Having a retirement account is, and has always been, fucking retarded. You aren't saving money on taxes. You are just deferring taxes until some point in the future when you will most likely be earning more money, not less, because as you get older, your skill level goes up and therefore so does your income. In addition, tax rates don't really seem to go down very often, do they? You'll put money away today and tax rates 20 or 30 years from now will be higher than they are today. You'll just end up paying more taxes on your money in the future. Also, do you really want to put your money into an account so that you can gamble in the manipulated stock market? So that Vanguard can take 1% of your money in fund management fees every year? So that the compounding growth of your money can get interrupted every time the market takes a nosedive? Fuck that. If you have money in a qualified retirement account, move it into a fixed, deferred annuity with a reputable, mutual insurance company where you can earn a guaranteed rate of return that will compound over time and never, ever go down. No need to liquidate or pay taxes and penalties. Just let it sit and grow. That's how you save money. You don't gamble your future in the stock market. If you want to gamble, do it with other money that you're not planning to retire on. If you're still earning money, you should also look into the Infinite Banking Concept and you'll see how to build wealth the correct way, and recapture some of the interest that you lose every time you spend money or take out a loan from a bank.