6 Ways to Build a Roth Retirement Nest Egg

Building up a Roth nest egg can pay off in spades for retirees.

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Building up a Roth nest egg can pay off in spades for retirees. Money in a Roth IRA grows tax-free, and the account doesn’t have required minimum distributions—so you withdraw the money only when you need it. Withdrawals are also tax-free, so they don’t trigger other consequences. Roth withdrawals don’t count in the calculations for taxing Social Security benefits or determining Medicare premium surcharges, for instance. Roths “give retirees a lot of flexibility,” says Gil Charney, director of the Tax Institute at H&R Block, “and some control over their tax liability.”

But there isn’t just one route to getting money into a Roth. You can take a variety of paths to reach tax-free nirvana—some more well-known than others. We’ll provide you the map, so you can choose which routes might best serve your situation.

Rachel L. Sheedy
Editor, Kiplinger's Retirement Report