It is generally well-known that in an IRA account you have a wide range of investment choices, typically only limited by the custodian’s available investment choices. There are, though, specific investing activities that are prohibited with IRA funds. What’s Not Allowed for IRA Accounts? Self-Dealing. You are not allowed to make investments in property which [...]
Posts from ‘April, 2009’
Rollover Risk
The idea of an IRA rollover, or a rollover IRA, isn’t necessarily a cosmic mystery – this happens all the time. You leave your job, and you rollover your 401(k) to an IRA. No problem, right? Unfortunately, there often are problems with the process of moving funds from one account to another – because there [...]
Comprehensive Financial Planning – Explained
From time to time, the question is asked of me: What exactly makes up a comprehensive financial planning engagement? Since you know from reading about my practice that I operate in an hourly, fee-only fashion, you should know that a truly comprehensive financial planning engagement requires 10 to 15 hours of effort by the financial [...]
Interesting Links to Share
I wanted to take a moment to catch you up on a few things. The first thing is that I wanted to point you to Helen Maynard’s Affine Financial Services blog, where she recently posted the very well-written article ETF’s vs. Index funds: The good, the bad, and the ugly where she makes some excellent [...]
Reminiscing…
Earlier this week marked the five year anniversary of this blog. Seems like an awful lot has happened during that time, from many different points of view. I thought it would be interesting to review a couple of those early entries today, to see how they have weathered the test of time. Keep in mind, at [...]
401(k) Fair Disclosure for Retirement Security Act of 2009
In addition to the “tweaks” that I talked about in this post, more components of the 401(k) landscape are receiving focus. In this particular case, we’re aiming for more disclosure and information about fees for plan participants. 401(k) Fair Disclosure for Retirement Security Act of 2009 Specifically, under this bill, 401(k) plan participants would receive [...]
Illinois’ BrightStart Plan Woes
Note: an update to this story can be found here. If you’re an Illinois (among other states, see Note below) parent of a child heading to college or already in college, then you may already be painfully aware of the “Oppenheimer problem” that the BrightStart 529 plan has encountered. Briefly, one of the Oppenheimer mutual fund choices (formerly) available [...]
Education Benefits of ARRA 2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA 2009) included three provisions for higher education benefits: changes to the HOPE education credit program, increases in the Pell Grant limits, and expansion of the types of expenses considered Qualified Higher Education Expenses for §529 college savings plans. Changes to the HOPE Education Credit Program (renamed American Opportunity Tax Credit) The [...]
Where To Establish Your IRA Account
Establishing and contributing to an IRA (Traditional or Roth) is pretty simple and straightforward. There is a wide variety of institutions that offer IRA accounts: banks, savings and loans, credit unions, insurance companies, mutual fund companies, and brokerages. There are pros and cons to each type of institution, as we’ll list below. These alternatives represent the [...]
2010 Conversions to Roth: Six Factors to Consider
If you have considered converting funds to a Roth (the IRA, not David Lee) from a traditional IRA or a qualified (tax-deferred) plan like a 401(k), undoubtedly you have run across this tax code item: in 2010, the income limit for Roth conversions is lifted. On top of that, the IRS will give you two [...]
And if you've come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed "advisor's advisor".
