I’m suddenly in the situation where we can afford to max our retirement accounts. I will be swapping from 100% Roth to a mix of Trad and Roth 401k to reduce taxes exceeding the marginal jump but it still makes sense to have some of it as Roth at the lower tax rate, after removing Trad contributions.
How do you make sure to max your contributions with Roth? To make it harder, my company contributes from our annual bonus to the 401k. Do I just take my best crack at my % contributed and gently reduce the % near year-end, and likely end up a few hundred below max?
My company does not allow equal $ contributions which would make this trivial.
I would guess your company payroll software may stop contributions once you’ve hit the cap. If so, put your best guess % in.
In this case no, due to changing employers. But I’ll ask for next year.
@ArthurItas You are correct in a normal year. They were stressing not to over-contribute in orientation and didn’t note the cap in full-year employment.
Agree you’ll have a little extra work monitoring the max if you changed employers. Put in your best % estimate, then update it in November.
That is the approach I have taken. If your new employer uses one of the largest 401k administrators (vanguard, principal, fidelity) they are pretty quick to apply your new contribution rate.
I’ve never missed the 401K EE contribution max by more than $100 (1% of a single paycheck)
I would rather under-contribute than have to deal with the hassle of taking out excess contributions and the associated tax return/filing forms/headache
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If you end up contributing too much they’ll just refund the excess. Maybe not ideal but not the worst situation if you want to max out.
I agree with take your best guess now and adjust in November.