I checked my 401K balance today and it is up to $35K! Whoot! I was looking at my "retirement" topic entries and I saw last year in March, so only 15 months ago, I was at $25K and was excited for when my 401K balance would pass my age....oops guess I missed that milestone...lol. I am guessing that happened somewhere in the fall. Chugging along!

I have bi-weekly deposits of $100 to an ING savings account that is a holding account for retirement savings. Then I have auto-deposits from that account to my ROTH IRA during the month. More goes into the account then goes out each month, so it now has about $1800 in it.

I decided to stop the $100 bi-weekly deposits to the retirement hold account for at least the summer. Just can't afford it right now. I would just have to take from one savings account to deposit into another. I stopped the auto-deposit today. Hopefully won't have to leave it off for too long.

Funds will still continue to be transferred to the ROTH from the hold account, since I have $1800 in there, that will be fine for about a year, and hopefully long before then I can start putting funds in there again.

I did go in and invested about $2000 more from the cash account in my ROTH to some stocks that have been doing well for me. Been too long since I reviewed my investment accounts. Need to make sure I am being more on top of that. My personal (not including DHs) total retirement is almost $45K. I think I am doing pretty well for 29 y/o.

I am still contributing 6% to my 401K at work, and get a 3% match on that from my employer. No plans to stop that.

My 401K finally hit $25K! Yippee! I can't wait till my 401K dollars are more then my age in years...currently at 28 y/o and 25K...so shouldn't be too much longer!

DH only gets a retirement statement once a year, so I usually end up estimating all year till we get the yearly statement. Happy to report my last estimate was $3760 short of what the actual balance was.

2010 Balance $9,983.38
2011 Balance $13,322.37
2012 Balance $17,566.74

Yeah my 401K hit $20K today! Now up to $20,115.00!! Whoo hoo, so excited!

Opening Balance 1/1/12 $16,483.20
My Contribution $550.00
Employer Contribution $550.00
Investment Gain $1,403.94
Closing Balance 3/31/12 $18,987.14


I put in $550 of my own dollars and I got an additional $1953.94 FREE! YEAH! I put in 6% which is the max my employer will match. The rest I of my retirement money is going into a ROTH IRA with ING.

DH only gets his retirement statement once a year and has no way to check in online so for most of the year I have to estimate what he has in his 403B. Finally got the statement.

2010 Balance $9,983.38
2011 Balance $13,322.37

Not a big jump, but with the way the market is going recently I am just happy it went up.

At the beginning of 2010 my employer lowered the 401K match from matching 50% up to 6%, down to matching 50% up to 3%. So back when they had changed that I lowered my 401K contribution from 6% down to 3% and moved the difference over to my ROTH IRA. Well they just sent out an email that effective 10/15/10 we will be getting the match moved back up to 6% again. Yeah for FREE money! So today I went in and moved by contribution back up to 6% for the 401K, and lowered my autodeposit with ING from $100 per paycheck to $75 per paycheck. Right now I am contributing 13% to retirement, plus the 3% from my employer = 16%. I am happy with that at 26 and will keep moving it up tiny percentage point by tiny percentage point!

My employer cut the employer match for 401K from 50% up to 6% to 50% up to 3% for 2010. So I am cutting my contribution from 6% to 3% and moving the 3% difference to my ROTH IRA. Yesterday was my last payday of 2010, and it was very slow at work so I got the 401K updated. Then I went to my ING and changed my autodeposit from $70 every 2 weeks to $100 every 2 weeks. All ready to go for 2010!

Here is our current retirement contributions:

Me
6% to 401K
3% to 401K (from employer)
6% to ROTH IRA


DH
10% to 403B
10% to 403B (from employer)

Balances
401K $8300
ROTH IRA $1300
Rollover IRA $1700
403B $6400
(403B is estimated balance, we only get statement once a year)

I try to bump my own retirement up 2% per year. It definitely gets harder to move it up as time goes on. Right now I am contributing 12% (plus 3% from my employer). But this next year my employer contribution will go down to 1.5%. So I think I will change to :

Me
3% to 401K
1.5% to 401K (from employer)
11% to ROTH IRA

So that will get me up to 14% (15.5% if you count employer contribution) - I am trying to keep moving mine up till DH and I are both at 20% and then move each of us up a little each year.