re: Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace

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Well that's a little ridiculous. You should absolutely be contributing up to any employer match in a 401k.

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If you have high interest debt you're probably better off paying that off instead of contributing to a 401K

With a lot of employers you don't get the match until you reach a certain duration of time anyway.

My previous employer required 5 years with the company to be fully vested. I got laid off after 4.5 years. The "free money" didn't work out so well for me as it turns out.

Also you have to consider that a lot of the people that call into his show are in a pretty dire financial situation. This issue of not contributing to the 401K makes a lot of sense when you're looking at people with 20K of high interest credit card debt. If they got in that much debt WITHOUT contributing to the 401K there is no way that they could ever improve their financial situation by withholding 15% of their gross income. It just isn't mathematically feasible.

These people need to get their debt wiped out before they even think about retirement. Some people have 20% interest on these cards. It is very obvious that removal of debt is mathematically more sound than getting "free money" from a stupid 401K.