Any refund check you get from the state is going to be considered paid to you, so might as well deposit it. It won't have any major impact on your ability to dispute an adjustment, it'll just be factored into your overall tax situation. If you thought you were due $1200 and they sent you $1000 instead, if you can get that fixed they'll just send the missing $200. You don't have to undo / cancel the "wrong" $1000 check to get the full $1200.

As for why the refund amount changed, that's harder to guess. When did you file? When was your return accepted and refund check sent? Government bureaucracy can sometimes cause communication to lag behind money moving around. I've had explanation letters show up a couple weeks after the check. But if it's been more than a few weeks since you got that lower refund check, that feels like time to start pushing harder on them for answers.

I do find it odd that a 401k plan managed through Fidelity is offering Vanguard's funds. Most bigger brokerages stick with just their own "in house" funds. Could just be something with your particular employer's plan.

But for a personal IRA, while you might be able to buy Vanguard's TDF in a Fidelity IRA, Fidelity is going to charge extra for it, usually through transaction fees. You can bypass those by just sticking with the "Fidelity Freedom Index 2060", their version of a target date fund. But make sure you get the "Index" version, they have an actively managed TDF with a higher expense ratio.

While they're issued by different brokerages, there is very little practical difference between a target date fund through Fidelity and one with Vanguard. Almost all TDFs follow pretty similar guidelines around asset mix vs. time. So a 2060 "Fidelity Freedom Index Fund" won't be too different from Vanguard 2060 "Target Retirement Fund".

>You can't put it back in again later — you're still limited to the annual contribution amount allowed.

While generally true, there is a small loophole. If the money is returned to the IRA within 60 days, it can be treated as an "indirect rollover", negating the withdrawal and not counting as part of this year's contribution limit. As I understand things, it doesn't even have to involve separate IRAs, you can "rollover" out of an IRA back into the same one as long as the rest of the rules are followed. The IRS does limit an individual to only one indirect rollover every 12 months, so this isn't something that can done on a regular basis.

You are allowed to withdraw however much you want from your Roth IRA at any time at any age. That is your money and you cannot be prevented from accessing it.

The big catch (which is probably your actual question) is that there are rules about whether that withdrawn money will be taxed or penalized. That tax + penalty is usually high enough that it's almost always a bad idea to incur those unless you absolutely, positively have to have more money right now or face severe consequences.

Roth IRA withdrawals follow a defined order depending on the category those dollars fall into. Here's a decently readable chart.

• "Contributory dollars" is the total of money you have put into your Roth IRA(s) since your very first deposit, minus any past withdrawals from your Roth IRA. So if you've made $5k of contributions since 2018 and haven't taken anything out since, that's the amount in this category and is the first thing used up from your current balance.
• The "conversion dollars" only matter when you've moved money from a non-Roth retirement account into your Roth IRA. That's probably not relevant to your situation, so I'll skip those.
• "Earnings" is everything else.

Withdrawals are always done as cash, so if you didn't have any in your IRA you'd have to sell some of your investments. That specific step is invisible to the IRS as far as taxes, they only look at money going into / out of the IRA as a whole.

So as long as you've contributed more than $1000 into your Roth IRA in the past 5 years, you can withdraw that much from your IRA without owing the IRS anything. That does effectively "waste" some of your past annual contribution limit and you lose out on future growth, but the government won't want anything from you for making that withdrawal.

Interesting. Who is the bank for your employer's HSA? I wouldn't expect a fee to show up on Fidelity's side, but any chance you're pulling, say, $1000 over and the originating HSA is subtracting $1025 from your balance? Maybe Fidelity is able to cover that fee, refunding the amount charged into your deposit into their HSA.

Or maybe I've just been stuck with fee-heavy HSAs in my past jobs and this transfer fee is less common than I thought.

Yes, you can rollover your balance from one HSA to another, and this has no penalty or tax owed. You can have as many HSAs open as you want, and are not locked into the HSA that comes with your employer's plan. Your total annual contribution is still limited to $3850 individual / $7700 family across every HSA in your name. You probably can't do an automatic "sweep", though I suppose there might be HSA providers who allow that.

This has a couple potential downsides you'd have to balance. HSA providers almost always charge a "transfer fee" to move money from them to another HSA. This is usually around $25-35 per transfer. So doing this a lot is going to cost you more.

The IRS does allow you to do an "indirect rollover" where you simply withdraw from one HSA (incurring no fee), and do a "rollover deposit" into a second. As long as that deposit occurs within 60 days of the withdrawal and you report everything correctly on your tax return, then this also incurs no tax or penalty. But you're only allowed one indirect rollover every 12 months.

It boils down to what kind of timeline you hope/expect to have before needing to draw from that balance. Some people plan to grow their HSA balance all the way until retirement. Others use it more as a supplemental emergency fund (potential to draw earlier). Others have enough ongoing medical expenses that they keep their HSA primarily cash to cover those, getting only the "tax free on contribution / withdrawal" savings, skipping out on the "tax free growth".

The longer you intend to leave the funds invested, the more likely you are to ride out any downswings of more volatile (though often higher return) investments like stock funds. Over the long term, things like stock funds are somewhat expected to grow more than a conservative option like a CD.

So the answer is "whatever fits best with your financial situation and plans".

There's a few things to factor in.

First, your employer is very likely only going to allow contributions from your paycheck to go to this provider. Paycheck contributions are the most effective way to get money into an HSA because those dollars bypass payroll taxes. Saving on your owed income tax can be done by deducting non-payroll contributions on your return, but that method cannot get you the 7.5% payroll tax savings.

Second is that you are allowed to transfer your HSA balance from this provider to any other provider you've opened an HSA at. So you could find a new provider without the investment fee (Lively and Fidelity are common recommendations) and use that as your primary HSA investment account.

The last thing is that every HSA provider I've ever had charged a $25-35 transfer fee to send my balance to another HSA. So now you have to balance that against the monthly fee or leaving your balance un-invested for longer. The IRS does allow an "indirect HSA rollover" that bypasses that fee, but you only get to do that once every 12 months.

So there are ways to get out of that fee vs. costs incurred vs. investment goals that you have to balance. One simple strategy would be to just accumulate cash in this employer HSA (no fee), then use your "once per 12 month" indirect rollover to push that cash to another HSA where you do all your investing.

Well, on the one hand 50% is still something. But on the other, in terms of raw dollars, you're talking about missing out on only $73k * 6% * 50% (match) * 50% (vest) = $1100 a year. Or $500 if you leave after year 1 but before completing year 2.

I doubt your eventual retirement will be drastically hurt from losing out on a couple thousand dollars. Though you're also not saving any of your own money. While maybe not "ideal" in terms of pure maximizing return on your dollars, I wouldn't consider it a horrible idea to put a temporary pause on that 401k to focus on debt / emergency fund.

When I had one several years ago, it did not come with any linked debit card. I'd pay daycare out of pocket, request an invoice from them, submit that as an expense to the FSA provider, and they would handled reimbursement as an electronic transfer out of the FSA into my linked checking account.

So it's not quite as easy as you hoped, but it's still a way to get a "discount" on your childcare expenses with only a little effort. You're putting $5k into the FSA, but your take-home pay would likely drop only $3500-$4000 (depending on tax brackets). Your FSA contributions will be untaxed for federal income tax, state (AFAIK any of them) income tax, and payroll tax. So your savings could be in the 20-30% range depending on your income level and state.

A few quirks:

• The FSA will only reimburse up to the amount of the expense or what you've contributed so far that year, whichever is lower. However, if the expense is high enough that it' doesn't get fully reimbursed, the remaining expense amount should be kept on record and used to pay you as new contributions occur. Ideally this won't require you to submit multiple requests for the same expense.
• You don't have to submit each expense as they're incurred. You can "roll up" your care expenses during the year until you've built up $5k of payments and submit that as one big request. With $10k / year expected, you'd likely hit that around July, get paid about $2500 (the amount contributed to that point), then get the rest reimbursed as new contributions flow from your paycheck.
• With a single dependent, the $5k FSA benefit will wipe out any "qualified expense" that you get to claim for the "dependent care credit" on your tax return. But unless your household income is pretty low (<$30k-ish), the tax break of using the FSA is larger than the credit you'd qualify for.
• You can only select an amount to contribute during enrollment, and that is locked in until your next enrollment period. Any of that $5k you can't claim is lost at the end of the plan year. With your expected expenses, this isn't likely to be a problem, but unexpected situations can crop up.

Owing when you complete your tax return means that the amount withheld from your checks during 2022 was not enough to cover your final 2022 tax bill calculated on your tax return.

My guess: your commission checks used a default "supplemental income" withholding, which is 22% unless payroll uses a more complicated method (not many go that route). On $250k of base + commission, that puts you just inside the 35% bracket, with a lot of your income in the 32%. So if your commissions were handled as supplemental income, you'd have at least 10% "missing" withholding from those, which results in a big amount owed on your return. Owing another $12k on $100k of income somewhat lines up with that theory.

>On my W4 I do not claim ANYTHING. No dependents, no other witholdings, 0s across the board.

What filing status? Since you do your returns as filing separately, do you have your W-4s set for that, or is it using "Married filing jointly"? If your W-4 has "Married filing jointly" that won't withhold enough for separate returns. And with multiple jobs, it wouldn't withhold enough when filing your return jointly either.

>I am claiming nothing on my W4s, so withholding nothing.

Not's not really how it works. Withholding is the money kept out of your income and sent to the IRS to pre-pay towards your yearly tax bill. With the current version of the W-4, having nothing other than your filing status means that payroll will calculate your estimated annual tax from your income (known to them) minus the appropriate standard deduction, then run that "taxable income" estimate through the tax bracket calculations. That amount gets divided by the number of pay periods in the year to get your per-check withholding. Even with nothing on your W-4, your paystub should show some amount for "Federal income tax withheld" (or similar wording).

>My husband and I both file - currently are set up to be filing separately due to the amount of income we make together.

In general, a married couple's total tax owed will be lower filing jointly vs. filing separately. There are sometimes reasons to file separately anyway, like if one has an income-based loan repayment.

Yes, you can recharacterize the tax year and not have to redo your 2022 tax return. For most people, Roth IRA contributions have zero impact on their taxes, so don't even get reported on your return.

The one exception would be if you or your spouse qualified for the "saver's credit" on your 2022 return, that's a tax credit given for you saving for retirement. But even then, an amendment would only be necessary if the extra 2022 contribution from the recharacterization increased that credit.

>Is there anyway to switch it to a 2022 contribution instead? My wife for example didnt hit the max for 2022 so maybe we can do that?

As long as you have unused "room" in your / her allowed 2022 Roth IRA limit you can submit a request to your IRA provider to "recharacterize" your 2023 contributions to be treated as being for 2022 instead. This retroactively changes which tax year those dollars count for. You have until April 18th to change your contributions to be for 2022.

Past that, you have two main options:

1. Execute a "removal of excess contributions" to undo the deposit and return that money to you. Any growth those dollars may have earned also has to come out, which will be reported as taxable dollars on a 1099-R you'd get next year. You may also owe a 6% "early distribution penalty" on those returned earnings, but I seem to remember seeing that penalty has been removed when doing a removal of excess.
2. Execute a "recharacterization" from your Roth IRA to a Traditional. Like changing the tax year, this retroactively treats that money as having gone into your Traditional IRA instead of the Roth. There is no income restriction around adding money into a Traditional IRA each year. However if either/both of you are covered by a retirement plan through your employer, your income would likely limit your ability to deduct that contribution on your tax form.

AFAIK, most if not all states subtract Traditional IRA contributions from the income they consider taxable. How that gets done varies by state. On my own state return (Colorado), I simply copy over the "taxable income" number from my federal return, and since that is after subtracting IRA contributions then I get the same benefit on my state tax bill.

Best as I can tell, the NY tax return pulls over your federal "adjustments to income" (which is where IRA contributions get reported on your federal return) on its line 18 and makes that same subtraction to get your state-level adjusted gross income. I couldn't find anywhere a IRA contribution would get added back to make it taxable.

In a similar way, if you did not qualify to claim that deduction on your federal return, then you wouldn't get it deducted on your state return.

I was just talking through why the IRS allows an indirect rollover that ends up in the same IRA the money was originally removed from.

AFAIK, the coding of a "rollover deposit" vs. "contribution" is still important to the IRS, and is something that needs to get properly done on Merril's side. Each year, your IRA provider generate a Form 5498 to report all the contributions made into that IRA for a given tax year. There are separate boxes on that for "IRA contribution", "Rollover contributions", "Roth contribution", etc. If the money you're depositing now ends up included in the "IRA contribution" box for your 2023 5498, then things will get tricky. I'm not sure if that's something that can be retroactively corrected, either with the brokerage or how you report details on your tax return.

I'm also not familiar with Merril's processes, so can't really offer much help on how to get them to do what you want. Sounds like you're making progress, so all I can offer is wishing you good luck.

It's a thing. The IRS somewhat considers all your IRAs as one big amorphous lump, regardless of what institution that total is spread across. Ok, one big lump with two sub-lumps (Roth and Traditional).

As long as they see money come out of that lump that gets returned into the lump within 60 days, it's an indirect rollover. Whether the deposit actually goes into a different IRA or the same one doesn't matter to them. It apparently does matter to Merril.

I've seen some people talk about using this as a risky way to get a short-term "loan" from their IRA. Take money out to pay off whatever emergency happened. Then within a couple of months, scrounge up the same amount of dollars and do a rollover deposit back into the same IRA. The IRS just sees the indirect rollover and you incur no tax or penalty (or use up your contribution amount if done with a Roth IRA). But like I said, it's somewhat risky, especially with Traditional IRAs where if the rollover deposit doesn't happen you get hit with tax + penalty. And you are only allowed to execute an indirect rollover once every 12 months (so not something to do everyday). But it is an option that is within the rules.

> What am I missing?

That some people prioritize debt repayment differently than you are. Maybe even to the point of deferring any retirement savings. Or are able to put themselves into a situation with a high income and very low expenses. That's usually tough to pull off because jobs that pay a lot are often located in high cost of living locations.

Once you get to 5 or 6 figures worth of debt, you have to look at it as a marathon, not a sprint. With $5k a month, that's at least 5.5 years of payments even without interest. You just have to remember that each monthly payment gets you that much closer to your goal, and keep your lifestyle to a level that supports continuing those payments. Balancing debt paydown vs. other goals (retirement, living for today, etc) is also something you have to keep aware of.

Severance is the company saying "we'll pay you this much as you leave without you having to work, but just sign this paperwork...". That paperwork boils down to you agreeing this layoff was legal (you're not being fired because of your race or as retaliation for something you did) and you won't take them to court for it. It may also include something like a "non-compete" clause where you agree not to work for a competitor of your ex-employer for some period of time.

Ideally, they'll lay out what is in that severance agreement, and will recommend you get your own legal counsel to read it over. You do not have to sign that paperwork. And if you don't, they don't have to give you anything.

How much severance is offered varies a lot. Often it's based on length of employment. I went through a layoff that gave one week per year of service. Or there may be a base level (say two weeks pay) plus one week severance per two years. It may or may not include continuation of benefits during the length of the severance period (handy for things like health insurance before COBRA kicks in). Or any number of other options. But there's not really anything that you'd definitively be "entitled" to, just what terms are offered and whether or not you accept.

Employees don't really have much leverage around negotiating severance, other than accept / decline. Declining is only going to be beneficial if you think you could win a wrongful termination suit for more than the offered severance (a very long shot in most cases).

In general, your card's required minimum payment will simply be a fixed percentage of your owed balance. Usually at a level just above the card's APY divided by 12. That'd be enough to cover that month's interest charge plus a (small) amount left over to pay down the balance. There's usually a "floor" of $25-35 that the required payment always stays above, but with a $10k balance you're probably a ways from that mattering.

I'd expect the required minimum to be set in the card agreement and be non-negotiable. But it might be worth calling the card and asking, you might get lucky. Though be aware that even if they allow that, if your payment is lower than your monthly interest charge then your balance will increase month to month, even with no new charges.

Honestly, the only real way out is what you appear to already be doing: get income larger than spending to have more money available to pay down the card balance faster.

But a few potential short-term bandaids:

• Do you have the ability to make any more cuts to spending? It sucks, but if you focus on it being only until the card is out of your life, that can make it easier. "Eat out less", "make coffee at home" are cliches, but can help, if only a little. But every little bit helps.
• See if you can be approved for 0% transfer card. Moving this $10k over to that would remove the interest you're paying on this balance each month. Those transfers do tend to have a fee, usually a percentage of the balance. So you may have to pay $300-400 to get that lower rate, and it'll only last 12-18 months.
• Borrow money from elsewhere (personal loan, friend, family) to zero out this card and pay that other loan back at a lower rate.

Key detail you may have missed:

>you still need to pay taxes on any money in your traditional IRA that hasn’t been taxed.

So only any pre-tax money (deducted when contributed or growth after contribution) involved in the conversion incurs owing tax.

The "clean" backdoor Roth goes like this:

• You have a $0 Traditional IRA balance, so no pre-tax dollars already exist in it.
• You contribute money into a Traditional IRA. You claim this as a "non-deductible contribution" on your return to report that these are "after tax" dollars. So they get included in your taxable income on your return and taxes are owed and paid on them as part of that. There is no income limitation on this contribution.
• You convert your Traditional IRA balance into your Roth IRA. There is no income limitation on this conversion. That used to be different, but the income restriction's removal back in the 90s(?) was the change that opened up the backdoor.
• The amount converted is taxable based on a "pro rata" calculation. You take the $pre-tax / ($pre-tax + $afterTax) of your IRA balance to get a percentage. If the $pre-tax is $0 (because you didn't claim the deduction and earned no interest/growth), then 0% is taxable.

There's some wiggle room around timing of things. You don't have to wait to file your return for those contributed dollars to count as after-tax, everything gets lumped together on your tax return.

For purposes of "a place to keep your money", there is very little practical difference. Both types of institution provide checking / savings accounts, both insure your deposited money against bank failure (though through different agencies), both tend to offer loans and other financial services, etc.

The main underlying difference is who "owns" the institution. Those owners want a return on what they put into it. A bank is often part of a publicly traded company, so it's owned by the various people (or institutions) who have bought shares in that company. A smaller bank might be privately owned by a few individuals.

But a credit union is owned by its members: everyone who has an account with them. So the "return" those members get can be through things like lower / no account fees, higher savings interest (though still smaller than you'd get through an online HYSA), lower rates on loans, etc.

Since account holders are owners, you tend to get better treatment at a CU. As a bank customer, you're ultimately a commodity and might get treated as such.

One drawback to a credit union can be (though not always) that as a smaller institution it may have things like the latest online technology for things like bill payment. And a credit union may have particular criteria you have to meet in order to join: live in a given city, go to a given school, member of armed services, etc. Both of those are much less of an issue nowadays, but was a quirk with my own CU 10-15 years ago.

TL/DR: you'd likely get as good (and usually better) services for lower cost at a credit union compared to a bank. Just look for "NCUA insured" (a CU's equivalent of FDIC for banks), though I don't imagine uninsured CUs would be that common.

When you have high income, it is true that "pre-tax" retirement savings almost always results in lower overall taxes paid (today's + during retirement). So at that level, you should focus your retirement dollars into either a pre-tax work plan or (if you have no retirement option through an employer) a Traditional IRA. The income restriction on deducting tIRA contributions only applies when you also have a work plan.

But there's a limit to how much pre-tax "space" you're allowed to use. Some people want to put away a lot for their retirement each year, more than they're allowed with regular 401k contributions. Maybe they're behind for their age, maybe they want a fancier lifestyle, maybe they just have no better use for those dollars. So while the tax cost from saving in a Roth may not be ideal, it still could be the best option compared to some non-tax-advantaged account. But again, only after "using up" all your available pre-tax options.

>Currently I'm still below the Roth IRA contribution limit
>
>...
>
>I'm currently in the second highest tax bracket

These two statements are not compatible. The income cutoff where your allowed direct Roth IRA contributions becomes $0 is roughly 1/3rd of the way into 24% tax bracket (give or take a bit between the filing statuses). If you're in the 35% bracket, then you make way too much to use a Roth IRA without the backdoor.

I wouldn't give up all hope, but it may boil down to effort required vs. how fast you want those dollars back. It does look simple from your side: you owed $X for your 2021 tax bill and paid them a total of $X + $400. That's (hopefully) documented in their system. I feel it's very likely the IRS will catch this themselves eventually. But "eventually" with an agency that seems to be continuously overworked / understaffed can be a while. Especially right now when they're primarily focused on 2022's tax season.

So while that mistake last year won't help with this year's return, it is still your money. And the IRS doesn't generally want to keep money they're not owed.

Your payments to the IRS get applied to a specific year's tax bill. You do have a $400 overpayment for 2021, which you should continue to pursue. But that is not something you can factor onto the 2022 return you're doing now.

The only mechanism I'm aware of that's even close to your situation is if you had ended your 2021 return with a refund that you then chose to apply towards your 2022 estimated tax payments. I believe your situation might be able to resolved in a similar way (count that 2021 credit of $400 as a payment for 2022's tax bill), but only after the IRS explicitly acknowledges that you're owed it. Yes, we know you are owed it but paperwork is inevitable and slow. And it feels like it might be too late for that $400 to be applied to your 2022 taxes, and probably isn't something you'd be interested in putting off until 2023's.

>I'm sure there's a few i'm forgetting

1099-SA if you had an HSA and took any distributions from it during 2022.

My HSA provider was annoyingly slow (though still before today's deadline) getting this to me. I'd have preferred not to tap this balance last year, but it ended up being necessary.