Opt-Out Plan
Categories: Company Management
See: Opt-Out Right.
We love our job at Happy Harry’s Halibut Hut, the best seafood joint in town. The pay is good, the food is great, the customers are...customers, and our full-time employment status means we’ve got sweet medical bennies and an awesome opt-out retirement plan. “Opt-out plans” differ from other types of employer-sponsored programs because we’re automatically enrolled as soon as we’re eligible. We don’t have to do a thing (except keep our job). Happy Harry automatically contributes 3% of our pre-tax paycheck (that’s the standard, though some organizations go higher) to a 401(k), and then he matches our contribution with company funds, and as long as we stay employed, the money keeps going in like clockwork. It’s the easiest retirement planning we’ve ever done.
The reason they’re called “opt-out plans,” is because we have to actually opt out if we want something different, or if we don’t want the plan at all. If we do nothing, we’ll be—and stay—enrolled in the standard plan. And while it’s super nice of Happy Harry to help us put away a little sumthin’ sumthin’ for retirement, a 3% biweekly contribution based on our wages as a barback at a seafood joint might not allow us to retire in the style we’d prefer. We might want to keep that in mind, and possibly up our contribution level, or have another method of saving retirement.
Because, although we can’t visualize it now, there just might come a day when we no longer want to clear tables at Happy Harry’s Halibut Hut.
