can still withdraw

That’s subject to plan rules.

grows tax free

If you pay the same effective tax rate now vs retirement, Roth and tax-deferred are equivalent. The benefit of Roth is that it gives you flexibility in retirement, so you can choose how much taxes you pay in retirement instead of whatever you happen to withdraw from your tax-deferred accounts.

So a Roth contribution isn’t an automatic slam-dunk, it really depends on OP’s tax bracket now vs retirement. If OP is in the 12% or lower tax bracket, I highly recommend a Roth contribution, but if they’re above it, I recommend taking the deduction. I’m a little below the top of the 12% bracket, so I actually convert my old pre-tax accounts to Roth up to the top of the 12% bracket since that’s a pretty good tax rate to lock in.

The main concerns here are:

• taxes - 401k contributions defer taxes (or prepay for a Roth account), and there’s only so much tax-advantaged space available
• investment options - 401k plans have limited fund selection, but many are good enough

If you’re planning to invest 5% regardless, choose the account that gives you the best tax advantages that matches your investment plan. For most, that’ll be the 401k in an S&P 500 or total US stock market fund. If the fees aren’t too bad, I’d absolutely go with the 401k.

If you’re in the 12% or below bracket, I recommend Roth if it’s available. If you’re above, deferring taxes is probably the better plan. If your funds are super expensive (say, >0.5% fees for an index fund), you might be better off in a taxable account.

Analysts have predicted 20 of the last three recessions.

You have some correct statements, but your conclusions aren’t backed by evidence. Here are the correct statements:

• inflation has dropped, which means slower price increases for the average person
• higher interest rates mean higher borrowing costs, which means slower growth in the business sector
• gold and silver have historically held their value, on average

But then you get into incorrect statements and speculation, such as:

only way to hold wealth during a recession is through precious metals

Here’s gold prices vs inflation historically, with recessions included. I don’t see much correlation here, and there are very long trends where gold lost value. So I see nothing in the data to back up holding gold.

Here’s a similar chart for the S&P 500. As you’ll notice, it doesn’t have as long of downward trends, and the total growth is much higher (2-3x vs gold).

So to me, gold looks just as volatile (maybe more?) and has worse returns relative to inflation vs stocks.

The best way to preserve and grow wealth is through a buy and hold strategy with a properly diversified portfolio. I don’t think gold is important in a portfolio and instead recommend stocks and bonds, where bonds reduce volatility and stocks produce growth relative to inflation.

Inflation is a hidden tax

Sort of, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. Inflation encourages consumer spending, since money doesn’t hold as much value tomorrow as it goes today. That spending pushes up profits, which does two things:

• increase investment in the business - more jobs, bonuses, raises etc
• increase share value of the business - enriches share holders

You want to benefit from both, so you should be a share holder as easily as you can (i.e. invest in a diversified stock portfolio) and hold an in-demand job so you get those raises and bonuses (i.e. increase your skills, apply for new positions as they’re available, etc).

The important thing to note is that recessions have historically been temporary, most of the time. The main exceptions are the Great Depression (perhaps could’ve been a simple recession if Hoover didn’t overreact) and stagflation in the 80s (supply shock, similar to COVID issues; also big change in US monetary policy), but in general they last 1-3 years and are usually followed by a bull market as the market recovers.

So this leads me to two points:

• analysts are consistently wrong at calling the start or end of recessions - the market is incredibly complex, so if professionals fail, what hope do average investors have of correctly guessing market movements?
• buying and holding is a recipe for success - meet Betty, the world’s most unlucky investor, who invested only at the worst possible times; her secret was to not sell, if you try to time the market, you will eventually lose

I don’t know if a recession is coming, but I do know it’ll change nothing about my investing strategy, other than perhaps how much I can invest.

I’m kind of the same way, though I’ve found most of the communities I’m looking for.

My main complaint is just how many leftists there are here, which wouldn’t be an issue if the selection of communities was a bit better. I have no issue with leftists in general, I just get a little tired of low effort posts like “because capitalism” or “unions ftw” on any post where it’s remotely relevant. I get it, unions can be cool, and capitalism has its warts, but those comments aren’t constructive. Fortunately, this is mostly on the more popular news communities, so I just don’t sub and it doesn’t bother me.

I’d love a handful of well moderated communities similar to the following:

• /r/neutralnews - strict limits on acceptable sources, and all comments must include sources for factual claims
• /r/neutralpolitics - similar to neutral news, but specific to political discussion

Reddit also has a huge leftist slant, but it at least has moderation tools to help make certain types of community moderation feasible.

I just want to point out that I’m far from a conservative and I don’t want to go the opposite direction and have mostly conservative viewpoints (that would probably be worse), I just like seeing multiple opinions for a topic, and that seems to happen less here because moderation tools kinda suck, which means poor quality sources that agree with the predominant opinion tend to get more attention than more reputable sources that have a more mixed view of things.

Regardless, I’m not going back, but that doesn’t mean lemmy has better content, it just means I refuse to support Reddit anymore.

China holds <$1T of US debt. Sure, they’re the second largest foreign holder of US public debt, but we could easily replace that debt if needed. The Treasury itself bought much more than that after the 2008 crisis, and we could do it again. Private citizens hold way more than China does through mutual funds and whatnot, and investors would buy more if rates go up.

The real problem is that interest rates for public debt is going up, so we’ll end up paying a lot later share of our budget toward interest if we don’t reduce our debt load. Those older, cheap Treasuries will be maturing over the next decades, so the time to act is now. I’m in favor of raising taxes somewhat and cutting spending across the board (I think a lot of it is waste that could be caught in audits). But China doesn’t factor in at all when it comes to debt concerns.