The questions have started coming in regarding the 2020 and 2021 income limits for Roth IRA contributions. Planning ahead for taxes is always a good idea. However, sometimes, you can get out a little bit too far. The IRS publishes various numbers, tax brackets, and the like for the next tax year during the fall …
As a financial advisor, I used to review client’s paperwork when they came in for an appointment. Among many other things, I always made sure to go over was to review beneficiaries of my client’s accounts. Or, more to the point, I TRIED to review the beneficiaries on my client’s accounts. All too often, they …
Should I use my Roth IRA for college? As a former financial planner, I would often get these questions from clients who read something somewhere. Much like patients asking doctors about drugs they heard about on TV, such questions rarely ended up being a good idea. Still, it is possible to use a Roth IRA …
What is a Roth IRA? Is a Roth IRA the best way to save for my retirement? Even the basics in financial planning aren’t always so basic. The basics of IRA plans, is one of those times. IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. Tthat means it is an account for an individual to use to …
No matter how helpful the government could potentially be to its citizens, it typically won’t/can’t get involved in finance because there are huge lobbying dollars behind financial services companies. For example, it would be relatively trivial for the IRS to create a free, online, auto-filing system that would work for most taxpayers, increase tax collections, and …
Retirement planning is actually incredibly simple and straightforward for most people. However, it can quickly sound complex because of all the edge cases, exceptions, and possibilities that really only affect a small number of people. If you eliminate all of that noise, however, there really isn’t much to the average American’s financial plan. Follow the …
Fall is coming. OK, it’s not as dramatic as winter is coming, but let’s be honest. It’s season 4 of the TV show, and Book 6 in the series, and winter still hasn’t actually come. Fall will be here much sooner as the yellow leaves on the trees out front can attest. Let’s get down …
In all my years as a financial planner, I never met someone who had “enough” money to retire when they were in their 40s or even 50s. Yet, every year, I saw clients who either were already retired, or were retiring. The interesting part was that they didn’t have “enough” money to retire either, no …
When I was a financial planner, there were a lot of little things that came up over the years that I realized went unnoticed by the vast majority of people, no matter how well educated they were in finance and investing. Understanding, setting and updating the beneficiaries on accounts like IRAs was one of those …
An IRA is an Individual Retirement Account. The IRA allows taxpayers to save money for retirement in a tax-advantaged manner. There are two types of non-business IRA accounts. With a traditional IRA, contributions are tax deductible for certain taxpayers. In addition, all monies within the account grow tax-deferred until withdrawal. A Roth IRA offers no …