📉 Bad year in business? Good news for the joint return.

Yes — this is exactly what the spousal IRA rule exists for, and it doesn’t care that your working days are over.

Normally, IRA contributions require earned income. No paycheck, no contribution. But if you’re married and file a joint return, your spouse’s earned income can cover your contribution, too, as long as it’s enough to support both of you. You don’t need a job, you just need a spouse with one (and a joint return).

The 2026 limit is $7,500 per person, or $8,600 if you’re 50 or older — and that catch-up amount applies to you individually, regardless of your spouse’s age. So a retired 62-year-old and a still-working 58-year-old could each put in up to $8,600 and $7,500 respectively, as long as the working spouse’s income covers both.

Traditional or Roth, your choice — there’s no upper age limit on contributing to either one anymore. That rule disappeared for traditional IRAs back in 2020. The real question is deductibility. If your spouse is covered by a workplace retirement plan, the deduction for your traditional IRA contribution phases out between $242,000 and $252,000 of household income in 2026. Below that, you’re fine. Above it, consider Roth instead.

One more thing worth knowing: this only works while your spouse is still earning. Once both of you have stopped working, the earned-income requirement can’t be met by anyone, and new contributions stop — a milestone some people call “retirement” and the IRS calls “no longer our problem.” Whatever’s already in the account keeps growing tax-advantaged until you draw it down.

👉 Read the IRS rules on spousal IRA contributions

Generally, yes. The catch is that “generally” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence.

If you file jointly, a loss from your business doesn’t stay locked in its own little box. It spills over onto the same return and nets against other income — including your spouse’s wages. That’s one of the upsides of filing jointly: your bad year becomes the household’s problem, in a helpful way for once.

Before that happens, the loss has to clear a couple of formalities — mainly, you need to actually have money at risk in the business, and you need to be genuinely involved in running it, not just cashing checks from the sidelines.

But there’s a cap on how much loss you can use this way. For 2026, married couples filing jointly can offset up to $512,000 of nonbusiness income — wages, interest, your spouse’s salary — with business losses. Go over that, and the extra doesn’t vanish; it rolls forward to use against future income instead. For a rough year at a typical small business, you will not come close to bumping into this number. It exists for the rare case where the “loss” looks more like a small crater.

One thing that has zero effect on any of this: how much your spouse makes. The $512,000 cap doesn’t change based on household income, so a bigger paycheck doesn’t earn you a bigger loss allowance.

Bottom line for most people asking this question: inventory write-off, slow sales, a tough year — report it on Schedule C, let it flow to your 1040, and it reduces what you owe as a couple, spouse’s wages included.

👉 See how business losses interact with other income

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If you own a business (or you’re building one), this one’s for you.

Federally, 529 contributions are never deductible. Some states let you deduct contributions on your state return if you contribute to that state’s plan — worth checking before you pick a provider. What you do get, federally, is tax-free growth and tax-free withdrawals for qualified education expenses.

Contributions count as gifts, which matters for the annual exclusion. In 2026, you can give up to $19,000 per grandparent, per grandchild, without touching your lifetime exemption or filing anything. Married grandparents can combine for $38,000. There’s also a special 529 rule letting you front-load five years of exclusions at once — up to $95,000 from one grandparent, $190,000 from a couple — treated as if spread evenly over five years, as long as you file Form 709 to make the election.

If he doesn’t use it all, the money isn’t stuck. Nobody’s coming to repossess it. Your options:

Only a genuinely nonqualified withdrawal — cashing it out for something outside all of the above — triggers income tax plus a 10% penalty on the earnings portion. Contributions come out tax- and penalty-free either way, since you already paid tax on that money once, and the IRS doesn’t believe in double-dipping even when it’s tempting.

👉 Find out what counts as a qualified 529 expense

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