How long do you plan to be at this employer? Is it a career move or a stepping stone? If you don't think you'll be there more than a few years, maxing out while you can afford to do so is a smart idea. You could then roll the contribution into either another 401(k) (if your next employer has a better one) or into a rollover/traditional IRA.
Also... I'd be a little wary of putting money into a 401(k) in anticipation of receiving money seven months out.
You could also cut back on the contributions and, if the money arrives and you still have paychecks left in 2013, you could boost those immensely.
Either way, sacrificing sleep (the worries) or safety (the brakes) in order to sock away extra into an unmatched, high-fee 401(k) doesn't strike me as a good idea -- and I'm usually the guy saying people should be using tax-advantaged accounts more!
All good points. Especially the wariness--I am by no means a count-your-chickens kind of person in my day to day life.
It's hard to say how long I'll be at this employer. I do like my job but not enough to keep it if I figure out a better fit. I also have seen a lot of employee churn recently, which is never comforting. If I am not let go (which, right now I have a fine review under my belt and a reasonable-seeming manager), I would like to stay here for maybe another 1-5 years.
I definitely had been thinking that it would be a benefit to get money despite the fees and then, when making my next job hunt, look for a better deal on the retirement front or roll into a lower-fee IRA.
The whole retirement situation is messed up right now because my husband and I ended up with $25k in non- or low-interest earning accounts at the end of March. This was due to not caring previously about keeping up with inflation, and therefore not prioritizing it.
Once I realized that this was ineffective, I tried to make some calls pretty fast to try to revive our dead money. It's why I've been able to run at a deficit--it's primarily money that should have been going into better accounts in the first place. (We're
really new at this money thing.)
I wish the 401(k) let me change my investment amount more frequently than once per quarter. That's really the most troublesome thing here: Whatever decisions I make have to be ones I can live with for 3 months.
I might scale back somewhat for Q2 and try to readjust for Q3 at the break-even point once I have more data to tell me where that is.