I left my previous employer in January of this year and have been waiting to receive my matching funds from last year (deposited June 15th of this year). I was looking at the company’s 401k rules and see that I am only 20% vested after my 2.5 years of service. So basically what I was expecting was that I would get 20% of my matching funds for the previous year seeing how I am not longer an employee. It appears however that I got 100% of my matching funds.

Now we aren’t talking about a whole lot of money here ($2300 matching), but I was expecting to only get about $400. So now here is the question. Did my company goof by giving me the entire match? I am certain that if I try to withdraw the money now I will only get my roughly $460 that is vested, but I was under the assumption that the day I quit my job my employer would go into my 401k and take out all money that was not vested. Apparently I assumed wrong.

So now I think I would be a moron to transfer my money out as I basically am getting $1840 of the company’s money for free, which can grow and compound for the next 30+ years and I get to keep the interest. At 10% return that is over $40,000 in interest (before taxes in 2040) by the time I turn 60.

Am I completely overlooking something here? This seems entirely too good to be true?