r/personalfinance • u/panicattheadulthood ​ • 5h ago

Roth IRA as a (mostly) stay-at-home mom Retirement

I need a bit of help trying to figure out if I'm eligible to open a Roth IRA and how much I can contribute. I'm a stay-at-home mom, however at the beginning of the school year I picked up a very part time job. I'm maybe making a couple hundred a month max, like I said it is VERY part time, it's just something to get me out of the house a bit. Everything I've read the verbiage is just a little confusing, from what I can tell I can open a Roth IRA, I'm just not sure how much I can actually contribute. We file taxes jointly. Can I only contribute what I myself actually make, or can I go off our tax filing and include my spouses income and in turn contribute the max amount allowed annually? Any insight is much appreciated!

4 Upvotes

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u/gimme_yer_bits ​ 5h ago

If you are married and file a joint tax return you can contribute to an IRA using your partners income.

https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/retirement/IRA-things-to-know

16

u/rotrap ​ 5h ago

If you are married filing jointly you do not need to have your own income. You can use your spouses. So assuming your spouse makes over 14k for a year, you would both be able to put in 7k. This assumes you also jointly do not go over the limit for eligibility.

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u/BouncyEgg ​ 5h ago

You use joint income to determine whether or not you can contribute to a Roth IRA.

8

u/Slowissmooth7 ​ 5h ago

It’s pretty normal for the SAH person to essentially use spouse’s money to max out an IRA. There may be other limits; without looking it up right now, I think the married income cap for contributing to Roth is around $240k.

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u/panicattheadulthood ​ 4h ago

I knew there was an income cap, we are fine on that front. I just confused myself since I technically do make some money, so I didn't know what dollar amount I needed to base contributions off of!

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u/Slowissmooth7 ​ 4h ago

Bonus: if you have that sort of money available, you can contribute to a Roth for 2024 until mid April. Then you can turn right around and contribute for 2025. Don’t forget to pick investments!

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u/grokfinance ​ 5h ago

If you are married filing jointly then as long as you both combined have at least 14k of earned income then you can each max out $7k into your own separate Roth IRAs. If not then you can contribute the LESSER of 1) 7k or 2) the amount of earned income you have for the year.

https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-a-spousal-roth-ira-4770888