One of the reasons people make sure they're contributing to and maintaining a retirement account is so that they will have plenty of money available when they stop working. Once you retire, you can begin tapping the money in your retirement accounts, essentially paying yourself a salary out of the balances in your accounts. With a tax friendly Roth IRA, the money that you withdraw from your account is even tax free no matter what age you start your IRA, as the federal government doesn't treat this type of withdrawal as income for tax purposes.

Making Roth IRA Distributions

So, when it's time to make withdrawals from your account, are there required minimum and maximum distributions on a Roth IRA? There really aren't any requirements concerning distributions with a Roth IRA, which is one of the advantages of this type of retirement investment account versus other types of accounts. If you have a traditional IRA account, for example, you must begin taking regular distributions from this type of account, at least by the time you reach 70 1/2 years of age. You then have to continue taking distributions over a period of several years until the account balance goes to zero.

With a Roth IRA, however, there is no age limit at which you must begin taking your distributions. The only rule regarding withdrawals and Roth IRAs is that you cannot begin taking payments from the Roth IRA account until you reach age 59 1/2. If you must take a payment from the account before you reach age 59 1/2, you will have to pay a penalty on the money that you've withdrawn, so it's important to make sure that you can avoid running into this problem.

Advantages of Delaying Distributions

Because you don't have to take minimum distributions from your Roth IRA at any point, you can allow the funds you've accumulated in your Roth IRA to continue to grow until you actually need them. Ideally, you won't actually need these funds until many years into your retirement. In fact, because the money in a Roth IRA account will grow tax free, you may be better served by receiving payments from this account in small amounts.

For example, take the minimum required distributions from your other retirement accounts first, and then supplement those funds as needed from the Roth IRA. Because the funds from those other types of retirement accounts will be taxed, you'll want to be careful that you don't withdraw so much money from those accounts that you are bumped into a higher tax bracket. Withdraw the tax free money from the Roth IRA account to keep your overall amount of retirement benefits for the year maintained in a lower tax bracket.

In addition, because the primary benefit of a Roth IRA account is the ability to allow the money to grow tax free, you may want to leave as large of a balance as you can in this type of account. After all, the longer money is allowed to ride the ups and downs of the stock market, the better chance you'll have of seeing a significant overall gain. Even an extra five to 10 years of gains can give you a significant tax break in your Roth IRA account.

You even have the option of continuing to make contributions to your Roth IRA account into your 60s or even 70s. You just have to have an earned income amount that's at least equal to the contribution you're making. So, if you have a part time job in retirement, you can still make contributions to your Roth IRA.