Tag: Roth IRA
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Don’t Use Tax Advantaged Investments in 401K, IRA
Given the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the tax advantaged status of investments such as municipal bonds, you may be tempted to begin investing in these instruments. If you do, don’t invest in them through a 401K or an IRA (either Roth or Traditional). You want to take full advantage of their tax advantaged…
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Can Children Make Roth IRA Contributions?
If you have children (or if you are a child under the age of 18 and reading personal finance blogs, kudos to you!), you might be thinking about what you could do to help give them a jump start on their retirement savings. Roth IRA contribution rules say nothing about age so anyone of any…
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Retirement Account Catch-Up Rules
Catching up is hard to do, unless you’re talking retirement savings and you have the power of the US Government behind you. The contribution limits for various retirement accounts are increased if you are over the age of 50 and you can use them to your advantage if you didn’t contribute as much in your…
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Spousal IRA Explained
If you’re a stay at home mom or dad, you can make a deductible IRA contribution (or non-deductible if you opt for a Roth) of up to $5,000 for 2008 if you file a joint return and your working partner/spouse has enough earned income to cover the contribution. That’s right, even if you don’t personally…
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Snowflaking Your Way To Retirement
Snowflaking is a play on words off Dave Ramsey’s Snowball psychologically-driven debt busting technique and it refers to putting small amounts towards your debt, snowflakes, to help eradicate debt. One of the ideas of snowflaking is that you can find small alternative sources of income and then push it towards your debt but you could…
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How Recessions Affect Retirement Plans
Recessions, or two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, have been on many people’s minds lately and this latest article, What job woes mean to you by Chris Isidore, probably doesn’t help. Economic cycles happen and with each economic burst will come a correction of sort, a regression to the mean if you will. However,…
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Taxable Brokerage Accounts for Retirement
There are a lot of retirement options out there, so many that your head probably spins whenever someone talks about 401(k)’s, 403(b)’s, Roth IRAs, or Traditional IRAs… the list goes on. One topic that most people don’t talk about is saving part of your nest egg in a regular taxable brokerage or mutual fund account.…
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Roth IRA Contribution Limits and Income Phaseout Schedule
The Roth IRA contribution limits are: Year 49 And Under 50 And Over 2005 $4,000 $4,500 2006-7 $4,000 $5,000 2008 $5,000 $6,000 As you can see, if you’re over 50 then you’re given a “catch-up” contribution. The income phaseout schedule is based on your modified adjusted gross income, which is your income minus some deductions.…