Can you Contribute to Multiple Retirement Accounts At The Same Time? – Money Q&A

Transcript:

On this episode of the personal finance podcast, can I contribute to multiple retirement accounts every single year? We're going to answer that and more on this money. Q and a

what's up everybody. And welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of master money. co and today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be answering the question. Can I contribute to multiple retirement accounts every single year? Along with a bunch of other questions on this money.

Q and a, if you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, Tik TOK, Twitter at master money co, and you can also reply. If you're on the master money newsletter, you can reply to me directly there via email as well. And if you're getting value out of the show. Make sure that you follow this show.

It is really important that you guys follow this show, because I want you to make sure that you are getting all of our new content that is coming out every single week and consider leaving a five star rating and review on your favorite podcast player. Now, today we're going to be diving into three deeper questions talking through retirement accounts.

So the first one is, can you contribute to a backdoor Roth? A 401k and a SEP Roth all in the same year. This is a deep dive question. I actually had to do a lot of research on this and get into some of the weeds of some really old IRS documents to figure out the answer for this question to nine reasons why I hate annuities.

So somebody asked a question about annuities. I'm going to go through why I hate annuities and why they are some of the things that I really don't want to be involved in. And then number three is we're going to talk through the difference between a Roth and a traditional 401k. And which one may be the best option for you based on your income and based on your financial situation.

So these are going to be the three questions that we are answering today. So if that's something you're into, let's get into it. All right. So the first question is a doozy. Is it possible to open and fund a Roth SEP IRA for my side hustle? If I am currently a full time employee at a corporation and I fund my company's Roth 401k and I fund a backdoor Roth IRA, I went on the IRA website to review frequently asked questions, but I could not find the answer.

So this is a great question. I am really glad you asked this cause I had fun kind of diving deep into some of this stuff to figure a couple of pieces of this out. So we're going to talk through each of these little things and talk through why this is really, really important to understand. So if you don't know what these accounts are, first, we have the Roth 401k and the Roth 401k is just like your standard 401k, except when you contribute money into the Roth 401k, this is not tax deductible.

You've already been taxed on those dollars going into the Roth 401k. The money can grow tax free and you can pull the money out tax free later. The Roth 401k is one of my favorites. Favorite accounts, and it is one that I try to contribute to heavily. Uh, every single year I do a solo Roth 401k, and it is one that I really try to contribute heavily every single year.

So in 2023, you can contribute 23, 000 to any of your 401k accounts, including the Roth 401k. And if you're 50 or older, you can do a catch up contribution of 7, 500 bucks. And so this is really, really important to understand now. We also are talking about a backdoor Roth IRA and a backdoor Roth IRA are for folks who make too much money to contribute to a Roth IRA.

Yes. Roth IRAs have income limits. Now the Roth 401k does not, which is a beautiful thing, but the Roth IRA does. So you must be a high income earner. If you are doing a backdoor Roth IRA. And so a backdoor Roth IRA means you contribute money to your traditional IRA, and then you convert that money to a Roth IRA.

It is just a loophole. And I say that in quotations, the IRS knows about it. They talk about it all the time in their documents, but it's just a loophole to get your money into a Roth IRA. Lastly, we have a SEP IRA and a SEP IRA is a very unique account to people who have businesses or small businesses where you can actually take income from your job, where you can actually save about 25 percent of what you make from a side hustle up to 69, 000.

Whichever one is smaller, so you can either save 25 percent of the income from business or up to 69, 000, whichever one is smaller in that instance. And so that is how the SEP IRA works. It works very similar to a traditional IRA in terms of how it's taxed, but that is how it works in terms of how you can contribute to it.

It has very specific rules. In fact, I've had a SEP IRA in the past where I had a business. And I contributed too much to my SEP IRA. Then I had to go back and backtrack and fill out all this paperwork. So SEP IRAs are kind of complicated for a lot of people. And if you have access to some of the traditional stuff, that's great.

This is obviously a high earner who wants to kind of max some of this stuff out. Now, really important to understand you can contribute to all three of these. Yes, you can. That is something you can absolutely do, but what's going to happen here is a SEP IRA. Can't reduce the amount that you can contribute to some accounts.

So I'm going to actually read directly from the IRS on this, because they say if the SEP IRA permits non SEP contributions, you can make regular IRA contributions, including IRA catch up contributions. If you are age 50 and older to your SEP IRA up to the maximum annual limit. However, the amount of the regular IRA contributions that you can deduct on your income tax return may be reduced or eliminated due to your participation in the SEP plan.

So if you participate in a SEP plan, it is very possible that your contributions, maybe to your traditional IRA, that you're going to move to your Roth IRA. And it may not matter to you because you're going to do that conversion really quickly because you're going to do the backdoor Roth IRA and you're going to pay for that anyways.

So that's number one is I want you to notice somebody is doing it just to an IRA contribution and not doing the backdoor Roth conversion like this listener is if you just do it to an IRA contribution or a 401k contribution, it can reduce your tax. Deduction if you do that. So that's just number one to note is you need to note that up top.

Number two is because a SEP IRA is the traditional IRA, you may be able to make regular annual IRA contributions to this IRA rather than opening a separate IRA account. However, any dollars you contribute to the SEP IRA will reduce the amount that you can contribute to other IRAs, including Roth IRAs for the year.

And they give an example here. So the IRS is actually giving examples when they go through this. And I'm going to read the example verbatim, because I think this is really important to understand. Example one, Nancy's employer, JJ Handyman contributes 5, 000 to Nancy's SEP IRA at ABC Investment Co. Based on the terms of JJ Handyman's SEP IRA plan, Nancy, age 45, is permitted to make traditional IRA contributions to her SEP IRA account at ABC Investment Co.

and she contributes 3, 000 in 2019. If Nancy wants to contribute to her Roth IRA at XYZ Investment Co. for 2019, she can contribute 3, 000. And at this time, when this was written, which was 2019, the IRA max out was 6, 000. So they're saying the maximum contribution, less than 3, 000 already contributed to our SEP IRA.

So it reduces the amount that you can contribute to that Roth IRA because of your SEP IRA contribution. So this is really important stuff to understand. This is why really, when you do this kind of stuff, you want to get with your accountant and say to them, Hey, I'm I want to do this. I want to contribute to all three of these.

How is this going to impact my contributions to each of these accounts? That's the first question you need to ask them, because what's going to happen is when you start to contribute this stuff, you don't want to go back and have to backtrack some of these set contributions and, or some of these. IRA or 401k contributions because you contributed too much to a SEP and it really just kind of canceled out what you were trying to do here.

So it's really important to understand you can contribute to all three of these 100%, but it's just really important to note, you know, do you have to backtrack some of this? Is it going to kind of reduce the amount of tax reduction that you can get as well? So really important to note some of this, but I love.

A that you're doing the Roth 401k that you're doing the backdoor Roth IRA. You can anytime do both of those at the same time. The SEP is what's going to complicate it. Now, if the SEP is something that you're making a ton of money with your side hustle, and you can contribute up to the, you know, that 69, 000 mark, if you can get those dollars in there, if that's 25 percent or less and you're trying to get more dollars in these retirement accounts, then the SEP may grip me a great option for you because you're trying to get Those tax deferred dollars into some of these accounts.

But if your side hustle is just doing a small amount right now, then maybe I wouldn't add the complication of the SAP because it's just going to increase the issues that you have at hand. Now you're talking about a SAP Roth. IRA. And so this is something where if you do this Sep Roth IRA, it just may not be worth the hassle if you have to backtrack some of these.

So I had to dig back to 2019 was the last time the IRS has actually talked about this, that I can find. Um, and so that's where we kind of pulled this out. I saw some places in some forums and chats, like on Reddit and things like that, that were giving some incorrect information on some of this stuff.

The IRS website does have a little bit of information on that. I will make sure that we link this up down below as well, where I was looking through this. Okay. Uh, so that you can see it because it's the frequently asked questions from 2019. So they haven't updated this in a long, long time. And so really, really important to kind of understand that because steps can get very, very complicated.

And even I when I contribute to these steps, like I said, I have had some complications with steps because the rules are so very specific. That you really need to make sure you're following them, especially if you're contributing to other accounts. So it just kind of complicates your financial situation in a lot of scenarios.

And so that's why I honestly like if you're going to go solo, uh, if you eventually leave your job and maybe your side hustle takes over, uh, maybe you want to look at a solo 401k solo Roth 401k, something like that, they're much simpler to kind of handle and you can contribute a large amount to those as well.

So, uh, really, really good stuff here and really glad that you are contributing to all these accounts. Congratulations for doing that because you can build a massive. Amount of wealth just by contributing to all of these accounts and would definitely, definitely, uh, be something that amazing that you could be doing over that time frame, you'll have multimillion dollar accounts for sure.

By doing this. So thank you so much for sending in that question. All right. So the second question is one about annuities. And so they ask a coworker of mine mentioned they have an annuity and I tried understanding it, but not quite sure I grasp it. And there's a reason for that. I'll tell you in a minute.

What is an annuity and is it a worthwhile investment mechanism? And would you recommend it in any circumstances? So annuities are financial products where they kind of try to tell you that they're going to offer a steady stream of income. And it's typically used obviously for retirement planning, but they have several cons that I really don't like when it comes to annuities and.

There are, I'm going to go through all of these here in a second, but the first one is they are very complex. So the reason why you're not grasping it most likely is because of how complex annuities are and they make them complex intentionally because there's a lot of different layers of things. Things that they're going to add in the annuities that are going to help the person who is selling you the annuity.

In addition to the company who is housing the annuity, making a lot of money. So first is they are extremely complex. I don't like any financial product that is complex because that means they can hide things in the fine print. And that's the last thing I want for most people is for them to hide things in the fine print.

Very simple concepts are things like target date, retirement funds, index funds, ETFs. Those are easy to understand. And for the most part, easy to read. And so those are products that I absolutely love. That's why I invest my dollars into them. And when it comes to some of these complex financial products, it seems like they are just creating vast amounts of weeds so that you can not find the real issues within each one of these products.

Number two is fees and expenses. Annuities. Come with really, really high fees. And if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time whatsoever, you know, I talk about this all the time. Fees will absolutely destroy your wealth building ability. If you do not stay on top of them, any investment fees that you pay can absolutely kill your rate of return over time.

This can cost you millions of dollars, depending on how much you are contributing to some of these accounts and how much time you are contributing to some of these accounts, annuities don't just have like one set of fees. Like if you look at. For example, a mutual fund, it has an expense ratio and those fees are something that is pretty much straightforward and, you know, maybe it has a 1 percent expense ratio.

If an advisor sells you that mutual fund, they're also going to take an expense ratio. So there's two layers there. Annuities have layers and layers of fees, which is why they're so complex. I believe they make them complex so that they can layer in these fees without you really noticing. So they'll have things like management fees is number one.

And so you have to look for those management fees and make sure they're not taking away. From a ton of different things that you have, they have mortality and expense risk charges, which are additional charges that they're adding on to some of these, they have administrative fees where they add on administrative fees for handling the annuity.

They have surrender charges, where if you surrender the annuity, you're going to lose a bunch of money just for surrendering that annuity. So they want to lock you in and keep you locked in into that annuity. So all of these are just. Huge, huge red flags when it comes to any investment product. If you see layers of fees, your red flag should be going crazy.

Alarm bells should be going off. This is something you definitely want to avoid. Number three is when you have annuities, you have a major liquidity issue. Meaning that because many of these come with surrender charges, meaning they're going to charge you a ton of money. If you actually want to liquidate that annuity, meaning if you actually want to pull your money out, then they make it difficult to access your money.

And if an emergency comes up now, let's look at this traditionally. On the flip side with a Roth IRA. So sure. Retirement accounts have a penalty. It's a 10 percent penalty if you pull it out before the age 59 and a half. But if you look at something like a Roth IRA, for example, a Roth IRA, you can actually withdraw the contributions that you put into a Roth IRA in the case of emergency.

Now, I would never recommend you doing this unless you're facing one of the worst situations that you could ever have, because you don't want to interrupt compound interest unnecessarily. That's the last thing you want to do. Instead, you want to leave your money in those accounts so that I can grow over time.

But you do have that option. If the worst thing in the world ever happened to you, you do have that option to actually liquidate and have some liquidity there. Number four is inflation risk. So there are some annuities they're called fixed annuities. And with fixed annuities, what happens is you get a fixed rate.

And what happens is when people lock in these fixed rates on these fixed annuities, you run the risk of your money, not keeping up with inflation. There was people who got annuities, who locked them in for just a couple percentage points, just five, seven years ago, when rates were much, much lower. And so this is a major, major problem that I think you really got to make sure that you protect yourself against.

Number five is these have a limited returns. You can get a much higher return. Just investing in a simple index fund, the S and P 500 historically, that's what the numbers have come back at. Whereas annuities have terrible returns historically. And that is number one. Why I really wouldn't like them is just their historical returns are just absolutely so bad.

They have really high fees. This is just stacking up more and more and more number six, they have something called mortality credit. So if you never heard of this, the payout of a lifetime annuity depends on the actuarial calculations and concept of mortality credits, which means that those who live longer benefit more at the expense of those who die earlier, and this can be a gamble on your lifespan.

So. Just another ridiculous thing that they throw into annuities is mortality credits, tax implications. While annuities do have tax deferred growth on some of them, withdrawals will be taxed as ordinary income, which could be higher than capital gains taxes for some investors. And early withdrawals before age 59 and a half also incur that same 10 percent penalty that you would have in another retirement account.

So you're getting more restrictions, less returns, higher fees than you would just get in a standard retirement account. Just not worth it. So annuities also are insurance products. And like I said, if you know me, you know that any insurance product that is being sold to you as an investment is not an investment.

This goes for life insurance. This goes for annuities. I absolutely hate annuities. Every single thing about insurance products as investments. These are not investments. These are ways for insurance salespeople to make money off of you. And so you got to make sure that you have your red flags ringing when it comes up to this.

And then lastly, you know, if you've listened to this podcast for a long period of time, I am all about flexibility. When it comes to your finances, you have zero flexibility when it comes to your finances. If you are invested in annuity, in fact, your flexibility means that if you want to get flexible with an annuity, you're going to have to pay a ton of money in penalties and fees.

And so that is really, really important to understand. It is so important to be fluid and flexible with your finances. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is putting them in accounts where you can access funds when you need them, in addition to putting 'em in accounts that have flexibility in what you can invest in, and flexibility in how you can actually allocate those funds towards different investments where you have zero flexibility in annuities and you have way less flexibility than a retirement account and way, way less flexibility than a standard brokerage account.

So really important to understand some of these nuances when it comes to these, because I would not touch these with a 10 foot pole. I'll tell you that right now. That's just my personal preference. I would not touch an annuity with a 10 foot pole. If you inherit one or something like that, then there's nothing really you can do in that situation, but outside of that, I would not maintain an annuity and, or invest my dollars into there.

Because A, the advisors that are asking you to invest in these annuities are going to make a ton of money off you. The company housing the annuity is going to make a ton of money off of you. And you're going to have a low rate of return. You're not going to have flexibility. The tax implications are not improved.

You're going to have interest rates risk. You have that limited return and your money could lose out to inflation in the long run if you're not careful. Why would you ever do this? And so this is one of those things where hopefully I see less and less people actually investing in annuities. I think it was bigger in the nineties and the eighties, but now it seems like less and less people are investing in them, which is a great thing.

And really, really try to stay away. And if somebody tries to talk to your parents or your grandparents into annuities, please. Send them this information because it's really, really important to understand. Um, and I think really you should avoid them at all costs. So thank you so much for the question. I love talking about this stuff.

I love spreading this message because I think there are way too many people spreading the opposite, which is something that I really don't want you to see get involved in. All right. The next question is, is it possible for you to cover why you choose Roth first traditional 401k and which may be better in the long run and what you would personally choose?

All right. So. This is a great question. And I think, uh, this is one that we have talked about a little bit in the past, but we will kind of go through this and I'll go through the synopsis of this. I will link up the show notes for it. We have a traditional 401k episode and we have a Roth 401k episode. I love both accounts.

And I think there are scenarios when you can utilize both. So. First, let's talk about the Roth 401k because less people know that that exists. We talked about at the top of the show on the first question, but when it comes to the Roth 401k, uh, your contributions, when you contribute to a Roth 401k are going to come out of your paycheck, but the money has already been taxed, meaning that it came from your paycheck, but it's already been taxed going into your 401k.

Now, because this is a Roth 401k. So once the money hits the Roth 401k, then you can invest those dollars into whatever options your company offers. Okay. And you invest those dollars into a specific fund or multiple funds, however you want to do it. And when that money is invested, your money will grow tax free.

Okay. And then when you retire, you can actually pull the money out tax free. Now, the beautiful thing about the Roth 401k for a lot of folks who are really high income earners, you do not have to To worry about those income limits because those do not exist in 401ks right now. And so the income limits do not exist with the Roth 401k.

And you can get more money into the Roth 401k. If you love these Roth accounts, meaning you can get 23, 000 per year. Into this Roth 401k, which is incredibly powerful. In fact, let's take a look at how powerful this can actually be, because it's really important sometimes just to run these numbers and I'm going to do this live as we're talking here, um, to run these numbers on this show in terms of how much that you can make just by doing this every single year.

So let's just do 23, 000 every single year with a 7 percent rate of return over the course of 30 years. And so we're going to contribute that annually at the end of every single year with a 7 percent rate of return. You're going to have 2. 1 million in that account. And let's look at this over the course of a 10 percent rate of return.

Let's just adjust this return. So with a 10 percent rate of return, which historically the S and P 500 has returned more than a 10 percent rate of return. Don't shoot the messenger. If you are planning your own retirement, I would reduce that number, but I would use the 10 percent rate of return for some motivation here, 3.

783 million. Is what you would have annually if you got a 10 percent rate of return. Now, let's look at 40 years because 40 years is always the fun number that you get because it really starts to compound. Holy cow. It really starts to compound over the course of those last 10 years. So what do we say? 3.

7 million dollars over the course of 30 years. If you did this for 40 years, you'd have 10. 1 million dollars. Dollars by maxing out your Roth 401k, but here's the amazing part. Okay. Here's the amazing part about this number. It was just crazy. As I'm even looking at this, your total contributions in that account would be 920, 000.

Well, you're saying that is amazing. My money grew. I only put 920, 000 over the course of 40 years into this account, and it grew to 10. 1 million compound interest. Amazing. You're probably saying to yourself, you know, this is absolutely fantastic, but here's the crazy part. It's a Roth 401k. Okay. What that means is that in that account, 920, 000, you would have been taxed on 9.

2 million would be completely tax free. Yeah, you heard that right. 9. 2 million would be tax free. That is absolutely amazing. Now, can you contribute to a Roth 401k for 40 years? It'd be, I mean, you have to start really, really early to be maxing that thing out, but it is absolutely amazing what you could do with these accounts over the course of long periods of time, smaller amounts of money over long periods of time, grow to very large amounts of money.

So I absolutely love doing that stuff when it comes to this. So that's an amazing, amazing number when it comes to the Roth 401k. Why I love the Roth 401k, especially if you're a high earner. So, you know, this is great for people who expect to be in a higher tax bracket in the future, and you are someone who may want to continue to contribute to Ross and be in that higher tax bracket long run.

And it's also great for people who appreciate maybe tax free withdrawals and retirement. So, for example, let me give you an example of this. Because Roths are important to me because I plan on still owning my businesses. There's a lot of businesses that we are on. We're buying more businesses every single year, and we're trying to expand a lot of our businesses.

I most likely plan to own businesses even in retirement and quotations. Cause I love the game of business. I love actually owning businesses and I love how my day flows by owning some of these businesses. So it is likely that I'm going to own some of these businesses and have an income when I am at retirement age.

So if I want to start withdrawing on some of these accounts. And start pulling some of these down. I am going to get tax on a traditional 401k based on whatever my income is. So I'm going to get taxed on that and it's going to be something where I don't really want to have to worry about that. So that's why I personally also like Roth because when I can draw and pull that money out, I'm not going to get taxed on this money ever again.

And so it's really important for me to think through that. And that's one thing I just wanted to kind of mention as we go through this. Now, here's some pros. You get tax free growth and withdrawals no income limits to contribute. Unlike Roth IRAs, and potentially this is even more valuable if tax rates rise in the future and, or if your income increases significantly in retirement.

So that last one is a really big one for me. Um, and that's why I'm talking about this. The cons are contributions did not reduce your current taxable income. So if you're trying to reduce your current taxable income this year, you're making too much money and you need to reduce that taxable income, then maybe this isn't the best option for you or may not be as beneficial if you end up in a lower tax bracket.

And retirement. So let's look at the traditional 401k now. So traditional 401ks, you get that tax deduction this year, meaning your money comes out of your paycheck and you don't have to pay taxes on those dollars goes into the traditional 401k and so contributions are made with pre tax dollars, reducing your taxable income in the year you contribute and withdrawals and retirement are taxed as ordinary income.

And this is suitable for individuals who expect to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement, which a lot of you will, a lot of you plan, probably to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement. You may not want to be owning businesses or you may not want to be making a ton of money in retirement. Instead, you want to hang out with your Pursue your hobbies.

Do the thing that you've been trying to do this entire time. And that's amazing. I love that. And so for a lot of you, the traditional 401k may be a great option if you're making a lot of money now and in the future you plan on making less money. And so that's another thing that I want you to think through as you go through this.

This is great for people who expect to be that lower tax bracket in retirement compared to their current tax bracket. It is also beneficial for those looking to reduce their current taxable income. Income. And so the pros are contributions reduce your taxable income in this year. You get tax deferred growth until withdrawals begin.

So you get to defer that growth. Your money can grow more so because you get that tax deferred growth. And it's beneficial if you end up in that lower tax bracket cons withdrawals in retirement or taxes, ordinary income. And here's a big con you have required minimum distribution starting at age 72, forcing you to withdraw and pay taxes.

Even if you don't need the money. So even if you don't need the money and you're like, I don't want to pay these taxes, they require you to draw those down. Uh, and that number actually has gone up. Let me see what the RMD number is for this year. Yeah, it's 73 or older now. So in 2024, the age to start taking your required minimum of distributions is 73.

So, really, really important caveat to understand there. Now, the question can become, well, can you have both? Yes, you can have both a Roth and a traditional 401k if your employer offers both options. This can be a strategic way to really diversify your tax situation if you can have both. And, which one is better long term?

Here's the big question. Is which one's better long term? I really like the option to have those tax free growth because the growth is the majority of your account. As you can see, when I run some of these numbers over the long run now, some people who are really high income earners do prefer that traditional IRA and that's more power to them.

But for me, long term, I like the Roth option because of a lot of those options, that tax free growth over that long term timeframe. So here's some of your decision factors. If you're trying to decide between these two, what is your tax rate expectations? Number one, meaning your current versus future tax rate expectations is really, really important.

If you expect to be in a higher tax bracket, that is one that you want to maybe consider that traditional IRA. If you only have one option, but you can't have both if your employer allows you to have both also. Flexibility and diversification having both accounts is going to allow you to have that flexibility and that tax diversification.

So if you can contribute both, I think that's a great, great option for a lot of people. Also, your age, your age and your income. So people who may be younger individuals in a lower tax bracket might favor the Roth over the traditional. If you're Older and in a higher tax bracket, you may favor the traditional over the Roth.

And so that's another way to think through this. And then also your retirement withdrawal strategies. You got to think through retirement withdrawals. And a lot of people don't think about this early enough. They don't think about how am I going to withdraw my money early enough, which is why I'm talking about this so much in this episode.

Is you got to think through, Okay, I either have to start withdrawing this at 73 and that number may go up. It's gone up a couple of times over the past couple of years, but I'm either going to have to withdraw this at 73 and start paying taxes on this money in a traditional and or with the Roth, I have the flexibility to not have those RMDs currently.

And so that may be something that you can think through as well as you go through this process. So if you can, I'd get both. If you don't have that option, then my tier is the Roth first and then the traditional for most people. That is the way I would look at it because I absolutely love the Roth and those tax free withdrawals and the tax free growth.

Like I said, over the course of 40 years, if you maxed out that account with 23, 000, You'd have 10. 179 million and 9. 2 of that would be completely tax free. Amazing stuff. What's your money can do if you give it time and allow compound interest to do its work. Well, listen, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and thank you so much for investing in yourself.

That's exactly what you're doing. When you listen to this podcast, if you got value out of this episode, make sure to give us a follow on this podcast, on your favorite podcast player. Can I thank you guys enough for listening and we will See ya on the next episode.