I gave a career recuriter a salary expectation but want to add in 401K matching differences, is this fair?

Question

I am looking to join a new company soon, I gave my career recuriter a salary expectation. However, I failed to research throughly. No job offer yet probably will come next week, in the meantime, my current company matches up to 6% in 401K contribution, and add in up to anther 3% to 401K per company performance. My pontential new company give 4% match period. So would it be fair for my to add in additional 2% for the 401K difference? Also how do I account for the additional 3% performance based 401K contribution? I think my company gave us 2% in performance based 401K dollars. Would it be fair for me to ask my new company to give me additional 4% on top of my salary?

Answer 1

well if you're going to get down to the nitty gritty and compare matches then make sure that you look at vesting. Typical company that uses a match up to 6% has a 6year graded vesting schedule and the one that matches 4% is typically a safe harbor match and is 100% vested. In that case I'd take the Safe Harbor Match every time...bird in the hand blah blah blah.

As for performance based contributions...that's profit sharing or bonuses paid into a retirement plan. I'm not so sure that's fair to build into salary as there was never a gaurantee of a contribution at your prior firm. However, if the prior firm had a money purchase pension plan where the contribution was required...then I'd say go ahead and ask for it.