they match up to certain %