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micha8st t1_iu75l0k wrote

I don't think it's that obvious.

First of all, I'm old. Roth wasn't even invented until I'd been contributing to my 401k for 10 years. Then it took another 14 years before my employer decided to add Roth to my 401k.

73 + 37 = 110. 22%(73k) + 12k = 22,060. That's 20% of your combined income. General recommendation is 10-15%. 20% is steep, unless you're behind.

Fidelity recommends having 1x your (combined) salary saved for retirement by age 30. How close is your combined retirement account value to 110k?

I'm old, but not quite old enough to withdraw from my retirement accounts. Wifey is younger than me. So if I were to quit at 59 1/2, at least 3/4 of my retirement money will be in Traditional, only 1/4 in Roth. But.

For those years between retiring and RMDs, I can spend out of my Roth, and convert Traditional to Roth. That will lower my tax rate, allowing me to get money into Roth.

There are 2 good reasons to go Traditional, in my opinion:

  1. you need the tax break to hit your savings goal. I don't think that applies to you.
  2. Congress. You never know when Congress might get squirrelly and change the rules on you in a negative way. For all we know, some future Congress might disallow social security to anybody holding a Roth account. Or to anybody holding a Traditional account.

Don't think Congress can't ruin your plans? My parents-in-law planned to take money out of my FIL's workplace retirement account to pay for college. Before the eldest daughter graduated HS, Congress changed the rules and those withdrawals were no longer permitted. So I married a girl with Student Loans.

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findingnemo202020 OP t1_iu76krq wrote

We are a little behind. We have approximately 70k in different retirement accounts between the two of us.

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