Any of you "people" use one of these? I'm talking with a RIA next week about retirement planning. Going to ask him about mega backdoor Roth or this if I can't do the Roth.

i'm guessing you're self employed?

Two jobs. One W-2 and the other as independent contractor.

what's the reasoning for wanting to do a defined benefit plan?

That's what I'm interested in learning about. Are they a way to save/invest much larger amounts than 401k's? Are there large tax deductions to these? A physician friend told me about his. It's his whole retirement plan now. Like I said I'll be talking to a professional and my friend gave me his contact who set his up. Just curious about any experiences people here may have had.

I was wondering if you were a doctor because that's who I hear about a lot for those types of plans. I think it's one of the few options they have for retirement because of the way they typically structure their companies.

I would figure out the nuances. They're a bit complicated. If you're wanting more investment options, you could look at a self directed IRA.

Will do. I'll have the conversations soon. If it's something cool I'll bring it back here.

Fee only RIA operator here.
We've done these but it's rare.

The TPA fees associated with this will be very big.

You can defer a lot of money potentially which is attractive.

Think of it in simple terms like this.

Defined Contribution plans (401k) you are defining how much you can contribute to the plan and the benefit you receive is TBD based on market performance.

Defined Benefit plan is opposite. You define how much you want to receive annually from your account at some future date. So if you want to receive 100k per year for example in income you may need to contribute a lot of money to the account to achieve that goal. Potentially a lot more than 30k per year.

If you do this the cost of running it will be high and it's usually something you'll have to commit to for maybe 4-5 years at a minimum for it to make sense.

Hope that's helpful.