Transcript:
Easan Arulanantham:
Both my husband and I work, should we be saving equally into our 401 K’s? Or should we be, you know, putting more maxing out one kind of how do we break down? Where to save our money between the two of us?
Tom Vaughan:
Yeah, that’s pretty interesting. Because I mean, there’s, there’s a whole bunch of different pieces that you look at. Right? So work, I’m a couple and we’ve got both earnings, we have two 401k Ks, you know, is there some way to kind of maximize that? Should it be adding more to one or the other or putting them out equally? Right. So I would say that one of the things, that’s fairly critical in my experience, because I have these strategy sessions with my clients, you know, years after year after year, and the couple dynamic is really important. And I think that might trump the math right? You know, we’ll talk about the math in a minute. But I think it is important to consider, you know, how each of you would look at that scenario. So one of you is getting all the 401k money and the other ones not? Because the math says that you should does that work for you as a couple? So I think that’s the first thing you have to answer. And every couple is different, you know, they’re gonna have different answers to that, as far as I’m concerned. But you could make some argument, it just depends on how much money each person is making. You know, because you don’t have to pay for Social Security tax, the FICA tax, I forgot the cut off is now it’s around 140,000. Yeah, so they run? Yeah. So I mean, if you’re making if one person is making 400,000, and the other person is making, you know, 100,000, it could make some sense to actually maximize out the 100,000 person still same amount of savings, you know, that you’re doing, let’s say that you have available, and, and, and maybe not as much to the 400,000, because then that gets that income above that faster and get you you know, paying less so Security Tax. I’m not even sure if that actually works. The logistics of that are a little bit more of a tax question as far as that goes. But there are some pieces that you could look at from, you know, optimizing standpoint, I’ve yet to see those really be put into play very often, it’s much more seen it put out as an equal distribution between them, or at least a percentage basis.
So you know, if somebody make 100, you’d have a percent there. If I make 400%. There, so there, you can make an argument for that too. But in the in the real world, and this is, you know, I think one of the things that does concern people sometimes is what if our relationship doesn’t happen, you know, how do I protect myself, and if my husband or wife is putting all the money that we have in the 401k, and I’m not getting any in my 401k, you know, maybe that’ll be a problem in a divorce. Most people don’t think that way, to be honest. But it does come up sometimes, actually. But one thing I have happened is I’ve had to deal with some divorces. And it isn’t a big problem, because they have a thing called the Quadro that stands for qualified retirement, forgotten some distribution methodology. And it allows somebody in a divorce to take and move money out of say, one 401k into another. And in to split it up evenly. Let’s say that the total assets was 800,000. That was 600,001, and 200,000. And the other, you could move 200, from the big one to the little one, both have 400,000. And you’re dissolving the marriage with an equal amount of money in retirement plans. There’s all kinds of other assets that might be out there to complicate that, but just just to just let you know that you are allowed to do that without any tax in a divorce situation. And that’s what this quadro rule does. And we’ve had to do that a few times within the practice. But luckily, we don’t actually deal with many divorces. We have a lot of pretty solid relationships, but it is something sometimes people think about.
Easan Arulanantham:
Yeah, so I think for me, the first thing is, are you maxing out any kind of math or any kind of bonus money that’s coming into that? So if one person has to save more money, because they have a better match, go for that? Because that’s a guaranteed return? Yeah. But other than that, you’re getting to the point where you’re kind of optimizing for the point of optimizing, but yeah, in the long run, it’s not likely to make or break you?
Tom Vaughan:
Yeah. I mean, if your spouse works at a company that’s getting 100% match for some crazy reason, and you’re getting a match on the first 3%. You know, that’s, that’s a big differential, you’d want to maximize yours and get that 3%. But no, I’d probably be pretty interested in putting as much as I could in that spouse and because that’s money to both of us. Right. And, yeah, you’re right. I mean, there are situations like that where it really because you’re exactly right, it’s 100% rate of return on that money immediately. That’s hard to get. So that’s that’s pretty good that’s good point