Money you park in a regular savings account can be withdrawn whenever you want. You don't pay tax on what you withdraw. Those withdrawals are not "income." You are simply liquidating an asset . . . like selling your gold jewelry. The proceeds are not income. Every year the interest on a savings account is reported to the IRS (unless it's very small) and the IRS sees that interest as part of your income for that year. You get taxed on that interest - every year. With a Roth, you don't have that annual bill.

I was wrong above in saying that you eventually get taxed on the earnings portion of a Roth. That was an assumption I wrongly made. You may possibly pay no taxes on even the earnings.

The money you put into a Roth IRA will earn interest or dividends or other forms of yield. At least, that's what you hope will happen. Otherwise, you may as well stuff the money in your mattress. (Roth money invested in stocks can also potentially shrink, rather than grow. Remember A.D. 2008?) That growth over and above the principal you put in may end up never getting taxed, even when you withdraw it, if you are past a certain age and the Roth has existed for a certain amount of time. That's a benefit that's pretty hard to beat.

If your tax rate is much higher now than you expect it to be when you stop working, you might be smarter to put as much as you can in a regular IRA, before you go putting money into a Roth.

A "self-directed" IRA can be good for someone with special knowledge about a particular type of investment, like real estate or commodities trading or currencies trading. Here's a link on self-directed IRAs:

https://www.fool.com/retirement/iras...e-trouble.aspx

For persons without some specialized investment knowledge, self-directed IRAs are probably not worth the trouble and risk. Picking "good investments" is like picking winning horses at the track. There's no sure-fire way to do it.

Generally, an elderly person pays less tax on a given income than a younger person with the same income will pay. One reason is that a retired person pays no Social Security payroll tax. Some elderly are eligible for a higher deduction than is available to younger folks. There are tax credits for some elderly that are not availble to the working non-elderly. Are you suggesting that the elderly pay higher taxes than the young? Or do you feel that the elderly should be taxed at a lower rate than the young?