When Death Itself is not a Worthwhile End

 

So my sole sense of comfort through hard times has been (not God) but knowing if it ever got too much, I literally didn't have to take it anymore. (If you've ever seen After Life on Netflix, you get it.)

In this moment, I feel that wouldn't even bring me any sense of comfort. I want to feel better not dead.  I want the world and the life I imagined. I want things to not be hard. I want to make significant, sustainable, positive, ongoing contributions to the world, starting with my job and I guess the humans.  I want the fact that I lived to have mattered - to more than one person.

I think what's been hard about grief each time someone close to me has died is how quickly they appear to be forgotten.  Whether that person lived 20 years or 70 years. After the first few weeks, after the funeral, after the gatherings, no one speaks of them. I would have wanted to be remembered forever and spoken of daily. 

So my beloved aunt passed away in January. She raised me (and a few others) on her own for the last 30 years. I failed to realize while she was alive how fortunate and blessed I was to have such a solid foundation. 

The other part of my story is I have two functioning natural parents. If my aunt is 100% of my parents. As a couple, they are more like 50% of a parent. So together I had 150% of parental units.  My aunt passed away in January. And last Saturday, I found out my father passed away as well. Now, I'm left with 25% of parental units, if that. 

And since this is a money blog, I ended up contributing $5k for funeral expenses. This morning I wasn't sure if that was too much.  That's what happens when you have too much cash floating in your accounts. Thanks, Corona. 

In other news, I skeptically attended a 401k presentation yesterday and it turned out to be full of little nuggets. 

Nugget 1: My company has separate bonus checks -which I didn't realize- and they match 6% of each payCHECK. My contribution for bonus checks was on 0% because I wanted to make even contributions to my 401k based on my standard paychecks to make sure I got the full match. I would have missed out on the bonus match come bonus time (God-willing, of course). 

Nugget 2: My company offers post-tax contributions to the 401k. This is different than a Roth 401k. I'd signed up just to try it out and remember it existed. I'd also signed up at 2% each pay period because I wasn't going to be able contribute exactly the max to my 401k pre-tax because I switched jobs halfway through the year and the percentages wouldn't match up to get me right at 19.5k. 

The game changing tip is - he was like if you sign up for post-tax match, you want to call us to do a Rollover to a Roth 401k so that your earnings can grow tax free! I just didn't even think about, or I guess really know that was an option. I'd never really heard of post-tax contributions. 

So essentially, I can contribute the annual max of $19,500 to my 401k, and in my case I'm doing it pre-tax. BUT, I can also do spillover elections up to the IRS max of of like $57k through these after-tax contributions! 

Since I'm already funneling post-tax money into taxable investment vehicles outside of my employer, to me it makes sense just to repurpose that money to the after-tax contributions and do the rollover so that the earnings grow tax free. 

My initial concern was being able to take the money out before retirement. I can do that freely with a personal investment account. With the post-tax contributions to the 401k which are subsequently rolled over into a Roth 401k, I would only be able to take out the contributions freely. Earnings would be subject to a 10% early withdrawal penalty.  But to me it's worth the risk because 10% is the lowest tax bracket anyway, and historically I haven't had too many ways to lower my tax rate.

So there you have it, the perfect distraction for grief - complicated financial matters.