IRAs
come in two main flavors: traditional and Roth. If you can't choose
between the two, why not choose neither? After all, IRAs really aren't
for everyone. Here are a few reasons you might want to avoid them.
You
don't want to lower your taxable income
Perhaps
you're perfectly happy paying a bigger slice of your income to Uncle
Sam. If you make $60,000, and you're looking at a 25% tax rate, you'll
only have to pay around $15,000 -- big deal! Who cares that a $5,000
contribution to a traditional IRA (those 50 or older can contribute up
to $6,000) will lower your income to $55,000, and your tax to $13,750?
Is $1,250 really that much money? Besides, the government could
use it.
You
don't want tax-free investments
If
you're selfish, go ahead and invest in a Roth IRA. When you withdraw
from it in retirement, you won't pay a dime in taxes, robbing our
deserving government of critically needed funds. (Have you seen our
deficit lately?) Check out how you'd be hurting America with the
following companies. I picked some of the most extreme examples I could
find, just to show you how bad the situation can get:
|
Company
|
20-Year
Avg. Annual Return
|
Would
Have Turned $10,000 Into
|
Capital Gains Tax Avoided
With Roth IRA
|
|
Cisco
Systems
(Nasdaq: CSCO)
|
33.6%
|
$3.3
million
|
$490,000
|
|
EMC
(NYSE: EMC)
|
28.7%
|
$1.6
million
|
$232,000
|
|
Best
Buy
(NYSE: BBY)
|
27.5%
|
$1.3
million
|
$193,000
|
|
PotashCorp
(NYSE: POT)
|
26.9%
|
$1.2
million
|
$175,000
|
|
UnitedHealth
(NYSE: UNH)
|
26.2%
|
$1.0
million
|
$155,000
|
|
Oracle
(Nasdaq: ORCL)
|
23.3%
|
$662,000
|
$98,000
|
|
Paychex
(Nasdaq: PAYX)
|
22.8%
|
$607,000
|
$90,000
|
Data:
Yahoo! Finance. Assumes maximum 15% rate on capital gains.
You
don't want money for retirement
Accumulating
wealth for your golden years just isn't everybody's thing. Probably you
have plenty coming to you via Social Security. I know that my last
statement from the Social Security Administration suggested that I might
collect $2,000 per month -- a whopping $24,000 per year! Who couldn't
live on that?
If
you invest $5,000 per year in a Roth IRA, and it grows at an annual
average of 10% -- the market's long-term average, though no one told
that to the companies in the table above -- in 25 years you'll end up
with more than $540,000! Per our Rule Your Retirement newsletter,
that would offer you an annual income of more than $20,000, just by
itself.
You
don't want a variety of options
IRAs'
flexibility can be a real drag. Who needs all those confusing
possibilities? Your employer probably offers you a 401(k), and it most
likely gives you a choice of a handful of mutual funds in which to
invest your money, nice and simple. So what if many of those funds
aren't great performers, or charge high fees?
Open
an IRA account at a good brokerage, and your head will soon be spinning.
You'll be able to invest in hundreds of mutual funds of all stripes, and
thousands of stocks. How will you make sense of that?
In
short, unless you want to save big bucks for your retirement, while
reducing your tax bill significantly, and with the freedom to invest in
exactly the stocks or funds you want, IRAs probably aren't for you.