Wow. I thought I was pretty financially literate, but this is confusing me.

So I'm 29 and my wife is 26. Our HHI is about 190k. We're just now starting to think of saving for retirement.

I contribute to my 401k and figure the next place is a traditional IRA. The contribution caps are confusing me though. Seems like for now, my wife could contribute to a traditional but I couldn't. And both of us could contribute to a Roth?

We were hoping it was going to be as easy as opening up Vanguard accounts and auto investing 500x2/month, but it seems like we really have to dig deep into which accounts we qualify for and I'm getting overwhelmed.

Should we just do a joint brokerage account and skip this whole headache since we're close to the salary cap for both?