In my career as a financial advisor, I have worked on my share of 401(k) plans. From the description of the 401(k) plan that Donald Trump offers his employees, saving for one's personal retirement is challenging.
The article, as reported by Bloomberg News, calls his plan "stingy." Perhaps that's how he has amassed a personal net worth of over $8B (I still don't believe he's worth that much, given his propensity to exaggerate).
Most companies will automatically enroll employees into 401(k) plans, if for no other reason than to more easily comply with the compliance testing that they are required to follow (a certain percentage of rank-and-file employees have to participate in order for the more highly compensated employees to be able to participate). Trump doesn't do this. You have to "opt-in" which is a statistically surefire way of reducing the amount of amount of participation.
Most 401(k) plans for employees will begin shortly after you are hired. At Trump, Inc, you have to wait a year.
Most 401(k) plans will offer a matching contribution. At Trump, Inc, you have to wait until the end of the year to qualify for the match. So if you started work on January 15, 2013, you don't qualify to participate for the 401(k) until January 15, 2014, and you won't collect a cent of any corporate match until January 1, 2015. And to make it worse, the corporate match has a 6 year vesting schedule. You don't get to keep 100% of that 2014 match until January 1, 2020. This is the longest vesting schedule allowed by law, or the worst plan idea you can install for your employees. I suppose this is an improvement for when Trump, Inc wasn't providing a match at all! Turns out he stopped the match during the recession and was among the slowest companies to turn it back on.
The average savings in the Trump plan is a paltry $20,000.
The article says nothing about investment choices, which largely determine the success of the participants savings results. I'd be curious to see the list. As an aside, one of the best ways to save for retirement is your company's 401(k) plan due to the pre-tax nature of the contribution, the regular periodic payments into your savings plan ("dollar cost averaging"), the tax free nature of the growth of the investments over time, and the company matching contribution which is essentially free money.
In other news, a Trump golf course in Los Angeles just lost the PGA Grand Slam of Golf due to his incediary remarks about Mexicans.
Have a nice day.