<prompt> Human: My current job does a 4 match but you only get to keep the money after 3 years. I dont plan on being there for that long. Should I even both to put money in? Im 26 and my wife is 23 with a household income of about 40,000. My wife and I save on our own. We take out 5 of each paycheck and put it manually into our savings account an account that we dont touch for anything. If I wont be meeting the requirements to take the company contributions with me, should I just keep doing what Ive been doing or start contributing towards it? We started saving about 3 years ago and are at about 15k in savings so far. I would like to increase that with employer contributions but I have to find a place I would like to stay at long term. Plus I like the security that if we ever REALLY need to money emergency, etc we can get it within a couple hours. At some point well have both. A small emergency fund couple thousand bucks, a bigger retirement savings account, and a 401k with an employer.Thanks for reading.  <response>: Yes, yes, yes. The value of investing early is not just that you have squirreled some money away. The value comes from the gains compounded over decades. Unless youre about ready to retire, a savings account is not an effective vessel for retirement savings. 