Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Roth IRAs can be a
powerful tool for your
retirement savings, but they canalso be quite complicated,
specifically when it comes torules around when you can
withdraw your Roth IRAs and havethose withdrawals be fully
tax-free.
So in today's video, I'm goingto walk you through some unknown
benefits of Roth IRAs, as wellas mistakes you need to avoid to
make sure that you'remaximizing the tax-free
potential of these accounts.
This is another episode ofReady for Retirement.
(00:24):
I'm your host, james Canole,and I'm here to teach you how to
get the most out of life withyour money.
And now on to the episode WithRoth IRAs.
Many people don't actually knowthere's something called a
five-year rule, and most peopledon't actually know there's two
different versions of thisfive-year rule.
This five-year rule is criticalbecause the whole goal of Roth
IRAs is to create tax-freeincome, but if you violate those
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rules in any ways, you may endup paying taxes and a potential
penalty on your Rothdistributions.
So the first thing that we needto understand in order to make
sure that we're maximizing theeffectiveness of Roth IRAs is to
understand that money in RothIRAs can only come from one of
three different sources.
Number one it can be acontribution.
Number two, it can be aconversion.
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And number three, it can begrowth.
Each of those is critical tounderstand because the way in
which you pulled those dollarsout is different based upon the
source.
So let's walk through these oneby one.
The first and the most simpleis contributions.
Contributions that you make toyour Roth IRA are completely
free for distribution andwithdrawal at any time, without
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penalty and without taxes.
Doesn't matter if you're olderthan 59 and a half, younger than
59 and a half.
The money you put in as adirect contribution is always
available to you.
So if you're 40 years old andyou put $5,000 into your Roth
today and next year, you have anemergency and you need to draw
funds from somewhere.
You have access to that $5,000of your Roth.
Today and next year you have anemergency and you need to draw
funds from somewhere.
You have access to that $5,000contribution completely tax-free
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and completely penalty-free.
This is because you didn't getany type of tax benefit for
putting money in.
That principal amount isavailable for you to withdraw
without any tax penalties on theway out.
Now to continue that example ifyou put $5,000 in and next year
it's worth $6,000 because ofgrowth, you have to look at that
$6,000 differently.
5,000 of it is contributions,1,000 of it is growth.
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So you can pull a 5,000 outwithout penalty or without taxes
.
But if you pull that $1,000 ofgrowth out, that $1,000 is both
subject to taxes at whateveryour marginal tax bracket is, as
well as a 10% penalty becauseyou pulled the money out before
the age of 59 and a half.
Some of you might be asking howdo I know if what I'm pulling
out is growth or contributions?
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I'm going to get to that once Iwalk through each of the three
types of ways.
You can actually have money inyour Roth IRA, but I want to
establish the rules for each ofthese and then we can talk about
that Now.
Here's the last thing to knowabout contributions.
In order to be eligible for aqualified distribution from your
Roth IRA which means you cantake money out and everything
can be tax-free you both have tobe older than 59 and a half and
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your Roth IRA has to have beenfunded for five years.
So if you're 60 years old andyou put money in your Roth IRA
today and the following year,you want to pull out your money
plus growth.
We can always pull out thecontributions.
As I mentioned, it doesn'tmatter your age, but that growth
.
In order for it to also betax-free, you have to have had
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money in your Roth for fiveyears.
This is the initial five-yearrule.
It doesn't matter if you juststarted with one single dollar.
Money has to have been in yourRoth for five years in order to
be eligible for a qualifieddistribution.
Now, if you have multiple RothIRAs in order to be eligible for
a qualified distribution, now,if you have multiple Roth IRAs,
say, you started a Roth IRA atage 40 with one single dollar
and at 60, you start a separateRoth IRA that initial
contribution you made at age 40,that five-year clock has passed
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, which means all futurecontributions.
Does it matter if you havedifferent accounts, although
there's not typically a greatreason to have multiple accounts
?
But even if you did, it's notfive years per contribution or
five years per account even.
It's five years from theinitial funding of your first
Roth IRA.
Now the second source that fundsin your Roth IRA could
potentially come from isconversions.
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Here's a really important thingto understand about conversions
.
Each conversion has its ownseparate five-year rule.
Now this is not the case onceyou're over 59 and a half If
you've already met the initialfive-year rule that we just
talked about for your initialcontribution.
If you've had a Roth IRA at anytime and it's been more than
five years, this does not applyto you if you're older than 59
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and a half, but if you are under59 and a half, every conversion
that you make is subject to itsown five-year rule.
So if you're 50 and you make aconversion this year and a
conversion next year and theconversion the following year,
each of those conversions hasits own separate five-year rule.
That helps you understand whenyou're eligible to take that
converted amount out and nothave it subject to taxes.
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And just in case it's not clear, when it comes to contributions
, every single year you have acontribution limit for how much
you can put into your IRA orRoth IRA.
For 2025, that number is $7,000per year if you're under the
age of 50, and $8,000 per yearif you're 50 or above.
When it comes to conversions,there is no limit.
A lot of people ask well, am Inot limited to how much I can
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convert to my Roth IRA each year?
The answer is no, but keep inmind any pre-tax balances you're
converting from an IRA or apre-tax account into a Roth IRA,
that entire amount is taxed atordinary income.
So if you have a milliondollars in a traditional IRA and
you convert all of it in onesingle year, that million dollar
conversion is as if you earneda million dollars.
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Now it's not subject to payrolltaxes, but it's fully subject
to federal taxes and then statetaxes, depending on the state
that you live in.
That's going to quickly pushyou up into the top marginal
bracket and probably be a veryexpensive mistake for many
people if they were actually todo that, depending, of course,
on their overall situation.
But I just want to reiteratethat fact that conversions do
not have a contribution limit inthe same way that contributions
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do.
But those conversions are thesecond source.
So source number one iscontributions.
Source number two isconversions.
Source number three is growth.
So you've been putting moneyinto your Roth IRA and that
money's been growing.
That growth is subject todifferent withdrawal rules than
are contributions or conversions.
As I mentioned, withcontributions you can pull those
dollars out at any time withouttaxes or penalties.
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With conversions, you can pullthose dollars out, assuming
you've met each successivefive-year rule for each
successive conversion thatyou've made.
With the growth on thosedollars, though this growth
cannot be touched until you are59 and a half, unless some other
exception applies.
Now the natural question becomeshow do I know if every dollar
that I pulled off my Roth isfrom a contribution or a
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conversion or its growth?
Well, the IRS, thankfully,makes this pretty
straightforward.
They simply assume that thefirst dollars that you pull out
are always contributions,meaning you don't actually have
to track.
You put these dollars in andinvested in these assets, and
this is what your contributionswere versus these assets were
from conversions, versus thisgrowth on these assets.
You don't actually have totrack any of that.
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The IRS is going to assume thatthe first dollars you pull out
are contributions.
Once you've exhausted all ofyour contributions, the next
dollars that you pull out arefrom conversions, and once
you've exhausted all of yourconversions or maybe you've just
never done a conversion thenyou go to the growth on those
dollars.
So let's look at an example toillustrate how this would work.
Let's assume that you're 45years old and you start making
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Roth IRA contributions of $5,000for the next five years.
So you contribute $5,000 today,$5,000 at 46, at 47, at 48, and
49.
Then, at age 50, you startmaking too much money to make a
direct Roth IRA contribution, soyou do something called a
backdoor Roth conversion.
I have other videos where Iexplain in more depth how that
process actually works, so I'mnot going to explain it in depth
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today.
But let's assume that you dothat.
Technically, each of those is aconversion.
So from age 50 to 54, you aredoing a conversion of $5,000 to
still get money into your RothIRA.
So you have five years ofcontributions at 5,000 per year
and then you have five years of$5,000 conversions technically
into your Roth IRA.
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And let's assume that you alsoget $25,000 of growth over the
course of that 10-year timeperiod.
What that means is you have$25,000 of contributions,
$25,000 total of conversions andthen $25,000 of growth on those
assets.
Well, if you're now 55 andyou're wanting to pull money out
of your Roth IRA, you don'thave to have tracked which
specific assets arecontributions, conversions and
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growth.
You can simply pull money Inthe first $25,000 that you pull.
The IRS is just going to assumethat those were your
contributions.
Once you've exhausted thosedollars, the next dollars that
you're going to pull are goingto be conversions.
This is very important becausesome of those conversions may
not have met their five-yearrule yet.
You have to wait five years foreach conversion to have met its
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time period.
To have met its waiting perioduntil you can pull that out and
not be subject to taxes.
To have met its waiting perioduntil you can pull that out and
not be subject to taxes.
Then, finally, once you'veexhausted all that, the
remaining assets.
The IRS is going to considergrowth for the sake of
understanding, are those assetstaxed or not when they come out?
Now the good news here, like Imentioned, is as soon as you
turn 59 and a half, all thisgoes out the window, with the
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exception, of course, of theinitial five-year rule where
your Roth IRA has to have beenfunded for five years and once
that clock, once that time hasbeen met, you are good from
there on out, from 59 and a halfand beyond.
Now here's what I see, actuallyquite a bit, is people who are
doing Roth conversions and maybethey're doing this before the
age of 59 and a half, maybe theyretired early, maybe they're in
a lower income year, forwhatever reason, they do
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conversions before the age of 59and a half.
They get concerned.
You say do I really want to dothis if I can't touch these
funds for five years or more.
Well, strategically speaking,if you're not going to let those
funds grow for some period oftime, there's not much of a
benefit for doing the conversion.
The conversion saves you nomoney in taxes up front.
In fact, it typically costs youmoney to do the conversion up
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front.
The benefit comes as thosedollars are now growing tax-free
, and the longer they can growtax-free, the better off you're
going to be.
So, yes, it's very natural tohave concerns of do I really
wanna do this conversion thatmeans I can't touch these assets
for five years.
Ideally, you have other assetsthat you can access, whether
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that's cash or brokerage assetsor income or whatever the case
might be.
But also keep in mind that ifyou're not going to do a
conversion and have those assetsinvested in growing in your
Roth for probably at least fiveyears or more, I would question
whether or not it even makessense to do the conversion in
the first place.
So I just wanted to point thatout, because sometimes this
five-year rule becomes ahindrance to people when in
reality, if you look at thingsstrategically, it maybe
shouldn't be when you start toconsider when those Roth assets
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should actually be used, whichin many cases, the further out
retirement they're being used,the better off you're going to
be, because each year that assetgrows, that's more tax-free
income.
That's more tax-free growththat you're going to have for
the rest of your life.
So, as I mentioned at thebeginning, roth IRAs can be
powerful tools to createtax-free income throughout
retirement and even as a legacytool beyond.
But you have to understand someof these key rules here.
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There's a five-year rule thatdetermines when you can access
any of the growth in your RothIRA tax-free.
There's a separate five-yearrule that determines how you can
access conversions in your RothIRA.
When you understand thedifference of how contributions
are treated, conversions aretreated and then growth is
treated, you can start to puttogether a strategy that works
the best for you to maximize thetax efficiency of your
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portfolio throughout retirement.
Root Financial has not providedany compensation for and has not
influenced the content of anytestimonials and endorsements
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shown.
Any testimonials andendorsements shown have been hey
everyone, it's me again for thedisclaimer.
Please be smart about this.
Before doing anything, pleasebe sure to consult with your tax
planner or financial planner.
Nothing in this podcast shouldbe construed as investment tax,
legal or other financial advice.
It is for informationalpurposes only.
Thank you for listening toanother episode of the Ready for
(11:48):
Retirement podcast.
If you want to see how RootFinancial can help you implement
the techniques I discussed inthis podcast, then go to
rootfinancialpartnerscom andclick start here, where you can
schedule a call with one of ouradvisors.
We work with clients all overthe country and we love the
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might be able to help.
And please remember, nothing wediscuss in this podcast is
(12:09):
intended to serve as advice.
You should always consult afinancial, legal or tax
professional who's familiar withyour unique circumstances
before making any financialdecisions.