Can you explain to me the point of maximizing your retirement contributions. (Money that you can't touch until retirement). Your still paying taxes on the money if you make it to retirement, obviously you don't know what the rate is but I don't see the point unless your close to retirement anyway.
You need to think about money within 'the family' - whether that is just you as a single person, or a traditional family, or even charitable organizations that you support. That concept is the expanding sphere of influence.
If you pay taxes you are taking money outside of that 'family' and when its out, its out. As such, it is best to keep hold of as much of your income as possible. When it comes to reducing what goes out you have two methods: Tax Deductions and Tax Credits. Both of these offset the amount you pay. There are tons of credits out there, but they are frequently phased out on income, so goals are to reduce taxable income, retirement accounts are great for that.
Tax Deductible retirement savings aren't necessarily those that you pay taxes on later. Or at least, they are, but the number isn't what you expect.
Last year I was in a high tax bracket -so I deferred SEP IRA income to reduce that. Let's say it was a 28% tax rate, for every $10000 I put into the SEP I 'saved' $2800.
This year, I decided to focus on other things, and dropped my starting salary downwards, so my starting effective rate was already very low, then I made a partial rollover into a Roth IRA of around $14K from last years money. That means that I kept $3920 'in the family' because I pushed it from one year to the next, and now it will earn tax free.
I use these partial rollovers to play with taxbrackets- puting more into SEPs or other deductible plans when earnings are in 'higher tier brackets' then moving it over to tax free whenever I spot a low tier bracket.
Technically speaking, for the employed it is very hard to do anything other than such deductions and rollovers to dramatically reduce income tax on salary. There are other elections to consider when it comes to stock incentive plans, or setting up businesses, but not so many for the guy with the average (well paying) job.