On the other hand, I once worked for a large well known company that actually gave me a pension. I can't remember what it was, but I think something like 5-10% of my total compensation went into this pension plan, which was essentially a mutual fund (although you could opt for long stock in the actual company instead). It took 3 years to fully vest. I stayed 5. When I left they sent me a letter literally saying that they thought the cost for me to hire a lawyer to get my money back would be more than the amount of money I could retrieve so they were going to keep the money. By that time I was already so annoyed with them that I concluded they were right: it wasn't worth my effort to extract a few tens of thousands of dollars from them (hey, this was a long time ago -- salaries were a lot smaller then ;-) ). Six months later the company dissolved under allegations of accounting fraud. The upper management actually got the bankruptcy court to allow them to use the entire pension fund as "retention bonuses" so that the company would have a chance of succeeding under their illustrious reign. That was an eye-opener. I had a few friends who had worked there for 20 odd years and were counting on that pension. Eventually I think they were able to sue the bankrupt company to get a portion of the money back. Of course, none of the fraud allegations went to court and the executives retained their retention bonuses (after having done nothing to save the company).