I almost posted something this morning about this, because I received an email that really frustrated me. I have a 401k with Guideline from an old employer. The email was from Accrue <no-reply@accrue401k.com>, and said, in part:
> 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.
On a completely unrelated note: I don’t understand why people keep money in prior companies’ 401K plans. I always role mine over to my Vanguard account.
I'd love to move the account (especially after this!), but unfortunately I can't because of what is basically an annoying side-effect. My current employer doesn't offer a 401k plan, and the only option I have for contributing to a Roth IRA is via backdoor contributions. Such backdoor contributions (which are basically an IRS-sanctioned loophole) have to start in a Traditional IRA account, and you cannot have any other/pre-existing Traditional IRA funds at the time of the contribution. So, I have nowhere to move the 401k funds besides an IRA account, but I have to leave my traditional IRA accounts empty so that I can do a backdoor contribution.
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.
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.
FYI you can do backdoor Roth contributions even if you already have an IRA with funds in it. It's just more complicated because you have to follow the pro rata rule.
And if you have hundreds of thousands or millions in the traditional. The pro rata rule would make your backdoor contribution 90+% taxed so it would be pointless
If you roll a 401k into an IRA, those will be pretax dollars in the IRA. It doesn't take a very big rollover to completely swamp the tax benefits of a 7k annual Roth contribution limit.
No. Pro rata is Latin for “in proportion.” It’s one dollar for one dollar. If you add $7k to your tIRA to do the backdoor Roth, you also must convert $7k of existing funds which becomes taxable income. So you pay your marginal tax rate, on half the amount.
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.
I'm not familiar with the strategy you're describing, but this is not how it works for the majority of backdoor Roth contributors.
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.
you can create a solo 401k that contains both a traditional and roth account, and roll over from your old employer's 401k to the traditional solo 401k, and do a conversion to the roth account
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
because its a huge hassle that many financial services companies have no incentive to facilitate or make easy or discoverable. And for many folks a job change is a stressful event even in the _best_ of circumstances.
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.
If you work for a large company it is possible that they have negotiated better pricing for their 401k plan than what Vanguard or some other brokerage offers off the shelf. For example Vanguard charges 0.08% for its target date retirement funds, but the one I get on my old employer's plan (BlackRock LifePath) is just 0.037%. And the retail price for that LifePath fund is a whopping 0.17%.
With how low fees have gotten, I think the more likely and more damaging situation is that where people's employers have negotiated much worse pricing for their captive audience. I wouldn't give 0.08% vs 0.037% a second thought any day. That's only difference of $400/yr on $1M!
The real mover for lower retirement plan fees was lawsuits. There have been loads of 401k excessive fee class action lawsuits and this got almost every employer negotiating to avoid this. Of course there's some plausible deniability in some cases but there is something on the other side against that https://hallbenefitslaw.com/401k-excessive-fee-class-action-...
Not really. If you start with a million dollars it’s adding $400 a year and compounding beyond that. But the median person doesn’t have that much in their portfolio…well, ever.
For most people micromanaging below 0.01% is like gaining a cup of coffee every year.
The question was - I don't understand why people keep money in their old 401k accounts.
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".
I tend to agree. However, Guideline (an excellent service imo) has admiral class vanguard funds which aren't always available in rollover IRA accounts. I hope Guideline doesn't go away or become exclusively Gusto (irrespective of what they said in the announcement).
I’ve always followed this advice as well, but rolling a 401(k) to an IRA limits your ability to do a backdoor Roth.
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
A backdoor Roth isn’t the be all end all people think it is. It only matters if you think your tax rates will be higher in retirement than they are now for most people that won’t be the case.
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.
But wait. If I take pretax $1000 this year and put it in a Trad IRA and buy some stock, and in 20 years I retire and it’s worth $3000, then I should owe income tax on the $1000 and 15% capital gains on the $2000 gain.
If I did the same to a Roth though, I’d pay tax on the $1000 now, so, it’s now $600, but in 20 years it’s $1800, and all of it tax free.
(Forgive me if I’ve screwed that up) if I’m right then it kinda seems to depend not only on future tax rates (def a huge question mark) but also on how much the stock may appreciate, as if the stock has more than that modest appreciation the capital gains tax avoided could be huge.
I’m not claiming expert status so I’m happy to be set straight.
Sorry but you don't get to claim capital gains on retirement distributions, they are entirely taxed as ordinary income. If your tax rate later will be 40%, you get the exact same result: 3000-1200=1800.
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?
How many people retire with minor kids or even kids in college?
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?
> How many people retire with minor kids or even kids in college?
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).
Funny enough, I moved from metro Atlanta to where I lived from the time I graduated from college in 1996 until 2022.
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.
I’ve heard that in Wisconsin, it’s common for retirees to sell the family home and buy a cabin on a lake. The dad spends his remaining years fishing and enjoying the quiet.
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.
Well they sold some retirement accounts to Ascensus which you have to have your own account and login for so maybe they will move your 401k too some day and you will be in the same boat as these guys.
The process is somewhat archaic (often involving mailing around paper checks) and I imagine many people just don't want to deal. Rolling over pulls your money out of the market which means you could miss a good day (or a bad day).
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.
With Vanguard at least, while you still have to get a paper check from your employer. But you can electronically deposit it into your IRA account by taking a picture of your check.
Something no one else mentioned so far is that, depending on your state, some IRA funds can be subject to judgments or non-exempt from bankruptcy, whereas 401k accounts are untouchable for anything except federal tax liens and divorce.
I think if your old company plan is with Vanguard and your new company plan is not as good as Vanguard, you leave it in the old company plan as a 401k.
In some cases it's a goddamn nightmare to get the money out. I've been trying for a year to get my money out of a Capital Group Roth. Every single support agent is utterly powerless, they're effectively holding my money hostage.
Generally, you want to ask your new financial institution to initiate the transfer for you. Fidelity especially is good about this. They figure out how to get it transferred to them, generally by sending an actual letter if all else fails.
Something broke down somewhere ... I got emails a while back about the acquisition and giving options about whether to go along with the move or not.
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.
My guess is your different experience is precisely because you use Gusto as your payroll provider. My previous employer does not, or at least they did not when I was working there. This was truly the first and only email I've gotten about it, but I have always gotten regular transactional and notification emails from Guideline just fine, including yesterday with a confirmation that I'd changed my asset allocation!
This whole space is littered with bizarre security practices that make my hacker senses tingle.
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
This is common for mortages, too. Mine has been sold a handful of times (as are most peoples') and more than once I've had to triple-verify that the dashboard website the new servicer is telling me to go to is legit. They often have extremely dodgy URLs like "mymortgagedash.com" that have no obvious association with the loan servicer whatsoever.
Yes! It’s like half the companies we interact with are actively working to teach people to do all the no-nos that some of us are trying to educate against.
I wonder if this acquisition update today is caused by the recent lawsuit alleging Guideline was performing corporate espionage. Seems like weirdly coincidental timing?
I got an unsolicited call from Fidelity once and they asked for a bunch of financial info. I told them I'd call back on their official number and they said that's not possible, I had to answer right away. So I told them to pound sand. Afterward found out it was legit when they sent the same form by mail.
Fun Guideline story: I worked for a company that went bankrupt and used guideline for 401k. The first day the website allowed me I withdrew the balance for rollover. Apparently this should not have been possible before the bankruptcy was finalized. I found from court filings that the bankruptcy trustee kept telling Guideline they need to freeze withdrawals until the bankruptcy was finalized, and Guideline kept dragging their feet and acting like they didn't understand. The trustee ended up having to go to court and get a temporary restraining order to prevent more employees from withdrawing their balances before the bankruptcy was finalized.
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.
Wait, how are 401ks part of a bankruptcy? I guess the matching portion?
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.
Guideline has an FSA/HSA product which is a walking CMMS and IRS violation.
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.
Gusto bought Guideline, migrated Guideline customers who also use Gusto directly to Gusto, and everyone leftover from the acquisition is now being served by Guideline under the name Accrue401k. The Accrue401k (formerly Guideline) dashboard is exactly the same, just a different name. And former Guideline customers who use Gusto for payroll now use Gusto 401k.
That’s my understanding at least.
Gusto basically acquired their mutual customers, seemingly.
Not using Fidelity for HSA and Vanguard/Fidelity for 401k is a sign of bad leadership. I have to assume management is getting paid off some way to subject themselves to an inferior and more expensive custodian.
> have to assume management is getting paid off some way to subject themselves to an inferior and more expensive custodian
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.)
ADP seems to have a half dozen or more discrete variations on their payroll product, each with their own weird quirks. I’ve experienced some that were perfectly adequate. Some of them being trash also seems plausible.
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.
Having selected a 401k provider for a small (<15 person) company and also for a larger (>100 person) one, I can say that the big names make it prohibitively expensive for small companies to use them. And that expense ultimately comes out of peoples’ retirement funds in the form of fees. They frankly don’t want the business - too much compliance overhead for a small asset pool.
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.
I recently had to select a 401(k) plan for our small startup. For a startup, the _employee_ fees was significantly better on Guideline (0.15 - 0.3%) than Fidelity (0.5% + $100 bookkeeping fee). The _employer_ fees were slightly more expensive with Guideline ($1,778 on Enterprise plan for Guideline vs $1,200 for Fidelity) but offered more features.
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 was very happy when Fidelity added HSA. Much better than the 2 previous places I had HSA. Fidelity HSA just works, and is directly investable, including in the very competitive iShares index ETFs.
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.
> Note that unless your start-up is matching, you can set up your own HSA anywhere you like.
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).
The slight advantage for employer contributions to HSA are that they avoid payroll tax. You’ll get the employEE part of it back when you file your taxes, so the savings is the 7.5% employER side.
If you’re an senior+ software dev in the US there’s a good chance you’re already over the social security payroll tax cap, and if so you’re really only saving the Medicare tax of 1.45% on up to $8000 for a family plan. It’s not nothing but not worth dealing with a crappy provider to get.
Hey, fresh startup here. We use Gusto and selected Guideline out of the two options presented, mostly because we have a ton of things we're focused on. Always had a feeling it was a scam, but didn't have time to really dig into it (we're also pretty small at the moment)
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?
Yeah, Fidelity customer service regularly beats my private client groups’. They want your money and then for you to be so happy about them that you forget you saved it :P.
the real lesson here is how acquisitions break customer trust overnight. you can't just rebrand someone's retirement account via email and hope they figure it out.
every SaaS acquisition forgets that users care more about consistency than "exciting new features." keep the old brand alive during transition or lose half your customers to support tickets.
Every job I've had with Gusto has managed to screw up payroll at some point. The support from Gusto is very poor, even a supervisor that's offshore when you call em won't be able to understand your basic questions.
My brother had an issue with Gusto, but I've not yet, after having used them for... probably at least 10 years now. Maybe longer. I was a refuge from quickbooks payroll which managed to screw up state filings such that I had 2 years of bad filings with the state where they were charging me late fees for things QP screwed up. Huge hassle, cost me days of time and a drive to the state capital to turn in paperwork in person. I swore off quickbooks payroll and have been happy with gusto ever since. But... I'm a single person who occasionally does payments to subcontractors, not dealing with payroll for dozens/hundreds.
lol they use LLMs to respond to support requests now and they don't seem to read what they're sending. I got an email from them where the LLM assumed I was the Gusto support representative:
> 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.
Based on the above complaint, it sounds like they generated an email to account holders without mentioning the acquisition or linking to the FAQ. Perhaps they were flooded with questions and realized they have to discuss the terms of sale Or Else their corporate account admins start worrying (and evaluating alternatives).
(Author of the comment you are talking about) To be clear, they DID link to the same FAQ, but hosted and branded on the new domain and name. I had to go digging to find the same info on the Guideline site I was already familiar with.
Also, I can't find any mention of Accrue on any previous Gusto or Guideline communications or any of their online FAQs about the acquisition. "Accrue 401k" seems to barely exist outside of its own website and a few third-party posts from today about the confusing email.
Huh, yeah that's not good. Trust is so important around financials like this. I'm surprised that no one thought through the branding and communications. Missing something like "hey, they've never heard of this company or domain" feels like a pretty easy catch.
I had my account with Guideline also. No way was I going to allow them to role it into a holding account. I rolled everything into my Human Interest 401(k) plan. Very similar to Guideline, but a few added features that I like now.
My wife tried using Gusto and hated it. She then happily went a different direction, picked up Guideline for her 401K provider, and now she's super unhappy she's getting pulled back into Gusto. /sigh
Ok we're transitioning to Salarya, but payroll is still in Bullfrog—did you see my Noosecock post? Submit your timecard on Fireplayce then jizz me on Smackdog. Do NOT upload to Crackerz without Yammer approval
I almost posted something this morning about this, because I received an email that really frustrated me. I have a 401k with Guideline from an old employer. The email was from Accrue <no-reply@accrue401k.com>, and said, in part:
> 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.
On a completely unrelated note: I don’t understand why people keep money in prior companies’ 401K plans. I always role mine over to my Vanguard account.
I'd love to move the account (especially after this!), but unfortunately I can't because of what is basically an annoying side-effect. My current employer doesn't offer a 401k plan, and the only option I have for contributing to a Roth IRA is via backdoor contributions. Such backdoor contributions (which are basically an IRS-sanctioned loophole) have to start in a Traditional IRA account, and you cannot have any other/pre-existing Traditional IRA funds at the time of the contribution. So, I have nowhere to move the 401k funds besides an IRA account, but I have to leave my traditional IRA accounts empty so that I can do a backdoor contribution.
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.
What the actual f%%%! I just looked it up. Not that I didn’t believe you. I just never looked into it.
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.
FYI you can do backdoor Roth contributions even if you already have an IRA with funds in it. It's just more complicated because you have to follow the pro rata rule.
And if you have hundreds of thousands or millions in the traditional. The pro rata rule would make your backdoor contribution 90+% taxed so it would be pointless
The confusion here is that trad IRAs can be pretax or posttax dollars.
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.
If you roll a 401k into an IRA, those will be pretax dollars in the IRA. It doesn't take a very big rollover to completely swamp the tax benefits of a 7k annual Roth contribution limit.
No. Pro rata is Latin for “in proportion.” It’s one dollar for one dollar. If you add $7k to your tIRA to do the backdoor Roth, you also must convert $7k of existing funds which becomes taxable income. So you pay your marginal tax rate, on half the amount.
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.
I'm not familiar with the strategy you're describing, but this is not how it works for the majority of backdoor Roth contributors.
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.
The PITA of that is that you have to keep track of the post tax additions pretty much for ever afterward or you’ll end up paying double tax on them.
you can create a solo 401k that contains both a traditional and roth account, and roll over from your old employer's 401k to the traditional solo 401k, and do a conversion to the roth account
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
because its a huge hassle that many financial services companies have no incentive to facilitate or make easy or discoverable. And for many folks a job change is a stressful event even in the _best_ of circumstances.
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.
If you work for a large company it is possible that they have negotiated better pricing for their 401k plan than what Vanguard or some other brokerage offers off the shelf. For example Vanguard charges 0.08% for its target date retirement funds, but the one I get on my old employer's plan (BlackRock LifePath) is just 0.037%. And the retail price for that LifePath fund is a whopping 0.17%.
With how low fees have gotten, I think the more likely and more damaging situation is that where people's employers have negotiated much worse pricing for their captive audience. I wouldn't give 0.08% vs 0.037% a second thought any day. That's only difference of $400/yr on $1M!
The real mover for lower retirement plan fees was lawsuits. There have been loads of 401k excessive fee class action lawsuits and this got almost every employer negotiating to avoid this. Of course there's some plausible deniability in some cases but there is something on the other side against that https://hallbenefitslaw.com/401k-excessive-fee-class-action-...
Compound it over 30+ years and even those few bps add up to a significant amount.
Not really. If you start with a million dollars it’s adding $400 a year and compounding beyond that. But the median person doesn’t have that much in their portfolio…well, ever.
For most people micromanaging below 0.01% is like gaining a cup of coffee every year.
The question was - I don't understand why people keep money in their old 401k accounts.
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".
Sure, I agree with that general sentiment, but I think there’s probably a ~90% chance that you should rollover somewhere else.
Usually when you leave the company they start charging a quarterly service fee. Be careful out there.
I tend to agree. However, Guideline (an excellent service imo) has admiral class vanguard funds which aren't always available in rollover IRA accounts. I hope Guideline doesn't go away or become exclusively Gusto (irrespective of what they said in the announcement).
I’ve always followed this advice as well, but rolling a 401(k) to an IRA limits your ability to do a backdoor Roth.
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
A backdoor Roth isn’t the be all end all people think it is. It only matters if you think your tax rates will be higher in retirement than they are now for most people that won’t be the case.
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.
But wait. If I take pretax $1000 this year and put it in a Trad IRA and buy some stock, and in 20 years I retire and it’s worth $3000, then I should owe income tax on the $1000 and 15% capital gains on the $2000 gain. If I did the same to a Roth though, I’d pay tax on the $1000 now, so, it’s now $600, but in 20 years it’s $1800, and all of it tax free. (Forgive me if I’ve screwed that up) if I’m right then it kinda seems to depend not only on future tax rates (def a huge question mark) but also on how much the stock may appreciate, as if the stock has more than that modest appreciation the capital gains tax avoided could be huge.
I’m not claiming expert status so I’m happy to be set straight.
You wouldn’t pay tax on the $1000 you put in a traditional IRA. It would be pretax.
Traditional IRA pretax deduction phases out with higher incomes. Backdoor roth does not
Sorry but you don't get to claim capital gains on retirement distributions, they are entirely taxed as ordinary income. If your tax rate later will be 40%, you get the exact same result: 3000-1200=1800.
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.
> for most people that won’t be the case.
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?
How many people retire with minor kids or even kids in college?
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?
> How many people retire with minor kids or even kids in college?
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).
Funny enough, I moved from metro Atlanta to where I lived from the time I graduated from college in 1996 until 2022.
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.
I’ve heard that in Wisconsin, it’s common for retirees to sell the family home and buy a cabin on a lake. The dad spends his remaining years fishing and enjoying the quiet.
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.
Well they sold some retirement accounts to Ascensus which you have to have your own account and login for so maybe they will move your 401k too some day and you will be in the same boat as these guys.
The process is somewhat archaic (often involving mailing around paper checks) and I imagine many people just don't want to deal. Rolling over pulls your money out of the market which means you could miss a good day (or a bad day).
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.
With Vanguard at least, while you still have to get a paper check from your employer. But you can electronically deposit it into your IRA account by taking a picture of your check.
Something no one else mentioned so far is that, depending on your state, some IRA funds can be subject to judgments or non-exempt from bankruptcy, whereas 401k accounts are untouchable for anything except federal tax liens and divorce.
I forgot to mention that, when my wife started teaching fitness classes as a “working hobby”, I made sure she had an umbrella policy.
I think if your old company plan is with Vanguard and your new company plan is not as good as Vanguard, you leave it in the old company plan as a 401k.
My old company’s 401k has a (now closed to new investors) fund that has returned 3-4% above the index average for over a decade.
In some cases it's a goddamn nightmare to get the money out. I've been trying for a year to get my money out of a Capital Group Roth. Every single support agent is utterly powerless, they're effectively holding my money hostage.
Generally, you want to ask your new financial institution to initiate the transfer for you. Fidelity especially is good about this. They figure out how to get it transferred to them, generally by sending an actual letter if all else fails.
Yeah, when I say "I," I actually mean me, my CFP, and his office assistant. Capital Group might be the United Healthcare of retirement funds.
Something broke down somewhere ... I got emails a while back about the acquisition and giving options about whether to go along with the move or not.
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.
My guess is your different experience is precisely because you use Gusto as your payroll provider. My previous employer does not, or at least they did not when I was working there. This was truly the first and only email I've gotten about it, but I have always gotten regular transactional and notification emails from Guideline just fine, including yesterday with a confirmation that I'd changed my asset allocation!
This whole space is littered with bizarre security practices that make my hacker senses tingle.
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
This is common for mortages, too. Mine has been sold a handful of times (as are most peoples') and more than once I've had to triple-verify that the dashboard website the new servicer is telling me to go to is legit. They often have extremely dodgy URLs like "mymortgagedash.com" that have no obvious association with the loan servicer whatsoever.
Yes! It’s like half the companies we interact with are actively working to teach people to do all the no-nos that some of us are trying to educate against.
I wonder if this acquisition update today is caused by the recent lawsuit alleging Guideline was performing corporate espionage. Seems like weirdly coincidental timing?
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/27/new-corporate-espionage-cl...
I got an unsolicited call from Fidelity once and they asked for a bunch of financial info. I told them I'd call back on their official number and they said that's not possible, I had to answer right away. So I told them to pound sand. Afterward found out it was legit when they sent the same form by mail.
Fun Guideline story: I worked for a company that went bankrupt and used guideline for 401k. The first day the website allowed me I withdrew the balance for rollover. Apparently this should not have been possible before the bankruptcy was finalized. I found from court filings that the bankruptcy trustee kept telling Guideline they need to freeze withdrawals until the bankruptcy was finalized, and Guideline kept dragging their feet and acting like they didn't understand. The trustee ended up having to go to court and get a temporary restraining order to prevent more employees from withdrawing their balances before the bankruptcy was finalized.
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.
Wait, how are 401ks part of a bankruptcy? I guess the matching portion?
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 worked for a company that went bankrupt. They ended up taking several thousand dollars out of my account to cover IIRC unpaid fees to the provider.
Guideline has an FSA/HSA product which is a walking CMMS and IRS violation.
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…
What specifically is violating policies?
> What specifically is violating policies?
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.
(Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services)
Gusto has their own, so I can't imagine they'd keep Guideline's?
Gusto bought Guideline, migrated Guideline customers who also use Gusto directly to Gusto, and everyone leftover from the acquisition is now being served by Guideline under the name Accrue401k. The Accrue401k (formerly Guideline) dashboard is exactly the same, just a different name. And former Guideline customers who use Gusto for payroll now use Gusto 401k.
That’s my understanding at least.
Gusto basically acquired their mutual customers, seemingly.
Could you elaborate
Not using Fidelity for HSA and Vanguard/Fidelity for 401k is a sign of bad leadership. I have to assume management is getting paid off some way to subject themselves to an inferior and more expensive custodian.
> have to assume management is getting paid off some way to subject themselves to an inferior and more expensive custodian
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.)
ADP seems to have a half dozen or more discrete variations on their payroll product, each with their own weird quirks. I’ve experienced some that were perfectly adequate. Some of them being trash also seems plausible.
> some of them being trash also seems plausible
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.
Having selected a 401k provider for a small (<15 person) company and also for a larger (>100 person) one, I can say that the big names make it prohibitively expensive for small companies to use them. And that expense ultimately comes out of peoples’ retirement funds in the form of fees. They frankly don’t want the business - too much compliance overhead for a small asset pool.
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.
I recently had to select a 401(k) plan for our small startup. For a startup, the _employee_ fees was significantly better on Guideline (0.15 - 0.3%) than Fidelity (0.5% + $100 bookkeeping fee). The _employer_ fees were slightly more expensive with Guideline ($1,778 on Enterprise plan for Guideline vs $1,200 for Fidelity) but offered more features.
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 was very happy when Fidelity added HSA. Much better than the 2 previous places I had HSA. Fidelity HSA just works, and is directly investable, including in the very competitive iShares index ETFs.
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.
Note that unless your start-up is matching, you can set up your own HSA anywhere you like. Very different from an FSA.
> Note that unless your start-up is matching, you can set up your own HSA anywhere you like.
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).
The slight advantage for employer contributions to HSA are that they avoid payroll tax. You’ll get the employEE part of it back when you file your taxes, so the savings is the 7.5% employER side.
If you’re an senior+ software dev in the US there’s a good chance you’re already over the social security payroll tax cap, and if so you’re really only saving the Medicare tax of 1.45% on up to $8000 for a family plan. It’s not nothing but not worth dealing with a crappy provider to get.
Hey, fresh startup here. We use Gusto and selected Guideline out of the two options presented, mostly because we have a ton of things we're focused on. Always had a feeling it was a scam, but didn't have time to really dig into it (we're also pretty small at the moment)
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?
Call Fidelity and ask them - they'll happily walk you through it!
Yeah, Fidelity customer service regularly beats my private client groups’. They want your money and then for you to be so happy about them that you forget you saved it :P.
the real lesson here is how acquisitions break customer trust overnight. you can't just rebrand someone's retirement account via email and hope they figure it out.
every SaaS acquisition forgets that users care more about consistency than "exciting new features." keep the old brand alive during transition or lose half your customers to support tickets.
Every job I've had with Gusto has managed to screw up payroll at some point. The support from Gusto is very poor, even a supervisor that's offshore when you call em won't be able to understand your basic questions.
My brother had an issue with Gusto, but I've not yet, after having used them for... probably at least 10 years now. Maybe longer. I was a refuge from quickbooks payroll which managed to screw up state filings such that I had 2 years of bad filings with the state where they were charging me late fees for things QP screwed up. Huge hassle, cost me days of time and a drive to the state capital to turn in paperwork in person. I swore off quickbooks payroll and have been happy with gusto ever since. But... I'm a single person who occasionally does payments to subcontractors, not dealing with payroll for dozens/hundreds.
lol they use LLMs to respond to support requests now and they don't seem to read what they're sending. I got an email from them where the LLM assumed I was the Gusto support representative:
> 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.
Interesting this is being posted now when the acquisition was two months ago.[0] Has anything changed?
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-...
Based on the above complaint, it sounds like they generated an email to account holders without mentioning the acquisition or linking to the FAQ. Perhaps they were flooded with questions and realized they have to discuss the terms of sale Or Else their corporate account admins start worrying (and evaluating alternatives).
(Author of the comment you are talking about) To be clear, they DID link to the same FAQ, but hosted and branded on the new domain and name. I had to go digging to find the same info on the Guideline site I was already familiar with.
Ah! Good to know, thanks.
Also, I can't find any mention of Accrue on any previous Gusto or Guideline communications or any of their online FAQs about the acquisition. "Accrue 401k" seems to barely exist outside of its own website and a few third-party posts from today about the confusing email.
Huh, yeah that's not good. Trust is so important around financials like this. I'm surprised that no one thought through the branding and communications. Missing something like "hey, they've never heard of this company or domain" feels like a pretty easy catch.
I was made aware from my company's HR as an email was sent out.
If I my retirement was tied up with some startup trying to IPO, I'd be furious. It's the exact opposite of responsible stewardship.
They just said shareholder
I had my account with Guideline also. No way was I going to allow them to role it into a holding account. I rolled everything into my Human Interest 401(k) plan. Very similar to Guideline, but a few added features that I like now.
My wife tried using Gusto and hated it. She then happily went a different direction, picked up Guideline for her 401K provider, and now she's super unhappy she's getting pulled back into Gusto. /sigh
They're both awful companies at heart. Birds of a feather flock together and all that.
Slorp is now Bonto!
Ok we're transitioning to Salarya, but payroll is still in Bullfrog—did you see my Noosecock post? Submit your timecard on Fireplayce then jizz me on Smackdog. Do NOT upload to Crackerz without Yammer approval
(Source: https://x.com/gossipbabies/status/1487161069143576576?lang=e...)
Notes about 401K backtesting and funds,: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42387927