All About Roth IRAs | Podcast
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All About Roth IRAs

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The Roth is really an essential planning tool for all ages.

Andrew Busa, CFP®

Senior Financial Planner

Roth IRAs—you may have heard of this type of individual retirement account, but do you know how a Roth really works? In this episode of The Adviser You Can Talk To Podcast, our financial planning specialists Andrew Busa and Rick Winters provide an in-depth explanation of the uses and benefits of the Roth IRA, including:

  • The requirements and tax advantages
  • Why to open a Roth at the beginning of your career
  • The so-called “backdoor” Roth conversion—what it is and when to do it
  • The Roth’s role in your legacy planning

Don’t let this important tool in your financial planning arsenal go to waste. Listen now to learn how you can deploy Roth IRAs for maximum benefit! Curious about whether converting from a traditional IRA to a Roth is right for you? Click above to listen now.

Or, click here for our free special report, Converting to a Roth IRA.

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Episode Transcript

Andrew Busa:
What if I told you that there is a way for you to achieve powerful tax-free growth for your retirement and to hand your heirs an extremely friendly legacy asset? Today, it’s all about Roth IRAs and why you should be contributing to them no matter where you are in your working career.

Rick Winters:

Hi, everyone. I just need your attention for one minute before we get started. The SECURE act was signed into law in December 2019 and the act’s provisions went into effect January 1st, 2020. During this episode, we mention rules that may have changed as a result. One example is the age you must begin taking required minimum distributions. If you became 70 and a half on or before December 31st, 2019 then you are required to continue taking RMDs. However, under the SECURE act everyone else is able to wait to start taking your RMDs until you turn 72. For detailed analysis of the SECURE act, please find a link to our SECURE act podcast in the episode’s description. Thank you.

Andrew Busa:
Hello, this is Andrew Busa and I’m a financial planner here at Adviser Investments. We’re here with another Adviser You Can Talk To Podcast. And today, I’m joined by my colleague Rick Winters. He’s a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and a vice president here at Adviser Investments. And he works with clients in a relationship capacity.

Rick Winters:
Hey, Andrew. How are you doing?

Andrew Busa:
I’m doing well. Thanks for joining us. So today, it’s all about Roth IRAs. And the reason why we want to do this podcast, and this has been on our list for a while, is because the Roth is really an essential financial planning tool for all ages. But the reasons why and the considerations can be pretty drastically different depending on where you are in your life and in your working career.

Andrew Busa:
So with that in mind, we’re going to frame this podcast as told by three different planning points. And the first planning point will be a 25-year-old with their first high-paying job. The second planning point is going to be a 45-year-old in their peak earnings years. And the third and final planning point will be a 65-year-old that’s considering retirement. So you’ll see, as we go through these, that the reasons why considering making Roth contributions is pretty different for all of those planning points.

Rick Winters:
Yes, they are.

Andrew Busa:
Exactly. So we hope that you take away three things from this podcast. The first is just what Roth IRAs are and why you probably hear so much about them in the media. The second is when they’re useful and when they’re potentially not, and when you might want to avoid doing some of these more advanced strategies that we’ll talk about. And the third and final takeaway will be just to give you a handle on the unique financial planning considerations that come along with these accounts.

Andrew Busa:
So first, let’s quickly discuss what Roth IRAs are, give you a little history and just why you should care about them. We’ll try to keep this section brief.

Rick Winters:
I’ll grab that. So yeah, we’ll try to put it into proper box, but brief, that’s tough. We’ll see how we do there.

Rick Winters:
So first, Roth, that sounds like some totally purposeful name that just describes tax-free. Well actually, no, it doesn’t. It’s named after William Roth.

Andrew Busa:
A Senator.

Rick Winters:
A Senator, yeah, Senator William Roth. Which was established by him by submitting a bill under the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997.

Andrew Busa:
So these have been around for a while then?

Rick Winters:
Absolutely. First time you were able to save into a Roth IRA would have been 1998. So we’re looking at 20 plus years. This is still something that many people need to learn about though. So they’ve been around for a while, but not everybody’s fully aware of the ins and outs.

Rick Winters:
So let’s focus first on the taxation. They’re similar to a traditional IRA, where in that case, the biggest distinction here is you’re saving money in an IRA as a pre-tax, before paying federal and state income tax. Those grow tax-deferred, then taxable as normal income when distributed to the owner. And for pre-tax savings, you have a required distribution at 70½. For Roth IRAs, it goes in after tax, grows tax-free and is distributed tax-free. But there are no RMDs for the primary owner or spouse beneficiary on a Roth IRA.

Andrew Busa:
That’s definitely a key point there.

Andrew Busa:
So with a Roth IRA, once you put money into this vehicle, it’s never taxed again.

Rick Winters:
That’s right.

Andrew Busa:
So that’s really a point to highlight.

Rick Winters:
Or beneficiaries. Now, the beneficiaries, non-spouse would have required distributions, but that still would be tax-free.

Andrew Busa:
Right. And another key point that you mentioned here with no required minimum distributions for Roth IRAs, the other point to go along with that is there’s no age limitation when it comes to if you can contribute to a Roth. What it relies upon is if you have earned income.

Rick Winters:
Earned income, that’s right. And earned income is a statement out there. It’s not your dividends, your interest and your capital gains. This is, “I went out, I was paid for work I did. You earned it.” It comes in the form of salaries, bonuses, wages and commissions and tips. But, again, not stuff from passive income from a rental income on your house. So you have to be out there doing something. But you can do this if you’re 80 and you’re still mowing the lawn and getting paid $10 bucks a week, you could put that in there.

Andrew Busa:
So let’s say you have earned income, what are the main ways that you’re able to fund a Roth today?

Rick Winters:
Yeah, there’s three main ways to get money into a Roth, which is your traditional contributions through a Roth IRA with your annual limitations, through an employer-sponsored plan or conversions. So conversions would be, I have an IRA asset, either in an IRA or a 401(k), something I’m at pre-tax status on at this point, and I want to convert that over to a Roth. Now what’s happening there is I’m creating income. And if I’m already in a high tax bracket, well, you’re just going to add more income to a very high tax bracket. If I’m in a very low tax bracket, and we’re going to maybe even temporarily, I can use that conversion as a way to get some income out of there at a lower tax rate. But can be quite expensive if you don’t plan ahead.

Andrew Busa:
And Rick, when you say creating income, remember that this is taking money from a tax bucket that’s never been taxed, to your traditional IRA, and moving it to a Roth IRA. So since that’s never been taxed, the IRS is going to see this as creating income and it’s going to be taxed as ordinary income. And I think that brings up this larger, overall point here to keep in mind, is that making a contribution to an IRA can seem like a simple matter of just writing a check or doing one of these conversions. But we want to emphasize the fact that if you make the wrong contribution or if you employ one of these more advanced techniques, like a conversion, it can have pretty expensive consequences if you’re not following the right guidelines here.

Andrew Busa:
So in our experience, best results happen when we talk about the options with you and mesh your contributions with the other long-term financial and investment plan.

Rick Winters:
And the other thing is that back in just two years ago, it wasn’t a big deal, you can convert. And then there was this thing called re-characterization, which the most recent tax bill had killed, simply not available anymore. And that re-characterization was I could convert $100,000 today and next year, decide by the time I’m doing my taxes, that was a bad idea and put that money back into my IRA. Well, that’s gone. You convert it, it’s there, you’re paying taxes.

Andrew Busa:
So you can no longer re-characterize.

Rick Winters:
You better plan.

Andrew Busa:
Right. One other piece of housekeeping before we talk about the three planning points, is this five-year rule concept that comes along with Roths. Let’s clear that up right from the get-go.

Rick Winters:
We’re going to two categories. We’ve got our straight Roth contribution. I take money out of my savings account that I earned that earned income and I make a contribution to my Roth IRA. So that amount that’s in there, now, as the first time I opened a Roth IRA, I have a five-year period that I need to keep that money in its place, not distributing the capital gains over that five-year period. Your contributions you can access within that five-year period because you’ve already paid taxes on it, but the gains you cannot. The other is conversion money. Every time I make a conversion, so let’s say I made a conversion this year, that starts a five-year clock. On that one, I can’t take my conversion amount or the growth.

Rick Winters:
And next year, let’s say I come back and do another conversion, that starts a whole other five-year clock. So every time you do that conversion, you are going to be starting that clock over for five years. You have to pay attention to that.

Andrew Busa:
And let’s be clear here, when we’re talking about withdrawing earnings from your Roth IRA, you need to satisfy two rules. That account needs to be open for at least five years from that first contribution, and you need to be at least 59½ to access those earnings penalty- and tax-free. You can always access your contributions penalty- and tax-free.

Rick Winters:
Well, the thing is, if you open that Roth, the minute that one starts ticking… so if I open it December 31 of whatever year it is, it’s actually as if I had made that contribution on January 1 of that year. So I’m already a year down on this five-year clock, but I never have to start that clock over for a contribution. So if I make a contribution the following year, I’m four years in and eventually you’re beyond it.

Andrew Busa:
So in that vein, let’s move ahead and talk about this first planning point of someone who’s young, 25 years old. They’re in their first high paying job out of college. Opportunity here to make sure that they’re funding their Roth IRA early on because they really, probably, have the most to gain out of one of these accounts.

Andrew Busa:
So let’s talk a little bit about why should this particular person care about having a Roth when they potentially already have a 401(k) from their job, maybe they’re contributing to a traditional IRA. This is just another account for them to juggle. How do you deal with this?

Rick Winters:
Well, let’s think about this. So generations past, not everyone had a 401(k) available to them once they started into the workforce. Maybe the law hadn’t even been passed yet. I mean, and the limits on what you contribute were significantly less. So someone that’s going into the workforce now, their first year of ordinary contributions to a 401(k) can be upwards of $19,000, plus whatever the company’s matching.

Rick Winters:
If I’m doing that all pre-tax for the next 40 years, I’m not talking about having $1 million IRA, I’m talking about having a $10 million IRA of pre-tax saving. That’s if somebody is really maxing out. I’m not saying that that’s everybody’s future dream, but you could create that problem.

Andrew Busa:
So, essentially, it could be a problem, you’re saying?

Rick Winters:
A bomb. Yeah, a big tax bomb.

Andrew Busa:
That’s interesting.

Rick Winters:
Yeah. So the reason I say that is because at 70½  all that pre-tax savings has a required distribution that starts. The age may change, but the requirement for distributing some of that deferred income is not. So why would I do the Roth, well, I’m at the lowest tax rates. One, because they’re as low as they’ve ever been right now, with the expectation that thinking forward they probably would be higher. And also, making his least amount of money, I think, at 25 versus what I would expect to make at, let’s say, 35 or 45. So maybe I want to take advantage of that 12% tax bracket or 22% tax bracket.

Andrew Busa:
Right. Well, I was going to say, when you’re in a lower marginal tax bracket, the benefits of contributing to a traditional IRA or a 401(k) are slightly diminished. And, like you said, the Roth IRA, once it’s in there, it’s never taxed again. So when you do reach that retirement age, you don’t have massive required minimum distributions all from one tax bucket.

Rick Winters:
Everybody wants to do calculations to figure out whether it makes sense to do Roth versus pre-tax. Let me tell you this, if you’re paying less tax now than you would be later, it’s better.

Andrew Busa:
You’re going to thank yourself.

Rick Winters:
Yeah.

Andrew Busa:
And so thinking about the end results here for this 25-year-old, really, you think about three major tax buckets of where you’re able to save your money. We talked about the traditional IRA or 401(k) and your Roth. But also saving in that taxable bucket just at a regular investment account to kind of give you this tax diversity throughout your life. That’s where we see a lot of retirees have success, is when they have the flexibility to pull from different tax vehicles.

Rick Winters:
I’ll tell you, it’s tough when someone calls and says, “Hey, I found this car I want to buy, it’s $30,000.” And I tell them, “Well after I take your distribution from your IRA, it’s a $40,000 car because we had to pay the taxes.”

Andrew Busa:
That’s tough. Yeah. So they’re going to have to wait on that car there.

Andrew Busa:
Thinking about another consideration here is that a lot of companies are now introducing this idea of traditional and Roth 401(k) contribution options. How do you think about splitting those up as this type of person?

Rick Winters:
The main thing is you want to be able to save the maximum amount you can. We’re not recommending that you save so much that you’re now not paying your bills and you’re creating a debt problem. Because I can tell you, 15 and 20% interest rates on your credit card are pretty hard to compete with when it comes to any tax savings you assume you’re making. So pay your bills.

Rick Winters:
But from there, if you have the ability to even split it, you can go 5% to pre-tax and 5% to post tax.

Andrew Busa:
Build that tax diversity, right?

Rick Winters:
Exactly.

Rick Winters:
One thing that’s a no brainer, and this isn’t specifically what this podcast is about, but you’re going to take advantage of that company match. If they’re offering you 5%, I don’t care what you need to do, borrow money from mom, do what you got to do.

Andrew Busa:
That’s free money on the table.

Rick Winters:
That’s free money on the table. Go to one less movie, do something less each month.

Andrew Busa:
That’s a fair point. So I think, again, building that tax diversity, if you’re able to split contributions between your Roth and traditional 401(k) contributions, it’s a good move.

Andrew Busa:
Another consideration for someone here, a big goal for a lot of folks this age is to buy their first home. And I know with a Roth IRA, there is a special provision allowing you to pull out money for that first down payment. What do you think of that?

Rick Winters:
Yeah, you can do up to $10,000, no penalty. If it was an IRA, you’d pay taxes because it’s all pre-tax. But I would say that these are not the vehicles that you’re putting money into to try to make that first-time down payment. Because getting money into the Roth is the number one goal. Anything you can keep there, I would hesitate taking any money out.

Andrew Busa:
Yup. The key there is once it’s in the Roth, the longer you leave it untouched, the bigger the benefit is. Because once again, it’s never taxed again. So if you’re able to let that sit until way, way off into your retirement, traditionally, this is the last money we recommend touching in retirement planning. So this is not the money that you should be using for your down payment. Again, that money should be in either a taxable account that’s invested conservatively if you need it in the next couple of years or just a regular savings money market account.

Rick Winters:
That’s why we focus on this conversation’s all about a 25-year-old, is because this is all about getting money into the Roth.

Andrew Busa:
Exactly.

Rick Winters:
So to provide an example here, Andrew, for how we can help our kids. Because I think we are also on this podcast not just talking to the 25-year-old who probably doesn’t even know how to find this podcast yet. Actually no, wait, they probably know but they’ve avoided it. So it’s the parents of the 25-year-old that we may be talking to right now. Is that with your planning, as you’re working with your estate attorney and your financial adviser and your tax accountant, all important advisers to you, and you’re thinking about how you’re going to handle your money and pass on wealth to the kids, let me tell you, if you’re in a situation where you can help them pay, they tell them they pay their rent, you’re going to make sure you give them the money so that you can get it into their 401(k). Obviously they got to direct it out of their 401(k) account, but you’re telling them you’re helping them make this contribution to their 401(k). $19,000 a year, a current limit, next year, $19,500, it’ll keep going up.

Rick Winters:
That’s a real way to pass on some wealth. Because how else are you going to get them tax-free growth and tax-free distribution? You can’t. We’re about to lead into where the 45- and 65-year-olds are. But if you’re thinking about it, you can have a very big impact on how your kids think about saving.

Andrew Busa:
Absolutely. And I think you touched on an important point, too, that where Roth can be a powerful legacy asset. And I think we’re going to touch on that here with our second and third planning points.

Andrew Busa:
And on that note, sort of transitioning into someone who’s 45 to 50 years old, they’re in their peak earnings years. This is you. So you better listen to this.

Rick Winters:
I’m in. You’re talking about me now.

Andrew Busa:
So let’s talk about this person and remembering that they’re in their peak earnings years. And with a Roth IRA, there are some AGI limitations that you might actually bump up against here. So talking about the possibility of still, how do you contribute to a Roth when you’re bumping up those contributions?

Rick Winters:
Yeah. So if you are working with an employer that has a 401(k) plan, it’s almost a no-brainer that they should have a rough feature on there. If your company, by chance, does not, immediately dock on the human resources door. Don’t get yourself fired, but definitely be saying, “Where is that Roth feature?” I think it costs like $250 bucks to file the application.

Andrew Busa:
Because there’s no AGI limitation for Roth.

Rick Winters:
No AGI limitation.

Andrew Busa:
401(k) contributions.

Rick Winters:
Exactly.

Andrew Busa:
Right.

Rick Winters:
Yes. So if you are bumping into that on your own personal access to a Roth IRA, yeah, first and foremost, definitely look at your options on the 401(k) plan.

Andrew Busa:
Good point.

Rick Winters:
At 45, you’re still dealing with the limits at $19,000. And we’ll be moving on to higher numbers next year.

Rick Winters:
But the other way that you can actually get a contribution in is if you’re fortunate enough to not have any money in an IRA, you can actually open an IRA, make a nondeductible contribution. Why would I do that? While I’m taking money out of my savings account, that’s earning me nothing and being taxed on that nothing, into an IRA. “Well, okay, well I get the … no, no, no, because we didn’t take a deduction.”

Andrew Busa:
Right, no deduction.

Rick Winters:
Right. So now what do we do? We backdoor convert that over to a Roth and not pay any taxes. That’s why you hear that terminology, backdoor. And it’s because it’s kind of like feeling like we’re just kind of skirting the rules. But no, the rules are known. Congress knows what’s going on and they have done nothing to change it. So consider this your way in. Now, however, right, Andrew, we’ve got a potential problem because-

Andrew Busa:
“I’ve got an IRA, it’s already got money in it.”

Rick Winters:
What if you do have an IRA and I’ve got money in it?

Andrew Busa:
Which is likely.

Rick Winters:
Which is very likely, because I had a whole past employer and I rolled over my 401(k). Well the IRS looks at your IRAs, but even if you have ten of them at ten different places, trust me, you’re not hiding your IRA money.

Andrew Busa:
They’ll find it.

Rick Winters:
They find it. They consider it at one big pool. You can have every different account number on all your IRA money, it’s all one pool to the IRS. So if I go and make that nondeductible contribution to my IRA, it’s like a drop of water hitting a bucket of water that immediately just is part of the whole pool. So you think, “All right, well I’m going to go in and convert my after tax money.” Can’t do it, it’s pro rata. It’s now like part of my bigger pool. So I had $100,000 in there and I dropped six after tax. And I convert it, well pretty much 6% of that is, a little less, is going to be a non-taxable to you. So that would be conversion through there.

Andrew Busa:
And a potential workaround to this is if your employer offers roll-ins from your IRA to get that into that for 401(k). That’s a way to shelter that asset. Correct?

Rick Winters:
Yes. Yes, exactly. So if you can possibly get that back into your 401(k) and free that IRA up to zero balance, you’re back, you’re back to that.

Andrew Busa:
In the backdoor Roth, I know you do a lot of these with your clients and you’re pretty passionate about this. So I think just talking about why you’re passionate about this.

Rick Winters:
Yeah. It’s like one of the quickest ways to save people money. In this way, we don’t want to just justify ourselves by getting you an extra hundredth of a percent return on your investments, which is nice when that happens. But we want to be able to make sure that you are setting yourself up to be extremely efficient. So, I mean, the importance of getting money into a Roth is that tax-free growth, that tax-free distribution to know that you’re in a position to be able to take money and not have to worry about everything being an additional tax bill, and setting up your family, long-term, for tax-free distributions. That’s just smart.

Andrew Busa:
Right. Why not do it?

Rick Winters:
Yup.

Andrew Busa:
And so moving ahead here to our third planning point. So let’s say now you’re 65 years old, you’re about to retire. I know this will probably resonate with a lot of our listeners, so I think this is an important one.

Andrew Busa:
Thinking about, so let’s say you’ve been contributing through your 20s and your 30s, you’ve done some backdoor Roth. So you’ve done a great job of building up this Roth base, but maybe you have some other opportunities here, to continue to build up that Roth, even if you stop working. Because remember, you need earned income to contribute to that Roth. But Roth conversions, this is where this becomes a popular planning topic.

Rick Winters:
Big deal. I mean, unless you’re in your 40s and 50s, so which we were talking about before, and you transition a job and have a 12-month period where you’re not making any money, Roth conversions a pretty tough one to swallow because you got to come up with the cash to pay the taxes.

Rick Winters:
Well, when you’re in retirement, if I’m 65 years old, I haven’t turned on my Social Security yet. I don’t have to. I would actually probably recommend that you don’t. You don’t have any required distributions. Ideally, you did that after-tax savings that you were talking about, having a nice size brokerage account. Pay taxes on interest, dividends and cap gains, but when I want to take out money, I’ve got something I can access. Think about that, age 66, you’ve just retired, you’re happy as ever been, and your adviser turns around and says, “Hey, let’s convert $150,000 of your IRA and create some taxable income.” You’re like, “Are you crazy?”

Andrew Busa:
I’ve heard you say this before.

Rick Winters:
Yeah. Well, the reason I’m saying that is because you could literally be converting money at a  10% or 12% and 22% tax bracket that you would otherwise lose. So let’s say you don’t do any of that, you didn’t pay any taxes. Then age 70 rolls around, turn on Social Security, turn on your IRA distributions. Next thing you know, you’re paying 30% in taxes and you’re like, “How did this happen?”

Andrew Busa:
Yeah. So this is powerful and I think not enough people are talking about this one. Because if you’re able to successfully convert some Roth assets here, you’re lessening your required minimum distributions and you’re also creating a really powerful legacy asset. So you’re doing a big favor to your heirs if you continue to build up this Roth IRA. And talk a little bit about that.

Rick Winters:
Yeah. If I’m converting money at these extremely low tax brackets, no matter where I’m at, maybe I’m lucky enough to be in the 12% still when I get there, or the 22%, at a bare minimum, we’re talking with the accountants and saying, “Hey, let’s max out that bracket.”

Andrew Busa:
Take it to the top of that bracket.

Rick Winters:
But you may have extremely successful children who are in the 35% tax bracket. And you giving them a bunch of IRA money, beyond your own needs. I mean, let’s feel sorry for everybody here that’s inheriting money, but put it in its proper place. This is where the planning side is, you don’t have to. You can pay all the taxes you owe, we just can pay them at a lower rate. And I can pay them at a lower rate than my kids will. And it’ll be better for my grandkids.

Andrew Busa:
Because a traditional IRA really isn’t a friendly asset to inherit from a tax perspective for the reason you just said.

Rick Winters:
Yup, you’re inheriting every tax dollar that goes with it. Now you’re under current tax law, it’s still favorable to do that because you get to distribute it at life expectancy of the beneficiary, who may be 40 or 50. But if the tax rules change, that could actually become a significantly larger liability, which there is a bill out there, The SECURE Act. We may or may not hear more about that in the future, but if you haven’t heard about it, it does impact how required distributions will be handled.

Andrew Busa:

We recorded this podcast in November 2019 and since then the SECURE act has become law. Now as rick mentioned that law did overhaul the rules for beneficiaries of retirement accounts. So, with a few exceptions around chronically ill or disabled individuals, non-spouse beneficiaries no longer have the ability to do what is called a lifetime stretch. So, retirement accounts now must be emptied by December 31st of the tenth year following the year of death. As a result, passing on a large traditional IRA to a non-spouse beneficiary presents a larger tax burden than before as the ability to spread those tax hits from the distributions over a lifetime has gone away. So as a result, Roth IRAs are even more powerful as a legacy asset since there are no taxes on those distributions for heirs even though it still needs to be distributed within ten years. Now, back to the episode

Rick Winters:
So I think the opportunity here is working with your professionals as part of your estate plan, as part of your smart tax planning with your adviser to make sure your investments are growing at a proper rate and all of these things are being tied together, especially in the case of like Adviser Investments, where we’re working with our clients as a wealth adviser with the financial planning and working with your other professionals. I mean, this is just a no-brainer.

Andrew Busa:
Absolutely. And I was about to say the same exact thing, is that the conversion strategy is a little bit more advanced. We don’t recommend doing this on your own.

Rick Winters:
None of this stuff, really. Basically down to your simple Roth IRA contribution. Exactly.

Andrew Busa:
Work with us, work with your CPA and we’d love to work with your CPA, as well, to make sure it’s meshing with your entire financial plan.

Rick Winters:
If you convert incorrectly and make a wrong contribution, let’s go down to the simple thing, that you make the wrong contribution and you found out you weren’t allowed to make the contributions, there are penalties to pay. And those are not friendly penalties because you may not have made any money and you’re still paying the penalties.

Andrew Busa:
Exactly. You don’t want to get the IRS angry.

Rick Winters:
Don’t do it.

Andrew Busa:
So Rick, this has been a fantastic conversation. I’m really glad that we finally got the opportunity to do this. I know you were very excited about it.

Rick Winters:
I know I’m going to be dancing to the Roth-rock. Listen to the Roth.

Andrew Busa:
Rick “Roth” Winters. That’s it.

Andrew Busa:
So before we wrap up here, I want to go through a few of our big takeaways from our podcast here. I think, for me, a couple that resonated. One is build that tax diversity throughout your life. The Roth is a powerful a retirement savings vehicle. Yes, but so are your traditional IRAs and your just regular taxable brokerage accounts. So building that up throughout your working career gives you flexibility, when you’re retired, to pull from multiple accounts. And then the other, just how powerful the Roth IRA is from a legacy standpoint. Your heirs cannot inherit a friendlier asset, from a tax perspective, than the Roth. So I think those for me really stick out. How about you?

Rick Winters:
Yeah, I’d say don’t miss out on maximizing your contributions. Know where you can get in, don’t shy away from exploring your ways to get into a Roth. I hate to be the don’t guy, but make sure that you, this is the do, make sure you consult with your tax advisers and your other professionals to get it right.

Andrew Busa:
It’s a great point. Because like you said, the penalties can be pretty nasty if you don’t.

Rick Winters:
That’s right.

Andrew Busa:
So this has been Andrew Busa and Rick Winters from Adviser Investments thanking you for listening to the Adviser You Can Talk To Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe and review our show. You can also check us out at www.adviserinvestments.com/podcasts. Your feedback is always welcome. And if you have any questions or topics that you’d like us to explore, please email us at info@adviserinvestments.com. Thanks again.

 

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Article

The ‘Mega Backdoor’ Roth IRA

We’re big fans of Roth IRAs. Who doesn’t love tax-free growth? But Roth IRAs come with limitations on who can contribute to them—and how much they can contribute—based on annual income. There’s a workaround, however. One fairly common strategy that skirts these limitations is the “backdoor” Roth conversion—you roll (or transfer) funds …
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Why Convert From a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA?

It's One of the Smartest Tax Moves You Can Make

The Roth IRA may be the best retirement savings vehicle available to the American investor today. Whether you are young or old, a white-collar worker or a business owner, this type of account is a fantastic investment choice. Special features like …

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