401k age 50 catch up contributions

[NWOutlier]

Hi Everyone,

quick question; I'm 50 this year, I max out my 401k (18500) as pretax.  Since I am 50 this year, I can contribute an additional 6000 dollars...  can i choose that to be in the ROTH portion of my 401k? or do I need to keep it as pretax?

I feel I am a bit light on roth balances between my wife and I, I figured an extra 6k in roth dollars would be good for the next few years.

[DreamFIRE]

You can contribute to both and split the contributions between them any way you want.  The maximum is the aggregate of both.

[NWOutlier]

excellent!  I think I will do that... 18,500 pretax, 6000 after tax. 

[aboatguy]

...and you can put an extra 1K in your IRA too

[NWOutlier]

Great point; I do put the extra 1k into a roth ira, and fund my wifes roth ira, but all my pretax accounts are growing kinda big... I would preferr more tax free money... so I'll max both roths and add roth dollars to my 401k as well...

now another thing I want is a larger taxable account as well.. so many savings options, so little time :)


NWOutlier - Steve

[DavidAnnArbor]

Personally I would max out the pretax savings right now in your life.
There will be time to make the pretax to roth rollovers in the future - at likely a lower marginal tax rate.