SECURE 2.0's mandatory Roth catch-up rule, effective January 2026, forces workers earning $145,000+ in FICA wages to direct all catch-up contributions into Roth accounts. Since both Roth and brokerage use after-tax dollars, Saulnier and Stein favor the Roth for its permanent tax-free growth and bankruptcy protections. The Roth 403(b)'s nine-and-a-half-year lockup until age 59½ is the primary drawback, making liquid emergency savings essential before choosing this route.
Many financial professionals are salespeople paid on what they push, not whether you end up wealthier. A fiduciary is the opposite. The SEC legally requires them to put your interests first.
Advisor.com's free matching tool pairs you with vetted fiduciaries from major national firms, all in under three minutes. See who you match with today. You're 50, earning $150,000, and your plan's Roth catch-up rule just changed the math on where those extra retirement dollars should land.
Send them to the Roth bucket inside the workplace plan and the money is locked away until 59½. Route those after-tax dollars into a regular brokerage account and you keep liquidity but give up decades of tax-free growth. That is the tension a listener named George brought to The Retirement and IRA Show, Q&A episode #2633, hosted by Jim Saulnier and Chris Stein.
George's 403(b) will not permit in-service distributions until 59½, so a Roth contribution today is money he cannot touch for roughly nine and a half years. He also asked whether workers in their early 60s have a special reason to route the enhanced catch-up into the Roth. The SECURE 2.0 mandatory Roth catch-up provision took effect January 1, 2026.
It was enacted in 2022 as part of SECURE 2.0 and originally scheduled for 2024, but was delayed to give employers and plan administrators time to prepare. It applies to workers who earned $150,000 or more in FICA wages the prior year. The original statute set the threshold at $145,000; the amount is adjusted annually for inflation.
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