Here is a sentence that should worry you more than it does.
Nobody is checking.
Your brokerage will happily accept an IRA contribution it has no business accepting. It does not know your income. It does not know what you put into the IRA at a different firm in March. It does not know whether you actually had earned income this year.
It takes the money, sends a confirmation, and moves on.
The IRS finds out later, and by then the clock has been running.
That is what makes an excess IRA contribution such an unusual mistake. It does not announce itself. There is no bounced transaction, no warning email, no red flag on your statement.
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It just sits there, quietly costing you money every year, until somebody finally notices.
And the penalty has a feature most people do not understand until it is explained slowly: it is not a one-time fine.
Let's fix that.