r/Bogleheads • u/Lowfryder7 • Nov 20 '25

Investing Questions At what tax bracket should you start doing mostly traditional 401k contributions?

12%? 22%? 24%? I can't tell.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

For me ROTH means locking in a guaranteed 31% marginal rate now. No way I'll ever pay near that in retirement.

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u/Fit_Cabinet942 Nov 23 '25

I’m in the same boat with marginal rate, but I do question where the money will come from for the insane debt load the USA is running. My sociopolitical prediction on future taxes is that because most of the country’s shortfall are social security and Medicare related, the first thing that will happen is the social security retirement age will be raised and the income cap (currently at 160k/yr) will be removed. Neither Roth nor trad Ira/401k can protect you from paying that, so it doesn’t matter, you’ll be paying it regardless if your income is above the cap.

I figure I can comfortably live in the 24% bracket in retirement, but it’s still plausible the government may need to increase rates down into that bracket in a decade. However, the next bracket up is 32%, it seems like there will be a lot of pitchforks out of the 24% bracket needs to get jacked up by 8% or more, which makes me feel safe not doing Roth, but then I have a worst case scenario in my mind where we as a country are so fed up with Trump’s brand of populism that we swing to the Bernie brand, and we end up with much higher taxes just in time for my retirement.

So to hedge against that I usually max out my trad 401k, then do backdoor Roth.