Scenario 1: If you believe that your marginal tax rate after retirement will be higher than your marginal tax rate now, you would prefer to max out your Roth th

Scenario 1: If you believe that your marginal tax rate after retirement will be higher than your marginal tax rate now, you would prefer to max out your Roth than you pre-tax now. Many people in tech will be taxed at the top income rate now and at the top income rate in retirement as well; it seems likely that tax rates will have to rise in the future as we're obviously not running a sustainable balance of federal inflows and outflows now. Scenario 2: If you want to funnel as much money as possible into your employer's plan, you might want to use a Roth vehicle to do that. (Your pre-payment of taxes on it means that $100 in a Roth is worth more than $100 in a pre-tax vehicle.) Your 401k plan might not support mega backdoor 401k contributions (many plans don't allow after-tax contributions [distinct from Roth]) and you might have other IRAs that would drag in the pro-rata rule for backdoor IRA contributions.