So I received a form today about my 401k bonus deferral, asking me to specify a dollar amount that I would like to contribute to my 401k tax free. I thought about it pretty long and hard and decided that I didn't actually want to put anything more into my 401k. I reason:

My income level allows me to fund a Roth IRA (contributions are after-tax, but grow tax deferred and are not subject to tax upon withdrawl), probably up to $5000, but only for this year because my income is likely to be over the ca next year, and unlike a 401k, I can withdraw my contributions (but not earnings) freely in case of an emergency. I also have the flexibility of buying stocks, ETFs, and whatever else I want in a Roth IRA account, (PIMCO total return, anybody?), which I don't with my 401k.

On the other hand, my tax bill is getting unwieldly and immediately contributing to a 401k will make me see more "take home income" for funding the same amount.

The latter 401k pro reason seems like an awfully shallow consideration, all in all, and given that I have NO idea what my bonus will be, I may not feel like tying a substantial portion of it up for another 40+ years. On top of that, I won't be with my employer for long and I am going to roll it out of the company and lose approximately $600 or so upon quitting. Making me whole on the other side of the equation is that I get to sell some of the company shares I purchased (for a hefty gain), should I choose to. Those gains are untaxable (or rather, already taxed) and represent a direct injection to my cash situation. I have a few thousand bucks in gains on that end.

I plan on saving at least half of my bonus, minus buying a few items (bling?) that I want and perhaps doing other funny things with it, like bidding for Tiffany items at Christie's.

In addition, I have opened a new entirely separate account for the Galapagos Fund at HSBC, which is an ultra-high rate savings account. That's good news because the monthly income from my sorta high rate checking account with Charles Schwab is kicking the crap out of my functional "cash management" First Republic account. The Galapagos Fund is relatively small so every little bit helps. Additionally, I am going to contribute 50% of all $1 bills in my possession to the fund, and will compell mr man to do the same.

Long story short: No additional 401k for me.