<prompt> Human: I have a Pre-Tax 401k that I contribute to through work. I contribute 18 for me, this is 14k per year and I have 27k in there so far.I want to start an IRA, but not sure which one? I make 78k per year and I am 24.I have heard the guideline of do you think you will have a higher tax bracket now or when you go to pull out the money? I dont know what this means.. I expect to make significantly more throughout my career and I assume most other people would too, so shouldnt the answer always be that I am in the lowest bracket currently? Or conversely, if this means once I retire and am on Social Security, and have zero income, wouldnt that mean you are always in a lower tax bracket at retirement? Someone explain so I can understand! So what do I do? Contribute extra to my 401k on top of the 18, do I open a Roth and which kind, or do I do nothing because I am already saving a good amount?  <response>: The sidebar is very helpful for these types of questions.The question about tax brackets has more to do with what you will pull from those accounts when you retire. Generally most people will be in a lower tax bracket after they retire, but that is not always the case.The goal of retirement accounts is to fund them enough so that you can pull a certain amount every year once you retire until you die.Right now Im assuming you are not married you are in the 22 tax bracket and you will stay there until you make over 82.5k. You have to guess as to what level of income you think you will live off of once you retire, but if you think you will live off less money or you think you will be in a lower tax bracket bc you are married then you should put money into a traditional IRA.However, lets say you want to put money into your retirement so that when you turn 65 you would to buy a nice house, an annuity, or some other large one time payment then you should put your money into a Roth IRA, a Roth IRA is not tax deductible when you put the money in but all of the growth is not taxed when you take it out.Since you already contribute to a 401k, you might want to put money into a Roth to balance it out, either way it will be tax advantaged but this way you see some now and some when you retire.The benefits of putting money into your own IRA instead of the company 401k is that you have more freedom to choose how you want to invest.Whether you should save extra or not is up to you, almost everyone here will recommend you save more because it will bring you closer to an earlier retirement but theres also value in putting that money elsewhere like a vacation fund, down payment, home improvement etc. 