These 401(k) 'benefits' may actually hurt

Every car has a reverse gear. You use it to get out of trouble. But you generally don’t use it much because it can also get you into trouble. If you’re like me, you avoid using reverse like the plague. Really. I always search for a parking spot I can drive through – just so I don’t have to back out when it’s time to leave. This might be a psychological response to the time I would back out of the driveway as a teenager. You remember that, don’t you? I failed to check my blind spot and knocked over the family basketball hoop; thus, symbolically ending my childhood and putting a dent in my father’s new car simultaneously.

Unless you’re a Hollywood stuntman, you don’t use reverse to drive a car forward. After all, they don’t say it’s hard to drive by looking at the rear view mirror for nothing. For most of us, putting the car in reverse means delaying the arrival to our ultimate destination. Sometimes we take a wrong turn and we have to back up to return to the correct course. Sometimes someone stalls in front of us and we have to back up to get around the obstacle. If we could just go straight to our journey’s end, we would avoid reverse altogether and proceed full speed ahead.