As an expat who may at some point want to return to the UK, is it better to have a Roth IRA rather than a traditional one as the tax will already have been paid? Or if anybody has any handy links to IRA sites that will have this information could they post them?
if you are going to leave for good get a raditional IRA and then cash it after January 1 and your tax liability will be nill because unless you are extremely honest (and I know we all are) you will not be filing a tax return for your leaving year anyway.
I have no idea what my pension is.
Supposedly it is quite good. I base this upon the fact it is a state employees pension scheme and the state's Republicans keep wanting to change it, so that it matches what is out in the "other" world.
I did try to look it up once but it was so confusing I had to have a lie-down after an hour of surfing the state's supposedly informative retirement website. They are very general about how it works and where the money is invested so one assumes they put it into stuff like Enron and cross their fingers, whilst hoping that the employees don't get too curious as to where the money goes.
I'd be interested to know how it compares to IRA's, Roth, Traditional etc. because it's really all beyond me at this time. All I can make out every few months when I look at my account is that my stake is going up much faster than any of my other investments and goes a long way to boosing my net worth. I don't really count on it though, having seen Mirror Group, Enron etc. help themselves in the past.
Dianey, there is no definitive answer to your question; the variables are the length of time till you retire, the return on investment, and your marginal tax rates now, and in retirement.
There are loads of tax calculators to be found if you google. I invest with Fidelity. their IRA comparison calculator is here http//personal.fidelity.com/global/search/inquira/resultsindex.shtml?question=ira%20calculator
There are calculators for everything at fool.com http//www.fool.com/calcs/calculators.htm?source=LN
These don't help if you want to try EEB's suggestion, but if you stay here, and are reasonably young, the Roth wins easily
I had almost pretty much decided to go with the Roth anyway. I wonder, by the time I'm sixty-five they may well have put a chip in my neck that will debit my account of the taxes as I leave the country. lol
I'm most likely to go with USAA. I've got a 401K with an old employer who is harrassing me about rolling it over. As I don't really expect to be with any employer for very long (long live Right to Work States and US Employee Protection!) I will most likely always go with my own private pension.