<prompt> Human: I read here a lot about people maxing out their 401k. It seems like a basic thing to do and is often step 2 or 3 in the I just started working, what do I do? advice posts, right after pay debt and build and emergency fund. I am 24 years old, making 57,500 gross and I currently contribute 10 pre tax to my 401k no matching and max a Roth IRA. I usually feel pretty good about my retirement savings, but coming here kind of puts a damper on that when I see people maxing their 401k and IRA savings. If youre in that position, how do you save for things like a down payment on a house after those big contributions to retirement and then living expenses? I have a few hard financial goals I am saving for buying a multi family home to rent, mainly and some softer goals I am considering starting a small business. If I contributed the 30 that would be necessary to max my 401k, these goals would be far, far off. And I do get tax free growth, but it is not much good if I cant touch the money until retirement So retirement savers on PF, tell me your secrets.  <response>: I maxed out my 401k and IRA, and gave up on home ownership as a goal. That is one extreme endpoint in answering the how do you balance? question. But that is not an acceptable answer for you because your goals are different.---You will have to strike a balance if you cant max out your retirement accounts and save for a downpayment. One way to strike the balance would be not maxing out your retirement accounts.Another way would be to earn more so that you could max out retirement accounts and save for downpayment at the same time.Another way would be to reduce your expenses so that you could max out your retirement accounts and save for downpayment at the same time.---Im not sure pf actually encourages people to max out their retirement accounts to the detriment of all other kinds of goals. If you see posts where people are discussing maxing out, it is often in a context where someones income allows them to do this and also still have money left over to earmark for medium-term or short-term goals. 