<prompt> Human: Hi all, I feel like I might be missing some key piece of information. I seem to see most people here literally screaming well, all caps that people should almost always be investing in a Roth IRA instead of a traditional one. But...why? Heres how Id been viewing it: I try to put in my 5,500 a year to a traditional IRA at Vanguard, and then as much as I can afford goes into my 401k at work - which usually pushes me back down into a lower tax bracket from 22 to 12. Something Ive read here a few times in the last couple of days is that traditional only makes sense if youre expecting to be in a lower tax bracket when you get older. I get that the whole point of working and wages is that the longer youve been working, the more you should be earning and thus the higher your tax bracket. But...these are my retirement savings. I dont plan on touching these until Im not even working. Why would I expect to be in a higher tax bracket then compared to when Im working full time? Or am I missing some other piece to the puzzle? Thank you all. This forum has been extremely helpful to me so far!  <response>: In addition to all the advice others are giving you, please note that there are also income limits on being able to deduct contributions to both a traditional 401K and a traditional IRA at the same time. In many instances, those who are able to max out a 401K would not be able to deduct the contributions to the IRA due to their income levels, so there would literally be no downside to having it made to the Roth IRA instead either by directly contributing or utilizing a backdoor 