CROSSPOSTING - Traditional IRA investments...without direct deposit

[BallardStubble]

Disclaimer: I'm crossposting this to Ask a Mustachian and Taxes, as I'm not sure the proper forum subject to put this question in. [Mod Note: Removed duplicate post from Investor Alley. Kept it in taxes.]

Hi everyone!

I've been busy on the forums lately, but I think I've come to my last question (I'm probably lying). I intend to max out my 401k contributions at work and then to promptly max out a Traditional IRA account I intend to take out through Vanguard. That's simple enough, until it comes down to my wife's income. We also want to open a traditional IRA account for her to maximize tax-savings investments. However, her employer doesn't offer direct deposit. I did some online research, but I can't find an article or forum that specifically asks this question. How can we get her income to a traditional IRA account before she receives her paycheck, at which point, taxes have already come out. It'd be simple if direct deposit was set up through her employer, but as discussed above, that's not the case here.

[mrpercentage]

She needs to talk to her Human Resource Dept. They will tell her what paperwork she needs to submit.

[Interest Compound]

You don't invest in Traditional IRAs through your job. You initially pay with after-tax money, then when you do your taxes at the end of the year, you get that money back. For example, if you both pay the $5,500 a year, totaling $11,000, you'll end up getting back about $3,300 on your tax return on April 15th. Alternatively, you can adjust your withholdings at work, so they take out less taxes from your paychecks. Either way, you won't be taxed on that $11,000 at the end of the day.

HR has nothing to do with contributing to an IRA. Only contact them if you want to adjust your withholdings.

[BallardStubble]

Now you've got me feeling dumb :) That makes a lot of sense and I'm not sure why I didn't think of that. The taxes would just come back when I file. Thanks!!

[mrpercentage]

HR has nothing to do with contributing to an IRA. Only contact them if you want to adjust your withholdings.

You can't pretax any IRA? Thats weird. That would make maxing out a traditional very expensive to your regular paycheck throughout the year. I couldn't do it. I could max out a Roth.

Shows what I know. I use a 457 for tax deferred. Don't feel bad dude, I would have gone to HR and looked dumb in person

[arebelspy]

HR has nothing to do with contributing to an IRA. Only contact them if you want to adjust your withholdings.

You can't pretax any IRA? Thats weird. That would make maxing out a traditional very expensive to your regular paycheck throughout the year. I couldn't do it. I could max out a Roth.

Since the limit is the same for traditional and roth (and indeed, combined, so you can't contribute over that limit across both accounts, which is why someone typically picks one over the other), I'm fairly confident that if you could max the Roth, you could the traditional as well.  ;)

[teen persuasion]

HR has nothing to do with contributing to an IRA. Only contact them if you want to adjust your withholdings.

You can't pretax any IRA? Thats weird. That would make maxing out a traditional very expensive to your regular paycheck throughout the year. I couldn't do it. I could max out a Roth.

Shows what I know. I use a 457 for tax deferred. Don't feel bad dude, I would have gone to HR and looked dumb in person

You can adjust your withholdings to compensate for the tax advantage of contributions to a tIRA.  Of course, there is no upfront tax advantage to the Roth IRA, so that one would seem more expensive to contribute to.