I had a 401K from an old job, and a Roth. So I rolled over the 401K to an IRA when I left that job. I am planning on investing that money into a REIT index (vanguard's). My Roth, which has the bulk of my retirement money is in a target date fund.
My issue is that the 401k was not much, about 2300. Which is below the minimum for the investor shares fund. So I was simply going to invest in the REIT ETF. However, since ETF's have to buy full shares, I will have a few dollars left over that will just be sitting in a money market account. (I'd like to get that money working.) My other issue is that my next job doesn't have a 401k fund to invest into. (The owner unfortunately thinks it's a waste to invest, since people were complaining that the money was just "disappearing" when they invested. So he just wants to pay people more, and let them make the decision. So as long as that is true, I'm ok.) So that means I'm going to have to invest in my traditional myself.
So I've got investing into a Roth by myself down, I just send in after tax money, stay under the max, and I'm good. So for investing into a traditional by myself, I don't know the process. But I believe the process is: that I invest money, and then Vanguard will send some tax form stating how much I invested into a tIRA, that I file, and then I get tax back on that money? Since IRA's are supposed to be pre-tax money? Please let me know if this wrong, or what the process is.
Also, I am able to invest in both a roth and traditional in the same year, right? I know a roth is 5,500 a year, but what's the max for a traditional? Do the maxes change when you are investing in both?
Once that is known, I figure I can invest more money, so then I can get those extra dollars left over in the MM working.
Thanks in advance!