Author Topic: Which investments to pull first-home down payment funds from?  (Read 1026 times)

mrcrabber

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 10
Which investments to pull first-home down payment funds from?
« on: September 29, 2019, 11:23:56 AM »
Hey all,

I'm about to purchase my first home for primary residence. I have the assets for the down payment currently invested in a few different vehicles, and I'm still deciding which is the best place to pull the funds from. I'd be curious to hear folks thoughts on where to pull funds from, and any tax advantages or other investment benefits of one vs another.

My current assets and options to pull from:

Employer 401k:
  - Roth and Pre-tax: all stock total market index funds

Vanguard Brokerage account
  - VTSAX - total market index
 
Vanguard Roth IRA
 - VBTLX - total bond market


What would be the order for pulling from each of these funds that folks would recommend?

I've read about the $10k first time home buyer exemption for retirement funds, but not sure if that's a good call or not.

Would love others thoughts on approaching this and what the priority of funds would be.

rothwem

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1046
  • Location: WNC
Re: Which investments to pull first-home down payment funds from?
« Reply #1 on: September 30, 2019, 03:17:24 PM »
If you’ve got to pull from investments, I’d do the taxable brokerage account. You’ll pay the 10% penalty and income tax on the regular 401k, so no way I’d pull from there. You can pull 10k out of the Roth to purchase a home but you can only put it back at the max-out rate, so that’s a no-go also. That leaves you with the taxable brokerage account that you pay cap gains tax on as being the only remaining option.

BECABECA

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 482
  • Age: 42
  • Location: Costa Mesa, CA
  • Retired since July 2017, not bored yet!
Re: Which investments to pull first-home down payment funds from?
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2019, 02:09:55 PM »
Yes, another vote for pulling from your Vanguard Brokerage Account and leaving your 401k and Roth alone. Raiding your retirement accounts would be a major setback to your long term net worth, since even if you could somehow withdraw penalty free from them, you’d be using money that could have grown tax free while not touching money that gets taxed as it grows. That’s a bad trade off.