This is the story of how I filed my 14-year-old daughter’s taxes, and then opened, funded, and invested a Roth IRA for her, for tax year 2023. Piecing this process together for the first time was a bit frustrating (even for a financial planner!) so I hope you can follow along with a bit more ease.
Continue readingRolling Over An Old 401(k)? Watch Out for These Gotchas.
Earlier this year, a client rolled over an old 401(k) into her IRAs at TD Ameritrade (where we manage our clients’ investments). She received, correctly, two checks from her 401(k): one for her pre-tax 401(k) account and one for her Roth 401(k) account. She mailed both of those checks to TD Ameritrade…and they were both automatically dumped into her traditional IRA.
Continue readingWhat Is a Backdoor Roth IRA (Contribution)? Should I Do it? How Do I Do It?
If I had to wager, backdoor Roth IRA contributions are in the top 3 of #personalfinance Slack channel topics.
Continue readingMy company doesn’t match my 401(k) contributions (or it’s a very small match). Should I still use my 401(k)?
Employer matching contributions to your 401(k) are a beautiful thing. They are also a thing of confusion.
Help! My 401(k) is crappy.
I’d like to think that 401(k)s at high-tech companies would be inexpensive to administer, provide employee-friendly interfaces, and be full of broadly-diversified, low-cost funds. Continue reading
College Planning… The Early Days. Part 1.
Before opening the doors of Flow Financial Planning, I asked a lot of working mothers about their top financial concerns. One of the most frequent response?
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