The $65,000 Roth IRA Mistake To Avoid
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning
– I've seen too many of
you making some mistakes when it comes to investing
in your Roth IRA. One of them could cost you
$65,000 and the other one could cost you almost $500,000. You guys are seriously going
to make my beard turn more gray than it already is if
you don't knock it off. So let me show you what to watch out for, that way, you don't lose more money than you have to and
I can save a few bucks on hair dye for a couple more years.
A Roth IRA is a self-directed
retirement account where you can contribute after
tax dollars to be invested. Since the money going in is taxed, the growth of your investments are not taxed and the money withdrawal from the account are never taxed either, as long as you don't try to pull out some of the money before the age of 59.5. There is no such thing
as a joint Roth IRA. So if you and your spouse
want to contribute to one, then you'll have to do it individually, hence the name Individual
Retirement Account. If you both have enough
earned income separately, then you can each invest up to the $6500 limit for the year. If one of you works and the other doesn't, but you file a joint tax return, then the person working can, of course, contribute to a Roth IRA and
your spouse can contribute to a Spousal Roth IRA as well. Remember, these accounts are
owned by the individual person and on paper, not co-owned by both people.
I want to try to encourage you to max out your Roth IRA every single year, if possible, because if you
don't do it for that year, then in the future you
cannot go back and contribute for a previous year once that time limit has passed. A Roth IRA is one of those accounts where I would bend over backwards to make sure that I can
put in the full amount allowed every single year. In my order of operations for
what to do with your money, I have maxing out a Roth
IRA right after investing up to your employer match and HSA. That is how important
this type of account is. The good news with this
is that you actually have a timeframe of 16
months to contribute for each calendar year. So if we are in 2023
right now, then you have from January 1st, 2023, up until
when taxes need to be filed for that year to contribute,
which in this case, would be April 15th, 2024.
That's how it is every single year, so ignore the actual dates in my example and pay more attention to the timeframes since the date taxes are due
will change by a few days from year to year. Most brokerages will ask
you which year you want to contribute to. For example, I personally
invest using M1 Finance, which you can check out down
in the description below, and also get a deposit bonus as well. If I contributed to my Roth
IRA through them right now, then they would ask if I wanted the money to go towards 2022 or 2023, since at the time of recording this, we haven't hit the date
where taxes are due. This is great because it
gives you some extra time beyond the current year to
contribute Roth IRA money for that year.
Before I tell you the next mistake that I see way too many people making, please help support my dog Molly by hitting that thumbs up
button and sharing this video with anyone you think it would help. Once you deposit money into your Roth IRA, there's one more extremely important step you need to do that I see a ton of people missing, and that is
actually investing the money. I can't tell you how
many people I've talked to over the years who just put money into the account assuming
it would automatically grow, or knowing that they
needed to invest the money, but just forgetting to do
it because life happens, and things naturally slip out of our mind, only to check their account
balance years later, realizing that it hasn't grown in value because they didn't invest the money.
Stop the nonsense here and
just set up auto investing within your investment account, and if you're waiting because you think that you can time the market
to buy in at a lower price, you can't, because it's
nearly impossible to do, so just to get the money
invested right now. If you know how you want to
invest the money, then great. If you don't, then I personally
like the two fund portfolio for people who are in
the accumulation phase of investing and in the
three fund portfolio for when you're closer to
retirement or in retirement.
I'll have a link to a
playlist then I made just for you where I teach you
about both of those portfolios down in the description below
and above my head as well. When you contribute to a Roth IRA, all of your money is not
locked up until 59.5. You can withdraw the
contributions that you've made before that age without paying a penalty, but you cannot withdraw any of
the gains within the account. For example, if you've contributed $6500 and the account has grown to $10,000, then you can withdraw
the $6500 contribution, but you cannot touch the $3500 gain without paying a penalty until 59.5. I've gotta interject for a second to give my personal opinion on this. While withdrawing money
penalty-free is an option, I want to encourage you not to do this. To be brutally honest, I think that doing this
is one of the dumbest, most irresponsible, short-sighted
things that you can do.
Withdrawing just $6500
worth of contributions would cost you $65,000 in
future investment growth. So when any money is
taken out of this account before retirement, think
about how it's actually going to cost you 7,800 Chipotle burritos, or 65 new Apple iPhones, or anything else that you would buy for that amount of money. And yes, I am fully aware
that you can do a penalty-free early withdrawal up to
$10,000 before the age of 59.5 for a first time home purchase. But this is just as stupid as withdrawing your contributions early
because that $10,000 is costing you over $100,000
in future investment growth when you pull that money out. Average annual home appreciation over the past 12 years has been 6.11%, and the US stock market
has returned 12.27%. Leave your money in the freaking Roth IRA and go earn that $10,000 that
you need to buy the home. Responsible investing takes time, like five or 10-plus years, and this money needs time to grow.
The second you withdraw
any of your contributions, you are cutting down that tree before it even has a chance to grow fruit. Once you withdraw
contributions from the past, you cannot replace that
money in the future. I get that emergencies happen in life, so that's why you need
to have money set aside in an emergency fund to
pay for those things. Do not, under 99.999% of circumstances, use your Roth IRA money for anything other than when you retire. One thing I see way too many people doing is investing in a
taxable brokerage account before they have their Roth
IRA maxed out for the year.
This is a huge mistake from a tax savings
perspective for some of you because of how each account is taxed. With a Roth IRA, you invest with money
that's already been taxed, so the money can grow tax-free
and be withdrawn tax-free. With a taxable brokerage
account, you are paying taxes for the ongoing dividend
distributions every single year. Then you have to pay capital gains tax when you go to withdraw the money.
Since the money within
a Roth IRA will grow and can be withdrawn tax-free, realistically, you want
this account to get as large as possible, but not at the expense of
your personal risk tolerance. You should not take on
additional levels of risk by investing in more
risky, unprofitable stocks that random YouTubers have been pumping over the past few years or actively manage funds to
try to achieve higher returns. 99% of people, including
myself, cannot handle investing in something with a
high risk and potential, potential, high return. So don't even bother. The money in this account
is for retirement, so is it really worth it to risk that 60-year-old's financial wellbeing because you decided to gamble with their money right now? I doubt it. Some of you might be over
the income limit to be able to contribute to a Roth IRA, or some of you will be at
that point in the future as your income grows. You can still contribute to a Roth IRA to take advantage of the tax-free growth by doing a backdoor Roth. To simply explain the process,
all you do is contribute to a traditional IRA.
Do not invest the money yet. Then contact your brokerage
to have them convert the money to a Roth IRA. Now, I have done it with M1 Finance before and it was extremely easy. It only took I think two or three days for the money to get into my Roth IRA. Only do this if it makes sense based on your current tax rates
and future financial plans. There's two things that you can do. if you are someone who thinks that you might be over the income limit, but you are not going to 100%
know until the year is over. Number one, you can
either wait until January of the following year,
like we talked about in one of the previous mistakes that
I mentioned, or number two, you can just contribute the
money to a traditional IRA, then do a backdoor Roth within
the year to get the money into the account so it can be invested.
That way, if you are
over the income limit, you've already done the backdoor Roth. If you're under the income limit, no big deal 'cause you had to pay taxes on that money that was going
into the Roth IRA anyways. A question I get a lot is
whether or not you can contribute to a Roth IRA on different brokerages. The simple answer is yes. This is how it would play out. You can contribute up to the max for one year
on, say, M1 Finance.
Then you can decide to contribute up to the max on fidelity the next year. Then you can contribute up to the max on Vanguard the following year. So by the end of that third year, you would have three different Roth IRAs with three different brokerages, and there is no problem with that. You can take it one step further. If you decide, hey, out of these three, I actually like M1 finance
better than the other two, you can convert the
Roth IRAs with Fidelity and Vanguard into your
M1 Finance Roth IRA.
You can also split up your contribution for the same year among
different brokerages. So if for this year you want
to say contribute $4,000 to an M1 Finance Roth IRA and the remaining $2,500
into a Fidelity Roth IRA, then you can do that without any problems. The only thing you
cannot do is try to game the system by saying contributing $6500 into an M1 Finance Roth IRA and $6500 into a Roth IRA with another brokerage. You cannot exceed the maximum
amount allowed per year across all of your Roth IRAs on all of your brokerage accounts. Technically, you could do that since all of the brokerages aren't talking
to each other to keep track of what you are contributing, so you have to self-manage this. I would highly, highly recommend making sure
that you do not do this, whether it's on purpose or on accident. I don't know what the penalty is for this, but all I know is that you do
not want to get caught trying to defraud the government
in any way, shape, or form.
Long-term investing is the name
of the game with a Roth IRA. This money is for when
you are in retirement, so make sure to take that into account when investing this money. No gambling it on stocks
that random YouTubers are promoting. I think the two or three fund portfolio is perfect for your Roth IRA, which you can learn more about
in these videos to your left. There's a bunch of free stocks and resources down in
the description below to help with all of your personal finance and investing needs. I'll see you in the next one, friends, go..
