Retirement account possibilities with residency / moonlighting

[nsd2015]

I'm a PGY-3 EM resident (married to another resident) and we will both have made $53k in 2017 as employees, and I have $40k in 2017 moonlighting 1099 income (total $146k). We are very fortunate to have refinanced both of our school loans to the 4% range (thanks WCI), so would like to max out retirement accounts as much as possible as our next financial goal. We are not big spenders and rent an apartment, so we have ~$60k in cash.

We've placed $5,500 into my Vanguard Roth IRA, $5,500 into her Roth IRA, $3,350 into my HSA, and I have $3,704 contributed for the year as a standard payroll contribution in my academic institution's 457 plan.

My question is where should I put any additional cash: a Roth 401k? Can I open one even though I already have those other plans? If so, could I put a full 18,000 in it or does my 3,704 in the 457 plan count toward that total? Is there another type of account I should open instead? Or should I place this all into a taxable Vanguard account?

Thanks for any advice (and all the great info on this forum)!

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[dpmd]

I'm a PGY-3 EM resident (married to another resident) and we will both have made $53k in 2017 as employees, and I have $40k in 2017 moonlighting 1099 income (total $146k). We are very fortunate to have refinanced both of our school loans to the 4% range (thanks WCI), so would like to max out retirement accounts as much as possible as our next financial goal. We are not big spenders and rent an apartment, so we have ~$60k in cash.

We've placed $5,500 into my Vanguard Roth IRA, $5,500 into her Roth IRA, $3,350 into my HSA, and I have $3,704 contributed for the year as a standard payroll contribution in my academic institution's 457 plan.

My question is where should I put any additional cash: a Roth 401k? Can I open one even though I already have those other plans? If so, could I put a full 18,000 in it or does my 3,704 in the 457 plan count toward that total? Is there another type of account I should open instead? Or should I place this all into a taxable Vanguard account?

Thanks for any advice (and all the great info on this forum)!

You can have a solo 401k along with your other plans. The deferral limits are separate for 401k and 457b. You could do the 18000 employee contribution and another 7434 for the employer portion assuming that 40K is net (will be less if you have some expenses to reduce it with which will reduce your taxes). I set mine up at fidelity because they do roth 401k option. After that then taxable investment account would be appropriate (but make sure you have planned for self employment taxes on that 40k).

 

[nsd2015]

Thanks dpmd for the quick response -- I partially funded a solo 401k for the year and will put the a good chunk of the rest in taxable to have some liquidity in reserve

 

[ThoracicGuy]

Thanks dpmd for the quick response -- I partially funded a solo 401k for the year and will put the a good chunk of the rest in taxable to have some liquidity in reserve

If you can afford it, I'd put more in the solo 401k. You'll never be able to contribute that money again if you changed your mind.

That being said, make sure you have a big enough emergency fund to get by.

 

[dpmd]

Ah yeah, I forgot fidelity allows you to set it up so you can take loans from the 401k. Obviously not the best option but a nice backup for emergencies.