^ everything 493 said and also no tax on the GROWTH.

with a traditional you DO have to pay tax on the growth..

so the longer it has to grow, the more sense a conversion makes because youre going to come out way ahead if it grows even normal amount
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It depends on your situation. I think your first should be any company match. I get 6%, so I make 100% on my 401k contribution. After that, it depends. I don’t want all of my investments long term retirement. I also get a 15% discount on my ESPP. Everyone’s situation will be different.
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While taxes may go up, so does the standard deduction. I think there is a balance between tax deferred and after tax retirement savings.
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The existing standard deduction is scheduled to be halved and taxes increased as it stands today. The goal is to give the government as little as possible. I’d suggest finding a good CPA.
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Links to the current standard deduction being halved?
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for sure. I was referring to folks who don't have the option of a 401k.... if you can do a 401k ROTH then that's better than an IRA.
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I didn’t realize that, and I agree with what you said about different buckets. I have 20-23 years left, unless one of my investments really pays off or I get a windfall.
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I’m not disagreeing with you, but there would still be advantages depending on income to make a tax deferred contribution. For example if you need to lower your tax burden, or if you wanted to make the biggest contribution you were able, but couldn’t max it out.
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I’m lucky. My boss is a CPA, so I can discuss it with her.
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going back to itemized deductions I guess!
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I think it has a place with variable incomes if incomes are down.

I think there is a case to be made that if you want out of some investments that have a loss in a taxable account you could do Roth conversions for the loss amount. But that sounds…painful.

I think there is a case where you lose an expense and could do Roth conversions for that amount without much impact on your life. For instance, if you pay off your mortgage you could do a Roth conversion for the P&I of your mortgage and not feel it too much. But my (not very confident, but it’s what I’d do) opinion is if you have the time horizon to capitalize on ROTH benefits, you’re probably better off to take whatever tax savings you are trying to utilize and stick the cash amount of the tax savings into a taxable brokerage (or increase contributions to a qualified plan if you have room).

I recently made this ridiculous spreadsheet that evaluated some qualified plan options, the theory of the exercise was to maximize total assets given a set cash flow. My bias was to put everything into a Roth optioned 401K, but in point of fact, sticking it in a traditional 401K and investing the tax savings into a taxable brokerage outperformed the Roth + tax across every variable I looked at. Thats all assuming current tax rates which 493 points out could change soon.

I’m not ready to take the leap on the basis of potential tax changes like 493 is suggesting, but it’s probably the smart play. The 2017 tax cuts were signify d if they go the other way Mr T predicts PAIN. But who the hell knows what will happen. I wouldn’t have predicted Trump of all people would sign off on SALT limitations and as much as democrats rail on capital gains tax they never do anything about it. So I’m not willing to eat tax on the current betting on the future with tax. But I’m almost certainly wrong.
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Great resource to have for sure!!
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Yup, assuming the Congress doesn’t get something done. We’ll see, we know how those clowns work!
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I’ll miss that standard deduction.
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I’ll trade you the standard deduction if I get to keep the tax brackets and rates.
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