Turning 401(k) confusion into opportunity

Student Experience

Turning 401(k) confusion into opportunity

When Luke Newell received a job offer after his summer internship, his excitement turned to confusion when he reviewed his 401(k) benefits.

“I had heard of it before, but I wasn’t super well-educated on it,” said the Class of 2025 University of Virginia graduate, who studied finance in the McIntire School of Commerce. “I was curious about how to make it work for me and how it would fit into my budget after college.”

He turned to his father, Jamie Newell – also a McIntire School alum, a former venture capital lawyer and a recently retired federal housing regulator – for guidance. Not only did Jamie Newell explain what a 401(k) is, but he then built an entire app to teach it to other recent graduates.

The Newells looking at a phone with their app on the screen.

The Newells access MaxMy401k on a mobile browser. The web-based app has two publicly available versions: MaxMy401k.com, targeted toward recent college graduates, and MaxMy401k.net, tailored for parents of recent graduates. (Photo by Erika Nizborski)

MaxMy401k is a web-based app designed to help recent graduates understand how their salaries, taxes, employer matches and spending choices interact with their 401(k) contributions and balances over 20 years.

Instead of confronting users with a contribution decision from the get-go, the app walks users through a sequence of scenarios, each building on the last. The first, called “MyMatch,” shows exactly how much a recent graduate needs to contribute to capture the full employer match – money that would otherwise go unclaimed.

Subsequent scenarios demonstrate what more ambitious saving could accomplish, such as reaching a million-dollar balance through “MyMillion” or maxing out IRS contribution limits with “MyMax.”

Luke and Jamie Newell posing next to each other in a garden.

Jamie Newell, right, says his son Luke Newell’s first benefits package inspired him to create MaxMy401(k). It’s a web-based app designed to help recent graduates understand how their salaries, taxes, employer matches and spending choices interact with their 401(k) contributions and balances over 20 years.(Photo by Erika Nizborski)

Along the way, the app reveals what Jamie Newell calls the “hidden government match.” Since traditional 401(k) contributions reduce taxable income, users can receive tax savings on top of their employer’s contributions. In Luke Newell’s case, maxing out his contributions cut his federal and state tax bills by about $4,500, which exceeded his company’s match.

“It’s not free money the way an employer match is,” Jamie Newell said. “You pay the government back eventually. But the present value of what you would have paid today is much higher than the present value of a tax bill in 30 or 40 years.”

The final stage, “MyBudget,” asks graduates to map out their monthly expenses, including housing, food, transportation or student loan payments and see immediately how small adjustments reshape their projected balance. Lowering one monthly budget category by $100 can create a $100,000 difference in the future 401(k) payout, Jamie Newell said.

Ryan Nelson is a professor in the McIntire School of Commerce and has stayed in touch with Jamie Newell since Newell graduated from the master’s program in management of information technology in 2005. Nelson was an early supporter of MaxMy401k and even used the app as a case study for his students to analyze and give feedback on. (Contributed photo)

“I’ve been able to see how much I’ll have in my bank account in future months based on my actual spending, with taxes, my 401(k) contributions and projected expenses all subtracted from my gross monthly spending income,” Luke Newell said. The budget sacrifices he made have been easier than expected, he said.

The app’s UVA connection goes beyond father and son. Ryan Nelson, a professor of commerce and director of the Center for the Management of Information Technology at the McIntire School of Commerce, taught both of the Newells, two decades apart. Nelson stayed in touch with Jamie Newell since Newell completed the Master of Science in Management of Information Technology program in 2005. When Jamie Newell reached out to share what he had built, Nelson was an early champion.

Nelson saw the app’s benefits for his own son, a freelance videographer without access to a company benefits program, prompting him to suggest the Newells expand the app to serve freelancers as well.

He also saw the app’s natural fit in the classroom. Nelson teaches a course in digital product management, which includes interface design, so he brought MaxMy401k to his students as a real-world case study. He said his students recognized the long-term value of starting early and maxing out contributions from the beginning. Their feedback directly shaped the final product.

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“The app has the potential to have a huge positive impact on so many new graduates as they take their first job,” Nelson said.

For Jamie Newell, the app reflects a commitment to the idea that education doesn’t end at graduation, a notion he traces back to his time at UVA.

“If UVA hadn’t continued to spark lifelong learning events, like the Knowledge Continuum,” he said, “I would have never built this app.”

became publicly available on the Salesforce App Exchange in February. A version designed for parents, , offers family subscriptions with up to five licenses and provides parents with the chance to share their own 401(k) experience with their kids.

Luke Newell has already walked several friends through the tool, helping them set up their own 401(k) contributions after starting their first jobs.

For the elder Newell, the MaxMy401k payoff speaks for itself. “Your future self is going to be pretty darn happy,” he said.