Individual Retirement Accounts - IRAs
Strategies for maximizing your Individual Retirement Account (IRA’s) Investments, Tax Savings and Timing of Required Minimum Distributions
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New Rules for Rolling Over After-Tax 401(k)s
New IRS rules make it easier for higher-income workers to shift their money to Roth IRAs. The rules apply to people who make after-tax contributions to 401(k) plans. These are contributions that exceed the maximum allowed tax-deferred contribution. You can make contributions above the tax-deferred ceiling, but the excess can’t be excluded from gross income. […]
Avoiding IRA Beneficiary Mistakes
Here’s a good summary of some key points to naming IRA beneficiaries. We’ve included these and more in past issues of Retirement Watch. It’s a good review for my readers and a useful introduction for those who haven’t been members yet. Clients who pay big bucks to have lawyers prepare wills and trusts often complete […]
How to Integrate IRAs into Estate Planning
IRAs are among the most valuable assets in many estates. The right moves can maximize the after-tax value of the IRAs for the objects of your affection. Too often, not enough thought is given to the different ways IRAs can be handled in an estate plan, so the value isn’t maximized. The IRAs don’t create […]
Two Important New IRA Rules
Summer began with a couple of surprising changes about IRAs being announced. These important rules should figure in your IRA planning. First, the Supreme Court weighed in. The background is that in 2005 the federal bankruptcy law was revised. One of the revisions eliminated a patchwork of state rules and made clear that IRAs and […]
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Overcoming Hurdles to Stretch IRAs
Making IRAs last a long time, especially for heirs, is a prime goal of many IRA owners. Hurdles stand in the way. Required mini-mum distributions after age 70½ force them to withdraw more from their IRAs each year than they need or want to. The forced distributions trigger higher income taxes. Then, the heirs can […]
Avoiding Inherited IRA Problems
Inherited IRAs are the focus of some of the saddest stories in estate planning. An IRA owner takes the time to arrange things so that the IRA will pass to the beneficiaries at the lowest tax cost and the heirs can stretch the IRA to last for years. Unfortunately, the heirs fall into one of […]
IRAs and Asset Protection
The recent Supreme Court decision limiting the protection of inherited IRAs in bankruptcy may be broader than initially thought. IRAs have been protected in bankruptcy since the law was changed in 2005. But a court ruled that an inherited IRA is not a “retirement account” and isn’t protected under the provision. The Supreme Court recently […]
Risks of the 401k to IRA Rollover
When people retire with a 401(k) balance or a pension plan, there’s an army of financial salespeople trying to get them to rollover that money to an IRA managed by the financial salespeople or their associates. That can be a good deal, but apparently for many people it isn’t. They aren’t financial sophisticated and get […]
