<prompt> Human: Ive thrown this all in a google spreadsheet that ties to actual data from google finance. You can see the funds available to me here:My company matches up to 3 per year, at their discretion - last year they matched 2. the vestment period is 20 per year over 5 years.Am I correct in thinking that these offerings are bad with such high expense ratios that I should put the minimum in the 401k to MAYBE get a match, and then dump my money into my own brokerage account? I make enough to max out my IRA and I could almost max a 401k if I didnt enjoy expensive hobbies. The only advantage I see in the 401k is really just the tax advantage, but the funds underperform the comparison by quite a bit.Any advice?  <response>: Hey there!Sounds like it would be worth it to accept a 3 employer match. It is, after all, free money that becomes 100 vested after 5 years. Pretty snazzy. I took a quick look at the funds in the spreadsheet you posted and they look like they are pretty generic mutual funds. Maybe theyll be higher fee than ETFs but honestly the matching feature that your employer is offering will have a way bigger impact. To illustrate, lets say that you had a salary of 60k, which means your employer will match 1,800. You put 1,800 into the 401k, your employer does as well, now the value is 3,600. Now imagine this mutual fund tracks the SP but has a 1 expense ratio. An index fund also tracks it with a 0.01 expense ratio. Say the value goes up 10, so 9 when fees are taken into account with the mutual fund and 9.99 with the index fund.If you invested the money just by itself into an IRA and bought an index fund, it would go from 1,800 to 1,980, minus fees of about 19 cents, so the value at the end would be 1,979.81 Pretty cool, a gain of 179.81 for you.But if you invested the money with the employer match it would go from 3,600 to 3,960, minus fees of about 39.60. Sure the fees are higher lame but the actual increase is 360. Not to mention the actual value is significantly higher! In fact, everything is better and happier for you in this scenario.So my advice is to pick a couple of those mediocre funds and have at it -- but only up until the limit where your employer will contribute. Hopefully I made it pretty clear how this can really work to your advantage -- now imagine over a 10 year period how that could add up! Dont OVER-contribute, however, because you might as well as you already know invest the remainder into lower cost alternatives like ETFs. 