Author Archive: Ryan

Traditional IRA vs Roth IRA

Traditional IRA vs Roth IRA – Understanding The Difference

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It’s good to invest for retirement.

It’s even better to invest for retirement if you can also pay less in taxes during the process. That’s what the traditional and Roth IRA provide. They allow you to pay fewer taxes. But they have a few differences, which I will explain below.

The federal government has decided to encourage you to do your own saving for retirement. You see, back in the good ole days, everyone either had a pension from their employer, or they just worked until they died. Only the rich were investing in the stock market.

In the modern era of investing, the pension started to go away. Thus, the government started feeling pressure to take care of older citizens. Because social security isn’t supposed to be a complete answer to your retirement needs, and because Americans started living longer, they needed a solution. They needed something to encourage do-it-yourself investing.

Traditional IRA

Along came ERISA and the traditional IRA in 1974. The traditional IRA is a retirement account in which the contributions you make to that account are tax-deductible. In other words, if you contribute $1,000 to a traditional IRA, you will be able to reduce your taxable income for the year by $1,000. Depending on your tax bracket, this could mean up to $250 in tax savings. All that just for saving for your retirement.

Over the years, the traditional IRA has seen come changes. We now have limits to the amount that you can contribute each year towards your IRA. Also, if you participate in an employer sponsored plan, like a 401K, you will not typically be able to invest tax-deductible dollars into a traditional IRA. Additionally, if you make over a certain amount each year, you will not be able to contribute tax-deductible dollars to your account.

When you pull money out of your traditional IRA (called a distribution), you will have to pay taxes on the money. So even though you skipped the taxes on the way end, you will make it up in retirement. Your contributions and earnings from those contributions will be taxed when you pull them out.

Lastly, you should know that there are penalties if you pull money out of your traditional IRA before you retire, and there are also required minimum distributions you must make starting in retirement. The traditional IRA has a lot of restrictions, but it’s the best place to save for retirement for those without a 401K who are looking for an instant tax deduction.

Roth IRA

That brings us to the Roth IRA. The Roth IRA was created by the in Tax Act of 1997, which was authored by William V. Roth, Jr., a Senator from Delaware. The Roth IRA was aimed at helping people save outside of their employer 401Ks.

You contribute after-tax dollars to a Roth IRA, but when it’s time to withdraw those funds in retirement, you can do so tax-free. Nice, right? Just like the traditional IRA, the Roth has income limits and contribution limits you must deal with. See more at the Roth IRA explained.

Other than that, there’s not much downside. Since the funds are after-tax (meaning you’ve already paid taxes on them), you have a lot more flexibility. You can withdraw your contributions without many limits and you can withdraw them in retirement any time you want. No required minimum distributions.

Traditional IRA vs Roth IRA

A good thing to keep in mind is that if you qualify for both accounts you can certainly contribute to both. There’s no rule saying you can’t. Keep in mind that if you do, you need to watch your contribution limits as those will be spread across both accounts.

The traditional IRA and Roth IRA are both excellent tools to help you get started with your retirement savings effort. It’s more important to get started with something than stopping down because you are stuck deciding which one of these is the best.

As a quick rule of thumb, I like to tell people that if you don’t have a company 401K, then consider the traditional IRA if you want to see some savings to your high tax bill. If you do have a company 401K, then just go with a Roth IRA to do all of your extra investing. That’s what I do.

Once you decide which account to use, you can start thinking about what to put inside your IRA. Good luck.

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Can You Contribute to 401k and IRA

Can You Contribute to a Roth IRA and 401K?

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Can you contribute to a Roth IRA and 401k?  Yes, you can contribute to a Roth IRA and 401K at the same time.

In this post I’ll share my experience of simultaneously contributing to a Roth IRA and 401K, as well as the requirements you’ll need to meet in order to do the same.

When it’s time to get serious about your retirement, it’s not a stretch to imagine you might start thinking beyond your 401K. If you have a 401K at work, that’s great. Your employer cares about you and your ability to support yourself in retirement. If your employer is offering a matching contribution, well, you’ve struck gold. That’s free money. The next logical step is to consider a Roth IRA.

Before you consider a Roth IRA, you should be fully taking advantage of your company 401K. By that I mean contributing enough annual dollars to get the full match that the company offers. It’s likely that you are already doing that so let’s dive into the next step of also investing in a Roth IRA.

As a side note, if you don’t have a 401K, then consider reviewing the Difference Between Roth IRA and Traditional IRA.

Difference Between 401K and Roth IRA

Remember that the Roth IRA and 401K are just accounts where you keep your investments. They aren’t actual investments. They are just the account (or vehicle, as some put it) where the money is held. These accounts are great because they get special tax treatment.

You are able to contribute pre-tax dollars to a 401K. This means that no tax is taken from your money that is placed into the 401K. If you earn a dollar and put it in your 401K, you pay $0 in taxes on that dollar. If you earn another dollar and put it in your checking account instead, you have to pay taxes on that money.

There is a limit to your contribution though. It changes every year usually, but right now you can contribute $18,500 (2018) to your 401K.

You can’t contribute pre-tax dollars to a Roth IRA. You can only contribute dollars that have been taxed already. However, unlike a 401K, when you distribute that money to yourself in retirement, you don’t have to pay a tax. Nice, huh? For more on this account see the Roth IRA Explained.

401K and Roth IRA

Because the Roth IRA and 401K have opposite tax treatments, the IRS allows you to contribute to both at the same time. The only thing you have to worry about is the income limitation set on the Roth IRA. Your ability to contribute to a Roth IRA starts to “phase out” at $189,000 (2018) for those who file “married filing jointly”.

Here’s a strategy I follow. To contribute to both of these accounts, just make sure you start with contributions to the 401K to get the match. Then, switch to contributing to the Roth IRA. Once that is maxed out for the year ($5,500 for 2018), then you can go back to the 401K until you reach your annual limit there.

I did that for the tax years 2016 through 2017 and saw significant increased in my tax-advantaged retirement investing accounts. Not to mention, I have two different account with different distribution rules. So now I can consider things like using my Roth IRA for a down payment.

How about you, do you contribute to a Roth IRA and 401K at the same time?

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Unlimited Financial Security, Financial Bondage, & Everything in Between

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The Path To Financial Freedom

Finding The Path To Financial Security

Whether you’ve created a formal budget or not, what if it’s clear to you that you’re on a financial path that’s unsustainable?  What should you do?  Well, you’d better do something, because your financial security is at stake.

What is Financial Freedom?

Money is a form of freedom because it provides you with the ability to make choices with respect to things that have a financial cost.  Financial freedom is measured in dollars, so the more money you have the more financial freedom you have.  Spending money is an expression of your financial freedom and, paradoxically, each time you do you actually reduce the amount of freedom that you have, because spending money on one thing deprives you of the ability to spend it on something else.

For example, let’s say that you have $100 that you’re completely free to use; you don’t need it for housing, food, transportation, or any other living expenses.  In short, you have $100 of pure financial freedom to do with as you wish.  If you save it you continue to maintain that freedom, and it will even grow over time as your $100 earns interest.  If, however, you choose to spend it on something then you’re free to do so, but once you make that choice then you’re no longer free to buy anything else.

The Myth of Unlimited Financial Freedom

There are varying degrees of financial freedom.  On one extreme end of the scale is unlimited financial freedom.  Unlimited financial freedom is the ability to do or to buy anything that costs money.  Nobody in the history of the world has ever had unlimited financial freedom.  The Pharaohs, the Khans and the Caesars didn’t have it anciently and, despite the many billions certain people have amassed in our time, nobody has it now.  In fact, nobody is even remotely close.  The bottom line is that even the richest of the rich have financial limitations.  Thus unlimited financial freedom is a mythical goal that can never be achieved, so you can go ahead and scratch it from your life’s “to do” list.

Financial Security

Since unlimited financial freedom is unattainable then I recommend that you strive for financial security.  You achieve a state of financial security when you can comfortably meet both your needs and all of your reasonable wants without having to work and without going into any kind of debt.  Financial security is what most people visualize when they think about the ideal form of retirement.  Again, it’s the ability to do what (within reason), when you want, without having to worry about money.

Having a true understanding of the concept of financial security is vitally important, because you’ll never be able to obtain it (much less be able to appreciate it) if you don’t even know what it is!  And how might you not recognize financial security even if you obtained it?  The reason is because “financial freedom” is such a heavily cited yet rarely defined goal in personal finance guides and literature that it’s easy to misunderstand what the term really means.  Again, if taken literally, one can easily be led to believe that financial freedom is the ability to do anything that costs money.  But remember, that’s the definition of unlimited financial freedom, which you just learned is an unobtainable goal!

Does that mean that all personal finance literature that uses the term “financial freedom” is wrong?  Of course not!  It’s just important to remember that whenever you encounter the term “financial freedom” you should interpret it in your mind as “financial security.”  If you do that then things you read on personal finance and money management will make a lot more sense.  Having said that, know that I myself will sometimes use the term “financial freedom” as a substitute for “financial security” in my own writing because in the context of certain discussions the idea of freedom actually conveys more meaning.  But again, to have the right understanding and expectations, in the context of money it’s always important to interpret financial freedom to mean the ability to do what you want within reason (as opposed to doing anything you want), when you want, without having to worry about money.

Financial Stability

Achieving a state of financial security is an ambitious goal that could take you many years of wisely applied learning and sustained effort to achieve.  Fortunately, along the way there is another worthwhile and satisfying goal to strive for: financial stability.  You achieve a state of financial stability when you can comfortably meet all of your needs and some of your reasonable wants without going into any kind of debt.

Those who achieve financially stability are generally thought of as “getting ahead.”  What exactly does that mean?  It means you reach a point where you consistently spend less than you earn, and by doing so you generate what’s commonly referred to as “discretionary income.”  Discretionary income is what’s left to save or spend after you have met all of your financial obligations.  For example, in a typical month if you have income of $4,000 and your standard monthly expenses are $3,500 (housing, transportation, food, etc.) then you would have $500 of discretionary income ($4,000 – $3,500 = $500).  Granted you can’t walk away from your job just because you’ve achieved a state of financial stability.  After all, using the previous example, you can’t exactly retire to an island paradise on $500.  But that aside, financial stability is a nice place to be because it means:

  • You can comfortably meet all of your needs.
  • You can meet some of your reasonable wants.
  • You can put some money in an emergency fund and/or investments with an eye towards eventually achieving financial security.
  • You can weather financial disruptions without undue stress (precisely because you have set aside some money to deal with such situations).

Financial Instability

Financial instability is a state where you have just enough income to meet your needs, along with perhaps a few meager wants.  In other words, you’re barely scraping by living at the subsistence level, right on the edge of your income.  Here are some signs that you’re financially unstable.

  • You feel a substantially heightened degree of stress if anything out of the ordinary happens that might cost money.
  • You can’t take advantage of good deals and opportunities even though you would like to because you don’t feel like you have enough extra money to do so.
  • Long periods of time can go by as you wait to be in a position to do or buy even modest wants (with higher level wants being out of the question).

Do you see the pattern?  Remember, financial freedom is the ability to make choices with respect to things that cost money, but when you’re financially unstable you have very little of such freedom.  It’s hard to be happy on a day-to-day basis in such a condition, because so much of your money is tied up just keeping your head above water that there’s little to nothing left to do anything satisfying or enjoyable.

If you ever reach a state of financial instability, and especially if you’re there for a long period of time, it can be tempting to compensate for your lack of discretionary income by turning to credit cards or other forms or borrowing to finance purchases for things that you want.  While that may feel satisfying in the short term, it’s just an illusion.  As time goes on the finance charges associated with your debts will mount, pushing you closer and closer to the brink of the worst state of all: financial bondage.

Financial Bondage

If financial instability represents a state where you have lost the ability to make choices with respect to things that cost money, financial bondage is a state where others actually have control over you.  In other words, you not only lose the ability to act financially, but you’re subject to being acted upon in ways that are beyond your control.  Following are some examples of things that can happen to you when you’re in financial bondage, whether you want them to or not.

  • You can be forced out of your home due to foreclosure (or you can be evicted from your apartment).
  • Your vehicle can be repossessed.
  • Your wages can be garnished (which means they’re taken out of your paycheck before they ever even hit your bank account).
  • The electricity, phone, Internet connection, gas and water can all be shut off.

It can be severely debilitating mentally, physically and emotionally to be in a state of financial bondage, but don’t give up hope!  If you combine the knowledge you gain from this website with other good resources and work hard to intelligently apply the things you have learned, I am confident that you can progressively gain more freedom until you find your feet financially…and then you can build from there.