When I changed jobs I switched my 401k over to an IRA. Now I work for a tiny company that doesn’t have a 401k plan so I am putting post tax money into my rollover IRA or should I open a Roth IRA? Apparently with the rollover account I can still put money into it but I’m worried about the fact those were pretax dollars invested and now I’m putting post tax dollars. Am I double taxed when I go to cash in for retirement? The only thing is the Rollover has a good chunk of change so adding to that instead of starting new will be better for compound interest. Any help is appreciated!!! Thank you!
Hey @F_Dionn!
Yeah, you definitely shouldn’t be putting post-tax dollars into a traditional/rollover IRA. That would be signing yourself up for double taxation. Although when you contribute to a traditional IRA, you’re supposed to report that on your taxes, so those dollars aren’t taxed this year, and all the money in there stays in that same pre-tax state.
That said, I think the best strategy is to basically leave that rollover IRA alone, and just let it grow indefinitely (and collect any future 401k rollovers from new employers). New cash contributions would go into a Roth IRA. That’s how these things tend to go… you end up with a bunch of different accounts that are there for different reasons like this.
The compound interest isn’t impacted based on how many accounts the money is split between. i.e. a $110,000 account invested in index funds will grow at the exact same rate as a $100,000 and a $10,000 account combined.