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Tax-Advantaged Retirement Investment Planning
Retirement planning calculator software is highly recommended, when you want to develop a superior family financial strategy
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Tax-Advantaged Retirement Savings Plans
You may have the opportunity to make investments into both individual retirement (IRA) accounts and into employer or self-employed tax-advantaged retirement plans, such as a 401k. In general, if your retirement saving planning allows sufficient annual retirement savings from your earnings, most retirement investment advisers would recommend that you make the full contributions each year into these various plans through out your employment up to when your retire.
Even when you find that you cannot deduct from your income taxes your annual contributions to retirement plans, very often it still makes long-term retirement financial planning sense to make those IRA and 401k contributions, since future appreciation of these assets would be sheltered from ongoing taxation.
Traditional Tax-Advantaged IRA Contributions Versus Roth Retirement Account Investments
The article that follows provides information that will allow you to understand better the trade-offs between “traditional” and “Roth” tax-advantaged retirement accounts. Understanding the trade-offs between traditional IRA and 401k retirement contributions versus Roth 401k retirement plan contributions and Roth IRA contributions requires automated analysis of all the factors that impact this decision. Back-of-the-envelope calculations can easily be simplistic, incorrect, and deceptive. This decision can only properly be made with the assistance of a comprehensive retirement planning tool. If you do not have access to retirement planning software that can do this analysis for you, you really should get such a retirement planning software tool. The dollar amounts involved can be very large over a lifetime. Following uninformed instincts can lead to a highly sub-optimal retirement savings plan and you could accumulated many thousands of dollars less than you might save with a more optimal tax-advantaged retirement investing strategy.
For the majority of Americans, such retirement planning tools develop projections indicating that it would be more advantageous to make contributions to traditional tax-advantaged retirement accounts rather that Roth tax-advantaged retirement accounts. This tends to be true, whenever those saving for retirement can take advantage of the current tax deductibility features of traditional tax-advantaged 401k and IRA account investments.
However, when retirement savers cannot take advantage of current deductibility to reduce current taxable income and their income still allows some level of retirement plan contributions, then Roth contributions are preferred, if the tax rules allow such Roth retirement plan contributions. While the majority of retirement savers would prefer traditional retirement plan contributions to reduce current taxable income, whenever possible, you should monitor the situation each year to understand the rules in effect in a particular tax year. Unfortunately, the tax-advantaged retirement plan account rules are quite complex and some rules have been shifting from year to year.
The best way to understand this topic yourself is to download from the IRS website Publications 560 and 590. Grab some coffee and dedicate a few hours to the task of learning about retirement plan taxation. This could be a very valuable expenditure of your time, particularly if you want to answer the question: “how much do I need to retire?” and you recognize that whether your retirement savings account assets are “pre-tax” or “after-tax” can make a huge difference in determining how much money do I need to retire?!. Of course, a knowledgeable certified public accountant could also be helpful, if you would rather pay someone else to help you learn the rules.
The retirement account article that follows provides information that will allow you to understand better the trade-offs between “traditional” and “Roth” tax-advantaged retirement accounts. A subsequent article discusses the estate planning and the inheritance advantages of Roth retirement savings accounts, which can be very substantial, if your assets are likely out-live you.
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