# One million dollars needed for retirement?!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-million-dollars-needed-for-retirement/1000593>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [April 21, 2024, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-million-dollars-needed-for-retirement/1000593 "2024-04-21T20:36:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 314

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**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2024, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-million-dollars-needed-for-retirement/1000593/314 "2024-06-18T21:54:39Z")

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> [@Munch](#):
>
> They likely only rolled the post-tax contributions to a Roth and left the earnings, since the earnings are considered pretax. This should be a strong incentive for anyone with post-tax trad. 401k funds to roll them over into an IRA as soon as possible.

The earnings would still be tax-free until withdrawn whether you roll the funds into an IRA or leave them in the 401(k).

But yeah, otherwise, it seems likely that the money put in a Roth was just the contributions, not the earnings, since you need to pay taxes on the earnings. Interesting that it got put into a Roth IRA - basically that let you bypass the Roth IRA limits for whatever year you earned the money.

Interesting article today on Washington Post, about people doing something like what @Broomstick plans (living in a multi-person household with roommates). They use the term “Boommates”:

> **[Advice | What ‘boommates’ are and why you might want to join them](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/06/18/multigenerational-homes-us-families/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzE4NjgzMjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzIwMDY1NTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MTg2ODMyMDAsImp0aSI6ImUwMjg2YWIxLWNiNjUtNDY1ZS05NzA5LTQ2MTZiYzAwNjI4YSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9jbGltYXRlLWVudmlyb25tZW50LzIwMjQvMDYvMTgvbXVsdGlnZW5lcmF0aW9uYWwtaG9tZXMtdXMtZmFtaWxpZXMvIn0.yEZPBd3xJaBdoy_Tq08uuO7XN3O0527kBCy7HTCQy3c&itid=gfta)**
>
> Thousands of baby boomers are living with intergenerational housemates — a setup that could help ease the housing crunch and cut global warming emissions.

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