The Roth IRA question I get asked the most

People ask which is 'better,' Roth or Traditional, like there's one universal answer. There isn't, because the two accounts are really just two different bets on the same question: will your tax rate be higher now or in retirement?

Traditional gives you the tax break today and taxes the withdrawals later. Roth taxes the money today and lets it grow and come out completely tax-free later. If your tax rate is the same both times, the two are mathematically identical. The whole decision comes down to which side of that rate you expect to be on.

The hidden question underneath 'which one is better' is really two separate guesses: do you expect your own income and tax bracket to be meaningfully higher or lower in retirement than it is right now, and do you think tax rates in general will be higher in the future than they are today?

As a rough starting point: early in your career, when your income and tax bracket are probably lower than they'll eventually be, Roth tends to make more sense. In your peak earning years, sitting in a high tax bracket now with an expectation of a more modest income in retirement, Traditional often wins.

It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. Plenty of people split contributions between both to hedge the uncertainty, since none of us actually knows what tax rates will look like decades from now. If you're not sure, splitting is a perfectly reasonable way to not have to be sure.