No worries. I wished I asked more questions when I was younger. Sock that money away!

So for the employee contribution it's 18,000$ limit TOTAL? I thought you could put 18k in your 401k and 18k in the 401k Roth and 5,500 in a non IRA Roth. (If you were under the income limits) And then 53k total for employee + employer contribution for the 401k.

402g limit is 53,000 total. 35k employer, 18k employee. You'll make too much to qualify for a Roth IRA.

As far as the 401k, you can contribute your 18k under either Roth (pay taxes now) or traditional (par taxes later) or any combination. Personally I contribute 50/50 Roth/traditional. Spreads the tax liability between now and then.

Bottom line, you can't contribute more than 18k/year and be tax deferred on either end.

Plus $6k once 50 years old, so $59k. Also, at the higher incomes ($218,750), once the company exceeds $35k contribution you have to reduce your own 401k contribution to prevent anything over the limit going into the pilot's (and pilots') health account, unless you want it to.

You can and should contribute to a traditional IRA (after every pre tax option is maxed out) then roll it into a Roth. At least the funds will grow tax free and I don't believe there is a limit to the amoun you can roll. It may create a tax on it but still less than taking it out when you start withdrawing it.

But this is a pilot board and your talking finances so.....there's that.......

Also if you have self-employment income from a side job you have yet another $59k bucket to put funds into a SEPIRA as long as its income from the 1099 income. So you can put $118,000 away tax free each year.

At what point is this excessive?

Say I'm 35 right now. UAL is going to put enough away (assuming 16% and no changes to pay, tax rules, etc) enough for well over 5 million bucks.

I figure I will invest elsewhere with money I can use before retiring (real estate, college savings for kids, etc) while making the minimum contributions to the UAL fund required to max out tax advantages... But 10 million in the 401k just seems like putting too much where I won't be able to use it.

College fund would be a good start...

My $.02

If you go into retirement and it feels like you've doubled or halved your usable income, you saved too much/little respectively.

Never met anyone who said, my financial plan derailed because I started saving to young or saved to much.