<prompt> Human: Today my wife was looking at her 401k and was pissed off that she was down 4 since she started contributing. She started asking why we were wasting money in the market if her portfolio is down in a 5 year period where most other securities are up. Setting aside the reasons for that for the curious...her company matches entirely in company stock, which we rebalance away quarterly, but not fast enough apparently...its dropped from above 30 to under 10 in the last year...Im amazed weve only lost 4 under those conditions, and also setting aside that were in it for 30 years, not 5, I was running some numbers to show her that I thought might be worthwhile for rpf. She has contributed the maximum allowed to her 401k every year since she started this job and has accumulated 129,000. The web interface reports that shes averaged -4 rate of return every year. But has she really? What has she put in versus what she has now? The company is actually matching some of her contributions 100, so even with heavy losses she should make out like a bandit. And thats what I proved to her: YearMax Contribution------2011 165002012 170002013 175002014 175002015 18000Sum of Contributions86500Actual Total 129,000Company Match Plus Gains 42,500Even with a good chunk of her match being made in a continually declining security, which is an abnormality for most folks, shes averaged about a 16 return each year. THATS why we waste the money in the market. Even with the incredible losses of the matched stock, the combined return is more than good enough.  <response>: I have worked for my family business most of my life. But left about 20 years ago. I now work at a company that does the 100 match of the percentage of contribution. I often try to explain to other employees about how important it is to utilize the 401k benefit. I generally use an analogy that, once signed up, they have just written themselves a significant raise. The younger people especially will stare at me with a look that says, 401k...? thats for old people. They just dont have a clue. 