Gunfighter

To expand on what OOfff said, it is a race to the annual 415C limit with maximum contributions onto the 401a. Once you reach the 415C limit, the company contribution is paid out as 401k excess. My general approach has been to contribute 75% of income into the 401a until reaching the limit sometime in March/April. For 2022 this approach would yield 50K of 401a after tax and 11K of company contributions for a 61K limit. This approach yields a $0 paycheck for the first few months of the year and frontloads your accounts. If you prefer dollar cost averaging over the year, put 75% in cash and meter out the investing over the remaining 9 months.

tennisguru

Ahh, so the goal is to slam as much of your own money in ASAP to hit the $40.5k limit before your money + company contribution hits the $58k cap?

positiveR8

I believe the only caveat to that strategy is any money that is paid out in excess of the 415(c) limit is subject to ALPA dues, so you’d be paying an additional 1.85% that you normally wouldn’t pay on that income.

Gunfighter

ALPA has adjusted dues collection so we don't pay dues on self-inflicted 401K excess. I have confirmed this on my 2021 pay statements.

notEnuf

Until the “oops” bill shows up in the mail at least. Delta has under collected in the past. Is there documentation for this?

Nantonaku

Is Paul Krugman on that list endorsing it?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoo...his-peers/amp/

theUpsideDown

The BBB makes the EITC permanent. Incentivizing people to work using the earned income tax credit has been a huge economist ask for a while. The best part is, youre not giving anyone any extra money. You are just giving people the tax refund slowly over the course of a year instead of all after the filing. Gets rid of the "splurge" mentality from idiots, and forces people to stay in their budget more months of the year, and its not a costly item because its tax money you were going to refund anyway. If you strip everything out of the BBB except for the EITC continuation, the bill would pass in record time. Making the EITC permanent is so popular on both sides of the isle, progressive democrats tried hanging 4 or 5 other nonsense programs on top of it hoping everyone would swallow the pill. Even now, as its down to 1.5 from 3.5 (or 6 before that), its still a hard pass. EITC makes a lot of sense, but it isnt going to convince America to turn into Europe.

PilotWombat

Now we're really into thread drift, but I always find this discussion interesting, if for no other reason than because many people just don't know where they sit. I don't mean that in an antagonizing way, but more just because people don't know the numbers and only see their neighbors.

Income based middle class:
For a wealth based definition, the 30th percentile sits at about $25k and the 70th percentile is about $320k.

So depending on which definition you want to use, if you make more than $135k/yr or have more than $320k in assets, congratulations, you are no longer middle class. Pretty much every year 3+ pilot at big D beats the income definition, and I'm sure a large chunk beat the wealth definition too.

Income: https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
Wealth: https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percenti...united-states/

NuGuy

I believe 415c excess is not duesed by ALPA, but 401a excess is. Big furball at ALPA last year about it if I recall correctly.

Gunfighter

You are correct about the furball and I've been searching for emails on the topic. If I recall the final answer was naturally occurring 401k excess above the 415C limits are charged dues. If the 415C limit was because of 401a after tax contributions, you were not assessed dues until reaching the normal earnings threshold.

The problem that happened this year is pilots like me who front loaded the 401a had a few months of zero dollar paychecks with no dues collected, even on Delta Flight Pay. This resulted in the invoices that were sent out asking for dues on flight pay from earlier in the year. I have added my invoice to my YTD dues check off amount and confirmed that it is 1.85% of flight pay. I was not billed for dues on my 401k excess.