In many cases, a Roth IRA may be a better option than a 401 (k) retirement plan, as it offers more investment options and greater tax benefits. It can be especially useful if you think you'll find yourself in a higher tax bracket later on. You can open an IRA at many different financial institutions, including banks and brokers, and you can purchase several types of assets within your IRA, such as certificates of deposit, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, and even gold in an IRA account. Both accounts are easy to set up, but your employer does most of the process with a Roth 401 (k), while you'll have to do the work yourself with a Roth IRA (some employers offer salary deductions for IRAs).An IRA is an individual retirement account that allows anyone with earned income (and even their spouse) to save for retirement with tax advantages.
The best IRAs allow you to invest in potentially high-yield assets, such as stocks and equity funds. Finally, and this is a bit complicated and not always available, you can sometimes have more access to your funds in a Roth 401 (k) than in a Roth IRA. Contributing to both will also diversify the tax treatment of retirement withdrawals, since 401 (k) plan withdrawals generate taxes, but withdrawals from a Roth IRA do not. Even without the appeal of saving more, the Roth 401 (k) beats the Roth IRA in terms of ease that goes far beyond wage deferral.
The IRS imposes eligibility on Roth IRAs that don't exist in the Roth 401 (k) environment. Both offer the growth potential of tax-deferred investments (or tax-free growth if you opt for the Roth versions of any of the plans), tax breaks on contributions and the ability to invest in assets, such as stocks and investment funds, that have a higher potential return than savings accounts and bonds. The bottom line is that you have “the potential to save a huge amount more on a 401 (k) than on a regular Roth IRA,” says Derek Amey, partner and advisor at StrategicPoint Investment Advisors in Providence. Speaking of investments, the investment options offered in a 401 (k), while limited, are likely to have lower spending ratios than the investment options you would normally include in your IRA.
That's not always true, but in many ways, you can save much more by contributing to a Roth 401 (k) than to a traditional Roth IRA. After that, the tax advantages of Roth accounts, such as a Roth IRA (tax-free growth and retirement retirement), are always taken into account instead of traditional IRAs and their tax-deferred growth (meaning retirement taxes).
