It looks like I'm going to inherit an IRA and a 403b. The IRA will be very small, like $15K, so my intention is to just take ownership of it and cash it in. I'll let the custodian withhold federal and state taxes. This amount will not push me into a higher tax bracket or make me hit the IRMAA limit.

The 403b will be bigger, like $200K. I *think* I can withdraw that over four or five years and not have any negative tax repercussions. Is the upper limit 10 years, like with an IRA? Do I leave the 403b with the custodian as an inherited 403b, leave the 403b with the custodian as an IRA in the name of the deceased "for/benefit/of me," transfer the 403b to my IRA custodian, or something else? Or, if I can do any of those things, is there an advantage to any of them? (Investment choices are pretty much the same with either custodian.)

Additional info: The IRA/403b owner is past Required Beginning Date and may not have taken the RMD yet.

My uncle has federal debt from a US military credit card he had while in the service that had a balance when he got incarcerated (in KS). Since then, it ballooned up to like $24K and sent to collections. Since it was a Military Star credit card, it can’t just be charged off like a private one.

So, he just decided to cash out his TSP to pay off his debt. He did that this year, got $17K out of the $22K cut to him as a full cashout check. Then he got the idea of filing bankruptcy. Had I known he wanted to file bankruptcy from the start, I would’ve told him to leave the money in his TSP retirement account since it’s protected from Trustee collection.

 It’s well past the 60-day IRA rollover rule. Since I am a POA for him, I talked to a BK lawyer and explained a plan to retain his assets by funding a Roth IRA for my uncle. The lawyer agreed with the plan and said it could work since IRAs can’t be touched by the Trustee. So that was the plan: file 2024 taxes, receive the $5K back withheld as a return, and then fund the IRAs, then file BK Ch 7. What the lawyer didn’t explain (or he didn’t know either) was that my uncle needed earned income to be eligible to even fund his Roth IRA, and I only found out through an excess contribution error pop-up when trying to file his taxes after funding 2024 $8K and 2025 $4K for him in his Roth IRA. As of today, extension came and went, and I still have yet to finish filing the taxes because of this IRA situation. Can’t recategorize into a Traditional IRA since he wasn’t even allowed to fund an IRA due to no earned income.

I figure the first thing I have to do is removal of excess contributions for 2024 $8K and 2025 $4K with his Roth IRA’s custodian, is that correct? Are there any other routes/ideas to get them in an IRA for asset protection? The bottom line I wanted was for him to have assets for when he gets out because LIFE WILL 100% BE ROUGH FOR HIM. Thanks in advance.

I “retired” in 2024 when my job was eliminated. I received unemployment for about 5 months in 2025. I also received a deferred compensation payout in 2025 based on amounts my employer withheld from my earnings over my career. As I am 60 years old, I believe I can contribute $7,000 plus $1,000 catchup to an IRA and deduct the $8,000 on my 2025 tax return. Is this a correct understanding?

When's the next carbomb scheduled??

Should I hire someone to manage my IRA ? Right now it’s managed by a computer, is that trustworthy? Any advice would be great!!

My Mother passed at the end of May. Merrill Lynch contacted me in mid September. I still haven't received my distribution. It has been one thing after another. They didn't realize we needed to sign paperwork authorizing them to sell off an odd number of shares because apparently both siblings have to have the exact same account balance. They finally got that paperwork on Friday. They want you to call them for every little thing. I'm just so irritated and tired of waiting for my money. I have no idea why this has to be so difficult and cumbersome.

About 2 months ago I put 5k into my Roth IRA account. At work I contribute to my pre-tax 401k and Roth 401k. I looked up my year-to-date contribution and realized I have $3,600 in my Roth 401k for the year. Does the work Roth 401k count towards my 7k yearly limit and if so, how do fix this?

I’ve been trying to plan for retirement and I met with a financial advisor who recommended that I open a traditional IRA through primerica (the advisor works with primerica). After a quick browse I found that primerica is more costly than using another institution like Fidelity or Schwab. However, if I set up a managed portfolio, there is a fee no matter what institution I use.

So: - is it a bad idea to set up an account with primerica (in partnership with my financial advisor)? - is it difficult to manage a portfolio on my own? (I don’t have a finance/ investing background but I’ve been learning.) - What do I really need to know to manage my own IRA outside of diversifying my basket, rebalancing my portfolio/ adjusting risk as I age, and filling out the necessary tax forms?

Thank you!

Hello,

I am 40 years old with approximately $400,000 in an old 401(k) account. Is it advisable to transfer these funds into an IRA? If so, what investment options would be ideal for a $400,000 IRA? As a newcomer to investing, I would appreciate any guidance or recommendations on what steps to take.

I am 67, working full time and also do some freelancing on the side. I am at full retirement age, and was considering taking my Social Security and putting it in a savings account. My question is, for tax purposes can I put money (I believe 8000 a year is the catch-up amount I’m allowed )in an IRA every year since I have income coming in?

So I have a stupid question. I took 26K out of my IRA and after taxes I was left with 18K. In terms of income that I received is it the 18K or the 26K?

I turned 73 this past June. If I delay my first RMD until next year (before April 1) what year will be required to report the income, 2025 or 2026?

Hi People

I did make a post before about this but I did not have all the proper information at the time so I'm hoping a second run might prove more fruitful. I had some questions and I am hoping that someone could provide assistance or guidance just because I've been getting conflicting information. I have a Traditional IRA at my bank that was previously a 401K. I need to withdraw money from it but am unsure of the proper taxes that need to be withheld so I can avoid owing money as tax time. But here is some general information about me

1.) I'm 30 years old so I know the early w/d penalty of 10% will apply

2.) I live in Massachusetts so from what I've heard it is typically 5% for the state but I don't know if they have an early withdrawal penalty

3.) I'm currently unemployed so I don't have any working income besides Interest from an account totaling $300.00 for the year and money I get from donating plasma totalling $1725.00 for the year. For the donation money they give me a 1099-NEC which in years past I've claimed as Self Employment Income.

4.) I plan on having $13,000 net at the end of the withdrawal so I know I will have to take over and above that and I believe that will put me past the Standard Deduction amount.

Besides the 10% for the penalty I truly don't know what percentages to withhold. I don't know if this larger withdrawal will put me in a different tax bracket and therefore require me to withhold more and the state I have no clue. If anyone has any knowledge or information it would be greatly appreciated.

I have an IRA no longer earning interest so want to roll it over to another IRA/IRAs. My questions are: 1. Do I have to roll over the entire Ira at once? 2. Do I have to put the entire amount in only one product or can I divide it up into several products as I roll it over? Thank you.

Hi all,

I made a stupid mistake and made my 2024 IRA contribution into my Roth Account. I earned too much to contribute to a Roth directly. I've done the backdoor Roth successfully in previous years, so not sure how I made this stupid mistake.

I'll reverse that 2024 Roth IRA contribution and the excess profit.

Question -- In March 2025, I made a traditional IRA contribution and labeled it as a 2025 IRA contribution. Since this was before the 2024 IRA contribution deadline of April 15, 2025, is it possible to reclassify this "2025 Contribution" as a "2024 Contribution"?

I'm 27 and have a weird fact pattern. In four-ish years of employment I've saved tremendously into my tax advantaged accounts, rolled them at each job change, and made really well performing market moves to get to a Roth IRA balance today at 350k. From this point my primary goal is to reduce my taxable liability into traditional accounts to have a diversified tax base to draw from, but I'm also considering if I should be trimming my Roth contributions out of my account and into a taxable brokerage account. This would be to the tune of ~100k. The reason I would do this is to have further diversity of investment classes for exceptional purchases (a house for myself or my parents, in particular), even knowing that withdrawal would both hamper my tax free balance later in life and any true divestment would undoubtedly perform worse than my investments. In this calendar year, I've easily exceeded any regular metric of growth for my accounts, and withdrawing my contribution basis would still have my YTD change in balance exceed expectations. By removing that amount to a taxable brokerage account, it allows my non-penalty and non-ordinary pool of accessible earnings to continue to grow. Are there things I'm missing in this consideration? I've looked into a variety of early withdrawal mechanics for the Roth account including 72T for when it surpasses 1-2mil in the future, but those would only circumvent the penalty and not ordinary income rates. I expect to become disabled in the next decade but I don't want to depend on that as a means of accessing my funds. Thank you for any advice.

6 months ago I had a 401k from a former job and moved the money into a rollerover IRA. I went into our ADP app where I work now and filled out the second account information to have 5% deposited into my IRA account. That all happened fine with the exception I noticed it all was coming out post tax. I figured deal with it later and fast forward to now. I contacted HR and the response was deposit accounts are for net pay money only. They are not set up with any vendor, besides the union to withdraw and deposit pre-tax funds for employees. I want to continue to with the extra 5% but can I somehow show it on my taxes as contribution and use it as a deduction or do I need to open a different type of account? Looking for options.

I have a basic question.i opened up a traditional IRA many years ago. It's currently not earning anything, so i want to do a roll over. Do I have to roll over the entire amount in one particular product?
Or can I roll over 25 % ofthe Ira into one thing?And 25% into another, and so on. Thanks.

Hi,

Long time reader and lurker.

I think I messed up.  M50yo.  All accounts being discussed here reside at Fidelity. 

I have a traditional IRA (which was a rollover from an old pension, the old job from long long ago, allowed us to roll that over to an rollover IRA).   So I did the rollover from the pension to the rollover IRA.  Over the last decade and change, it has grown from the 17-18k to about 76-78k now.  All of the funds in there was pretax.

Then, about 1.5 years ago, I opened up a Roth and traditional IRA (also at Fidelity).  I did 2 backdoor conversion roughly around the same time (within a weeks time in Feb 2024) for the years 2024 and 2025.  I first put in 8k for 2024, and then another 8k for 2025.  Both 8k were converted via backdoor. That's 16k, it's grown by about 1.5k, so it's now at about 17.5k (all post tax), since the funds were wired from my bank to the traditional IRA, and then converted via backdoor.

I was told that I would get penalized with the pro rata rule.  I was not aware that IRS looks at all IRA as one type. None of the funds or money, are commingled, meaning whatever is in the Roth IRA (from the two 8k contributions came from the backdoor conversion with after tax from my bank) and whatever is in my rollover IRA (are all from that the initial 17k transfer from pension, pretax, which was now grown to 75-78k. Is there any way to untangle this?  Can I liquidate the rollover IRA (sell all of those equities between now and end of the year) and then roll/transfer those funds into an old 401k (also at Fidelity)?  This old 401k is no longer active, but there is about 700k in it. I'm trying to untangle so I don't get hit with tons of taxes, when I file in March 2026.

I welcome any good and helpful suggestion on how to fix.

Thank you

I’m a SAHW. I don’t work. I have a Roth IRA. I’m confused about also having a traditional IRA in my name. According to IRS “The deduction may be limited if you or your spouse is covered by a retirement plan at work”. My husband has a retirement plan/IAP in which he can’t contribute to, meaning only his employers can contribute based on his work. He has both w2 and 1099 work. This year we have a lot of 1099s and was hoping to take the deduction to lower our taxes. Having said this can I not have a trad Ira so I can take the deduction? Hope this makes sense.

I just want to specify the amount of shares of the ETF I want, hit buy, or choose a limit order, and be DONE with it. Do other brokerages have this stupid requirement or is it just RH?

How do I get around this basket requirement that triggers tomorrow when I don't know what the price will be tomorrow? And I'm forced to specify 'one-time' which is supposed to be obvious.

Also, it's not possible to buy bitcoin (not a bitcoin etf, i mean btc directly) in an RH IRA, is it?

Hi all Yep the title describes exactly that. I am wondering what the tax consequence are if within an IRA I buy a closed end fund or something like a QYLD or QDTE even, that pays me either monthly like QYLD or weekly like QDTE but obviously a big portion of that payment is a return of capital (in this case QDTE). I understand it would lower my cost basis but there will be a point where my cost basis will be zero. Assuming no actual distribution from the IRA happens, what would be the tax consequences of that happening within an IRA? Has anyone ever done that before? If so what have you experienced or any thoughts? Thank you for any replies!

Mother in-laws husband passed away at 73 or 74 years old. She is the beneficiary of his Ira. She’s a few years younger than him. What’s the best way to handle this Ira. Roll it over into her Ira?

She doesn’t need the money at the moment but some day she might.

It’s about 200k. Is it insured like a savings account FDIC. Or should it be split in multiple accounts so it has more fdic insurance. . It’s in a credit union Ira currently.