steps 5-6 combined into retirement step?

[rrelyea]

User feedback:

I would combine "government retirement funds", "employer retirement funds", and "mega backdoor roth" into a single step called "retirement accounts". There are not enough differences between the three to warrant different steps in my opinion. It seems to be a holdover from the days when most 401k's had terrible investments and fees and IRAs were almost always better. In my experience that's not true nearly as much today, when many 401k's are better than IRAs. But this is a stylistic choice.

[rrelyea]

Additional detail from same person: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7047148#p7047148

I'll add a comment here I provided to OP over PM. I suggest lumping IRAs, 401k/403b's, and mega backdoor Roth into a single step. In my opinion it's much cleaner and simpler to consider all these options together. Many "investment priority" guides put IRAs before workplace plans, and I believe this is a holdover from several decades ago when most 401k's were lousy and had 1%+ fees. Nowadays, my experience is that most 401k's are on par with or better than IRAs, plus can have other benefits like not interfering with backdoor Roth IRAs. (A comparison between IRAs and 401k's is here; there is no general winner.) In fact, the typical Boglehead case is someone with mid or mid-high income (phasing them out of deductible IRA contributions), and no pension but access to a decent 401k with index funds, who should prefer traditional contributions into their 401k before a Roth/backdoor Roth IRA.

I suggested this change the last time the wiki page was updated, but did not get much traction. But especially here with making a tool, I think it makes sense to combine them. The single "retirement account" page will have one or two IRAs (depending if single/married), and as many retirement plans as the individual or couple has access to. Each retirement plan can have checkboxes that enable features like Roth contributions and mega backdoor Roth capability, then the user can enter their limits into each. The tool should prioritize "regular" contributions over mega backdoor Roth though, because there is no good reason to do MBR before regular contributions. I guess ultimately it's the OP's decision how he wants to do it.

[rrelyea]

retitled this issue to combining 5 & 6, not 5-7...because mega backdoor is always last.

[rrelyea]

I changed both step numbers to be 5, and added text to both of them to choose the order. Interested in more feedback.

[rrelyea]

had to change those back to 5 and 6, instead of 5 and 5 due to a bug that popped up. keeping issue open to consider how to improve.