Author Topic: Is there any reason not to put savings into an Roth IRA if I have unused space?  (Read 1778 times)

ender

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I will be getting married shortly. Between my fiance and I, we have only put money into my 2014 IRA - so we will have 11k for 2015 and 5.5k for 2014 in available IRA space.

I also have some savings for a house which will likely not be used over the next few years unless we decide to use it for other means, around $15k or so. This is probably in the 5+ year horizon.

Because we won't be able to hit the full 16.5k in IRA space available to us (her 2014, our 2015s) it seems pretty obvious to put some of my cash savings into her 2014 Roth IRA in a money market account for sure and do something similar at the end of next year for the remainder of our 2015 IRA.

This seems obvious to me - what reasons should I not do this? Are there any?

skunkfunk

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Only reason is if you think a risky investment might lose a bunch of value. Really though, no reason not to do it.

sol

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The only good reason I can think of would be if you have a high marginal tax rate and tax-free space available in your 401k account, in which case I would contribute to the 401k first and the Roth second.  Otherwise I'd go ahead and fill it now.  It's tax-advantaged space you'll never get back if you don't.