Well, that was a mighty long headline.
Wanna start an IRA or put money in an existing one? The IRS says you have until tomorrow at midnight (the tax filing due date). There’s an easy way to do this even if you have already filed your taxes, got your refund, and blew it on something frivolous.
Open a Roth IRA and thrown some cash in it. The most you can plunk down is $5,500 ($6,500 if you’re age 50 or older). See details here on IRS.gov.
A Traditional IRA gives you a tax deduction when it goes in, but makes you pay taxes when it comes out.
A Roth IRA doesn’t give you a tax deduction when it goes in. The beauty is that you don’t have to pay taxes on it when you take it out. It (hopefully) grows tax free!
That’s why you can still do it now even if you have filed your tax returns.
Interest piqued? Talk to your broker about it. Don’t have one? Call or walk into a big brokerage house (not your Bernie Madoffs). For example: Charles Schwab, E-Trade, Fidelity, OptionsHouse, Scottrade, TD Ameritrade or TradeKing, Vanguard. Plunk down some cash. You don’t have to decide then and there what to invest in. I can just stay as cash until you get more info. But you do need to get the money in there by tomorrow night to count for 2016.
Be the ball, Danny. Feather your own nest (in a good way)!
