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Traditional 401k vs Roth 401k - morfizm

Jul. 25th, 2016 09:42 pm Traditional 401k vs Roth 401k

Update: the original version of the post have bugs. Sorry about inconvenience.

Everyone is puzzled whether Roth 401k is better than Traditional 401k. Usually financial advisors will not give a good explanation why one or another is better. They tend to compare the same amount invested in one and another, which is wrong amount of investment, because IRS limit works differently for Traditional vs Roth. For Traditional it's pre-tax and for Roth it's after tax. Same amount invested in Roth is actually a larger investment.

To make things fair, I compared Roth 401k with a combination of Traditional 401k plus regular investments, so that we would look at the same amount spent pre-tax. The code below does the modelling. It assumes your current marginal tax rate is 50% (pretty common for software engineers in SF Bay Area), you'll invest up to Roth maximum every year for 15 years, make 10% annually less 3% inflation, have 6K company match limit (it actually doesn't matter for comparison! thanks rezkiy for pointing that out, which led to discovery of bugs in the original version of this post). All that matters is expected average tax rate at retirement, and it seems that breakeven point is around 20%.

     avg tax     Roth401k Trad401k+Inv
          10%       875588       941751
          15%       864363       896849
          20%       853137       851947
          25%       841912       807045
          30%       830686       762143
          35%       819461       717241

Here is the source:

# initial constants
class const:
    def __init__(self, retirement_effective_tax_rate):
        self.irs_cap = 18000
        self.company_match_limit = 6000
        self.current_marginal_tax_rate  = 0.5
        self.retirement_effective_tax_rate = retirement_effective_tax_rate
        self.long_term_capital_gain_tax_rate = 0.2
        self.inflation_rate = 1.03
        self.investment_growth = 1.07
        self.years_before_retirement = 15

# money made with Roth 401k
def roth401k(const):
    roth401k_account_value = 0
    roth401k_company_match_value = 0
    current_irs_cap = const.irs_cap
    current_company_match_limit = const.company_match_limit
    for i in range(const.years_before_retirement):
        roth401k_account_value *= const.investment_growth
        roth401k_company_match_value *= const.investment_growth
        roth401k_account_value += current_irs_cap
        roth401k_company_match_value += current_company_match_limit
        current_irs_cap *= const.inflation_rate
        current_company_match_limit *= const.inflation_rate
    after_tax_available_at_retirement = roth401k_account_value
    after_tax_available_at_retirement += (roth401k_company_match_value
                                          * (1 - const.retirement_effective_tax_rate))
    return after_tax_available_at_retirement

# money made with traditional 401k + investments
# if the same amount after tax is kept for spending.
def trad401kAndInv(const):
    trad401k_account_value = 0
    investment_account_value = 0
    investment_cost_basis = 0
    current_irs_cap = const.irs_cap
    current_company_match_limit = const.company_match_limit
    for i in range(const.years_before_retirement):
        trad401k_account_value *= const.investment_growth
        trad401k_account_value += current_irs_cap
        trad401k_account_value += current_company_match_limit
        investment_account_value *= const.investment_growth
        equivalent_roth401k_contribution_pretax = current_irs_cap / (1 - const.current_marginal_tax_rate)
        extra_investment = ((equivalent_roth401k_contribution_pretax - current_irs_cap)
                             * (1 - const.current_marginal_tax_rate))
        investment_account_value += extra_investment
        investment_cost_basis += extra_investment
        current_irs_cap *= const.inflation_rate
        current_company_match_limit *= const.inflation_rate
    after_tax_available_at_retirement = (trad401k_account_value
                                         * (1 - const.retirement_effective_tax_rate))
    after_tax_available_at_retirement += investment_cost_basis
    after_tax_available_at_retirement -= ((investment_account_value - investment_cost_basis)
                                          * const.long_term_capital_gain_tax_rate)
    return after_tax_available_at_retirement

def printAll():
    print "%12s %12s %12s" % ("avg tax", "Roth401k", "Trad401k+Inv")
    for retirement_tax in [0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.35]:
        r = roth401k(const(retirement_tax))
        t = trad401kAndInv(const(retirement_tax))
        print "%12.0f%% %12.0f %12.0f" % ((retirement_tax * 100.0), r, t)
    print

printAll()

Tags: in english, money, usa

43 comments - Leave a comment

Comments:

From:	ex_juan_gan
Date:	July 26th, 2016 05:31 am (UTC)

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Спасибо; мне все лень было это дело запрограммировать, я чисто интуитивно. Да.

(Reply) (Thread)

From:	morfizm
Date:	July 26th, 2016 05:49 am (UTC)

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Пожалуйста. Я тоже интуитивно чувствовал, что 401K лучше. Я думаю, что весь сыр-бор вокруг Roth в том, что на рекламках берут "одну и ту же сумму X", вкладывают её и туда, и туда, и смотрят, что получилось. Только забывая на минутку, что отложенные X pre-tax и X after-tax это объёмы вложений. Я же сравнил исходя из того, что в период накоплений after tax на руках остаётся такая же сумма.

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From:	morfizm
Date:	July 27th, 2016 03:55 am (UTC)

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Обновил пост. К сожалению, вычисления были неверны, и выводы тоже.
Roth бъёт traditional если ожидаемый средний налог на пенсии будет выше 20%.

Edited at 2016-07-27 04:00 am (UTC)

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	ex_juan_gan
Date:	July 27th, 2016 06:29 am (UTC)

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Ой. Буду думать.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	morfizm
Date:	July 27th, 2016 06:32 pm (UTC)

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Мне кажется, основной вопрос, на который надо ответить - будете ли вы single в retirement'е, и будете ли вы жить в Калифорнии в retirement'е. Roth лучше, если на любой вопрос ответ "да", но 401K может быть лучше, если оба вопроса "нет",

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	rezkiy
Date:	July 26th, 2016 06:13 am (UTC)

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shouldn't it heavily depend on tax bracket today vs at retirement? And if today's bracket is higher than at retirement, regular 401k should win; and if the other way around, Roth?

(Reply) (Thread)

From:	morfizm
Date:	July 26th, 2016 06:59 am (UTC)

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It heavily depends on both - tax bracket and company match.

At max company match (like Google's), break-even point is 50% today vs 47.5% at retirement. At 6K company match it's 50% and 37%.

Note two things:

1. We're comparing marginal tax rate today and more like average tax rate at retirement (when most income will be drawn from retirement fund). Even today marginal can be 20% higher than average.

2. At retirement one doesn't need to live in taxy California.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	rezkiy
Date:	July 26th, 2016 07:28 am (UTC)

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don't all companies match in pre-tax funds?

1, 2. 100% agreed.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	morfizm
Date:	July 26th, 2016 07:33 am (UTC)

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They do. For better intuition why company match matters, forget about it for a second, and imagine you're comparing putting 10K (pre-tax) in 401k vs putting 5K (after tax) in Roth. It's same pre-tax dollar, but apparently 401k would win, right? Big part of the potential for Roth to win lies in a fact that you can put MORE pre-tax money there, because 18K cap works both pre-tax and after-tax. But if you don't have this leverage, it's weaker position for Roth.

Now let's get back to company match: something similar is going on: you have, say $6K company match, and in 401K case you add the entire 6K to your 401K. In Roth case you add 3K. The bigger is company match, the bigger is the difference, and 401K variant wins more and more.

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Traditional 401k vs Roth 401k - morfizm

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