A 401(k) quietly does two jobs at once — your contributions compound, and your employer's match compounds right alongside them. Move the dials and watch decades of payroll deductions turn into a real number.
A typical plan matches 50% of contributions up to 6% of salary.
Assumes monthly compounding and contributions at the start of each month. Match is modeled as a flat percentage of salary for simplicity. All math runs locally in your browser; nothing is sent to a server.
An employer match is an instant, guaranteed return on the money you set aside — often a 50% or 100% bump before a single dollar is invested. Then it compounds for decades. Skipping it is one of the few genuinely costly mistakes in personal finance, because no other asset class hands you that kind of head start.
Notice how the gap between the emerald line (your total balance) and the grey line (raw contributions) widens late. The first decade feels slow; the last decade does most of the heavy lifting. That asymmetry is the entire argument for contributing early and never pausing.