Agreed, but the options listed, sadly, don't help you there. If you use a tax advantaged savings vehicle, it's much harder to actually use the money before retirement. At best you can borrow from it (which i ended up doing as a buffer when switching careers) or take the withdraw penalty, which eliminates a large portion of the savings.

So I'd agree with keeping savings as a hedge against unemoyability, but against usIng the 401k etc methods the OP listed if that is your goal.