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.
What 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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