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I am finally looking to invest and have some cash on hand over my emergency fund. I do not have an IRA but am contributing to my 401K. I opened a betterment account investing in ETFs for general investing, but have heard about IRAs for a long time. I qualify for IRAs and am wondering if I should invest my extra cash there. If I choose to can i put in 12,000 on Jan 1, 2020 and say 6,000 is from 2019 and 6,000 is from 2020? I read that the last day to put money into an IRA is the tax deadline of the next year.

yoozer8
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Jacob
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    If you have the cash on hand now, open the IRA in 2019, deposit $6,000 now, and wait until Jan 1 to deposit the other $6,000. Problem solved. – chepner Dec 19 '19 at 18:59

1 Answers1

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Not yet

You'll have to wait til January 1 2020 to do both in the same sitting. They'll be characterized as two contributions; i.e. two $6000 deposits (say) not one $12,000 deposit.

You are allowed to make an IRA deposit anytime from January 1 of that year to Tax Day (nom. April 15) of the next year. So you have a 3-1/2 month overlap from January to Mid-April where you can declare an IRA contribution to be either year.

  • You can make a 2019 IRA contribution up until April 15 2020.
  • You can make a 2020 IRA contribution from Jan 1 2020 to April 15 2021.
Harper - Reinstate Monica
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