If you have a good salary you want to maximize your tax deduction by contributing to your 401K - texas doesn't have income tax but federal tax is still enough. Think of it this way, when you retire you will take what is called a required minimum distribution which you can find a calculator to see what that will be, but on a 500K retirement it's about $20K for instance. The point is that for you, you'll be retiring in 10 years where you will have to take distributions. If your income will be lower in 10 years, then you will save money by maximizing your contribution now - that way you pay less tax since you'd pay more tax on 20K now than you would later when your income is lower as you have retired and the only other income is social security. If you don't have kids who need your support than your life insurance only needs to be enough to cover the misses and support her beyond what your 401K and social security can provide.
While a number of reasons can contribute to a stick market decline, Trump does not help himself and the markets with his daily statements. You can expect this market crash to continue until you see the whites in people's eyes. My only question is whether we'll see Nasdaq 4K or so.
