Variable Annuity inside a Roth IRA? What is this and how can I switch it to something else?
"This answer is provided mostly to answer your question ""what is it?"" A variable annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company. The insurance company takes a bunch of money up front as a lump sum, and will pay you some money yearly - like earning interest. (In this case, they will probably be paying you the money into the account itself). How much they return is, as the name suggests, variable. It can be anything, depending on what the contract says. Mostly, there will be some formula based on the stock market - frequently, the performance of the Standard & Poors 500 Index. There will typically be some minimum returns and maximum returns - if the stock market tanks, your annuity will not lose a ton of value, but if the stock market goes up a lot in one year (as it frequently does), you will not gain a lot of value either. If you are going to be in the market for a long amount of time (decades, e.g. ""a few years out of college"" and then a little), it makes a lot more sense to invest in the stock market directly. This is essentially what the insurance company is going to do, except you can cut out the middleman. You can get a lot more money that way. You are essentially paying the insurance company to take on some stock market risk for you - you are buying some safety. Buying safety like this is expensive.  Variable annuities are the right investment for a few people in a few circumstances - mostly, if you're near retirement, it's one way to have an option for a ""safe"" investment, for a portion (but not all) of your portfolio. Maybe. Depending on the specifics, a lot. If you are under, like, 50 or so? Almost certainly a terrible investment which will gradually waste your money (by not growing it as fast as it deserves to be grown). Since you want to transfer it to Vanguard, you can probably call Vanguard, ask to open a Roth IRA, and request assistance rolling it over from the place it is held now. There should be no legal restrictions or tax consequences from transferring the money from one Roth IRA account to another." Your financial advisor got a pretty good commission for selling you the annuity is what happened. As for transferring it over to Vanguard (or any other company) and investing it in something else, go to Vanguard's site, tell them that you want to open a new Roth IRA account by doing a trustee-to-trustee transfer from your other Roth IRA account, and tell them to go get the funds for you from your current Roth IRA trustee.  You will need to sign some papers authorizing Vanguard to go fetch, make sure all the account numbers and the name of the current trustee (usually a  company with a name that includes Trust or Fiduciary as shown on your latest statement) are correct, and sit back and wait while your life improves.
TL; DR version:  What you propose to do might not save you taxes, and may well be illegal. Since you mention your wife, I assume that the Inherited IRA has been inherited from someone other than your spouse; your mother, maybe, who passed away in Fall 2015 as mentioned in your other question (cf. the comment by Ben Miller above)? If so, you must take (at least) the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from the Inherited IRA each year and pay  taxes on the distribution. What the RMD is depends on how old the Owner of the IRA was when the Owner passed away, but in most cases, it works out to be the RMD for you, the Beneficiary, considered  to be a Single Person (see Publication 590b, available on the IRS web site for details). So, Have you taken the (at least) the RMD amount for 2016 from this Inherited IRA? If not, you will owe a 50% penalty of the difference   between the amount withdrawn and the RMD amount. No, it is not a typo;   the penalty (it is called an excise tax) is indeed 50%. Assuming that the total amount that you have taken as  a Distribution from the Inherited IRA during 2016 is the  RMD for 2016 plus possibly some extra amount $X, then that amount is included in your taxable income for that year.  You cannot rollover any part of the total amount distributed into  your own IRA and thereby avoid taxation on the money. Note that it does not matter whether you will be rolling over the money into an existing IRA in your name or will be establishing a new rollover IRA account in your name with the money: the prohibition applies to both ways of handling the matter. If you wish, you can roll over up to $X (the amount over and above the RMD) into a new Inherited IRA account titled exactly the same as the existing Inherited IRA account with a different custodian. If you choose to do so, then the amount that you roll over into the new Inherited IRA account will not included in your taxable income for 2016. To my mind, there is no point to doing such a rollover unless you are unhappy with the current custodian of your Inherited IRA, but the option is included for completeness. Note that the RMD amount cannot be rolled over in this fashion; only the excess over the RMD. If you don't really need to spend the money distributed from your Inherited IRA for your household expenses (your opening statement that your income for 2016 is low might make this unlikely), and (i) you and/or your spouse received compensation (earned income such as wages, salary, self-employment income, commissions for sales, nontaxable combat pay for US Military Personnel, etc) in 2016, and (ii) you were not 70.5 years of age by December 2016,  then you and your wife can make  contributions to existing IRAs in your names  or establish new IRAs in your names.  The amount that can be contributed for each IRA is limited to the smaller of $5500 ($6500 for people over 50) and that person's compensation for 2016, but if a joint tax return is filed for 2016, then both can make contributions to their IRAs as long as the sum of the amounts contributed to the IRAs does not exceed  the total compensation reported on the joint return.  The deadline for making such IRA contributions is the due date for your 2016 Federal income tax return. Since your income for 2016 is less than $98K, you can deduct the entire IRA contribution even if you or your wife are covered by an employer plan such as a 401(k) plan.  Thus, your taxable income will be reduced by the IRA contributions (up to a maximum of $11K (or $12 K or $13K depending on ages)) and this can offset the increase in taxable income due to the  distribution from the Inherited IRA.      Since money is fungible, isn't this last bullet point achieving the same result as rolling over the entire $9.6K (including the RMD) into an IRA in your name, the very thing that the first bullet point above says cannot be done? The answer is that it really isn't the same result and differs from what you wanted to do in several different ways. First, the $9.6K is being put into IRAs for two different people  (you and your wife) and not just you alone. Should there, God forbid, be an end to the marriage, that part of your inheritance is gone. Second, you might not even be entitled to make contributions to IRAs (no compensation, or over 70.5 years old in 2016) which would make the whole thing moot. Third, the amount that can be contributed to an IRA is limited to $5500/$6500 for each person. While this does not affect the present case, if the distribution had been $15K instead of $9.6K,  not all of that money could be contributed to IRAs for you and your wife. Finally, the contribution to a Traditional IRA might be non-deductible for income tax purposes because the Adjusted Gross Income is too high;  once again, not an issue for you for 2016 but something to keep in mind for future years. In contrast, rollovers from one IRA into another IRA (both titled the same) can be in any amount, and they can be done at any time regardless of whether there is compensation for that year or not or what the Adjusted Gross Income is or whether there is coverage by a 401(k) plan. There are no  tax consequences to rollovers unless the rollover is from a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA in which case, the distribution is included in taxable  income for that year.  What is prohibited is taking the entire amount of the $9.6K distribution from an Inherited IRA and rolling it over  into your existing IRA (or establishing a Rollover IRA in your name with that $9.6K); ditto for some money going into your IRA and some into your wife's IRA. I expect that any IRA custodian will  likely refuse to allow you to carry out such a rollover transaction but will be glad to accept 2016 contributions (in amounts of up to $5500/$6500) from you into existing IRAs or open a new IRA for you. The custodian will not ask whether you have compensation for 2016 or not (but will check your age!); it is your responsibility to ensure that you do not contribute more than the compensation etc. Incidentally, subject to the $5500/6500 maximum limit, you can (if you choose to do so) contribute the entire amount of your compensation to an IRA, not just the take-home pay amount (which will be smaller than your compensation because of withholding for Social Security and Medicare tax, State and Federal income tax, etc). There is always some fine print, read it. I doubt there is any product out there that can guarantee an 8% return.  As a counter example - a 70 yr old can get 6% in a fixed immediate annuity. On death, the original premium is retained by the insurance company.  Whenever I read the prospectus of a VA, I find the actual math betrays a salesman who misrepresented the product. I'd be really curious to read the details for this one. What you should do is re-characterize contributions from being a Traditional IRA contributions to Roth IRA contributions. Call your broker that holds the account and ask how to do that. Note: re-characterize means you don't move the money to Roth account, you retroactively say that it was a Roth account to begin with. By re-characterization you're saying that your contribution, and all the earnings on it, are Roth from the start. This is different from moving (rolling over), and moving is not advised if you have significant Rollover IRA sums. If your MAGI is over the limit for Roth IRA as well (see table 2-1 in pub 590) then you keep it as non-deductible IRA contribution and report it on form 8606. In this case your wife's Roth IRA contribution should be recharacterized as traditional and reported as non-deductible on form 8606 as well. I wrote an article about this a while ago with detailed instructions, so I'll link to it here. Here's a snippet about how to use the Roth IRA loophole and report it properly: You don’t have any Traditional/Rollover IRA at all. You deposit up to the yearly maximum (currently $5500) into a traditional IRA. In your case, you re-characterized, which means you essentially deposited. The fact that it lost money may help you later if you have extra amounts in Traditional IRA. You convert your traditional IRA to become Roth IRA ($5500 change designation from Traditional IRA to Roth IRA).  You fill IRS form 8606 and attach it to your yearly tax return, no tax due. You have  a fully funded Roth IRA account. If you have amounts in the Traditional IRA in excess to what you contributed last year - it becomes a bit more complicated and you need to prorate. See my article for a detailed example. On the form 8606 you fill the numbers as they are. You deposited to IRA 5500, you converted 5100, your $400 loss is lost (unless you have more money in IRA from elsewhere). If you completely distribute your IRA, you can deduct the $400 on your Schedule A, if you itemize. "This is the infographic from the Fidelity. It exemplifies what's wrong with the financial industry, and the sad state of innumeracy that we are in.   To be clear, Fidelity treats the 401(k) correctly, although the assumption that the withdrawals are all at a marginal 28% is a poor one. The Roth side, they assume the $5000 goes in at a zero tax rate. This is nonsense, as Elaine can't deposit $5000, she has to pay tax first, no? She'd deposit $3600, and would have the identical $27,404 at withdrawal time.  And this is pure nonsense -  ""Let’s look at the numbers another way. Tom takes the $1,400 he saved   in taxes from his $5,000 pretax contributions, and invests that money   in a taxable brokerage account. That could boost his total at age 75   to $35,445."" The $1400 saved is in his 401(k) already, there's no extra $1400. $5000 went in pretax.  Let me go one more step, and explain what I think Joe meant in his comment below - tax table first -   At retirement, say a couple has exactly $168,850 of income. With the $20K in standard deduction and exemptions, they are right at the top of the 25% bracket.  And have a federal tax bill of $28,925. Overall, an effective rate of 17%.  Of course this is a blend from 0%-25%, and I maintain that if some money could have gone in post tax while in the 10%/15% brackets, that would be great, but in the end, if it all skims off at 25%, and comes out at an effective 17%, that's not too bad.  The article is incorrect. Misleading. And offends any of us that have any respect for numbers. And the fact that the article claim that ""87% found this helpful"" just makes me... sad.  I've said it elsewhere, and will repeat, there are not just two points in time. The ability to convert Traditional 401(k) to Roth 401(k), and if in IRAs, not just convert, but also recharacterize, opens up other possibilities. It's worth a bit of attention and ongoing paperwork to minimize your lifetime tax bill. Time makes no difference. There is no ""crossover point"" as with other financial decisions. For this illustration, the results are identical regardless of time.  By the way, in today's dollars, it would take $4M pretax to produce an annual withdrawal of $160K. This number is about top 2-3%. The 90%ers need not worry about saving their way to a higher tax bracket." You are likely thinking of a individual variable insurance contract (IVIC) , better known as a segregated fund, or a principal-protected note (PPN). For a segregated fund, to get a full guarantee on invested capital, you need a 100/100 where the maturity value and death benefit are each 100% guaranteed. The PPN works similar to a long-term GIC (or CD) with a variable investment component.  The thing is, neither of these things are cheap and the cost structure that is built in behind them makes it difficult to make any real above market rates of return. In both cases, if you try to break the contracts early then the guarantees are null and void and you get out what you get out. "I wrote a brilliant guest post at Don't Mess With Taxes, titled Roth IRAs and Your Retirement Income. (Note - this article now reflects 2012 rates. Just updated) Simply put, it's an ongoing question of whether your taxes will be higher now than at any point in the future. If you are in the 25% bracket now, it would take quite of bit of money for your withdrawals to put you in that bracket at retirement. In the case of the IRA, you have the opportunity to convert in any year between now and retirement if your rate that year drops for whatever reason.  The simplest case is if you are now in the 25% bracket. I say go pre-tax, and track, year by year what your withdrawal would be if you retired today.  At 15%, but with a good chance for promotion to the 25% bracket, start with Roth flavor and then as you hit 25%, use a combination. This approach would smooth your marginal rate to stay at 15%.  To give you a start to this puzzle, in 2012, a couple has a $11,900 standard deduction along with 2 exemptions of $3800 each. This means the first $19,500 in an IRA comes out tax free at retirement. If you believe in a 4% withdrawal rate, you need a retirement account containing $500K pretax to generate this much money. This tick up with inflation, 2 years ago, it was $18,700 and $467K respectively. This is why those who scream ""taxes will go up"" may be correct, but do you really believe the standard deduction and exemptions will go away?  Edit - and as time passes, and I learn more, new info comes to my attention. The above thoughts not withstanding, there's an issue of taxation of Social Security benefits. This creates a The Phantom Tax Rate Zone which I recently wrote about. A single person with not really too high an income gets thrust into the 46% bracket. Not a typo, 46.25% to be exact." "What is a 403b? A 403(b) plan is a tax-advantaged retirement savings plan available for public education organizations, some non-profit employers (only US Tax Code 501(c)(3) organizations), cooperative hospital service organizations and self-employed ministers in the United States. Kind of a rare thing. A bit more here: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/teacheroptions.htm under investment options Equity Indexed Annuities are a special type of contract between you and an insurance company. During the accumulation period — when you make either a lump sum payment or a series of payments — the insurance company credits you with a return that is based on changes in an equity index, such as the S&P 500 Composite Stock Price Index. The insurance company typically guarantees a minimum return. Guaranteed minimum return rates vary. After the accumulation period, the insurance company will make periodic payments to you under the terms of your contract, unless you choose to receive your contract value in a lump sum. For more information, please see our ""Fast Answer"" on Equity Indexed Annuities, and read FINRA's investor alert entitled Equity-Indexed Annuitiies — A Complex Choice. So perhaps ""equity indexed annuities"" is the more correct thing to search for and not ""insurance funds""?" Fidelity recently had an article on their website about deferred annuities (variable and fixed) that don't have the contribution limitations of an IRA, are a tax-deferred investment, and can be turned into a future income stream. I just started investigating this for myself. DISCLAIMER: I'm not a financial professional, and would suggest that you consult with a fee-only planner and tax advisor before making any decision. You can get no load annuities through some no-load financial companies like Vanguard so to start with I'd see how what she is being offered compares with something that comes free of a sales load. I'd also question that fixed rate, seems pretty impossible to me, which makes me think there is some catch or 'gotcha' that we are not seeing that either brings down that rate, or makes it delusional (they are kidding themselves) or deceptive in some way.  In any case it's setting off my 'too good to be true' alarm at full volume, along with the 'shark attack' alarm as well. (I would strongly suspect the 'advisor' is advising the product that makes the most money for him, NOT what is in your mother's best interest)  A fixed annuity is an insurance product, not a security, because the insurance company must credit the annuity holder’s account with the specified interest rate for the contractually-stipulated time period, regardless of market fluctuations in actual interest rates. It is the insurance company that bears the investment risk, which it does by investing the annuity holder’s purchase proceeds in fixed-income instruments that the company hopes will provide sufficient return to fulfill its contractual representations to the holder.  THIS is why there is no prospectus (it's not a 'security' they are not required to provide one by SEC) because the risk is entirely with the company. Obviously as pointed out in the comments, the company could easily go out of business (especially of they sell a lot of these and can't find a way to get that kind of return on the invested money).  Now, ask yourself, if I was the insurance company, would I be comfortable guaranteeing that level of return over that much time if I intend to make a profit from it, pay sales comissions, and stay in business?   In terms of 'will they stay in business' I'd have a hard look at their ratings, and go compare where that is on the total range for AM Best (they are lowest 'secure' rating, next thing down is in the 'vulnerable' category) and Standard and Poors (4 places down from their best rating, next thing down is 'marginal' followed by 'poor')   You might also want to see if you can get any idea of historical ratings, is this company's ratings falling, or rising?   Personally, for the amount of money involved, I'd want a company with MUCH higher ratings than these guys..  THEN maybe someone could say 'no risk', but with those ratings?  an no, I don't think so! BTW I'd check over what this bozo (um sorry, that's not fair to clowns) is recommending she do with her own funds as well.  For example is he recommending she take something that is already tax sheltered such as an IRA and investing the stuff inside that in an annuity (kind of pointless to 'double shelter' the money, or lock it up for a period of time when she may be required to make withdrawals) make sure you don't see something there that is actually against what is in her best interest and is only done to make him a comission. "Like JoeTaxpayer said, I don't know of any difference between the backdoor and a regular Roth IRA contribution besides the issue with existing pre-tax IRA money. So if it is your practice to contribute at the beginning of the year (good for you, most people wait until the last minute), then doing a backdoor seems like the safe choice. Some people have speculated that, hypothetically, the IRS could use the ""step transaction doctrine"" to treat it as a single direct contribution to a Roth IRA (which then would be disallowed and cause you a penalty until you take it out), but I have never heard of this happening to anyone. As for the paperwork, you just need to fill out one extra form at tax time, Form 8606 (you need to complete two parts of it, one for the non-deductible contribution, and one for the conversion). It is pretty straightforward. (Although I've found that it is a pain to do it in tax software.) Another option would be for you to contribute to a Roth IRA now, but when you discover that you're over the limit at the end of the year, re-characterize it as a Traditional contribution and then convert it back to Roth. But this way is not good because then there is a long time between the Traditional contribution and the Roth conversion, and earnings during this time will be taxed at conversion." She is very wrong.  If the IRA is a traditional, i.e. A pretax IRA (not a Roth), all withdrawals are subject to tax at one's marginal rate. Read that to mean that a large sum can easily push her into higher brackets than normal. If it stayed with her, she'd take smaller withdrawals and be able to throttle her tax impact.  Once she takes it all out, and gifts it to you, no gift tax is due, but there's form 709, where it's declared, and counts against her $5.5M lifetime estate exemption.  There are a few things in the world of finance that offend me as much as lawyer malpractice, going into an area they are ignorant of. I am not a lawyer but I do not see a legal problem here. However, if the puts in the Roth IRA are not purchased at fair market value that could be a problem. For example, if your traditional IRA sold puts to the Roth IRA below fair market value that would not be allowed. However, from your post, it appears that you will be buying the puts from a third party so that will not be an issue. There is something else that just cross my mind. Imagine that you own 100 shares of the XYZ stock in your traditional IRA and 100 shares of the XYZ stock outside of an IRA. Now, you buy a put on the XYZ stock inside your Roth IRA. Are the dividends on the XYZ stock still qualified? I do not know but my guess is the answer is no. "The extent that you would have problems would depend on if the annuity is considered Qualified or Non-Qualified. If the annuity is qualified that means that the money that was put into it has never been taxed and a rollover to an IRA is simple.  The possible issues here are tax issues and a CPA is likely the best person to answer this question.  Two other things to consider in such an event is the loss of any 'living benefit' or 'death benefit'. Variable annuities have been through quite the evolution in the last 15 years. Death benefits have been around longer than living benefits but both are usually based on some derrivitive of a 'high water' mark of the variable sub accounts. You might want to ask Hartford the question ""...how will my living or death benefits be affected if I roll this over""." "Welcome to the 'what should otherwise be a simple choice turns into a huge analysis' debate. If the choice were actually simple, we've have one 'golden answer' here and close others as duplicate. But, new questions continue to bring up different scenarios that impact the choice.  4 years ago, I wrote an article in which I discussed The Density of Your IRA. In that article, I acknowledge that, with no other tax favored savings, you can pack more value into the Roth.  In hindsight, I failed to add some key points. First, let's go back to what I'd describe as my main thesis: A retired couple hits the top of the 15% bracket with an income of   $96,700. (I include just the standard deduction and exemptions.) The   tax on this gross sum is $10,452.50 for an 'average' rate of 10.8%. The tax, paid or avoided, upon deposit, is one's marginal rate. But,   at retirement, the withdrawals first go through the zero bracket (i.e.   the STD deduction and exemptions), then 10%, then 15%. The above is the simplest snapshot. I am retired, and our return this year included Sch A, itemized deductions. Property tax, mort interest, insurance, donations added up fast, and from a gross income (IRA withdrawal) well into the 25% bracket, the effective/average rate was reported as 7.3%. If we had saved in Roth accounts, it would have been subject to 25%.  I'd suggest that it's this phenomenon, the ""save at marginal 25%, but withdraw at average sub-11%"" effect that account for much of the resulting tax savings that the IRA provides.  The way you are asking this, you've been focusing on one aspect, I believe. The 'density' issue. That assumes the investor has no 401(k) option. If I were building a spreadsheet to address this, I'd be sure to consider the fact that in a taxable account, long term gains are taxed at 15% for higher earners (I take the liberty to ignore  that wealthier taxpayers will pay a maximum 20% tax on long-term capital gains. This higher rate applies when your adjusted gross income falls into the top 39.6% tax bracket.) And those in the 10 or 15% bracket pay 0%. With median household income at $56K in 2016, and the 15% bracket top at $76K, this suggests that most people (gov data shows $75K is 80th percentile) have an effective unlimited Roth. So long as they invest in a way that avoids short term gains, they can rebalance often enough to realize LT gains and pay zero tax.  It's likely the $80K+ earner does have access to a 401(k) or other higher deposit account. If they don't, I'd still favor pretax IRAs, with $11K for the couple still 10% or so of their earnings. It would be a shame to lose that zero bracket of that first $20K withdrawal at retirement. Again working backwards, the $78K withdrawal would take nearly $2M in pretax savings to generate. All in today's dollars."