With just a week to go before the New Year, I thought I’d put together a quick post on IRA contribution limits for 2013. As a reminder, contribution limits have been indexed to inflation since 2008, and can increase in $500 increments (as necessary).
As you can see from the table below, nothing had changed in the past few years, but… Limits are increasing by $500 in 2013.
| Year | Under Age 50 | Age 50+ |
| 2002-2004 | $3, 000/year | $3, 500/year |
| 2005 | $4, 000/year | $4, 500/year |
| 2006 | $4, 000/year | $5, 000/year |
| 2007 | $4, 000/year | $5, 000/year |
| 2008 | $5, 000/year | $6, 000/year |
| 2009 | $5, 000/year | $6, 000/year |
| 2010 | $5, 000/year | $6, 000/year |
| 2011 | $5, 000/year | $6, 000/year |
| 2012 | $5, 000/year | $6, 000/year |
| 2013 | $5, 500/year | $6, 500/year |
A few notes…
First, note that this limit is a combined limit for traditional and Roth contributions. Thus, while you can contribute to both in the same year, the total contribution cannot exceed the $5, 500 (or $6, 500) limit.
Second, your traditional IRA contributions may be tax deductible, depending on whether or not you’re covered by a retirement plan at work, and how much money you make. Details can be found here.
Finally, remember that you can make contributions for 2012 all the way up to April 15th, 2013 (the due date for filing your 2012 tax return). Thus, if you still haven’t gotten around to it making your 2012 contributions, you still have time.
Roth money is “after-tax”, so technically, you can save more using a Roth than a Traditional IRA: because the two types of accounts have the same limits.
$5,500 max contribution to a Roth, assuming 25% marginal tax bracket, is equivalent to $7,333 in a Traditional account, which is way over the max contribution limit for the IRA.
j: Fixed it, thanks.
typo: u have 2012 twice