<prompt> Human: I know you need it to live on etc etc. But we had a huge market crash about a decade ago and most of my coworkers lost A LOT. infact now they work just to try get their retirement account back up. If you put everything you have like 40 after bills etc and then lose half of it in 10 years, what was the point?Also traveling at 6567 etc doesnt sound as much fun as traveling in early 30s. Why is no one mentioning a healthy balance of life now vs life when you retire?So instead of having 1.5mil when I retire, I have 1 mil when I retire and use 500k on things now.Right now I have a 503b, a differed comp 401k and a roth IRA. I dont max any of these things but live stress free and take vacations with the family multiple times a year. Some of the things we have done I most likely couldnt do at certain ages so waiting until I retire for them seems silly. A few of my wifes co-workers havent been out of the state let alone out of the country.What other incentives other than live comfortably are there to max retirement accounts? If I die in 10 years my retirement accounts are also moot points although my wifedaughter will get themTL;DR: Why is there no inbetween talk of retirement accounts and everyone suggests maxing first?Assistant: Your co-workers who lost a lot 10 years ago should have all of that money and a LOT more back in their retirement accounts because of how much the market has grown since then. The only reason they wouldnt is if they got scared and decided to drain what was left of those accounts, andor stopped putting money into it.My retirement accounts only took a few years to build back what was lost, and then has just really grown far beyond what it was thanks to the market gains.Human: I doubt they drained the accounts if they are still workingAssistant: No, but they may have sold and not bought back inHuman: that would have been really dumb to do.  <response>: And this is exactly what they did if they havent returned to the same balance and much more. 