As an immigrant in the US, I wasn’t sure if I should invest my money in a tax advantaged account (401k/IRA) or an after tax brokerage account. It’s a no-brainer to invest using a tax-advantaged account if you expect to be in the US by the time you’re 65, however as immigrants on worker visas we rarely know if that’s the case.
Given this conundrum, an immigrant investor has two options:
- Invest using an after-tax brokerage account with the flexibility of being able to withdraw your money whenever you want.
- Invest using a tax-advantaged account (401k/IRA) with pre-tax money knowing that you’d have to pay an early withdrawal penalty for a withdrawal before you turn 65.
Each of these options also comes with it’s own tax implications. In-order to aid my decision making, I built this webapp to compare the returns from investing the same amount of pre-tax money in a tax advantaged account vs an after-tax brokerage account.
Feel free to use this script as a starting point to build your own comparisons!
