Max 401k in your 20s (Roth 401) or do the minimum to get employer match and keep the rest in cash to save up for big purchases and or real estate?

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Can you not do more than one?
I would max out the 401k to develop the discipline and to get started on retirement savings early.
I would also save up for a 10-15% downpayment on a multi-family house. Live in one unit, rent the other. Use the rental income and increasing salary over the years to save for other goals for my late 20s, early 30s.
By mid-30s be really, really well off.

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Your perspective is what is most flawed about this app. You presume that you have the best advice and you also make a whole bunch of assumptions made on a few lines of text.

You can buy a multi-family house with as little as 3.5% down on and FHA, as example. Assuming OP is 24 and they want to buy a $500k house (plus closing costs) are you really saying that and extra $4000 a year is so incredibly outside of the realm of possibility? And that's assuming OP can afford to max out their 401k this year, but isn't going to have any sort of salary increase in the next few years.

And heck, even if OP doesn't hit this goal till early 30s, it's still great if they're planning for it now. Thinking about the possibility now.

Again, if I was able to do this by 30 with an average salary of $52k across 8 years, not sure why you think this is so far fetched by someone already working at EY in their 20s.

Crypto gang

I’m all about the Roth Max right now but I live in the worst city in America to own real estate (Chicago). Once I get 100k or so in my Roth retirement accounts I’ll reevaluate to see if I need to slow it down to save for other expenses (should get there before 27).

I would go with the retirement savings. The power of growth overtime will be huge, whereas saving for real estate or a big purchase may mean you can buy a house two or three years earlier than otherwise.

And if you don’t have a spouse or family, waiting to buy a house may also mean having two incomes to save towards a house than just one. I have several friends who bought houses as single people very early, then promptly met someone and got married, who also owned a home. They then sold one house at a huge loss, not just because the price of the house didn’t move much in 2/3 years, but also because they paid so much in interest and mortgage origination fees. Or a few couples sold both homes and bought an entirely new one together - the right choice for the health of the marriage but it meant having spent lots on the houses with no time to recoup mortgage costs.

Max your pretax 401k and invest in a roth IRA (or back door roth)

Why pretax? That’s some broke boi talk. Save pretax 401k for when you’re earning more than 75k/yr...

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