<prompt> Human: Ive been maxing out my 401k throughout the year for the last several years. The employee offers a match that vests immediately. The catch is that in order to get every possible penny of that match, I have to spread my own contributions out so that they hit all 24 paychecks. The general advice Ive heard is that anything else is leaving money on the table.However, if I set my contribution to the highest possible value on January 1 and max out the contribution limit very quickly, isnt that better? Isnt that money going to have a lot more time to grow, dwarfing an employer match?  <response>: Almost certainly not. Lets say you had a really generous employer match of 6,000 dollars 6 on 100,000. So you contribute 17,500 in the first 3 months of the year and you get 1,500 in employer match, but after that nothing so you have 19,000 on April 1. To match the employer contribution you would have gotten throughout the rest of the year you have to end the year with 23,500. Which is around 25 growth, that is a rare year on the stock market where you can expect that kind of growth. A lower match will obviously require less growth but even 12 growth at 3 match is not something anyone should regularly expect out of the market.So all-in-all its unlikely the added growth time will make up for the instantaneous 100 growth of the employer match. 