Graham Holdings Co 401(k): Vanguard, match 1% max
The 401(k) Savings Plan for GHC Affiliates · GHC · CIK 104889
Vanguard is the recordkeeper named on the Form 5500 filed for this plan, the company that keeps the account records. Where to log in, and what the filing says.
Maximum employer match, as a share of pay
1%
Graham Holdings Co matches 100% (dollar-for-dollar) of the first 1% of pay.
Graham's Form 11-K filings for plan year 2025 describe three separate 401(k) plans. The terms on this page are read from the 401(k) Savings Plan for GHC Affiliates. Not all of them state a match formula, so each one is listed below with the group it covers and what its filing says.
From the Form 11-K filed June 25, 2026 ↗, covering the plan year ended December 31, 2025. Page data last updated July 28, 2026, when the Form 5500 bulk data was last refreshed. Why filings lag
On this page: which plan you are in · the formula, word for word · when the money becomes yours · who can join · who holds your account · what the plan reports to the DOL · how it compares · what to do next
Which Graham 401(k) plan are you in?
Graham's Form 11-K filings for this plan year describe three plans, and not all of them state a match formula. Find the plan you are in before you take a number off this page. The terms in the rest of the page are read from the 401(k) Savings Plan for GHC Affiliates.
The 401(k) Savings Plan for GHC Affiliates (the plan this page answers for)
The filing states no limit on who this plan covers · Form 11-K ↗
1% of pay, at most
The Savings Plan for Graham Holdings Company
The filing states no limit on who this plan covers · Form 11-K ↗
Match not stated as a formula
The Kaplan, Inc. Tax Deferred Savings Plan for Salaried Employees
Salaried Kaplan employees · Form 11-K ↗
Match not stated as a formula
One row per plan, taken from the three Form 11-K reports this site has read for the plan year ended December 31, 2025. Each maximum comes from that plan’s own filing and describes only that plan.
What Graham puts in, and what the plan costs
What Graham puts in
$495
a year, at a $49,500 salary.
The match paragraph, word for word
“Contributions equal to 100% of their pre-tax and after-tax contributions up to 1% of their base salary, which does not apply to employees covered under a collectively bargained union or employees of Clyde’s.”
What you contribute to collect all of it
Contribute at least 1% of your pay to collect the full match.
That is $495 a year at a $49,500 salary, and it scales with your own.
Vesting score
100 out of 100
How fast the employer’s money becomes yours. Higher than 48% of the 369 schedules we have scored.
It measures vesting speed and nothing else. It says nothing about the size of the match, what the plan charges, or the funds inside it.
Share of the employer's money that is the worker's at hire and at each of the first 6 anniversaries: 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%. The score is the average of those 7 readings.
Vesting, word for word
“Upon enrollment in the Plan, participants are fully vested at all times in all amounts held in their accounts.”
The wait before the match starts and the year-end true-up appear above when the filing states them. Neither is part of the score, and a filing that is silent on one of them is not a plan without it.
What the plan costs, against plans of its size
16th percentile
$20.49 per participant in plan-paid administrative cost, cheaper than 84% of plans with 5,000+ participants.
What is Graham's 401(k) match formula?
Graham's 401(k) employer match tops out at 1% of pay. One rate up to one limit is the commonest of the four shapes a match formula takes.
| Match formula | 100% (dollar-for-dollar) of the first 1% of pay |
|---|---|
| Maximum employer match | 1% of compensation |
| Conditions | Only employees of Clyde’s who are designated as hourly employees and Kaplan, Inc. who are designated as part-time employees and certain collectively bargained union employees are eligible to receive Company Matching Contributions (generally 1% of base salary) if they are not eligible to participate in The Retirement Plan for Graham Holdings Company |
| Current formula effective | January 1, 2024 |
| Other employer contribution | Union employees may be eligible for a Matching Contribution up to 3% of their base salary depending on their position and length of service. |
| Other employer contribution | Clyde’s may make a discretionary Company Matching Contribution for its participating employees equal to a percentage (to be determined at the discretion of Clyde’s) of the employees’ pre-tax or Roth contributions not in excess of a percentage (to be determined at the discretion of Clyde’s) of the employee’s compensation. No such discretionary or supplemental contributions were made in 2025. |
At a $60,000 salary, contributing 1% ($600) earns the full employer match of $600 for the year.
What the filing says, word for word
“Contributions equal to 100% of their pre-tax and after-tax contributions up to 1% of their base salary, which does not apply to employees covered under a collectively bargained union or employees of Clyde’s.”
Source: Form 11-K filed June 25, 2026, SEC EDGAR, corroborated by the filing's inline-XBRL facts · SEC ↗
What is Graham's 401(k) vesting schedule?
Graham vests the employer match immediately: 100% is yours as soon as it is paid in. Nothing is forfeited when you leave, which is not true of the two schedules that vest over time.
| Employer match vesting | Immediate: employer match is 100% vested when contributed |
|---|---|
| Your own contributions | Immediate: always 100% yours |
Vesting, word for word
“Upon enrollment in the Plan, participants are fully vested at all times in all amounts held in their accounts.”
Source: Form 11-K filed June 25, 2026, SEC EDGAR · SEC ↗
Who can join Graham's 401(k), and is enrollment automatic?
Graham's filing does not mention automatic enrollment, which is not the same as the plan having none.
| Plan entry | upon hire |
|---|---|
| Match eligibility | Only employees of Clyde’s who are designated as hourly employees and Kaplan, Inc. who are designated as part-time employees and certain collectively bargained union employees are eligible to receive Company Matching Contributions (generally 1% of base salary) if they are not eligible to participate in The Retirement Plan for Graham Holdings Company |
| Automatic enrollment | Not mentioned in the filing (not proof of absence) |
Eligibility, word for word
“Only employees of Clyde’s who are designated as hourly employees and Kaplan, Inc. who are designated as part-time employees and certain collectively bargained union employees are eligible to receive Company Matching Contributions (generally 1% of base salary) if they are not eligible to participate in The Retirement Plan for Graham Holdings Company”
Source: Form 11-K filed June 25, 2026, SEC EDGAR · SEC ↗
Who holds your account
Schedule C of the Form 5500 filed for plan year 2024 reports Vanguard, filed as “THE VANGUARD GROUP, INC.”. That is the company paid to keep the account records: what is in an account, what went into it, and usually the site a participant signs in to. The trustee that holds the plan’s assets can be a different company, and this filing does not name it.
2,337 plans on file name Vanguard as their recordkeeper. Of those, the 2,333 with a computable fee have a median plan-paid cost of $97.87 per participant.
Participants log in at Vanguard ↗. 401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Vanguard or with any other recordkeeper, and takes nothing for this link. It is here because that is where the account is.
| Recordkeeper | Vanguard |
|---|---|
| Recordkeeper EIN | 231945930 |
What does the Graham plan report on Form 5500?
The Graham plan reported $76.6M in assets and 6,174 participants for plan year 2024.
| Total plan assets | $76,572,801 |
|---|---|
| Participants | 6,174 |
| Plan-paid admin cost per participant | $20.49 |
How that cost compares
This plan pays $20.49 per participant. The median across plans in education is $94.85, from the 824 of 861 whose Form 5500 yields a per-participant cost.
Read from the Form 5500 filing of The 401(k) Savings Plan For Ghc Affiliates, which has no page of its own here.
How does Graham's 401(k) match compare?
Graham Holdings Co's maximum 401(k) match of 1% of pay compares with a median of 4% across the 269 companies in our data with a computable formula.
Employers worth reading next
Of the six employers below, two report the same recordkeeper, three land near Graham's maximum match and one vests on the same schedule.
Maximum match 3% of pay. Same recordkeeper, Vanguard.
Maximum match 3% of pay. Same recordkeeper, Vanguard.
Maximum match 1% of pay, level with Graham.
Maximum match 1% of pay, level with Graham.
Maximum match 0.25% of pay, 0.75 points below Graham.
Maximum match 4.5% of pay. Vests immediately too, like Graham.
What do Graham's other 401(k) plans say?
The Savings Plan for Graham Holdings Company
The filing states no limit on who this plan covers
Graham Holdings Co's filing discloses no employer matching contribution for this plan (plan year ended December 31, 2025).
- Employer match vesting
- Immediate: employer match is 100% vested when contributed
- Automatic enrollment
- Yes: default deferral 4% of pay; 30-day opt-out window; auto-escalation +1%/yr to 10%; default investment: a Vanguard Target Date Retirement Fund with the target date closest to the year in which the participant reaches age 65
What the filing says, word for word
“Substantially all employees in this Plan participate in The Retirement Plan for Graham Holdings Company. Accordingly, these employees are not eligible for Company Matching Contributions for participating employers in the Plan”
The Kaplan, Inc. Tax Deferred Savings Plan for Salaried Employees
Salaried Kaplan employees
Graham Holdings Co's filing discloses no employer matching contribution for this plan (plan year ended December 31, 2025).
- Employer match vesting
- Immediate: employer match is 100% vested when contributed
- Automatic enrollment
- Yes: default deferral 4% of pay; 30-day opt-out window; auto-escalation +1%/yr to 10%; default investment: a Vanguard Target Date Retirement Fund with the target date closest to the year in which the participant reaches age 65
What the filing says, word for word
“Substantially all employees in this Plan participate in The Retirement Plan for Graham Holdings Company. Accordingly, these employees are not eligible for Company Matching Contributions for participating employers in the Plan”
What can you do next?
- Read the Form 11-K on SEC EDGAR ↗
Form 11-K filed June 25, 2026, SEC EDGAR. Every match fact on this page comes from it.
- Changed jobs? Find an old 401(k) ↗
The Department of Labor's Retirement Savings Lost & Found, a free government database.
- This year's IRS contribution limits ↗
The official deferral and catch-up limits every formula operates under.
Questions this filing answers
What is Graham Holdings Co's 401(k) match?
Graham Holdings Co matches 100% of employee contributions up to 1% of eligible pay (plan year ended December 31, 2025).
When does the Graham Holdings Co 401(k) match vest?
Immediate: employer match is 100% vested when contributed.
Does Graham Holdings Co's 401(k) plan have automatic enrollment?
Not mentioned in the filing (not proof of absence).
Who is the recordkeeper for Graham Holdings Co's 401(k)?
Vanguard is named as the recordkeeper on the Form 5500 filed for The 401(k) Savings Plan For Ghc Affiliates for plan year 2024. That is the company paid to keep the account records: what is in an account, what went into it, and usually the site a participant signs in to.
Source
The match formula, the vesting schedule and the enrollment rules on this page were read from one document: the Form 11-K annual report that Graham Holdings Co filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the plan year ended December 31, 2025. Each of those fields carries the filing sentence it was read from, expandable where the field appears. Nothing on this page was supplied by the employer to this site.
The plan assets, the participant counts, the plan-paid fees and the recordkeeper come from a different document, the plan’s DOL Form 5500 annual return, and the section that reports them links it. Comparisons with other employers are computed across the filings named in the section they appear in.
Read the filing on SEC EDGAR ↗
| Document | Form 11-K annual report |
|---|---|
| Filed with | US Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR) |
| Filed by | Graham Holdings Co |
| SEC CIK | 104889 |
| Accession number | 0001628280-26-045535 |
| Plan | The 401(k) Savings Plan for GHC Affiliates |
| Period of report | December 31, 2025 |
| Filed | June 25, 2026 |
401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Graham Holdings Co, with the Securities and Exchange Commission or with this plan’s recordkeeper, and publishes this page without their involvement. It republishes a public filing and says where it came from.
Cite this page
401(k) Monitor, “Graham Holdings Co 401(k) plan facts”, from SEC Form 11-K accession 0001628280-26-045535, plan year ended December 31, 2025.
