How to balance future flexibility with tax advantages
My wife and I are both in our early twenties. Over that last year, our income has dramatically increased to around 290k combined. In the past couple years we've maxed out our Roth IRAs and HSA, took our 4% 401k matches, and that was pretty much it. We were at around 150k income, and that made sense for us a the time, but now we would like to be saving a good deal more than that. We would like to buy a house in about a year, probably in the 400k range, but other than that we don't have very many short term financial goals. We would like the flexibility to go down to part time work in 5-10 to have kids. If we stay in our current career paths our income has a strong likelihood to 3-400k each over the next 10-15 years. We're in a HCOL area, but currently moving to a medium one. What are some good methods for figuring out the allocations to different account types? We want to be saving 70-80k a year. Am I dumb for not just maxing out the 401k? that would still be around 20k a year going into an after tax brokerage. Roth vs Traditional 401k is also a consideration.
Posted Sep 14, 2026, 7:53 PM UTC