Retirement Watch Weekly
Tips to Maximize Benefits of an IRA Conversion
There are some strategies that will increase the benefits of an IRA conversion or help you turn a conversion mistake into a benefit. Convert in stages. It can be expensive to convert all of a large IRA in one year. You might not have enough cash to pay the taxes, or the conversion could push […]
Maximize Medical Expense Write Offs
Retirees and those near retirement often shortchange themselves when computing medical expense tax deductions. Few taxpayers deduct medical expenses because of tax code changes over the years, but the deductions aren’t eliminated. There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this you aren’t maximizing this tax break. To deduct medical expenses, you have to itemize […]
February 2015
February 28, 2015 04:45 p.m. Your Retirement Finance Week in Review You still can attend my talk tomorrow to the local Washington, D.C. chapter of the AAII (American Association of Individual Investors) You can find details here. Greece finally was on the backburner this week. The country presented some reform proposals to European officials that […]
Estate Tax Tricks, Traps for Married Couples
Too many married couples are making a big mistake. They believe current estate tax law exempts them from having to plan or consider estate tax implications in their plans. That misunderstanding could lead to problems. While the estate tax law enacted in early 2013 has many benefits, you need to know how to maximize them. Two […]
Avoid Unintentionally Disinheriting Your Spouse in your Wills and Trusts
Many people don’t realize it, but their wills leave nothing outright to their spouse. Before the current high federal exempt amount was established, a standard will stated that a portion of the estate equal to the federal exempt amount was left in a bypass trust or other trust that benefitted the surviving spouse for life […]
An Estate Planning Saga – Health Care Directives
Celebrities teach the best estate planning lessons. They make a lot of mistakes, and the people around them seem to have extreme reactions to everything. Plus, the details make their way into the media. A recent, tragic example is the last days of Casey Kasem. GQ documents the details. The lessons are that you should […]
Perhaps the Most Important Investment Issue
Growth and productivity boomed since 1982 and really going back longer. This contributed to the boom in earnings and stock prices. Is that going to continue? This post for Philosophical Economics presents the history of the profit margin boom, attributing it primarily to technology and finance. He then presents both a bullish case (that the […]
Nursing Homes Control Patients Who Don't Pay
A nursing home has options if you are admitted to residence and can’t pay your bills or dispute some of them. The nursing home has the option of going to court and seeking guardianship over the resident. In New York especially the law is written to make it easy for nursing homes to be appointed […]
