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We do a mix. When I've had a maternity leave that year, our income drops, so I've upped our Roth contributions those years because we don't need the tax benefits as much. If I was really on top of it, I'd do Roth conversions those years (all company contributions are pre-tax).

I will say that we've become a double income family and I anticipate not having dual-income in the future, so we've mostly shifted to pre-tax this year.

@gotkimchi: does your work make it easy to adjust your contributions whenever you want? I have self-service so I just submit changes online and it gets processed automatically, which has allowed me to play with amounts as much as I like. I also tried using paycheckcity.com to estimate how making changes would affect my take-home, and although it was pretty close I could never get it to calculate quite correctly...worth a try, though. My philosophy is just to bump up my Roth percentages as much as I can, whenever I can.

@gotkimchi: I'm not an expert on this stuff, just an interested follower. You said you'd prefer to have most of your retirement savings in a roth401k. Why? Do you expect your income tax bracket in retirement to be higher than your current income tax bracket?

@gotkimchi: Here's a calculator I found, if you want to play around with plugging in different numbers.

The hard part for me is always guessing our tax bracket in retirement. We're in our late 30s, but still retirement seems so far away. I have no idea what I'll tax bracket will actually be at that point, so I usually go by the conventional wisdom that we'll be a lower bracket. But i don't really know for sure.

https://www.aarp.org/work/retirement-planning/roth_vs_traditional_401k_calculator.html

@Anagram: Roth IRAs also don’t require you to take required minimum distributions (RMDs) when you reach 70 1/2. With tax-deferred accounts, the government forces you to take a certain percentage—and pay taxes on it—every year after you reach that age. The bigger your balance, the more you have to take out, even if you don’t need it to live on. You can reinvest it, of course, but only after paying the taxes, and having to take RMDs can end up bumping you into a higher tax bracket. With Roth IRAs, you can truly only withdraw what you need (if your money is in a Roth 401(k), you do have to roll it into a Roth IRA to get this benefit but that’s easy to do). Also, in the event there’s money left in your retirement accounts when you die, it’s far more beneficial for your heirs to inherit a Roth than a tax-deferred account. Another benefit is you can withdraw your Roth contributions (but not earnings) penalty-free after you’ve held the account at least 5 years, even before you’re 59 1/2—not that most people should be using that option regularly, but there are scenarios where that flexibility can be a huge plus.

My plan is to aim for about a 50-50 split between traditional and Roth assets. When I retire, I’ll roll my Roth 401(k) portion into a Roth IRA and withdraw only what I need to supplement our income after taking the RMDs from my traditional account. Since all distributions from a Roth (principal and earnings) are tax-free after 59 1/2, I’d rather draw down the taxable account first and let the Roth keep growing for as long as possible, even in retirement.

Of course, this could all get upended if there are any changes to the laws governing retirement accounts, but I think it’s a good idea to hedge my bets with both types.

@Adira: you have to roll your Roth 401(k) into a Roth IRA. I edited above to clarify that.