You don’t have to “spend” all your money. Live frugally, invest the rest, then retire early or donate it or something. Spending your whole paycheck is very bad at any income level, but it turns out when you’re poor you don’t get a choice.
Actually not sarcasm. I literally was on medication and then I got a good job and I don’t need it anymore. I’m mildly sure I still have depression but I’m much happier in my life and nowhere near risk of self-harm anymore.
For reference, you’re comparing a Target Date Fund (TDF) to a world index fund. A TDF is composed of stocks and bonds and slowly shifts towards bonds as it reaches its target date (the date is ideally “your retirement date” - the one you’re looking at is for 2020). The world index fund (VT) is an index of every stock in the world, so by buying one share you buy a piece of everything that exists.
Unless you’re retiring very soon, you should generally just buy VT and forget about it. If you’re close to retiring you might want to think about a “bond tent”, where you increase your bond percentage incrementally up until you retire, then slowly sell your bonds after you retire. You can do this by buying a bond index by itself.
There’s a few “right” answers to this depending on what you believe so I would do more research and understand what all of this actually is. The good news is that proper investing is actually really easy. The best strategy is generally to “buy the entire haystack, don’t ever sell”. The Bogleheads wiki is a good place to check first to get some of the basics down.
You’re correct about the now vs. later part but I’ll also note that tax laws can change and some people think that getting ahead of the curve and confirming their taxes now via Roth has value. I’m not one of them, but it’s certainly a strategy.
The main thing I don’t get is that the top talent at your company are the ones that can easily find another job instead of putting up with your BS. The people that aren’t competent enough to leave on a whim are the ones you’re going to be keeping.
