Roth or traditional: which retirement account wins?

The entire difference is when you pay tax. Traditional contributions go in pre-tax and get taxed on the way out; Roth contributions are taxed now and grow and withdraw tax-free. Mathematically, if your tax rate never changed, the two would finish identical, so the whole decision is a bet on whether your rate today is higher or lower than your rate in retirement.

That makes the practical answer cleaner than the debate suggests. Early career and lower brackets favor Roth strongly: you pay tax on the seed instead of the harvest, and decades of growth come out untouched. Peak-earning years in high brackets favor traditional, taking the deduction at your most expensive rate. Roths also skip required minimum distributions, a real estate-planning perk. Genuinely unsure? Splitting contributions hedges the tax-policy bet, and any employer match beats both considerations; take it first.