Last week I found out BY ACCIDENT that my employer offers a 457 plan. This is not advertised anywhere, it's not on the benefits site anywhere even when one uses the search function looking for it, and it definitely wasn't brought up at the benefits overview.
So today I call HR and ask, and the lady answering the phone says "Yes we have a 457 plan but you have to be maxing out the 403b plan first." Um, HELLO, I am doing that! Why in the heck don't they tell people about this? Do I have to be in a certain income bracket for them to even be bothered informing me of all of the available benefits? Because I even proactively LOOKED through all of the benefit website trying to find information about it when I first joined the company several years ago because my previous employer had a 457 option. I even scheduled a special one-on-one retirement planning session with my employer to ask about where else I could be saving, and it wasn't mentioned then although he did suggest opening a 529. He did say it didn't look like I need to put anymore toward retirement, so maybe he just didn't think I'd be interested enough to even know about it. Man, I am triple miffed!
Anyway, tomorrow the guy who handles the 457 enrollments is supposed to call me back, and I'm going to give him the third degree about why this is the freaking magical mystery benefit. And then I'll probably be doing some research figuring out how to invest in whatever options they offer in this plan (unless it's with Vanguard, in which case I'm all set with fund already.)
Okay /rant.