Thinking about hitting 401k limit with May Bonus

Stonks only go up...

Serious note, if you have the money (and we aren’t at an all time high), why not? Lump sum dump in and focus on funding other accounts for the rest of the year.

Your bonus goes into your 401k?

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Will it affect how your company matches?

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Company will do catch-up in December $3-4k impact

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Your bonus goes into your 401k?

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X % of my pay goes in 401k

Do instead of regular 10-12% I am going to up percentage so bonus goes more to 401k

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X % of my pay goes in 401k

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My bonus never goes to my 401k , payroll treats it as separate

Guess it would depend on how flexible your plan is about changes. I can login at any time and change contribution percentages but sometimes they take a while to go into effect. I moved mine from 20 to 15 a few weeks ago because I was making more than anticipated but the change won't go into effect for a couple months.

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Guess it would depend on how flexible your plan is about changes. I can login at any time and change contribution percentages but sometimes they take a while to go into effect.

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Usually it happens same payroll period. I got it up to 25% so May 15th is going to hurt. A little annoyed they won't tell us bonus basically until day of. My guess 25% won't get me to $19,500 hopefully close.

Might get jelly of month lol

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Question for board how risky is this versus doing it over the whole year?

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Last year, I front loaded and bought my whole year’s worth of contributions in mid-February. Three days later, things began to tumble. Then they came back. I ended the year up, still (60% S&p, 20% small cap, 20% international).
You’ll never know when a peak or trough occurs until later.
You’ll end the year up (in the s&p. I’m sure the total market is similar) about 3 in every 4 years.
After “losing” 30% of what I put in over the course of a few weeks, I still maintain a 100% equities portfolio, don’t sell (so I never really “lost” any money at all!), and plan on front loading annual contributions in the future.
For a “boring” strategy where you buy and hold, which is typically what a 401k is going to offer, it’s probably got more upside than downside.
Being aware enough to ask the question probably means you’ve already won the game, and the difference between the two isn’t going to be the difference between you retiring earlier/later/richer/poorer.