If your employer offers a Roth 401K I suggest putting your money into that instead of the traditional 401K in almost any scenario you're in. The only way a traditional 401K is best is if you're at a prime point in your career (read: you're in the highest tax bracket you'll ever be in) and soon will lower your income. (I.e. If you're 60 years old and done well at building up your career and plan to retire soon and begin living on a 4% annual withdrawal rate from your retirement accounts, that'll mean your taxable income in a few years will be at a much lower tax bracket, thus save taxes now in the high tax bracket and put your money into a traditional 401K).
Another nice thing about a Roth 401K: when the day comes that you leave work there (whether it's to retire, you quit to go somewhere else, or you're terminated), you can transfer some or all of your Roth 401K to your Roth IRA and withdraw the money immediately or any time without penalty regardless of your age (assuming you started your Roth IRA at least 5 years prior). This is because Roth 401K-to-Roth IRA transfers makes that portion of the Roth IRA count as contributions. And Roth IRA contributions can be withdrawn at any age as long as the Roth IRA was started at least 5 years prior (really five January 1st's prior, because it doesn't matter what time of year you start your Roth IRA, it counts as though you had started it on January 1st of that year to satisfy the 5-year start rule). So a strategy for retiring before age 55 (401K's and Roth 401K's have an age 55 rule) or age 59.5 (that's the other rule, the one most people already know), but still get awesome investing tax breaks, is to:
1. Invest as much as you as needed into your Roth 401k to get the full employer match if they offer one. The match portion by law will go into the traditional portion of your 401K -- so you'll eventually be taxed on that part when you withdraw it. But the employer match is still free money and therefore better than you can do on your own in a Roth IRA.
2. If you still have money in your budget for long term investing put it into your Roth IRA up to the $6,000 annual max ($7,000 if 50 or older). This assumes, of course, your income doesn't exceed the limit for Roth IRA contributions. Spread it out among many different asset classes. I use over 30 mutual funds for the equities portion of my Roth IRA, each fund is a part of a different asset class with only a little overlap (i.e. I'm sure some of the companies my large-cap core mutual fund is invested in are also some of the companies my domestic tech fund is invested in, there's no getting around at least a little bit of overlap like that). And each time you contribute to your Roth IRA (i.e. if you invest $500 per month to get $6,000 per year), but that contribution into whatever asset class (for me that means mutual fund) has the lowest balance at that time. If you do that every time, you're always buying low. That simple step will increase overall performance. To do that you don't have to read Zero Hedge every day or watch Jim Cramer every day to try to stay on top of things. You don't have to know why some of your funds are up and others are down. Just buy into whatever one(s) is down that month, click Submit, and don't worry about it until you repeat the process the next month.
3. If you still have money in your budget after that put it into your Roth 401K (on top of what you're already putting in there to get the employer match) until you reach the $20,500 per year limit (starting in 2022), or $27,000 if 50 or older.
Share this with your girlfriend. Sit down with her and discuss each other's financial expectations and how much of today's immediate gratification you're willing to sacrifice (i.e. tighten down the budget you'll live on) to have a better future together. I promise you it's better to learn from each other now what the expectations are on the four things couples argue about most -- money, how to raise kids, sex, and devotion to God (everybody else states the first 3, but from what I've observed when I used to volunteer in divorce counseling I'd say that one person being way more devoted to Jesus than the other is as much an argument starter as the other three). If you wait until you're married to hammer out the expectations on those things then your marriage will be as much a struggle as the Cincinnati Bearcats fans will have on Dec 31st if they spend the next two weeks chanting "We want Bama!".
flr