Roth, Traditional, or taxable: which actually wins?
Enter your income now and in retirement, your age, and what you save each year. See the real after-tax dollars you'd take home from each, including the capital-gains tax a Roth quietly avoids.
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Sample result
PreviewAfter 30 years, after-tax take-home
Traditional
$544,000
Roth★
$558,000
Taxable
$493,000
The Roth quietly avoided ~$58,000 in capital-gains tax
vs holding the same money in a taxable brokerage, because a Roth's growth is never taxed.
Run it with your own numbers
The now-vs-later tax bet
Roth vs Traditional is really one question: is your tax rate lower now or in retirement? The calculator estimates both from your income and filing status and shows who wins, in dollars.
Ordinary income vs capital gains
A Traditional account turns growth into ordinary income; a taxable account taxes it as capital gains; a Roth never taxes it at all. The tool puts a number on each so the trade-offs are obvious.
How it works
Enter your income now, your expected income in retirement, your age, and how much you plan to save each year toward retirement.
The calculator estimates your tax rate today and in retirement using current federal brackets.
It then projects a Traditional account, a Roth, and a taxable brokerage forward and shows the after-tax dollars each one actually leaves you.
What to do with your result
Knowing which account wins is only useful once money is actually going into one. Build Real Wealth covers where retirement accounts fit into your overall order of operations: how much to hold in an emergency fund first, which account to fund next, and how to keep contributing consistently once you have decided. The calculator settles the comparison. The course settles the order.
Explore Build Real WealthFrequently asked questions
Stop guessing on Roth vs Traditional.
Create a free account to see your real after-tax take-home from each account, then learn to put every tax-advantaged dollar in the right order in Build Real Wealth.