| 1/4/2021 8:20:59 PM licid9 |
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| Someone with better knowledge on this subject should comment, but I believe you can withdraw the Roth 401k (or Roth IRA) contributions 5 years after the initial years contribution.
ie:
2015 = Contribute $5k and gain $1k over the next 5 yrs = 6k
2016 = Contribute $7k and gain $2k over the next 5 yrs = 9k
Total = $12k in contributions and $3k in gains = $15k total account value
In 2020 you could withdraw $5k
In 202X you could withdraw the $5k & 7k = $12k (but you have to leave the $3k in gains or pay taxes/penalty on their withdrawal).
We cash flowed medical expenses while letting our HSA funds be invested in a Total Market fund for the last couple of years. I keep a spreadsheet with all claims data and a file with all receipts (I found the need to photo copy the carbon receipt paper because some of them started to fade on me). I just submitted a few claims at the end of last year and was surprised at how easy it was to get reimbursed for 2-3 yr old claims. |
| 2/1/2021 10:44:58 AM girlnextdoor |
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| You can definitely withdraw from Roth IRA, not sure about Roth 401(k) (although you can roll over a Roth 401(k) to a Roth IRA when you leave a job ... did that in 2019). Unfortunately .... I don't have all of the records of contributions handy. I can probably find all of the ones from my Roth 401(k) at my last company if I dig long enough (or reach out to them to request them), but the place my Roth IRA is with only has the records of contributions I've made through them - about the last 6 or 8 years of maxing out each year. So at some point I need to add getting those Roth 401(k) records to my to do list. Any contributions I made to my Roth IRA from the time I opened it to the time I moved to my current place, I think it's safe to say those records are lost forever. That would have only been maybe ~10k though, so not the end of the world. But my understanding is that it is 100% on the owner of the account to be able to prove the contributions, and when most were made I wasn't really t |
| 2/1/2021 10:46:11 AM girlnextdoor |
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| ... I wasn't really thinking about needing documentation 20+ years down the road.
That said, I'm a bit of a hoarder about paper, so the paperwork could be around here somewhere. :) And old W2 probably have info about post-tax retirement contributions.
For HSA - my plan is to just hang onto receipts from "big" medical stuff in case we need reimbursed. Expecting a baby in July this year, but in general we don't have many medical expenses (last year I think it was right around 2k total, and typically around 1k) so we cash flowed and only saved 1 large bill for potential reimbursement later. My understanding is that you can be reimbursed for literally any medical claims since opening the HSA, so we could theoretically save bills for 20 years then file them all for reimbursement at once (I doubt there are any adjustments for inflation, though). |
| 2/1/2021 10:47:48 AM girlnextdoor |
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| And today I learned there's a character limit here, even though it didn't give me a warning before posting :) |
| 2/1/2021 6:14:54 PM licid9 |
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| LOL @ the character limit (I didn't know either).
I'm glad you mentioned the details about needing records of our contribution amount to the Roth 401k. Job changed happened in 2020 and, while we have yet to, we plan to roll the 401k to an Roth IRA. Thank you for mentioning the need to download/save that documentation.
Our HSA accounts (past and present) have the ability to invest the funds in the HSA. The 1st HSA account had the investment features rather "hidden" in the menu options and the user interface was confusing. The current HSA has it front and center. We were required to keep $1,000(ish??) in cash and then any remaining funds could be invested - I just went Vanguard Total Market on it for simplicity. Don't discount saving the co-payments and standard medical visits. For a family of 4 (with a HDP) those added up to $1,635 from Oct 2019 to Sept 2020. The average bill was $72 (max was $265). Hopefully leaving those funds invested in the HSA can reduce the cost o |
| 2/1/2021 6:15:25 PM licid9 |
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| HSA can reduce the cost of those bills over time via investment gains (reverse inflation adjustment& ancillary benefit). =0)
Congrats on the coming baby! |
| 3/1/2021 10:00:39 AM girlnextdoor |
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| My HSA also has a $1,000 cash requirement, with anything above being eligible for investment. And it also was not intuitive to figure out how to get to the investment options. Fortunately at this point I've done enough transfers that I can go right to it when I check the balance at the beginning of the month. I could set it up to auto-invest, but it will only work when there's a minimum of $1k available to invest. My contribution is about $495/month (company contributes some once/yr, so I contribute the rest up to the max via monthly payroll deduction), so it would only transfer about every 3 months. Since I don't want to miss that extra time in the market, for now I do it manually every month. |