Just here to check your pace? Jump straight to the calculator — it takes four numbers off your last paystub.
As the end of the year approaches, I want to be sure none of our clients are leaving tax savings on the table. The first place I look is what I’d call the low-hanging fruit — the easy places to save on taxes that don’t require complex planning, multi-year projections, or moving anything around.
Your 401(k) is usually where most of it is sitting. Contributions come out before federal income tax, which lowers your taxable income for the year. In 2026, the employee contribution limit is $24,500 for those under 50, with a catch-up provision on top of that for anyone 50 or older. The limits went up this year, and they’re use-it-or-lose-it. There is no carrying unused room forward.
The client who stopped at the match
During a recent review, we pulled up a client’s payroll elections and found they weren’t on pace to max out their 2026 contributions — despite having the cash flow to support it comfortably.
When I asked why, the answer was one I hear often: they were “only contributing enough to get the company match.”
That’s a good baseline. The match is quite literally free money, and capturing all of it should be the floor for anyone whose plan offers one — it’s the first thing we check when we sit down with a new client’s plan documents . But a floor isn’t a ceiling, and treating it as one is how this happens. At their current election, they were on track to contribute $14,000 of an allowable $24,500, leaving $10,500 of contribution room to hand back.
What the gap actually costs
At a 29% combined marginal rate — 24% federal plus roughly 5% state — that $10,500 of unused room works out to about $3,045 in tax paid this year that didn’t have to be.
And that’s only the part you can see. It’s the up-front deduction being voluntarily forgone. It doesn’t account for:
- Years of tax-deferred growth. Interest and dividends inside the account compound without an annual tax drag.
- Optionality later. A smaller pre-tax balance is a smaller base for future IRA-to-Roth conversions — one of the more useful levers available in a low-income year or a down market.
- Early retirement planning. Strategies like a 72(t) election work off the balance you’ve built. Less in the account is fewer options at 55.
None of that shows up on a paystub, which is exactly why the election goes unexamined.
Where do you actually stand?
Four numbers off your most recent paystub will tell you. The calculator below is an estimate, not advice — but it will show you in about thirty seconds whether this applies to you.
One assumption worth naming: the tax figures below apply to pre-tax deferrals. Roth 401(k) contributions count against the same $24,500 limit, so the pace math is identical either way — but there is no up-front deduction on a Roth contribution, so the tax lines do not apply to that portion. Which of the two you should be using is a genuinely different question, and a bigger one than this article is trying to answer.
Are you on pace to max your 401(k)?
Four numbers off your most recent paystub. The figures below start as an example — replace them with yours.
Estimates only. This calculator is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation for your situation. It uses simplified assumptions and does not know your plan's rules, your full tax picture, or your other accounts. Confirm anything you act on with your plan administrator and your tax professional.
Your numbers
Where do I find this?
On your paystub, find the deductions section — often split into before-tax and after-tax. The line is usually labeled something like 401(k), 401K PRETAX, or RETIRE PRETAX, with two columns: this paycheck, and year to date. You want the year-to-date column.
- Leave out the employer match. It's listed separately — often
ER MATCHor company match — and it doesn't count against this limit. - Include Roth 401(k) contributions. Pre-tax and Roth deferrals share the same annual limit, so if you split between them, add both together.
- Leave out after-tax contributions that aren't Roth. Those fall under a different limit and don't belong here.
- Changed jobs this year? The limit follows you, not the plan. Add what you deferred at your previous employer — this is the one people miss.
No paystub handy? Your plan's website usually shows year-to-date contributions on the account summary.
- Year-end total at today's rate
- $0 against a $24,500 limit
- To finish at the limit, defer
- $0 per paycheck
- Your take-home drops by
- — per paycheck, estimated
Not sure what your plan allows, or whether maxing it is the right call at all? Send me your paystub using the buttons further down this page.
Figures above are estimates. How they are calculated, the 2026 limits used, and the full disclosures are in the notes at the end of this article.
It’s usually cash flow, not unwillingness
When we sit down with clients who aren’t maxing out, it’s rarely because they’ve decided not to. It’s almost always cash flow — or more precisely, not wanting to watch their take-home pay change.
That’s a real concern and it deserves a real answer rather than a lecture. Usually the fix is a reframe.
Solution one: backfill from the brokerage account
We had a client who wasn’t maxing their 401(k) specifically because they didn’t want their monthly take-home to move. They also had a taxable brokerage account sitting right there.
Say you’re $5,000 short of the limit and you have $100,000 in a taxable account. Raise the 401(k) election to the max, then sell $5,000 of securities to put that cash back in your pocket. Net effect on monthly cash flow: zero. All that happened is money moved from one of your pockets to another — and in exchange, $5,000 that would have been taxed this year isn’t.
Normally there’s a caveat here: selling appreciated securities realizes a capital gain, and that gain carries its own tax. In this case there wasn’t one. The gain was absorbed by losses we had already harvested earlier in the year, during the selloff in March.
That isn’t luck. Harvesting losses when the market hands us the opportunity is a standing part of how we manage taxable accounts, and this is precisely what those losses are for. They sit on the books doing nothing visible — we look for them everywhere, including in places most people don’t think to check — until a year like this one, when they quietly pay for a decision you wanted to make anyway. It’s the least glamorous thing we do and one of the most reliably valuable.
If you don’t have banked losses, this still works. It just means choosing which lots to sell with some care, or using cash you were already holding, rather than assuming the sale is free.
Solution two: time it around a bonus or commission
The other version of this is timing. Some plans let you defer directly from a bonus or commission payout. Where that’s allowed, you can direct a larger share of that payment into the plan and reach the limit without touching your regular paycheck at all.
Your bonus will be smaller. Your monthly budget won’t notice.
Whether your plan permits it — and whether the plan’s percentage cap applies to bonuses the same way it applies to salary — varies by plan. It’s worth a call to your plan administrator, and it’s a common enough question that they’ll have the answer ready.
Before you crank it to the maximum
Two things to check first, and the first one matters more than most people realise.
- Does your plan true up the match? Many plans calculate the match per pay period. Front-load, hit the annual limit in November, and the match stops when your deferrals stop — unless your plan has a true-up provision that reconciles it after year end. A plan with a true-up pays you what you would have earned anyway. A plan without one simply doesn’t, and nobody sends a letter about it. It is one line in your plan document, and it is worth knowing which kind you have. Spreading the increase evenly across your remaining paychecks avoids the question entirely, which is why the calculator above solves for a per-paycheck number instead of telling you to max out as fast as you can.
- Are you 50 or older? A new rule applies this year. Beginning in 2026, if your FICA wages from your employer in 2025 exceeded $150,000, catch-up contributions have to go into a Roth account rather than pre-tax. Those still grow and come out tax-free — but they don’t reduce this year’s taxable income, so if the up-front deduction is what you’re solving for, that changes the math on the catch-up portion.
And the obvious one: maxing out isn’t automatically the right move. High-interest debt and a cash reserve you’re actually comfortable with both come first.
Send it over and I’ll take a look
If you'd rather not work it out yourself, send me the document and I'll come back to you with what I'd change — and anything else worth catching before December.
- Your most recent paystub — this is the useful one. It has the year-to-date figure and your current election on the same page.
- Or your most recent 401(k) statement, if that's easier to lay hands on.
- Either works on its own. Both is better.
Both buttons open a message already addressed and filled in — you add the attachment, or type the four figures from the calculator above. No document has to change hands for me to answer the question.
Want to password-protect the file first?
Reasonable instinct. A paystub carries your name, your employer, and your earnings, and email isn't a vault. Locking the file takes about a minute.
- Pick a four-digit PIN — any four digits you'll remember. Don't use your Social Security number, and don't put the PIN in the same email as the file.
- Lock the file. On a Mac, open the PDF in Preview and choose File → Export, then tick Encrypt and enter your PIN. On Windows, most PDF tools have a Protect or Encrypt option. On a phone, it's usually easiest to send the file as-is and skip this step.
- Send me the PIN separately — a text message, or a second email on its own. Two channels is the entire point; a PIN sitting under the attachment protects nothing.
Many plan and payroll websites also let you download a statement that's already password-protected. If yours does, use that and just tell me the password it expects.
Or skip the file entirely. The four numbers from the calculator above tell me almost everything I need, and none of them identify you.
Please don't include your full Social Security number, account passwords, or card numbers in an email — we will never ask for them that way.
Bottom line
There are roughly three months left in the year to make changes — realistically a little less, because a payroll election made in mid-December won’t take effect in time to matter. Most of what you could still do about your 2026 taxes stops being available the moment the calendar turns.
The 401(k) election is the easiest of those items to check, and the easiest to fix. So let’s check the easy ones, and make sure you’re not leaving anything on the table.
Notes and disclosures
How the calculator works. Your year-end total is what you have deferred so far, plus your current per-paycheck deferral multiplied by the paychecks you have left. The take-home figure assumes a pre-tax (traditional) deferral and reduces only federal income tax — Social Security and Medicare are still withheld on money you defer, and state tax is not included. Every figure is an estimate.
2026 contribution limits. Employee deferrals are capped at $24,500. Participants who are 50 or older may add a catch-up of $8,000, and those aged 60 to 63 may add $11,250 instead. Source: IRS, November 2025.
This material is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. It does not account for your complete financial circumstances and should not be relied upon as the basis for any decision. Plan rules vary; confirm any contribution change with your plan administrator and payroll before acting. Sending a document does not create an advisory relationship. Blue Haven Capital is a registered investment adviser.
