Did my financial advisor screw up?

I’ve been working with the same financial advisor from a very large and well known institution for a number of years now. We’ve been focusing for some time on maxing out my Roth IRA contributions as well as a few side endeavors. Nothing too big. I haven’t had any issues over the years, though he doesn’t check in with me that often.

When I went to do my taxes last year, I was shocked to find out that I had over-contributed to my Roth IRA (I didn’t even know that was a thing) as the government apparently phases out your ability to contribute to Roth IRA as your income exceeds certain thresholds.

That mistake ended up costing me probably several hundred dollars due to having to correct the issue by pulling some funds out of the Roth IRA (which were already taxed) and having those funds taxed a second time as income. Needless to say, I wasn’t happy.

I’m trying to temper my response as I know financial advisors are not supposed to be tax experts, but I would think (1) they should always know how much I’m making, and (2) they should know the tax code as it applies to investment vehicles.

Am I just an idiot, or should my financial advisor have caught that?

Further context: After this “incident” and rushing to remediate the situation, he knew that I was no longer contributing anything to my accounts with him as we immediately stopped all Roth IRA contributions to prevent further problems (as my income continues to go up).

I figured he would be in touch within perhaps several weeks to several months at most to find other ways for me to invest with him. Instead, I didn’t hear back for 6+ months when he reached out for a routine/annual financial check-up. At the meeting, I waited for him to bring this up, and he didn’t, ending the meeting with, “Well, do you have any questions?”

I stated that we currently have no ongoing investments due to halting Roth IRA contributions, and I challenged him to work on providing alternate investment opportunities. I was irked that I had to be the one to bring this up. That was a few months ago, and I still haven’t heard back.

Posted Feb 14, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

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