> Login: Please visit my.accrue401k.com to log in. You’ll find that the 401(k) dashboard and user experience remain familiar. If you’ve set up your account, your same login credentials will provide you access into the dashboard. (Please note, Accrue does not currently offer a mobile app).
The my.accrue401k.com part was a hyperlink to that site. I've independently done some digging (and contacted my old employer to verify!) but this is precisely how a targeted phishing attack would work. Asking someone to enter their financial account credentials into a site they've never used or heard of, based entirely on an unsolicited email, is INSANE.
This email was the first time I've heard of Gusto, of Guideline being acquired, or of Accrue 401k (which apparently is the company created to hold Guideline's 401k accounts that are NOT affiliated with Gusto). Nice.
I wish the federal government would just get rid of the salary cap for direct contributions to a Roth IRA, since they basically already allow it via the obnoxious and convoluted path.
For reference for others…
https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/a...
I’m both under the limit to contribute to a Roth since I am married and my company offers an “after tax 401K” (different than a Roth 401k) and I’m over 50 so I can do catch up contributions.
I’m a long way before I need to worry about backdoor contributions.
This rule only matters if you have pretax dollars in an IRA that you want to also use posttax dollars to backdoor.
To be clear, it wouldn't be taxed at 90% in this example. It's that 90% of the conversion amount would be taxed as ordinary income.
AFAICT there's no extra paying taxes here or anything. Your pretaxed dollars are being taxed, instead of posttax dollars not being taxed.
IMO not that big of a deal to contribute $7k, convert $7k, and pay $2-3k in taxes to get $14k in the Roth space that will grow tax free forever. Most people are too pre-tax heavy in their retirement strategies anyway.
If you have $100k pre-tax in a trad IRA, contribute 7k after tax for the purpose of rolling into a Roth, then you will owe income tax on the proportion of 100/107*7k, or $6,542.
You're still limited to 7k annual (for 2025) so the 14k you describe must be something else.
All contributions or conversions to Roth IRAs are after-tax dollars.
there are caveats to this, like always being attached to your solo 401k plan makes you ineligible for contributions to an IRA all the time, but you will be able to have rollovers into the IRAs, you also might decide that the solo 401k is a superior product to IRAs in every way
if you are not currently eligible to create a solo 401k, it is very easy to become eligible with a single dollar of 1099 or schedule C income the year you make it, and then it can exist in perpetuity
corroborate that with your licensed professionals. many gurus overlook the solo roth 401k mostly due to SEO and their audience of professionals that associate "401k" with "corporate employer thing", as opposed to something at parity with a traditional and roth IRA and expanded in capability
No, your scenario is not "very easy". No custodian is going to handle a solo 401k based on one dollar of self employed income (and 1099-NECs aren't issued for such tiny amounts anyway). You are also overlooking the overhead of maintaining a 401k, such as plan updates every time related federal tax law changes, or the potential IRS reporting requirements, which can generate significant penalties if overlooked.
OP can also just use the solo 401k's roth balances as a temporary holding place to then pass through directly to the roth ira
The expanded investment options are worth it alone. And the years where there is self employment income, the expanded contribution limit up to doing my own $70,000 employer match saves literal years of contributions off my life.
It's literally 10x what the IRA contribution guys get, and most of them are barely able to even reach the IRA contribution max.
There are more tax deferral plans out there too, I'm willing to do that compliance.
Vanguard wouldn't need to know it was a solo 401k, they would just see a trust being signed up. There are other institutions that you can go into mutual funds or get similar exposure from who are more acclimated to solo 401k entities though.
Here's a simple idea: roll over your 401k, and then take the $7K (or whatever) you were going to put into the Roth and instead use it to pay the tax on a conversion of $20K. Much bigger bang for the buck.
For most people micromanaging below 0.01% is like gaining a cup of coffee every year.
The answer is - there are situations where it is favorable to do so. It may or may not be favorable for you, and it may or may not be favorable for the median person. But these situations exist. And everyone can check for themselves and make the best decision insted of arguing over a blanket "X is better" or "Y doesn't make sense".
Unless your Vanguard has a 401(k) account and it already then your golden, I’d advise rolling your previous balance into your current employers account first
The other case is when you are trying to manage IRMAA in retirement and it helps that you can withdraw from Roth accounts. But you can also just contribute to a Roth 401K or a Roth. Yes I know Roth limits for married and single.
I’m not claiming expert status so I’m happy to be set straight.
If your tax rate will be lower in retirement, favor pre-tax contributions. If higher, favor after-tax. The trick is knowing what tax rates will be years (decades?) from now.
I've had the same belief, but I've started questioning it. In retirement, your income (mostly) matches what you spend. Someone in their 20s or 30s may have both lower income and lifestyle costs (roommates, cheaper cars, no kids, etc) than they will at age 65.
At age 65, you're probably maintaining 1 or more homes, supporting a partner (and kids), maybe drive a more expensive car and have much higher healthcare costs.
If your lifestyle costs are more comfortable than your ramen noodle 20s and higher lifestyle costs put you in higher tax brackets, wouldn't most people actually have higher taxes in retirement?
And if you are retiring with high fixed expenses and worrying about buying new expensive cars - you’re doing it wrong.
Anecdotally, at even 51, we (wife 49) have been focusing on reducing our expenses since 2022. Our youngest son (my stepson) graduated in 2020. I slightly pivoted to a career that is mostly remote first (strategy cloud consulting + app dev). We sold our house in the burbs in 2024 that we had built in 2016 for twice the price we paid for it, downsized to one car that is below the median price of a new car in the US, downsized to a condo 1/3 the size of our old house (and less maintenance), moved to state tax free Florida, paid off some lingering debt.
I “retired my wife” in 2020 because of a combination of not wanting her to be in the school system at the height of Covid, so she could explore her passion projects, so we could travel after Covid lifted and I started making significantly more working at BigTech remotely (no longer there).
Our fixed expenses - money we have to spend to live - is around $8K a month all in and that’s going to go down some in 2028.
We don’t live “miserly” at all. Our flexible expenses include lots of travel between short getaways and longer month long stays away from home, concerts etc.
My entire idea is to do most of our expensive traveling while I’m working and healthy instead of waiting until I retire. I see retirement as us staying in another country for extended periods of time - we are starting that next year while I’m working.
It’s also the last thing we want to do is have more than one home. Why would we do that and give up the optionality of just renting an AirBnb for long stays in different places both domestically and internationally?
I think a lot:
avg age of first pregnancy (29.6) + marital age-gap (2.2 years) + 4 years (last kid) + 18 years + 5 years college (gap / delayed graduation) = 58.8 years old when the last kid finishes college. And then parents (probably) will need to help their kid's with their first home purchase.
> Our fixed expenses - money we have to spend to live - is around $8K a month all in and that’s going to go down some in 2028.
My fixed expenses when I was 25 was $2k/mo (living in ATL in 2012), I spend about $6k/mo (ignoring tax payments).
You obviously don't have to continue growing your expenses, but for many people they want the option to stay in their child-raising home (especially if there is rising interest rates and housing prices).
I happen to have an old paystub in an email folder I sent to a real estate agent back then actually mid 2011. I was only bringing home around $5K a month back then and spending every penny of it just surviving.
While I told my step sons from the day I was serious about my now wife (they were 9 and 14) and treating them as my kids that I would pay for college - they both decided not to go. I feel no obligation to help them pay for their first home. My parents didn’t help me get my first one when I was 28.
On the other hand, I don’t believe you should buy a home too early because it limits mobility. If you can’t afford your home without help, you probably shouldn’t buy one and you don’t have the financial stability needed for it.
Even if you do want to stay in your child raising home (my parents still live in the house they had built in 1978 and added in to it in 2004), it should be paid off or such a low expense by the time you retire it shouldn’t factor in.
But downsizing to a lower-cost, rural area often means less access to healthcare. Eventually, Dad passes away, and the widow is left snowed in each winter: unable to afford moving back, now that home prices and interest rates have climbed far beyond what they sold for.
> If you can’t afford your home without help, you probably shouldn’t buy one and you don’t have the financial stability needed for it.
My prediction is more and more families will provide down payment support. $2m homes are affordable if you put 100% down and just need to worry about taxes, repairs, and insurance.
Assuming everything else even (career/income, etc), the person with the family assistance will get to own the home pushing the goal post further away from the people that don't have family assistance.
While I understand helping your kids to “launch”, letting them move back in for a couple of years after they graduate, subsidizing some of their expenses because they aren’t making enough to live where the opportunities are early on, etc, I never understood why parents pressure themselves helping grown kids buy houses, pay for expensive weddings etc.
I told my parents plenty of times they should “die dead broke” - in other words spend their last dollar on their last breath and not worry about leaving me anything (only child).
if you look at any tier one city’s job centers unless you have a great career, living in a comfortable home near your house just isn’t affordable on a regular person salary.
Which means your kids spend more time in their car and less time parenting their kids.
Many families, especially ones that were careful with their spending, will choose to support their kids and enable them to live in neighborhoods. They couldn’t normally afford on their lower income.
But let’s be realistic. The median income of a retired couple is only around $85K a year.
https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/planning/what-aver...
The median net worth is around a quarter million.
https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-net-worth-of-americans-a...
Parents should set expectations early on - don’t have any expectations that our job is to make your life easier once you are launched Once you decide to get married and have kids, your life is your responsibility. If my wife and I have any excess after taking care of all of our needs and wants. We will help our adult children. Even now at 51 and 49. Our older son (28) knows that we will help him a little but not much and our younger son 23 knows that the subsidies are cut once he turns 26.
I save “enough” for retirement for my wife and I to be comfortable. But we aren’t over savers. We travel a lot, and enjoy ourselves.
We asked our younger son was he absolutely sure he didn’t want to go college. We told him once he made that choice, we were moving to Florida, left him in Atlanta at our house and he and two of his friends paid us (heavily subsidized) rent for a year and a half and we helped them move out on their own when we sold our home.
We have a two bedroom and one is an office. There is no room for our kids to move back in Even when we leave for months at a time we rent it out as a short term rental (prime location six miles from Disney).
Personally, spending money doesn't bring joy to my life above a certain threshold. Research agrees with this sentiment [0]. I don't believe that a $400 camping trip near my house is 10x worse than $4000 trip to Europe. Likewise, you moving to FL (reducing lifestyle costs by 20%) doesn't make your life 20% worse than wherever you were living before.
My issue with broad national or global surveys is they are largely meaningless on the individual level. You could be double the national income/wealth, but you still can't retire in Manhattan (if that is where you want to live due to being near your kids). Also, why stop at national? Why not compare yourself to global income/wealth?
But circling back to the original point: If the next generation wants to live in a good area [2] in a tier1 city, the either need to the top 10% of their field or their parents need to lift them up. If someone wants to skip college to pursue plumbing, great! but they will never be able to compete with DINK tech/finance/medical households or trust fund kids bidding on properties in Buckhead.
Land isn't growing, but population is. Even if only 1% of the parents each year subsidize their kid's housing, as t approaches infinity, cities will be filled with DINK and trust fund families.
[0] - https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/does-more-money-correlate-g...
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Die-Zero-Getting-Your-Money/dp/035856...
They don’t have to live in Buckhead either. I have one son that lives in North Cobb and the other lives in Gwinnett.
Heck when I lived in metro Atlanta, I lived in Marietta, Decatur, John’s Creek and finally outside of Cumming. I’m looking at the apartment I use to live in Marietta that I paid $700 a month for in 2003 and it’s now $1100 a month and still gets decent reviews.
And why would an older person want to live in Manhattan? You remember I live in Florida the state where a lot of retirees come to get away from cold weather, their expensive homes, etc.
And as you can tell, I’m not attached to my children I loved them. But we feel no need to be under them constantly. Our jobs are done. It’s up to them to find their own way in life. I moved from my parents the week after I graduated from college. They helped me launch and subsidized me to live to Atlanta early on.
People can’t always have what they want - thst goes for children wanting to be in an expensive city or parents wanting to be near their kids. Even though in my social circle of mostly 10% of earners, we aren’t really that tied to our grown kids wanting to live near them. We want to have our own lives. Admittedly, most 50 year olds don’t have the freedom we have with low expenses, only one person working and working remotely.
As far as money, we don’t spend much on things. But we do spend on experiences, travel by ourselves and with friends and crossing off our bucket list.
I left a trail of 3-4 accounts until just recently, when I rolled them all over to my current Vanguard 401k. They were all invested in the same Vanguard fund so there's not much change other than simplicity.
I know when I was laid off a week after covid lockdowns, the last thing I was thinking about was how to roll over my 401k as the market collapsed and I began interviewing and trying not to freak out.
having retirement and health benefits coupled to employment is antiquated and stupid, but changing tax code and finance system around 401ks is probably the least of our problems in the US.
Now you can do it electronically by taking a picture of the check. When I’m done with the company I’m done. I sold all of my RSUs when I worked for BigTech as soon as they vested and diversified too.
I know my 401k is provided by company ABC, but then they host all of their web content and ask you to log in to myretirementplan.com. and then they do a redesign and then ask you to log into yourretirementplan.com. and there's basically no communication from company ABC directly if these sites are legitimate or illegitimate
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/27/new-corporate-espionage-cl...
Since Gusto is our payroll provider, I didn't see a reason not to do that... hopefully there will be less finger pointing the next time something goes screwy with the 401k transfers.
Un-fun bankruptcy fact: All employee names & mailing addresses are part of the public record and accessible on PACER because they're potential creditors in the bankruptcy.
Edit: from my quick research, it appears 401ks are completely protected in a bankruptcy. The only thing would be if the company had not yet sent your contribution to the servicer, then that payment would be considered another creditor. But if the money is in your 401k account at your servicer, the money is protected from any bankruptcy.
I never bothered escalating my disputes, but simply said, their customer service agents have multiple times admitted in writing to their systems being designed to break federal and state law.
I never thought it was worth pursuing. But Gusto has deep pockets…
Guideline materially and repeatedly breached their fiduciary duties under ERISA.
Their definition of when an expense is “incurred” varies materially from case to case and diverged substantially in almost all of them from IRS guidance. Multiple times, a customer service agent said—in writing—the last person I interacted with misrepresented something material that I had subsequently acted on.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am describing my personal experiences. Don’t cite this comment if you decide to pursue these fuckwits.
That’s my understanding at least.
Gusto basically acquired their mutual customers, seemingly.
I’ve done a startup that tried to run ADP for payroll. It was a mess.
Lots of startups avoid that problem by using Gusto. And until recently, Gusto integrated better with Guideline than other providers. So that’s what one got. No kickback needed.
(Like, constellation of shitty products users are locked into helped make Larry Ellison the world’s richest man.)
I wouldn't call them trash. They're just absurdly powerful tools for moving boatloads of money in infintessimal increments. It's incredibly low-level financial tooling that simply outclasses any organisation without full-time finance and payroll departments.
Important for founders in the US to know: you can put up to $70k annually into your 401k using profit sharing, which only some 401k plans offer. Your startup does not need to be making a profit to do 401k profit sharing. Employees may also be able to negotiate this!
I wish more startups would find a way to use Fidelity or Vanguard (with access to the very-low-ER index funds).
I never did figure out how to track Guideline 401k in GnuCash satisfactorily. It was complex, when all I wanted was a balance of IVV/ITOT and AGG (or Vanguard equivalents).
And a different startup used Transamerica 401k, which looked like it had been forgotten on one person's desk in the basement of their skyscraper a decade earlier, and I didn't like their funds. As soon as I could rollover to an old Fidelity account, I did so.
Even if your employer provides an HSA, you can still open a separate HSA anywhere you like (or multiple, if you really wanted to). You just have to make certain that all contributions (from you, your employer(s), and your payroll) sum up under your annual limit at the end of the year (keeping in mind that changing jobs or benefits mid-year can impact your limit for that year).
I’m no longer strictly a software engineer nor do I live in Atlanta any more. But that’s where I spent most of my career. If you look at the well known companies headquartered there like Delta, Coke, Home Depot, GE (large headquarters there), etc.
Very few of their developers are making over $176K. You see the same in most other tier 2 cities where most software developers work in the US.
Hell most of the job postings by YC companies here on HN aren’t offering their developers over $176K.
Believe me, I would prefer to have my own 401k at Fidelity too.
I have no dog in this fight, I just know from experience that setting up a 401k for your company is vastly different from setting up a brokerage account, and the reason a lot of small companies end up with off-the-run vendors is because those are the ones that will take the business.
What's the best way to transition to Fidelity / Vanguard? I assume Fidelity would be better for having a single entity to deal with rather than Fidelity for HSA and Vanguard for 401K?
> This was concerning to us, as we rely on Gusto to handle these automated compliance filings.
This was concerning to Gusto, as Gusto relies on Gusto to handle these automated compliance filings.
My copium as a shareholder is that they’re beefing up their services to boost a valuation for IPO.
One can dream!
[0]: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joshuareeves_better-together-...
(Source: https://x.com/gossipbabies/status/1487161069143576576?lang=e...)