EquiFi

You just quit your job, and your 401(k) is still sitting with your old employer. What happens to it now? Nothing happens to it automatically — your money stays invested, but you now have four choices, and the wrong one can cost you 30% or more of your balance. Your own contributions are always 100% yours. The employer match depends on vesting. And the rules that decide what you keep — a $7,000 balance threshold, a 20% withholding trap, and a deadline on any outstanding loan — are the parts most guides skip. This guide works through each one with real dollar numbers, using a $30,000 balance as the running example. What You Actually Own When You Leave Every dollar you contributed from your own paycheck is yours, no matter when you leave. The employer match is the part that may not be. Employer contributions vest — become permanently yours — on a schedule your plan sets. Federal law caps how slow that schedule can be, and plans can only be faster, never slower. The two legal maximums...

You got the full employer match. Now you have another $500 a month to save, and two Roth accounts are waiting for it. Which one deserves the next dollar? After the match, the Roth IRA usually takes the next dollar. Both accounts use the same Roth tax deal: you pay tax now, and qualified withdrawals in retirement are tax-free. The difference is not the tax treatment. It is the limits, the fees, and what happens when you need the money early. This guide works through each one with 2026 numbers, and ends with a decision rule you can run in two minutes. Same Tax Deal, Different Accounts Put the same $7,500 a year into either Roth account and the tax result is identical. At a hypothetical 7% a year, $7,500 a year grows to about $762,000 in 30 years — in a Roth 401(k) or a Roth IRA. The 7% is an assumption for illustration, not a prediction; actual returns vary and can be negative. So the question is never which Roth account grows faster. It is which one lets you put more in, charges ...

Your job offers a 401(k) but no employer match, and you have $500 a month to save for retirement. Where does the first dollar go? Without a match, the Roth IRA usually goes first — until you save more than $7,500 a year. With a match, the order is settled: take the free money first. Our guide to retirement accounts covers that order, and it still holds — a match is the closest thing to a guaranteed return in investing. Without one, the two accounts compete on four things: how much room each one gives you, when you pay tax, what the funds cost, and how easily you can reach the money. This guide works through each one with 2026 numbers, and ends with a five-question decision rule. The Capacity Gap: $7,500 vs $24,500 The Roth IRA holds $7,500 a year in 2026. The 401(k) holds $24,500 — more than three times as much. That gap decides the order for most people before tax brackets or fund fees enter the picture. Save $500 a month — $6,000 a year — and the Roth IRA can hold every dolla...

Your first job hands you a 401(k) enrollment form, and someone online tells you to open a Roth IRA instead. Which one do you pick? Take the 401(k) match first, then open a Roth IRA — the order matters more than the account. Retirement accounts all do the same basic job: they shelter your investments from taxes while the money grows. What differs is when you pay the tax, how much you can put in, and who offers the account. This guide explains each type in plain language, with the 2026 limits verified from the IRS, and ends with the funding order most beginners use. The One Idea Behind Every Retirement Account Every retirement account is the same deal in different wrapping: a tax break now or later, in exchange for leaving the money alone until retirement. There are two families. Tax-deferred accounts — a traditional 401(k) and a traditional IRA — give you the tax break today: contributions come out of your pay before income tax, the money grows without yearly tax bills, and you pa...

How much will an index fund actually earn? About 10% a year before inflation, about 7% after it — and almost never 10% in any single year. That one sentence is the honest answer to the question behind this article. The rest of it is about why the average misleads, what the number looks like in dollars, and what return is sensible to plan with. The headline number: 10% a year, with dividends From 1928 through 2025, the S&P 500 compounded at 10.02% a year with dividends reinvested — 6.78% after inflation. Those are the figures from Professor Aswath Damodaran's historical dataset at NYU's Stern School of Business, the standard free source for long-run U.S. market returns. They are total returns: price gains plus every dividend, reinvested. Dividends do most of the quiet work. Hartford Funds calculates that reinvested dividends supplied about 85% of the S&P 500's cumulative total return since 1960. Any return figure that leaves dividends out — like the price-only ...

You want to buy an S&P 500 index fund, and your broker shows two options holding the same 500 companies — one labeled an index fund, the other an ETF. Which one should you pick? The short answer: in most cases it barely matters, because the two options are often the same portfolio in two different wrappers. What matters is the account you hold it in, whether you invest automatically, and whether the account is taxable. First, the category confusion to clear up An index fund is a strategy. An ETF is a wrapper. Comparing them directly is like comparing "vegetarian" with "takeout box." An index fund tracks a market index instead of trying to beat it. An ETF is a fund that trades on a stock exchange like a single stock. Most ETFs are index funds — but not all index funds are ETFs. Some are mutual funds. So when people ask "index funds vs ETFs," they usually mean index ETFs against index mutual funds. Both track the same indexes for nearly identic...

You have $1,000 ready to invest in a broad stock fund, and your broker shows two options holding nearly the same stocks — one is an ETF, the other a mutual fund. Which one should you pick? The short answer: an ETF and a mutual fund are two wrappers for the same idea — a basket of investments owned by many people. What differs is how you buy and sell, when the price is set, and what you pay in fees and taxes. For a beginner, the fund inside the wrapper matters more than the wrapper itself — but in a taxable account, the ETF's structure usually keeps more of your money. What an ETF actually is An ETF is a basket of securities that trades on a stock exchange, just like a single stock. ETF stands for exchange-traded fund. Each share you buy represents a slice of everything the fund holds — hundreds of stocks, bonds, or other assets. You buy and sell shares through your broker during market hours, at whatever price the market sets at that moment. The price moves all day. Behind the...