I have been investing in a tIRA since I was 18, which was 1994, just out of high school and prior to starting college. As soon as the Roth became available, I converted my funds to a Roth, stopped contributing, and only contributed to a Roth after that.
In 2012, I realized my bank was getting too big, and eventually I would need to prepare for early retirement. My wife and I cut off all funding of our Roth IRA's to invest in taxable accounts. With the 0% cap gains and dividend rates for those in the 15% federal bracket, I see no reason why a Roth, with all of it's restrictions, same penalties and taxes as a tIRA IF withdrawn early, would be preferable to a 0% taxable account, with the ability to harvest tax losses and tax gains.
Since I am saving up for years 1-5 of early retirement (enough time to create a sizeable Roth ladder), I don't understand why so much emphasis is placed on Roth IRA's still. I see value in them, only in the following situations:
1. Do not qualify for traditional IRA deduction AND first five years of early retirement is fully funded in taxable accounts.
2. Nearing age 59.5, the age of penalty free withdrawal status.
Instead, we both withdrew our Roth Principle this year, (65k total) in order to beef up our early retirement accounts. Sure, we could have kept the principle in the Roth and used that for early retirement, but our retirement is near full funding for the entire length of it. Therefore, our goal here is to expedite the early part. We did not need the principle for our "old age" retirement funding as we have hundreds of thousands in 401k's as well as 80k in a tIRA.
In summary, I believe the only time you should put money in a Roth is when all other tax shelters are accounted for. I would like to hear others opinions.