So I've been rethinking my contribution to my 401K. Since my wifes company no longer matches 401K contributions would it be better to stop contributing to the 401K and instead take the extra money that was going into the 401K and instead start paying down the mortgage on our rental property. Essentially switching from investing in buy and hold in stocks to buy and hold in real estate. We're not planning on trying to do any flip work on the real estate, just simply renting it out for the next 30 or 40 years to generate some income while paying down the mortgage and hopefully getting some capital gains from appreciation of the property in the next 30 yrs. The reason why I'm toying with this idea is that real estate seems to have some pretty big tax advantages over investing in stocks in a pre-tax retirement account. My assumption is that this idea of having the top 1-5% of the US population subsidize the rest of the country and still running deficits is eventually going to catch up to us. As a result I would expect the tax rates on all income levels to shoot much higher in the next 20 to 30 yrs.....therefore is it any better to not pay 30% tax now but then have to pay 40 or 50% tax when you retire (regardless of whether your retirement account made any money), versus investing in rental real estate that will probably keep better tax advantages....... So something I was toying with and wanted to throw out and see if anybody has knowledge on whats better real estate versus stocks when looking at the possible tax rates being jacked up upon retirement.
you get tax relief on pension saving so you are better off paying into a pension plus you might be able to get a salary sacrifice pension and save national insurance too.
Without the 401k match, to give you a near 100% return, then its not worth the post-tax risk investing in a 401k. The risk is tax rates will have to increase in the future and as such when you withdraw from your 401k in the future it will be at higher tax rates. Invest/save outside of the 401k.
If you can refi your mortgage at a 4.5% rate, why would you pay down the loan? Inflation will probably be higher than 4.5% in the near future. I rolled my 401K into an IRA and manage the account myself. I wouldn't have it any other way.