Who has the most in their ROTH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 I think the winner’s hat goes to Peter Thiel with a Roth worth over $5B. All tax free. He’s now a kiwi citizen. Per the Pro Republica income tax leaks, he started by contributing legitimately the minimum ($2000) to a Roth back in the 90s when he was working for PayPal as a founder. However the rub is that he bought PayPal founders shares with that contribution and these shares were significantly undervalued at something like $0.0001. These founders shares were not available to the public. So he was able to buy ten of thousands of PayPal shares for just $2000. He did the same thing the following year and then stopped contributing to his Roth.The rest is history. PayPal grew significantly and eventually was bought by eBay for billions. Thiel then took the tax-free earnings and made a $500K angel investment into FaceBook in its early days before it went public. All done within his Roth IRA. Then FB went public and the rest is history

Ted Weschler, one of Warren Buffett’s deputies , has a Roth worth over $264M (in 2021). This was made public via the pro republics tax return leaks as well. He did it legitimately using his brain and all publicly available investments that anyone could have invested in. He converted his regular IRA to a Roth and paid over $32M in taxes. And the Roth just continued to grow.

Bottom line, the Roth IRA is a powerful retirement vehicle if you invest wisely inside the vehicle. Uncle Sam can’t touch the earnings or tax the withdrawals.

Yes and if there was any sense of justice or logic, Congress would have capped the untaxed portion at say $15 million. The machinations of those like Thiel and Weschler are good examples of how the ultra-rich use the vagaries of the tax system to make billions, without contributing to the public systems that helped make their investments safe and possible. It's obscene.

Clearly you are jealous/envious. How is there no justice? When both Thiel and Weschler started out they put the maximum into their IRAs/Roth IRA just like you could have done. They used their own money and made good investments. You could have done the same thing with other investments. Besides, you wouldn’t even know about these accounts if some left-leaning employee with an agenda at the IRS hadn’t broken the law and leaked them to the press. These guys did nothing wrong. They just used their brain and made intelligent investments with obviously some luck.

Your kind of liberal socialist posts are annoying. It comes across like “how dare someone else have success following the rules. Let’s change the rules.”

Ah yes who among us hasn't had the opportunity to purchase shares at 1000x below their fair market value?

And why didn’t Biden’s politicized DoJ go after Thiel’s Roth then if those shares were purchased 1000x below FMV in his Roth?

Dude. Take a walk. Enjoy some nature and get off of Twitter/Newsmax. It’s not good for you

[Anonymous]

Well to answer the question, not me. I have about $60k and my husband has about $75k and we’re planning max contributions from here on out which is currently just $8k a year.

[Anonymous]

Age 49

$500k in my contributory Roth at Vanguard

Have been contributing to workplace after-tax 401(k) and immediately converting to Roth 401(k) for the past two years so about $80k in there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 I think the winner’s hat goes to Peter Thiel with a Roth worth over $5B. All tax free. He’s now a kiwi citizen. Per the Pro Republica income tax leaks, he started by contributing legitimately the minimum ($2000) to a Roth back in the 90s when he was working for PayPal as a founder. However the rub is that he bought PayPal founders shares with that contribution and these shares were significantly undervalued at something like $0.0001. These founders shares were not available to the public. So he was able to buy ten of thousands of PayPal shares for just $2000. He did the same thing the following year and then stopped contributing to his Roth.The rest is history. PayPal grew significantly and eventually was bought by eBay for billions. Thiel then took the tax-free earnings and made a $500K angel investment into FaceBook in its early days before it went public. All done within his Roth IRA. Then FB went public and the rest is history

Ted Weschler, one of Warren Buffett’s deputies , has a Roth worth over $264M (in 2021). This was made public via the pro republics tax return leaks as well. He did it legitimately using his brain and all publicly available investments that anyone could have invested in. He converted his regular IRA to a Roth and paid over $32M in taxes. And the Roth just continued to grow.

Bottom line, the Roth IRA is a powerful retirement vehicle if you invest wisely inside the vehicle. Uncle Sam can’t touch the earnings or tax the withdrawals.

Yes and if there was any sense of justice or logic, Congress would have capped the untaxed portion at say $15 million. The machinations of those like Thiel and Weschler are good examples of how the ultra-rich use the vagaries of the tax system to make billions, without contributing to the public systems that helped make their investments safe and possible. It's obscene.

Clearly you are jealous/envious. How is there no justice? When both Thiel and Weschler started out they put the maximum into their IRAs/Roth IRA just like you could have done. They used their own money and made good investments. You could have done the same thing with other investments. Besides, you wouldn’t even know about these accounts if some left-leaning employee with an agenda at the IRS hadn’t broken the law and leaked them to the press. These guys did nothing wrong. They just used their brain and made intelligent investments with obviously some luck.

Your kind of liberal socialist posts are annoying. It comes across like “how dare someone else have success following the rules. Let’s change the rules.”

Ah yes who among us hasn't had the opportunity to purchase shares at 1000x below their fair market value?

How did you determine fair market value for his founder shares when PayPal was just a start up at the time? In fact, hoe do you determine fair market value for many other assets such as an art or sports collection, homes, business, cars, jewelry, etc? It’s very subjective.

This is done all the time. Platforms like equityzen allow you to buy pre-ipo shares that don't really have an open market. As long as he's not the only person to have gotten that price it should be fine. All of these transactions have a paper trail that can be verified and litigated if necessary and the government won't hesitate to do that, Democrat or Republican, if there's any wrongdoing.

The issue here is the congress not anticipating this type of 'sheltering'. They should have established a cap and I believe they tried that in 2022 (same thing they tried to get rid of mega backdoor Roth) and it got shot down. Peter Thiel is a dick but that doesn't make this illegal.

Agreed on all points- although it probably was illegal when he severely undervalued the stocks upon the award- it's just that the IRS decided not to pursue it. And yes there was a section of the Build Back Better bill in summer 2021 to cap the values in Roth's- but yes that got stripped out:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/billionaires-may-be-spared-big-ira-tax-bill-in-build-back-better-plan.html

And a lot of the BBB got stripped down anyway before it finally passed as the Inflation Reduction Act in summer 2022.

Can you provide some reference to this? I find it hard to believe that the SEC will let that pass if they had proof that he illegally undervalued the stock.

[Anonymous]

Genuine question — how are people able to buy and hold private investments in a Roth (like exercising founder options, angel investments, etc). Fidelity administers mine and I thought it was limited to public funds and equities.

[Anonymous]

Not me. I didn't know that I could trade inside of Roth, but now I know.
I traded in regular account where I 5x'd the money in few years. Luckily my taxes are super low and I will simply switch over. I will work enough this year to get that $7k earned income in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 I think the winner’s hat goes to Peter Thiel with a Roth worth over $5B. All tax free. He’s now a kiwi citizen. Per the Pro Republica income tax leaks, he started by contributing legitimately the minimum ($2000) to a Roth back in the 90s when he was working for PayPal as a founder. However the rub is that he bought PayPal founders shares with that contribution and these shares were significantly undervalued at something like $0.0001. These founders shares were not available to the public. So he was able to buy ten of thousands of PayPal shares for just $2000. He did the same thing the following year and then stopped contributing to his Roth.The rest is history. PayPal grew significantly and eventually was bought by eBay for billions. Thiel then took the tax-free earnings and made a $500K angel investment into FaceBook in its early days before it went public. All done within his Roth IRA. Then FB went public and the rest is history

Ted Weschler, one of Warren Buffett’s deputies , has a Roth worth over $264M (in 2021). This was made public via the pro republics tax return leaks as well. He did it legitimately using his brain and all publicly available investments that anyone could have invested in. He converted his regular IRA to a Roth and paid over $32M in taxes. And the Roth just continued to grow.

Bottom line, the Roth IRA is a powerful retirement vehicle if you invest wisely inside the vehicle. Uncle Sam can’t touch the earnings or tax the withdrawals.

Yes and if there was any sense of justice or logic, Congress would have capped the untaxed portion at say $15 million. The machinations of those like Thiel and Weschler are good examples of how the ultra-rich use the vagaries of the tax system to make billions, without contributing to the public systems that helped make their investments safe and possible. It's obscene.

Clearly you are jealous/envious. How is there no justice? When both Thiel and Weschler started out they put the maximum into their IRAs/Roth IRA just like you could have done. They used their own money and made good investments. You could have done the same thing with other investments. Besides, you wouldn’t even know about these accounts if some left-leaning employee with an agenda at the IRS hadn’t broken the law and leaked them to the press. These guys did nothing wrong. They just used their brain and made intelligent investments with obviously some luck.

Your kind of liberal socialist posts are annoying. It comes across like “how dare someone else have success following the rules. Let’s change the rules.”

Ah yes who among us hasn't had the opportunity to purchase shares at 1000x below their fair market value?

How did you determine fair market value for his founder shares when PayPal was just a start up at the time? In fact, hoe do you determine fair market value for many other assets such as an art or sports collection, homes, business, cars, jewelry, etc? It’s very subjective.

This is done all the time. Platforms like equityzen allow you to buy pre-ipo shares that don't really have an open market. As long as he's not the only person to have gotten that price it should be fine. All of these transactions have a paper trail that can be verified and litigated if necessary and the government won't hesitate to do that, Democrat or Republican, if there's any wrongdoing.

The issue here is the congress not anticipating this type of 'sheltering'. They should have established a cap and I believe they tried that in 2022 (same thing they tried to get rid of mega backdoor Roth) and it got shot down. Peter Thiel is a dick but that doesn't make this illegal.

Agreed on all points- although it probably was illegal when he severely undervalued the stocks upon the award- it's just that the IRS decided not to pursue it. And yes there was a section of the Build Back Better bill in summer 2021 to cap the values in Roth's- but yes that got stripped out:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/billionaires-may-be-spared-big-ira-tax-bill-in-build-back-better-plan.html

And a lot of the BBB got stripped down anyway before it finally passed as the Inflation Reduction Act in summer 2022.

Can you provide some reference to this? I find it hard to believe that the SEC will let that pass if they had proof that he illegally undervalued the stock.

It's in the middle of the Pro Publica article. It would an IRS tax issue, not SEC. And the IRS pretty clearly doesn't go hard after stuff like this, historically.

"While SEC filings describing that time don’t mention Thiel’s Roth, they show that he bought his first slice of the company in January 1999. Thiel paid $0.001 per share — yes, just a tenth of a penny — for 1.7 million shares. At that price, he was able to buy a large stake for just $1,700.

In 1999, $2,000 was the maximum amount you could put into a Roth in a year.

Thiel’s unusual stock purchase risked running afoul of rules designed to prevent IRAs from becoming illegal tax shelters. Investors aren’t allowed to buy assets for less than their true value through an IRA. The practice is sometimes known as “stuffing” because it gets around the strict limits imposed by Congress on how much money can be put in a Roth.

PayPal later disclosed details about the early history of the company in an SEC filing before its initial public offering. The filing reveals that Thiel’s founders’ shares were among those the company sold to employees at “below fair value.”

Victor Fleischer, a tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine who has written about the valuation of founders’ shares, read the PayPal filings at ProPublica’s request. Buying startup shares at a discounted $0.001 price with a Roth, he asserts, would be indefensible."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 I think the winner’s hat goes to Peter Thiel with a Roth worth over $5B. All tax free. He’s now a kiwi citizen. Per the Pro Republica income tax leaks, he started by contributing legitimately the minimum ($2000) to a Roth back in the 90s when he was working for PayPal as a founder. However the rub is that he bought PayPal founders shares with that contribution and these shares were significantly undervalued at something like $0.0001. These founders shares were not available to the public. So he was able to buy ten of thousands of PayPal shares for just $2000. He did the same thing the following year and then stopped contributing to his Roth.The rest is history. PayPal grew significantly and eventually was bought by eBay for billions. Thiel then took the tax-free earnings and made a $500K angel investment into FaceBook in its early days before it went public. All done within his Roth IRA. Then FB went public and the rest is history

Ted Weschler, one of Warren Buffett’s deputies , has a Roth worth over $264M (in 2021). This was made public via the pro republics tax return leaks as well. He did it legitimately using his brain and all publicly available investments that anyone could have invested in. He converted his regular IRA to a Roth and paid over $32M in taxes. And the Roth just continued to grow.

Bottom line, the Roth IRA is a powerful retirement vehicle if you invest wisely inside the vehicle. Uncle Sam can’t touch the earnings or tax the withdrawals.

Yes and if there was any sense of justice or logic, Congress would have capped the untaxed portion at say $15 million. The machinations of those like Thiel and Weschler are good examples of how the ultra-rich use the vagaries of the tax system to make billions, without contributing to the public systems that helped make their investments safe and possible. It's obscene.

Clearly you are jealous/envious. How is there no justice? When both Thiel and Weschler started out they put the maximum into their IRAs/Roth IRA just like you could have done. They used their own money and made good investments. You could have done the same thing with other investments. Besides, you wouldn’t even know about these accounts if some left-leaning employee with an agenda at the IRS hadn’t broken the law and leaked them to the press. These guys did nothing wrong. They just used their brain and made intelligent investments with obviously some luck.

Your kind of liberal socialist posts are annoying. It comes across like “how dare someone else have success following the rules. Let’s change the rules.”

Ah yes who among us hasn't had the opportunity to purchase shares at 1000x below their fair market value?

How did you determine fair market value for his founder shares when PayPal was just a start up at the time? In fact, hoe do you determine fair market value for many other assets such as an art or sports collection, homes, business, cars, jewelry, etc? It’s very subjective.

This is done all the time. Platforms like equityzen allow you to buy pre-ipo shares that don't really have an open market. As long as he's not the only person to have gotten that price it should be fine. All of these transactions have a paper trail that can be verified and litigated if necessary and the government won't hesitate to do that, Democrat or Republican, if there's any wrongdoing.

The issue here is the congress not anticipating this type of 'sheltering'. They should have established a cap and I believe they tried that in 2022 (same thing they tried to get rid of mega backdoor Roth) and it got shot down. Peter Thiel is a dick but that doesn't make this illegal.

Agreed on all points- although it probably was illegal when he severely undervalued the stocks upon the award- it's just that the IRS decided not to pursue it. And yes there was a section of the Build Back Better bill in summer 2021 to cap the values in Roth's- but yes that got stripped out:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/billionaires-may-be-spared-big-ira-tax-bill-in-build-back-better-plan.html

And a lot of the BBB got stripped down anyway before it finally passed as the Inflation Reduction Act in summer 2022.

Can you provide some reference to this? I find it hard to believe that the SEC will let that pass if they had proof that he illegally undervalued the stock.

It's in the middle of the Pro Publica article. It would an IRS tax issue, not SEC. And the IRS pretty clearly doesn't go hard after stuff like this, historically.

"While SEC filings describing that time don’t mention Thiel’s Roth, they show that he bought his first slice of the company in January 1999. Thiel paid $0.001 per share — yes, just a tenth of a penny — for 1.7 million shares. At that price, he was able to buy a large stake for just $1,700.

In 1999, $2,000 was the maximum amount you could put into a Roth in a year.

Thiel’s unusual stock purchase risked running afoul of rules designed to prevent IRAs from becoming illegal tax shelters. Investors aren’t allowed to buy assets for less than their true value through an IRA. The practice is sometimes known as “stuffing” because it gets around the strict limits imposed by Congress on how much money can be put in a Roth.

PayPal later disclosed details about the early history of the company in an SEC filing before its initial public offering. The filing reveals that Thiel’s founders’ shares were among those the company sold to employees at “below fair value.”

Victor Fleischer, a tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine who has written about the valuation of founders’ shares, read the PayPal filings at ProPublica’s request. Buying startup shares at a discounted $0.001 price with a Roth, he asserts, would be indefensible."

And he did have a reference point for the price, as further described, because other investments were made at the same time as the company grew. Those would have had approximate stock values assigned/assumed at the time the Investments were made. That would be more than enough evidence to hang your hat on for the market value of the shares. It's fine he was awarded them, but they should have been able to all go into the Roth, and he should have had to pay taxes on the market value of the actual award.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 I think the winner’s hat goes to Peter Thiel with a Roth worth over $5B. All tax free. He’s now a kiwi citizen. Per the Pro Republica income tax leaks, he started by contributing legitimately the minimum ($2000) to a Roth back in the 90s when he was working for PayPal as a founder. However the rub is that he bought PayPal founders shares with that contribution and these shares were significantly undervalued at something like $0.0001. These founders shares were not available to the public. So he was able to buy ten of thousands of PayPal shares for just $2000. He did the same thing the following year and then stopped contributing to his Roth.The rest is history. PayPal grew significantly and eventually was bought by eBay for billions. Thiel then took the tax-free earnings and made a $500K angel investment into FaceBook in its early days before it went public. All done within his Roth IRA. Then FB went public and the rest is history

Ted Weschler, one of Warren Buffett’s deputies , has a Roth worth over $264M (in 2021). This was made public via the pro republics tax return leaks as well. He did it legitimately using his brain and all publicly available investments that anyone could have invested in. He converted his regular IRA to a Roth and paid over $32M in taxes. And the Roth just continued to grow.

Bottom line, the Roth IRA is a powerful retirement vehicle if you invest wisely inside the vehicle. Uncle Sam can’t touch the earnings or tax the withdrawals.

Yes and if there was any sense of justice or logic, Congress would have capped the untaxed portion at say $15 million. The machinations of those like Thiel and Weschler are good examples of how the ultra-rich use the vagaries of the tax system to make billions, without contributing to the public systems that helped make their investments safe and possible. It's obscene.

Clearly you are jealous/envious. How is there no justice? When both Thiel and Weschler started out they put the maximum into their IRAs/Roth IRA just like you could have done. They used their own money and made good investments. You could have done the same thing with other investments. Besides, you wouldn’t even know about these accounts if some left-leaning employee with an agenda at the IRS hadn’t broken the law and leaked them to the press. These guys did nothing wrong. They just used their brain and made intelligent investments with obviously some luck.

Your kind of liberal socialist posts are annoying. It comes across like “how dare someone else have success following the rules. Let’s change the rules.”

Ah yes who among us hasn't had the opportunity to purchase shares at 1000x below their fair market value?

How did you determine fair market value for his founder shares when PayPal was just a start up at the time? In fact, hoe do you determine fair market value for many other assets such as an art or sports collection, homes, business, cars, jewelry, etc? It’s very subjective.

This is done all the time. Platforms like equityzen allow you to buy pre-ipo shares that don't really have an open market. As long as he's not the only person to have gotten that price it should be fine. All of these transactions have a paper trail that can be verified and litigated if necessary and the government won't hesitate to do that, Democrat or Republican, if there's any wrongdoing.

The issue here is the congress not anticipating this type of 'sheltering'. They should have established a cap and I believe they tried that in 2022 (same thing they tried to get rid of mega backdoor Roth) and it got shot down. Peter Thiel is a dick but that doesn't make this illegal.

Agreed on all points- although it probably was illegal when he severely undervalued the stocks upon the award- it's just that the IRS decided not to pursue it. And yes there was a section of the Build Back Better bill in summer 2021 to cap the values in Roth's- but yes that got stripped out:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/billionaires-may-be-spared-big-ira-tax-bill-in-build-back-better-plan.html

And a lot of the BBB got stripped down anyway before it finally passed as the Inflation Reduction Act in summer 2022.

Can you provide some reference to this? I find it hard to believe that the SEC will let that pass if they had proof that he illegally undervalued the stock.

It's in the middle of the Pro Publica article. It would an IRS tax issue, not SEC. And the IRS pretty clearly doesn't go hard after stuff like this, historically.

"While SEC filings describing that time don’t mention Thiel’s Roth, they show that he bought his first slice of the company in January 1999. Thiel paid $0.001 per share — yes, just a tenth of a penny — for 1.7 million shares. At that price, he was able to buy a large stake for just $1,700.

In 1999, $2,000 was the maximum amount you could put into a Roth in a year.

Thiel’s unusual stock purchase risked running afoul of rules designed to prevent IRAs from becoming illegal tax shelters. Investors aren’t allowed to buy assets for less than their true value through an IRA. The practice is sometimes known as “stuffing” because it gets around the strict limits imposed by Congress on how much money can be put in a Roth.

PayPal later disclosed details about the early history of the company in an SEC filing before its initial public offering. The filing reveals that Thiel’s founders’ shares were among those the company sold to employees at “below fair value.”

Victor Fleischer, a tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine who has written about the valuation of founders’ shares, read the PayPal filings at ProPublica’s request. Buying startup shares at a discounted $0.001 price with a Roth, he asserts, would be indefensible."

And he did have a reference point for the price, as further described, because other investments were made at the same time as the company grew. Those would have had approximate stock values assigned/assumed at the time the Investments were made. That would be more than enough evidence to hang your hat on for the market value of the shares. It's fine he was awarded them, but they should have been able to all go into the Roth, and he should have had to pay taxes on the market value of the actual award.

*should.NOT have been able....

[Anonymous]

38 and 250k in Roth, no backdoor contributions, just the 5-6k in my earlier years with a couple good investments. Make too much money to contribute and don’t bother with back doors

[Anonymous]

I’m 46 and have $2.1M in my Roth
Dh is 47 and has $500k in his Roth. He has other money in a 403b

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:38 and 250k in Roth, no backdoor contributions, just the 5-6k in my earlier years with a couple good investments. Make too much money to contribute and don’t bother with back doors

You "don't bother" with the backdoor Roth IRA option? It takes all of 15 minutes once a year and gives you access to the most valuable investment account in existence.

[Anonymous]

I have nearly 1M+ in my Roth. But some of it was from rolling over a old employer 401k to a roth and paying taxes on it. I did it when I was in grad school so I literally had 0 income otherwise. I had 2 zero income years, so I phased it out those two years. Keep in mind this is was back in 2010-11. so the 200k i did back then is worth 1M. I paid maybe 30k in total taxes on this.

I now have a separate roth 401k too. But my tax rate is higher and I split between the roth and regular 401k as a tax hedge strategy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have nearly 1M+ in my Roth. But some of it was from rolling over a old employer 401k to a roth and paying taxes on it. I did it when I was in grad school so I literally had 0 income otherwise. I had 2 zero income years, so I phased it out those two years. Keep in mind this is was back in 2010-11. so the 200k i did back then is worth 1M. I paid maybe 30k in total taxes on this.

I now have a separate roth 401k too. But my tax rate is higher and I split between the roth and regular 401k as a tax hedge strategy.

So few people on DCUM do this. And it is the right answer for most people. If you aren't certain which is better for you, split it. You don't have to be all one or all the other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have nearly 1M+ in my Roth. But some of it was from rolling over a old employer 401k to a roth and paying taxes on it. I did it when I was in grad school so I literally had 0 income otherwise. I had 2 zero income years, so I phased it out those two years. Keep in mind this is was back in 2010-11. so the 200k i did back then is worth 1M. I paid maybe 30k in total taxes on this.

I now have a separate roth 401k too. But my tax rate is higher and I split between the roth and regular 401k as a tax hedge strategy.

So few people on DCUM do this. And it is the right answer for most people. If you aren't certain which is better for you, split it. You don't have to be all one or all the other.

The biggest variable is expected retirement age. If you plan to retire early, you could have 20+ years to convert regular 401k/IRA money to Roth at low tax rates.