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myRA

Illinois’ Automatic Roth IRAs for Employees

Recently Illinois’ Governor Pat Quinn signed into law the Illinois Secure Choice Savings Plan. This plan provides an automatic Roth IRA via payroll-deduction for some employees who do not have an employer-sponsored retirement savings plan. Essentially this law will require employers with 25 or more employees to establish a payroll deduction program permitting the workers to defer earnings into a Roth IRA, beginning in June 2017.  Employees will be automatically enrolled (hence an automatic Roth IRA), but the workers will have the opportunity to opt out of the program. The automatic enrollment includes a 3% salary deferral, but the employee can increase the deferral amount, up to the legal limitations (in 2015 it’s $5,500, $6,500 for folks over age 50). There is no company matching with this program.  

myRA? What’s the point?

After the President’s state of the union announcement of the new myRA account, my first reaction was: Did we need this?  What’s so “out of reach” about a regular Roth IRA?  And if there was a great hue and cry for this, why hasn’t the marketplace provided it already? After all, there are custodians who will provide a no-fee Roth IRA with no account minimum already (TD Ameritrade comes to mind). Plus, there are plenty of ways to get a bond-like return with no costs or account minimums as well. All that I can find that is different about the myRA accounts is that the bond investment (same as the TSP “G” fund) has downside protection – meaning that the funds in the myRA account will never reduce in value, only grow or stay the same. As with any gift (and downside protection is indeed a valuable gift), there is […]