Originally Posted by
Gunfighter
Outstanding advice. I'd also suggest reviewing an after-tax (Roth) contribution as an option to the 18K pre-tax. Roth accounts give you more estate planning options, tax free growth and the option to pull from a retirement account that won't increase your taxable income like pulling from a pre-tax retirement account does.
Outside of your Delta plan, if you do not have a traditional IRA, look into a back door Roth IRA. If you have a traditional IRA already, the backdoor Roth gets more complicated.
A Roth usually only makes sense if you're going to be in a higher tax bracket at Retirement and most Delta pilots earn over the limit to even contribute to a Roth and a Roth 401K (which we have access to at Delta) once again makes sense only if you have so much money saved that you are using it for estate planning - even with that you are better off converting to a Roth IRA after retirement than putting taxable (probably already taxed at 33% or higher) income into a Roth 401K.