401(k) Venting, avoiding taxes and getting your company to pay you more money

Finally, I'm going to be eligible to start the 401(k) program at work! After casually discussing it at the lunch table, the one thing that I noticed is that there is fear and confusion when it comes to changing the dollar amount that shows up in your bank account when you sign up:
1. It sounds like people think that they won't be staying at their company that long, so they won't start on their plan, because, "why bother, I'm not going to save that much, I'll be leaving soon! " I'm thinking that these said folk don't realize that the company is going to give you a little contributing match your savings (in my case up to 6% of earnings). What does that mean? It means, "even though we didn't tell you about this plan at orientation, you actually bothered to sign up for the 401(k) , so we are going to give you even more money!" whoohoo for you! It's a bonus you barely had to do any physical work for, except fill out a form!
2. All of these contributions to your 401(k) are tax free- if you think about how much money Uncle Sam steals from your paycheck every week, it's just too fabulous of an opportunity to keep some of your earnings away from his grubby 28% hands by putting it in your 401(k) account. Income is taxed WAYYY too much. Investments are taxed wayyy less. And taxes are not going to touch your 401(k) account for a long long time!
3. Lastly, if you leave your company and you don't really care for the management of the company 401(k) plan, you can take the money with you in a traditional IRA and still not have to pay taxes on it. So who cares if you only worked there for a couple of years, you got some tax-deferred moolah in your hands that you get to keep for forever until retirement! Yippeee! This Smart 401(k) Moves When You Leave A Job, on the Suze Orman website says some really concise things about rolling over.
4. Lastly, don't go asking me if you want to pay for your overseas backpacking trip to Guam by cashing out your 401K hanging out at your old employers 401K, it makes my skin crawl. All of the friends that ever mentioned cashing out I wanted to yell at them. This is why: Not only will you get charged income tax that you avoided, but you also get an additional 10% taken away. AND you don't get to take advantage of the compounding calculator fun that an account is supposed to perform for you!
Anyway, hope I didn't make anyone feel stupid because they didn't know all this stuff, I'm just making sure everyone I know who reads this will make sure that they are signed up to take advantage of avoiding uncle sam and make their employers pay up, by signing up!

Eating Real Food

With all of the recent news about food manufacturing, I've acquired a recent slight paranoia about industrially processed food and eating food that I pay other people to make for me, like at a restaurant. One of my friends, A. has also informed me that she has stopped buying food products that say "Made in China." I was never conscious of this before, but I realized a lot of my Asian food products have the "Made in China" label.
As a result, I've been hunting for food from farms and looking for local produce. So not only do I visit Union Square Farmer's market, I also finally went to Concord, MA to Verrill Farms. They are just starting to sell tomatoes, and delicate peaches from B.'s hometown of Bolton, MA. And i found another farm, Turkey Hill Farm, in Haverhill, where they have some very good blueberry and raspberry picking! It is run by a Mr. Butt, who is plenty nice, with some New England quirkiness. But since I can't eat just vegetables, I also have to make a run to either Market Basket or Shaw's , and depending on traffic, Whole Foods, to get the other stuff.
On the shopping list-Cherry tomatoes in a bright orange and reddish pink, some Bolton Peaches, Green onions with a nice purple cast at their necks, a head of young red leaf lettuce, and carrots! Wild Blueberries! Golden Rasberries! Zuchinni that comes in green and yellow!