Related Posts
Anyone at Motorola able to provide a referral?
Additional Posts in FIRE Financial Independence Retire Early
What are the best cities to live in for FIRE?
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.




You can take out your contributions from a Roth IRA without penalty or tax, but you’ll pay a penalty and taxes on any early withdrawal of earnings (barring exceptions).
Subject Expert
OP - Yes
Technically you already paid taxes on the contribution so that isn’t really “tax free”
Unlike brokerage accounts, you can withdraw your contributions at any time without paying further taxes.
Just to repeat my example. If you contribute $10k to Roth and it increases to $11k. You can withdraw $10k at any time, tax free.
You need just leave the $1k gain in your account until age 59, otherwise you pay tax and 10% penalty,
The max annual contribution to Roth IRA is $7.5k, but I used $10k from your original post.
Mentor
You can ALWAYS take out your contributions - not the growth - from your Roth IRA, penalty and tax free.
What's the point of dropping 10k Ina roth for only a year? Better to leave it and let time and dividends, as applicable, do their jobs
I believe you would still have to pay capital gains tax in addition to the penalty
Good call. Hadn’t thought about that.
If the goal is to invest for only 1 year then do a straight brokerage (axable) account.
You'll only pay 15% long term capital gains as opposed to state income taxes, and will avoid ROTH fees altogether.
Subject Expert
I would step back and think about the larger situation here.
Why are you pulling the money out? What are you investing for?
The S&P500 will not give you a reliable 10% return over that period. It will give you whatever you get, which could be much more than 10%, a large loss, or anything in between.
What is your situation and what are you trying to accomplish?