Strategies For Managing Tax-Advantaged "Buckets" Versus Cash

[Bryan Hancock]

I am assuming many folks on the forum take advantage of tax-advantaged accounts and thus they have to manage what "buckets" to fund when trying to grow their money. Defined contribution plans are pretty popular for this. I know there are different contribution limits based on whether or not you use SEP, SoloK, IRA, Roth IRA, etc. I was hoping folks could share their thoughts on how they manage where to stash dollars.

The Roth can be coupled with a SoloK plan. You can also use a traditional IRA type plan inside of a SoloK. You can also just discard the tax-advantaged accounts altogether and pay the tax. So broadly-speaking there are three types of "buckets" for money to be accumulated in:

1.  Regular cash

2. Regular IRA

3. Roth IRA

You can also convert item 2 to item 3 by laddering.  You can also take regular periodic distributions pre-retirement-age.

For many folks on this forum it seems like the way to maximize after-tax income is to bypass items 2 and 3 altogether so they can invest their money actively in projects that yield a lot more than what you can get passively in someone else's projects, vehicles, etc.  For instance, if you can make 40% or more on a flip or development project with the use of leverage that will yield more net-of-tax income and thus seems superior to even putting money in the tax-advantaged accounts if you could make, say, 18% - 25% on a syndicated offering passively.  

A lot of this discussion also centers around how active you want to be.  You can get more yield investing actively, but it requires work.  Thus it probably makes sense to fund some of the tax-advantaged accounts if you wish to make your money work instead of you working. 

Any thoughts on this?  How do you balance what to fund and in what quantity?