Ep #132: Closing the Contribution Gap: The Payroll Math, the Super Catch-Up, and the Cash Balance Lever

What percentage of your paycheck is actually going into your 401(k) right now, this pay period, not what you elected back in January? If you'd have to go check, you're not alone.

In this episode, Jared breaks down a new wrinkle in this year's contribution limits: surgeons turning 60 through 63 get a super catch-up of $11,250 that replaces, rather than stacks with, the standard $8,000 catch-up, bringing the total to $35,750. He walks through the payroll math on a stale January election (a flat per-paycheck number that has to triple or more once only a handful of checks remain before December 31), and why waiting until November to change it is often already too late once payroll processing lag is factored in.

Then he covers the bigger lever most of this conversation misses entirely: the cash balance plan, which runs on the actuary's funding schedule rather than a payroll election, and can dwarf the 401(k) catch-up figures for a surgeon in her late 50s or 60s.

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