Traditional or Roth 401(k): The Decision Most People Skip
If your employer offers both a Traditional and a Roth 401(k), you are facing a decision that gets far less attention than it deserves.
Most people focus entirely on how much they're contributing and give little thought to how those contributions are taxed. A Traditional 401(k) gives you a deduction today; a Roth 401(k) does not, you pay tax now so the money can grow tax-free later.
Which is better depends on your current income, your long-term goals, and, critically, what you expect tax rates to look like when you eventually withdraw. That last part is where a lot of guesswork creeps in.
We built our 2026 Retirement Tax Checklist specifically to help people ask smarter questions about future taxes before these decisions get harder to unwind.
You can download it at InterlockFinancial.com, just click “Slott Into Retirement” at the top of the homepage.
Traditional vs. Roth 401(k)
