# Catching Up Family Caregivers Act of 2024

This bill is designed to help family caregivers catch up on their retirement savings by allowing them to contribute more money to their retirement accounts without facing the usual tax penalties. The basic idea is that people who take time out of the workforce to care for aging parents, disabled relatives, or other family members often fall behind on saving for retirement, and this bill tries to make that easier to fix.

Here's how it works in practice: If you've been a family caregiver and haven't been able to save much for retirement, this bill would let you make larger contributions to accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs than the normal annual limits allow. Essentially, it gives you a chance to "catch up" on the retirement savings you missed while you were focused on caregiving responsibilities. This is similar to catch-up provisions that already exist for people over 50, but this one specifically targets people who stepped back from paid work to care for family members.

The bill recognizes a real problem many Americans face: caregiving responsibilities often force people to reduce their work hours or leave jobs entirely, which means they're not contributing to retirement savings during those years. By the time caregiving duties end, they're significantly behind on retirement security. This bill aims to give those caregivers a tax-advantaged way to make up for lost time and build a more secure retirement, even though they took on the important responsibility of caring for their loved ones.

Catching Up Family Caregivers Act of 2024

Collins, Susan M.

Catching Up Family Caregivers Act of 2024This bill allows qualified family caregivers to make catch-up contributions to a retirement account for up to five years. A qualified family caregiver is an unemployed or severely underemployed adult who provides 500 hours or more during one tax year of in-home care, monitoring, management, supervision, or treatment of an adult with special needs or a child.&nbsp;