> Make sure you're always contributing your max $5k/year into your Roth, too. If you're ever really capital-F Fucked you can eat the tax penalties and get to that, too.
You can actually pull the money out of your Roth IRA without penalty of any kind, for any reason. The catch is twofold:
1) You can only withdraw the money you used to fund the IRA (not the money you've made inside the IRA). E.g., if you've put in $20k over 4 years and the account value today is $25k, you can take up to $20k penalty-free.
2) You can't replace the money back into the account past the $5k maximum. So if you withdraw $20k and then don't need it after all... too bad, you can still only put back $5k/year.
You can actually pull the money out of your Roth IRA without penalty of any kind, for any reason. The catch is twofold:
1) You can only withdraw the money you used to fund the IRA (not the money you've made inside the IRA). E.g., if you've put in $20k over 4 years and the account value today is $25k, you can take up to $20k penalty-free.
2) You can't replace the money back into the account past the $5k maximum. So if you withdraw $20k and then don't need it after all... too bad, you can still only put back $5k/year.