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 married? Is that worth the lost money? Perhaps something worth discussing at the next money talk.

Here are their main findings:

– Employer 401(k) matches vary in generosity, so couples can get the most bang for their buck by prioritizing the more generous match.
– But, about 1 in 5 couples leave employer matching money on the table by failing to coordinate their contributions – forgoing $760 per year, on average.
– Half of forgone matches appear to be accidental; the other half reflect deliberate choices related to low marital commitment and/or misperceptions about how assets are treated in divorce.
– These findings suggest that employers and financial advisors could boost couples’ savings by alerting them to the value of coordination.