alt Hacker News>Even then I question max 401k - time works for the young and so a maxed 401k makes for too much money in retirement and not enough to enjoy now.
Except the 401k is so tax advantaged that you are foolish to not use it as your basis for financial security. Pre-tax money + employer contributions mean 401k is far and away the fastest method of building up a significant chunk of capital to protect yourself from hardship. Yes there are penalties for early withdraw, but they come out far less than what you would alternately be able to build up with just post-tax savings from your paycheck.
Again, how much money do you need? At some point you are taking a risk, and I don't know any seer/medium/prophet/God/gods who both are talking and I trust (plenty are talking that I don't trust). Even if follow your plan of emergency savings from the 401k, you still don't need to max things out as you should be taking some risk as odds are it won't happen anyway - frankly if things get that bad you should spend more time enjoying life now as your life after that emergency will be bad no matter what and so in the worst case you should save less.