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Can you contribute to an ira if you are retired and not working?

Yes, you can contribute to an IRA after you retire, but you'll need to have a certain amount of “earned income” to do so. Earnings from work come in the form of salaries, tips, or bonuses, so you'll likely need to have at least some type of part-time work. An IRA (and its corollary, the Roth IRA) is a tax-advantaged form of retirement account that allows you to save money during your working years and even buy physical gold with it. There's no age limit for contributing to an IRA, meaning you can do so at any time in your life and even use it to IRA buy physical gold. However, you can only contribute earned income to this account, not investment income.

So, even if you're technically retired, you must work in some way to make additional contributions to the IRA. A financial advisor may be able to help you determine how to manage your IRA. SmartAsset's free advisor search tool can help you find advisors who serve your area. Since people usually contribute to IRAs throughout their lives and invest at the same time, IRA balances can be quite high when they reach retirement age.

However, you must be working while you're retired; you can only make IRA contributions with the income you earned from this job; and you can't contribute to your IRA or Roth IRA more than you earned in that tax year. After confirming that you are eligible to make contributions to an IRA during retirement, you may need guidance on how much you can contribute or help evaluating whether a Roth or a traditional IRA is better for you.