I suppose this falls into the category of "nice problems to have" but my wife and I did a little better than we'd expected to last year, which has resulted in the disqualification of the Roth contributions that we made in 2008.

My contributions were made at regular intervals in 2008 - actual purchases of stock didn't coincide with contributions. My wife made two lump sum contributions, with instructions to immediately buy mutual funds.

So, here's my question/problem: I need to take out $5,000 plus earnings from each of our Roths. Needless to say, we don't have earnings - we have losses.

I don't want to take out more than I really need to, but I can't think of a really great way to say precisely what our losses were on the Roth contributions, due to the various contribution dates and purchase dates. Am I better off just taking the full $5,000 out of each portfolio to be safe, or is there someone who has had experience with this sort of thing who can offer a better solution?

Thanks in advance,
Matt