That is why I don't plan on being here. If I'm going to be miserable I want to be miserable someplace warm and where I can get wet. Plus I never expected to have anything in a 401 by the time the gubmint gets done raiding em. I got in too late anyway to have any real investment and with my salary there is no way I can afford to increase the contributions now. When my wife died I had to actually cut them just to get by. Bad decisions in my early 20's cost me dearly now. Biggest error of my life was not going into the military and making it a career. I'd have been retired 5 years ago and with a decent income. Young and foolish is horsecrap. It is young and bag of hammers stupid is what I was.
Jim, I have conversations with people like you all day, every day...I hear the good, the bad, and the ugly....often tragic and very personal/intimate details of peoples' personal and financial lives, and am paid to help people solve problems and provide options/investment education. Obviously my firm (and federal regulations) prohibit me from doing any of that here on the internet, and of course, I don't know enough detail about you to do any such thing, nor are you asking anyone here to do such a thing. That being said, some generic things I can say are:
1) are you contributing to your 401K at a sufficient level to receive full company 401K matching $ ? (assuming your firm offers 'matching'.)
2) if you're 'cynical' about the stock market and very risk averse, consider at least contributing to your 401K to the extent you're getting full company match, and then considering (assuming your 401K plan has this option, and the vast majority of them do) putting your $ into a money market/stable value oriented fund, focusing on capital preservation...that way at least you can (mostly) guarantee you won't lose your contributions and matching $.
3) don't leave your firm until you're fully 'vested', otherwise you will forfit some/all your company matching $.
4) stick around at your firm until you're at least 55 yrs old and if you do a withdrawal the year you turn 55 yrs old (or older) there's no 10% age based withdrawal penalty.
5) did you have the forsight (or option) to make ROTH 401K contributions ? The earnings on such contributions are exempt from taxes/penalties IF you don't withdraw them before (a) you're 59 1/2 yrs old AND (b) the 1st ROTH contribution was made at least 5 yrs ago. (that's not to say ROTH 401K contributions are necessarily the best way to go....there are pros and cons to everything, but if you did choose that option, and pay taxes on those contributions already, when you had more income and could more easily afford to do so, then it will feel nice to not have to pay those taxes in future)
6) depending on the country you are going to move to, and depending on if you plan to remain a US citizen, the US has 'tax treaties' with many countries such that, if you go through the appropriate process/procedures your 401K withdrawal will not be taxed as though you're a US citizen....in many cases the US tax rate would be 0% and you're just subject to the tax laws of your 'new' country.
7) I'm assuming you've 'run the numbers' on your retirement ? If not, my firm (as I'm sure all the others that are in this business too) offers free WWW based financial planning tools/spreadsheets/projections to help you see if you're on track to fund your retirement, or if you're not on track, these tools can quantify (via projections/assumptions) what it would take for you to get on track to adequately fund your retirement.....you REALLY should take advantage of such free services that are likely available within your 401K....our firm also (for free) offers professional help with the tools via our 'lifetime solutions' group too. These tools can be a real eye-opener and I'm convinced that I help change people's lives on a daily basis, so my job is both high stress but sometimes highly rewarding too. Some people who call me walk away saying 'WOW!', it's like I showed them a brand new universe they had no conception even existed!