Originally Posted by
Meme In Command
MBCBP question:
Chatting with a buddy about where to put our PS. He mentioned not maxing 401k and waiting till the end of the year to max it to avoid how much cash goes into the MBCBP and optimize how much cash goes in hand. Does it actually work like this if you wanted to work around the MBCBP?
the long answer is to call the R&I guys and walk through the flow of dollars. You can also see the latest R&I comm for the max amounts for 2026.
here’s the short version. Every dollar you make from flight pay/flight advance and PS gets 18% allocated to the 401k. Company dollars always go first. Catchup dollars are always only your dollars and are a separate category. You can put catchup in any time regardless of how much the company has contributed. Back to the 18%… the company will be putting in the money until the 401k hits $72,000 OR your income hits $360,000. The max the company get get into the 401k for 2026 is $64,800. That’s 360k @ 18%. So if you wait and want to put in money later in the year you would only be able to get $7,200 in there. To limit MBCBP you have to limit your contributions (so $7,200). If you want to get your full personal contributions in, you need to be aggressively putting in money at the beginning of the year because once the 401k hits $72,000, all company contributions go to the MBCBP.
feel free to send a dart or check out the R&I docs in comply for “where’s my money” and “delta savings plan strategies”. A good bit of time was spent on trying to make those easy to understand for those who don’t speak 401/415/414 IRC.