{"id":53803,"date":"2018-06-26T17:54:32","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T17:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/?p=53803"},"modified":"2018-06-26T17:54:32","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T17:54:32","slug":"finding-downpayment-can-tap-ira-buy-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/?p=53803","title":{"rendered":"Finding a downpayment: Can I tap my IRA to buy house?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question<\/strong>: I&#8217;ve heard that I can withdraw money from my IRA to help pay for my first house. Is this true?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Answer<\/strong>: To be perfectly clear, you can withdraw money from your IRA whenever you want. But if you do it without an IRS-allowed exemption, you&#8217;ll end up paying a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately for first-time homebuyers, there is such an exemption. First-time homebuyers can take out as much as $10,000 from their traditional IRA penalty-free, although it will still count as taxable income. And if your spouse also has a traditional IRA, they can take out $10,000 as well.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, the homebuyer doesn&#8217;t necessarily have to be you. You can use the money to help your child, grandchild or parent buy a home as well.<\/p>\n<p>If you have a Roth IRA, you may be able to take out even more. You can always withdraw Roth IRA contributions (but not your earnings) tax- and penalty-free. Plus, you can withdraw up to $10,000 of your earnings under the first-time homebuyer exemption, and if your account has been open for more than five years, the withdrawal will be tax-free.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the IRS has a liberal definition of what a &#8220;first-time&#8221; homebuyer is. Basically, you must not have owned a principal residence within the last two years.<\/p>\n<p>So even if you&#8217;re not really a first-timer, you may still qualify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: I&#8217;ve heard that I can withdraw money from my IRA to help pay for my first house. Is this true? Answer: To be perfectly clear, you can withdraw money from your IRA whenever you want. But if you do it without an IRS-allowed exemption, you&#8217;ll end up paying a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53805,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53803\/revisions\/53805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}