Absolutely. I also invest in stocks a little on the side.

If your company matches at any amount, you need to at least put enough into it to max that match. It's literally free money. If you were at a company for 3 years with 5% match and took advantage of it... at retirement it could have tens-of-thousands of dollars of money they gave you for nothing because of compound interest.

The withdrawal is also pre-tax (unless you Roth it), which means if you set aside 10% of your paycheck, it will actually only reduce your take-home by like 5%.

As you get older and into higher tax brackets, it helps a ton to put as much as you can into a 401K (you're still technically getting all of your money, but the government is only taxing you the part of it after the 401K is set aside). You pay taxes on the back-end, but you can research how different 401K plans work. Most companies can give you contact info to their plan administrator too... who can help you get started.

I used to work in the finance industry and by far the best resource on the web for long term investors is the Bogleheads forum. Ridiculously amazing stuff here:

www.bogleheads.org

If you don't want to bother doing your own research I would defintely just dump your money into a roboadvisor like Wealthfront or Betterment. Their investment strategies and asset allocation are sound. However you could easily replicate their strategies on your own without paying their fees.

A word of caution, their Tax Loss Harvesting and rebalancing claims are very overblown and do not at all justify their fees. 0.25% might seem small but due to the nature of compounding this will likely add up to $200,000+ in fees over your lifetime (or more, depending on what you make).

The only value they provide is the convenience factor and realize that you are paying a big premium for it.

Here's more reading on wealthfront and betterment's TLH claims: https://www.kitces.com/blog/wealthfront-tax-loss-harvesting-white-paper-how-not-to-calculate-tax-alpha/?utm_source=Nerd%E2%80%99s+Eye+View+%7C+Kitces.com&utm_campaign=e7697c6572-NEV_MAILCHIMP_LIST&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4c81298299-e7697c6572-57008225#more-3021

On the impact of percentage based fees: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/millennial-retirement-fees-one-percent-half-million-savings-impact/

My advice: open an account at Vanguard, assemble a portfolio of crazy low fee ETFs, and rebalance/harvest losses yourself. It's the only way to get maximum returns. Never forget: fees are gaurunteed, returns are not.

Take a week or two doing research on Bogleheads and you'll have all the information you need for a lifetime of investing.

Betterment.com for mutual funds and indexes for the past few years and i love it.

That's a great question. I wonder what others are doing, especially the ones outside of US.

As someone who's based in (almost) a third world country, working remotely and doing design consulting with different clients, I have a hard time trusting the government.

What I decided to do is invest into real estate and live off of 5-10% return. Stocks sound interesting as well, but real estate first.

I would say in the stage of retiremnet there are lot of people who want to save their income for their rest time and also read some news from the Cryptocurrency News where people who are taking retirment also investing their funds in trading.

Currently contribute soundly to my Roth IRA monthly (easier as a F/T employee and not freelancing). Even when I freelanced, I'd contribute a hundred or so monthly draft that I knew I could put in, and as things freed up, would contribute from bigger margin on a project, or would slowly bump up the monthly contributions by 10-25 bucks. Currently use a financial planner that's a work relation and working out super well. "Paying myself first" always works better, as soon as I get paid, let the autodrafts hit, and I'm set.

Like Benjamin said, if your company matches a 401k, contribute to that mark first.

I've also got a permanent life insurance piece as another avenue of an investment vehicle to save for retirement as well. Just opened, but should give me another avenue outside of my Roth to put funds away for retirement.

I definitely do. I used to trade stocks but I was looking for more passive investments.

Note: I'm not a financial manager and you're investing at your own risk

Wealthfront - I use this for all of my retirement investments (IRA/401's) if I can. I also have some funds that I invest in though that site.

Coinbase - I've been investing in crypto currencies a bit recently. Keep in mind that the crypto space is really a crap shoot and you need to do a lot of research to avoid scams. That being said, Coinbase is a good user friendly entry point into a few currencies.

Angel List - Startup investing is something I'm just getting started with. I don't have enough net worth to invest on my own, but you can invest alongside other investors in a fund. This generally requires a lot of work and almost needs to be a full time job if you want to make money, but it can be cool to really put your money where your mouth is. A lot of times, people say some project is awesome, but would never back it.

This is really as much as you feel comfortable with. Most investment sites have risk profiles that help gauge how much you're willing to put in. If any one of my investments went to zero right now, I wouldn't freak out just as long as they all didn't.

In terms of interest, I'm relatively interested but only from the standpoint of having my money work for me while I work. I know a few people in the financial industry who were pretty much set for life before they reached 30. I still focus most of my efforts on work and building a project that I can work on beyond retirement. My dad retired and got bored really quickly. I think finding something that you're really passionate about outside of money is really what's going to bring you lifelong joy.

Roth IRA through Vanguard, 401k through my employer, and trying out Acorns now as well, which seems to be similar to Qapital.

A lot of people, especially younger people, do not adequately prepare for retirement. If you can afford to start young, you should, even if you can't max out Roth contributions, for example, something is better than nothing at all.

Yep, I have a Roth IRA, a pension (I work for the quasi-state agency...all the state benefits, none of the state BS), and few other retirement plans from past companies (Simple IRA, 403(b) plan, 401(k)) that I need to get wrangled together.

I am not trying to be Pluggy McPluggerton, but I use a service called Digit which scans my bank account and randomly grabs a few bucks here, a few bucks there and puts it into a savings account that I can interact with via texting. I use that to save cash and dump into my Roth IRA at the end of the year.

Personally, I am super interested in this topic because as I get older I actually want to retire from the daily grind and focus on other pursuits...like maybe brewing.