{"id":182377,"date":"2025-09-26T05:54:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T05:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/182377\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T05:54:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T05:54:22","slug":"my-biggest-retirement-mistake-not-understanding-401k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/182377\/","title":{"rendered":"My Biggest Retirement Mistake: Not Understanding 401(k)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI thought, well, I\u2019m already getting it, and that was it,\u201d Davis says. \u201cHow will I get retirement from any other job?\u201d<\/p>\n

Not having an option to save more \u201cdidn\u2019t really bother me,\u201d she adds. \u201cI needed to go and work just to keep me going.\u201d<\/p>\n

401(k) confusion<\/p>\n

Davis\u2019 particular misconception about retirement plans may be unusual, says Jason Washo, a certified financial planner and president of Washo Financial in Scottsdale, Arizona\ufeff, but confusion over such benefits is not.<\/p>\n

A 2023 survey<\/a> by financial services company Principal of working adults who were not participating in an available workplace retirement plan found that more than 1 in 5 didn\u2019t know they were eligible for the plan, and nearly 3 in 5 mistakenly believed that they had been enrolled and were contributing.<\/p>\n

Davis\u2019 former coworkers at the assisted living center will soon have access to a retirement savings plan. New York State is in the final stages of implementing an \u201cauto IRA\u201d program<\/a> that will require most employers that don\u2019t offer a savings plan of their own to enroll employees in a state-facilitated individual retirement account.<\/p>\n

The program, called Secure Choice, is slated to launch in late 2025 \u2014 too late for Davis, who retired for good in March. She loved the job at the assisted living facility and still visits three or four times a month to see residents she had grown close to.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of what she describes as a fulfilling retirement. She rents a small apartment down the street from Philip and stops in regularly after church on Sundays for meals with her daughter and grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will cook and feed me,\u201d Davis says. \u201cJamaican rice and chicken, or steak and broccoli, sweet potatoes and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

After working for decades in long-term care, Davis enjoys her retirement in Brooklyn, but she wishes she could afford a house \u201cwith my own garden for golden girls in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juan C. Giraldo<\/p>\n

Food also figures prominently when she visits her son, John Philip, in Pennsylvania. She\u2019s teaching him her old recipes. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Mom, how do you make the dumpling? How do you make this? What do you put in it?\u2019\u2009\u201d she says. \u201cNow he can cook really good, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis regularly travels back to Antigua, where another daughter and three grandchildren live. Her one regret is that she can\u2019t afford to buy a house of her own, \u201cwith my own garden for golden girls in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mom having a home where the kids and grandkids could gather \u201cwould have been great,\u201d Philip says. \u201cIt would be nice for the family, especially around holidays.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI thought, well, I\u2019m already getting it, and that was it,\u201d Davis says. \u201cHow will I get retirement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[107681,107680,28,107679,147,530,107677,22849,79354,107678],"class_list":["post-182377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-401k-advantages","tag-401k-benefits","tag-business","tag-how-does-a-401k-work","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-retirement-mistake","tag-retirement-saving","tag-saving-for-retirement","tag-understanding-401k"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}