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Posts from ‘May, 2009’

Making an Income For Yourself, Part 1

One of the really critical aspects of financial planning that often is overlooked in the early stages is planning your income during retirement.  It’s really not just a matter of withdrawing money as you see the need – there’s a benefit to planning it out and having a strategy as you create your income stream. [...]

A SIMPLE Kind of Plan

The SIMPLE Plan is a type of retirement account for small businesses that is simpler (ah hah!) to administer and more portable than the 401(k) plans that are more appopriate for larger businesses.  SIMPLE is an acronym (probably a backronym, more likely) which stands for Savings Incentive Match PLan for Employees. A SIMPLE Plan can [...]

Five Examples Of When NOT to Listen to Mom

This post was one of the earliest posts on this blog - back in 2004.  But I thought that it was still applicable today as it was then, and so I figured I’d republish it today, being Mother’s Day and all. Financial Advice to Ignore – Even If You Get It From Your Mother! 1. Buy Low, [...]

Recharacterizing

For IRA contributions, the concept is simple:  a certain amount may be contributed to the account each year, dependent upon the type of IRA and your MAGI (this is all covered here if you need a refresher).  But what if you find out that you are ineligible to contribute to a Roth IRA due to [...]

Problems and (proposed) Solutions for 401(k) Plans

The 401(k) plan has been under a great deal of scrutiny lately, with quite a few proposals being offered to “fix” the system.  Granted there are a few problems with the system that is in place, but the overall concept is still good.  What follows is strictly my opinion of some of the real “problems” [...]

IRA Distribution Pro-Rata Rule

Continuing the discussion of IRA distributions, it is important to understand the Pro-Rata rule – which comes into play when you have both deductible and after-tax contributions in your Traditional IRA account. As you take distributions from the account, each distribution is treated as partly taxable and partly non-taxable, in proportion of the after-tax contributions [...]

Investing Rules Article from WSJ

In the Wall Street Journal today there is an article by Mr. Brett Arends, discussing the rules for investing in the “next bull market”.  Mr. Arends frequently dispenses practical and useful advice, and this article is fits into that category. The advice he offers is among the hallmarks of investing during any period – especially [...]

19 Ways to Withdraw IRA Funds Without Penalty

We’ve covered a lot of ground on how you can get at your IRA funds in this blog, but here is an all-inclusive list of the ways I’ve come up with to withdraw your funds without triggering the 10% penalty.  This list is for Traditional IRAs only. It is key to note that, although these [...]

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