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Exceptions to the 10% Early Withdrawal Penalty from IRAs and 401(k)s

May 29th, 2013

English: A clock made in Revolutionary France, showing the 10-hour metric clock. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you take money out of your IRA or 401(k) plan (or other qualified retirement plan, such as a 403(b) plan), if you’re under age 59½ in most cases your withdrawal will be subject to a penalty of 10%, in addition to any taxes owed on the distribution. There are many exceptions to this rule though, and the exceptions are not the same for all types of plans. IRAs have one set of rules, and 401(k)s have another set of rules.

The exceptions are always related to the purpose for which the money was withdrawn. The exact same dollars withdrawn do not have to be used for the excepted purpose, just that the excepted expense was incurred.

IRA Exceptions

It is important to know that all distributions from your traditional IRA are subject to ordinary income tax, but some distributions are not subject to the early withdrawal penalty. The list of exceptions for early withdrawals from IRAs is as follows:

Death of the owner of the IRA – if the owner of the IRA dies, the beneficiaries of the IRA can (in fact, must) take withdrawals from the plan without paying the 10% penalty.

Total and permanent disability of the owner of the IRA – if the owner of the IRA is deemed to be totally and permanently disabled. You are considered disabled if you can furnish proof that you cannot do any substantial gainful activity because of your physical or mental condition. A physician must determine that your condition can be expected to result in death or to be of long, continued, and indefinite duration.

SOSEPP – With a Series of Substantially Equal Periodic Payments, lasting at least five years or until age 59½ (whichever is longer), there is no 10% penalty applied.

Medical Expenses – if you have medical expenses greater than 7.5% of your Adjusted Gross Income, a distribution from your IRA to cover these expenses (the excess above 7.5% of AGI) will not be subject to the penalty. Any amounts paid by insurance toward the medical expenses reduces the overall expense counted toward the excepted expenses.

Health Insurance Premiums – if you’re unemployed, you can take a distribution from your IRA to cover your health insurance premiums without paying the penalty.

Qualified higher education expenses – amounts withdrawn from your IRA to pay for tuition, fees, books, supplies, and equipment needed for enrollment or attendance of a student at an eligible higher education institution are not subjected to the penalty. In addition, if the student is at least a half-time student, room and board expenses paid for with an IRA distribution would not be subject to the penalty. The amount of education expenses is reduced by any scholarships, grants, and qualified 529 plan distributions; any amount applied to an IRA penalty exception is also not eligible to be used toward education credits, such as the American Opportunity Credit or the Lifetime Learning Credit.

First-time home purchase – amounts withdrawn from your IRA up to $10,000 that are used toward a qualified first-time home purchase are an exception to the penalty.

Qualified reservist distributions – if a reservist who is called to active duty after September 11, 2001 for a period of 179 days or more takes a distribution from an IRA (after the start of active duty and before the end of active duty) the distribution will not be subject to the 10% penalty.

Rollovers – both direct, trustee-to-trustee transfers and 60-day indirect transfers are exempted from the penalty.

Excess contributions – if you have contributed too much to your IRA, you can take out the excess contribution without penalty. However, any growth that is attributed to the amount that you over-contributed will be subject to the 10% penalty and taxes when withdrawn.

401(k) Exceptions

As with the IRA, most withdrawals from a 401(k) or other qualified retirement plan are subject to taxation. Early withdrawals before age 59½ are also subject to a 10% penalty, with some exceptions. The exceptions are as follows:

Death of the participant – this is the same as the exception for an IRA above.

Total and permanent disability of the participant – same as with an IRA.

SOSEPP – same as with an IRA.

Medical Expenses – same as with an IRA.

Qualified reservist distributions – same as with an IRA.

Rollovers – same as with an IRA. However, an indirect 60-day rollover (not a trustee-to-trustee transfer) is subject to mandatory 20% withholding. If the withheld 20% is not transferred within 60 days, this amount may be subject to both taxation and the 20% early withdrawal penalty.

Corrective distributions – just like with an IRA, if you have contributed too much to your 401(k), you can take out the excess contribution without penalty. However, any growth that is attributed to the amount that you over-contributed will be subject to the 10% penalty and taxes when withdrawn.

Separation from service after age 55 – if you leave employment after the age of 55, you are eligible to take distributions from your 401(k) or other QRP without penalty. This is only valid while the funds are still in the 401(k) – if you rollover the funds to an IRA, this option is no longer available. If the participant is a public safety employee (police, fire, or emergency medical technicians), the age is 50 or older.

Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) – in the event of a divorce, if the 401(k) is to be divided or distributed to the ex-spouse of the participant, withdrawals from the plan by the ex-spouse are not subject to the 10% penalty.

State Income Tax and Retirement Income

May 8th, 2013

by sraskie.

3 comments

On only a few rare occasions does it make sense to defer money to your 401(k) or other employer sponsored plan instead of a Roth IRA. Those occasions include when your gross income excludes you from contributing directly to a Roth IRA (you can still convert), you are currently at a very high tax rate or the case of when you live in a state where retirement income is excluded from state taxation.

Here in Illinois, the current law exempts retirement income from being taxed at the state level. What this means, is that any contributions to a 401(k), 403(b), SEP, SIMPLE and 457 avoid state income taxation. Qualified distributions at retirement are only taxed at the federal level, and then only as income.

If you contribute directly to a Roth IRA that money is after-tax money going in. After-tax in this case meaning it’s been already taxed at the federal and state level. So in this case the money going into the Roth IRA has been “hit twice” with federal and state taxes.

One possible way to avoid this double whammy (going by current Illinois law) is to contribute to your employer’s plan and then at retirement or whenever you leave your job, convert that money to a Roth IRA. In this case the money from your paycheck is already deferred from state taxation and then when it’s converted to a Roth IRA, avoids state income taxation again – since it’s income from a retirement plan and considered retirement income – which Illinois does not tax. This is evidenced by the 1099-R you’ll receive at the time of conversion.

Another way to avoid this is if your employer’s plan allows, convert your 401(k) to a Roth 401(k) while you’re still employed. Again, you’ll pay federal income tax but avoid the state taxation if your state excludes retirement income for tax purposes. If you’re in a higher tax bracket, you may consider staging your conversions up to the point where you maintain low tax costs (converting small amounts over many years). Or you may just want to wait to convert the whole amount when you know you’ll be in a lower tax bracket.

Your Employer’s Retirement Plan

Mar 13th, 2013

by sraskie.

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Whether you work as a doctor, teacher, office administrator, attorney, or government employee chances are you have access to your employer’s retirement plan such as a 401(k), 403(b), 457, SEP, or SIMPLE. These plans are a great resource to save money into, and some employers will even pay you to participate!

Let’s start with the 401(k). A 401(k) is a savings plan that is started by your employer to encourage both owners of the business and employees to save for retirement. Depending on how much you want to save, you can choose to have a specific dollar amount or percentage of your gross pay directed to your 401(k) account. Your money in your account can be invested tax-deferred in stock or bond mutual funds, company stock (if you work for a publicly traded company), or even a money market account. Your choice of funds will depend on the company that offers the 401(k) through your employer. Generally, you’re going to want to choose funds with low fees and expenses. As of 2013, the maximum amount you can put into your 401(k) is $17,500 annually and another $5,500 “catch-up” contribution if you’re age 50 or older. At age 59 ½ qualified withdrawals are now taxed as ordinary income. Withdrawals before age 59 ½ are subject to penalties with some exceptions.

A cousin to the 401(k) is the 403(b). The 403(b) is very similar to the 401(k) in that you’re allowed to allocate a certain amount or percentage of your gross pay to your account, tax-deferred. Where the 403(b) differs is that it’s only allowed for non-profits such as school districts, hospitals, municipalities, and qualified charitable organizations. Another difference is by law the money in your 403(b) can only be invested in mutual funds or annuity contracts. You’re not allowed to own individual stocks or bonds in it. Like the 401(k), you’re allowed to save (as of 2013) $17,500 annually and another $5,500 “catch-up” contribution if you’re age 50 or older. At age 59 ½ qualified withdrawals are now taxed as ordinary income. Withdrawals before age 59 ½ are subject to penalties with some exceptions.

Branching out in our retirement plan family tree we come to the 457 plan. 457 plans are reserved for certain non-profits such as hospitals, government entities, school districts and colleges and universities. As you may have guessed, 457 plans are similar to their 401(k) and 403(b) counterparts in that money from your gross pay goes into your account tax-deferred. Like the 403(b) the 457 only allows investments in mutual funds or annuity contracts.

Similar to the 401(k) and 403(b), you’re allowed to save up to $17,500 annually and another $5,500 “catch-up” contribution if you’re age 50 or older (for 2013). Unlike the 401(k) and 403(b) the 457 allows you access to your money at any age, as long as you’re separated from service from your employer. For example, if you were 40 years old and have been saving into a 457 since you were age 25 and you saved $50,000 and you were fired, laid off or resigned, you’d have access to your 457 money without penalty; you’d simply pay ordinary income tax on any withdrawals.

Another key point to make is in regards to the aggregation rule. What this means is that you’re only allowed to invest $17,500 (along with the “catch-up” if you qualify) total between a 401(k) and a 403(b). For example, you work as a professor for nine months of the year and save $14,000 in your college’s 403(b). Over the summer, you work part time for a company that offers a 401(k) plan and you want to save money there. Assuming you’re age 40, you’d only be able to save an additional $3,500 to your summer company’s 401(k) – for a total of $17,500.

There is one exception to the aggregation rule. If you have access to a 401(k) or 403(b) and a 457, you are allowed to contribute the maximum to the 401(k) or 403(b) – for a total of $17,500 and then contribute the maximum to the 457 for an annual total of $35,000. The 457 trumps the aggregation rule. Few people may be able to actually sock away $35,000 per year, but it is available to those that work for employers offering both plans or if you work for two or more employers and they offer one or the other.

SEPs and SIMPLEs work a bit different. Typically these plans are available to smaller employers and SEPs are common for those that are self-employed. Both SEPs and SIMPLEs use IRAs as the funding vehicle to place retirement money, but each has different requirements as to contribution limits and participation requirements.

SEPs (Simplified Employee Pensions) can be funded to a maximum of $51,000 annually (for 2013) or 25% of the employee’s salary – whichever is smaller. There can be corresponding tax deductions involved that may be beneficial for solo businesses or businesses with a small number of employees as there are requirements that all employees must participate.

SIMPLEs (Savings Incentive Match PLan for Employees) are another option for smaller businesses looking to start a retirement plan and looking for a cost effective way to start (a 401(k) can be administratively expensive). Essentially, both employer and employees are allowed to participate and certain rules dictate that the employer must make a matching contribution (hence the Match in the name) to participating employees. As of 2013 you can contribute a maximum of $12,000 annually to a SIMPLE plan with an additional “catch-up” contribution of $2,500 if you’re age 50 or older.

The aggregation rule that applies to the 401(k) and 403(b) also applies to SEPs and SIMPLEs. This means that of the four plans for 2013, you’re still only allowed a total contribution of $17,500 annually ($23,000 if you’re age 50 or over). Having a 457 would be the only way to increase this amount.

Like SEPs and SIMPLEs, some 401(k) and 403(b) plans also have the company match. This means that in addition to your contributions, your employer will also make a contribution or “match” to the amount you’re contributing up to a certain percent. Consider taking full advantage of this. It’s free money! There are several reasons why an employer would do this ranging from plan compliance to helping ensure employee satisfaction and loyalty.

Finally, participating in your employer’s plan does not prohibit you from participating in a Traditional or Roth IRA. You are allowed to contribute the maximum allowed by law to both your employer’s plan and your own IRA.

It goes without saying that before you decide to participate, talk with your human resources department (not your cubicle buddy) or a financial professional regarding your options and which option or combination is right for you.

Rolling Over a 401(k) into a New Employer’s Plan

Feb 20th, 2013

by jblankenship.

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When you change jobs you have a choice to make regarding your retirement plan at former employer. If the plan is a 401(k), 403(b), or other qualified plan of that nature, you may have the option to roll the old plan into a plan at your new employer.

The new employer’s plan must allow rollovers into the plan – this isn’t always automatic. Most plans will allow rollover of former employer’s plans, but not all. Once you’ve determined that the plan will accept a rollover, you should review the new plan to understand whether or not it makes sense to roll your old plan into it, or choose another option. Other options may be: rollover the old plan into an IRA, convert the old plan to a Roth IRA, leave the old plan where it is, or take a distribution from the old plan in cash.

In this article we’ll just deal with rolling over the old plan to your new plan.

If the new plan has some compelling features, such as access to very low cost institutional investments or attractive closed investment options, or if the plan has very low overhead and great flexibility, you might want to rollover your old plan into it. Other reasons that might compel you to rollover the old plan might be – to have access to loan features (IRAs don’t have this), access to your funds when leaving your employer after age 55 but before age 59½, and ERISA protection against creditors.

There may be reasons to leave your old plan at the old employer though. The two that come to mind are NUA treatment of stock of the old employer, and if you think you’ll need access to the funds before you leave the new employer (especially if you’ve left that employer after age 55).

So after reviewing the options and features, you’ve decided to rollover the old plan to the new employer’s plan. It’s a relatively straightforward process: you contact the old plan’s administrator and request a rollover distribution form. You should have already contacted the new plan’s administrator to ensure that the new plan will accept a rollover. Once you have the rollover distribution form from the old employer, get any pertinent information from the new employer, such as your employee id, or an account number for the new plan.

On the rollover distribution form, you’ll have the option to send the distribution directly to the new plan – called a trustee-to-trustee transfer. In this manner, the funds never come into your possession. This is important, because if you take distribution in cash from the old plan, the IRS requires that 20% is automatically withheld from the distribution. You could still send the distribution to the new plan – but you’d have to come up with the 20% that was withheld in order to make the transfer “whole”. It’s not required that you make a complete transfer, but if you take any of the funds in cash, including the withheld 20%, this money will be taxable as ordinary income, and if you’re under age 59½ it will likely also be subject to an additional 10% penalty.

After all of this has occurred, your new plan will have the additional old plan money rolled into the account. Most likely this will be entirely in cash when it arrives in the account – so you will need to make investment allocation choices for the new addition to the account.

How Dollar-Cost-Averaging Can Work to Your Advantage for Your 401(k)

Feb 6th, 2013

by jblankenship.

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When you invest in your 401(k) plan with salary deferrals from each and every paycheck, you are taking part in a process known as Dollar-Cost-Averaging (DCA). This process can be advantageous when investing periodically over a long span of time, by smoothing out the volatility of the market and giving you an average cost of your investment shares over time.

How does this work, and how can it be advantageous?

Dollar-Cost-Averaging

When deferring income with each paycheck, typically you will be investing in your 401(k) plan each pay period, whether monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly. Each pay period the same amount is deferred and invested, no matter what the price of the underlying investments are at the time. Since you’re always putting the same amount into the investment, when the price of the shares is higher, you purchase fewer shares; when the price is lower, you are purchasing more shares.

Note: DCA can be used with any type of investment account, including a 401(k), 403(b), IRA, or even a non-tax-deferred investment account. We’ll refer to 401(k) accounts throughout the article since this is one of the more common accounts where DCA is employed.

For example, let’s say that you defer $100 every two weeks into your 401(k) plan, and your investment is an index fund. For the first pay period the price of the fund is $10. When you make your deferral and purchase this time, your $100 purchases 10 shares.

Then, in the next pay period the price of the shares of your index fund has increased to $10.50. Now your $100 purchases 9.5238 shares, and you have a total of 19.5238 shares, at a price of $10.50 per share, for a total account value of $205.

On the following pay period the price of your index fund has fallen to $9.50 per share. Your $100 deferred will purchase 10.5263 shares of the fund – you now have a total of 30.0501 shares at a price of $9.50, with a total account value of $285.48.

The table below plays out purchases with random amounts over a year and then tallies the result:

Pay Period	Amount Deferred	Price Per Share	Shares Purchased	Total Shares	Total Value
1	$100	$10.55	9.4787	9.4787	$100.00
2	$100	$10.44	9.5785	19.0572	$198.96
3	$100	$9.92	10.0806	29.1378	$289.05
4	$100	$10.33	9.6805	38.8183	$400.99
5	$100	$11.95	8.3682	47.1865	$563.88
6	$100	$11.36	8.8028	55.9893	$636.04
7	$100	$9.14	10.9409	66.9302	$611.74
8	$100	$9.54	10.4822	77.4124	$738.51
9	$100	$11.67	8.569	85.9814	$1003.40
10	$100	$9.76	10.2459	96.2273	$939.18
11	$100	$10.46	9.5602	105.7875	$1106.54
12	$100	$9.62	10.395	116.1825	$1117.68
13	$100	$10.23	9.7752	125.9577	$1288.55
14	$100	$10.70	9.3458	135.3035	$1447.75
15	$100	$10.40	9.6154	144.9189	$1507.16
16	$100	$11.52	8.6806	153.5995	$1769.47
17	$100	$11.37	8.7951	162.3946	$1846.43
18	$100	$10.91	9.1659	171.5605	$1871.73
19	$100	$11.55	8.658	180.2185	$2081.52
20	$100	$10.37	9.6432	189.8617	$1968.87
21	$100	$10.19	9.8135	199.6752	$2034.69
22	$100	$9.98	10.02	209.6952	$2092.76
23	$100	$11.89	8.4104	218.1056	$2593.28
24	$100	$11.82	8.4602	226.5658	$2678.01
25	$100	$10.33	9.6805	236.2463	$2440.42
26	$100	$11.41	8.7642	245.0105	$2795.57

The table above was created by generating random prices between $9 and $11.99 over the 26 periods. In real life, your investment wouldn’t likely have such wildly-fluctuating values during the course of 26 pay periods – I used this degree of fluctuation to demonstrate the benefit of DCA when the investment is relatively volatile.

The Advantage

If, instead of investing $100 every two weeks you saved up the entire $2600 and invested it at the end of the 26th pay period, you would be purchasing all of the shares at $11.41, for a total of 227.8703 shares. By DCA, your $2600 has increased in value such that you hold 245.0105 shares, with a value of $2795.57 – a net benefit of $195.57.

On the other hand, if you had $2600 to invest at the beginning of the table when the price was $10.55 per share, you would have purchased a total of 246.4455 shares, which would be worth a total of $2811.94 at the end of the 26 periods.

You can see from the table that by Dollar-Cost-Averaging, you achieve an average price per share over the period that is beneficial to you – since you’re purchasing exactly the same dollar amount of shares every time. When the price is high, you buy fewer shares, and when the price is low you buy more shares. By doing this over a long period of time, such as 30 years, you will avoid the risk associated with saving up a large sum of money and (perhaps) purchasing shares in an investment at a relatively high price by comparison over the savings period.

IRAs and Medicaid

Feb 1st, 2013

by sraskie.

4 comments

When it comes to IRAs and Medicaid eligibility the question that gets asked is, “How does my IRA affect my eligibility for Medicaid?”

Many states share similar guidelines when it comes to exempt and non-exempt assets in IRAs. Essentially, it boils down to this: if the IRA is not in payout status (the IRA owner is not taking required minimum distributions) then the assets in the IRA are included (non-exempt) in the determination of eligibility. However, if the IRA is in payout status and the owner is now taking required minimum distributions (RMDs) the total amount of the IRA is not included, but the annual income from the RMDs is.The same would be true regarding 401(k)s, 403(b), and other qualified plans that may require RMDs after age 70 ½.

There are some states (Illinois for example) that treat IRAs, a 401(k), and pensions as exempt. Check your state’s laws to see where you fit in.

Another asset that works similarly is an annuity. Like the IRA, if an individual owns and annuity and it is not in payout status (it hasn’t been annuitized), the entire account balance is deemed non-exempt and it is considered an includible asset. If the annuity has been annuitized and is now rendering a steady stream of guaranteed payments, then the annuity balance is not included, but the annual income from the annuity payments is.

Defined Contribution vs. Defined Benefit Plans

Jan 28th, 2013

by jblankenship.

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Many employers have made retirement plans available for their employees, and sometimes there are multiple types of plans that the employee can participate in. These retirement plans fall into two categories: Defined Contribution and Defined Benefit plans. In this article we’ll cover the differences between the two types of plans.

Defined Benefit (DB) Plans

The older type of retirement plan is the Defined Benefit Plan. (We’ll refer to this as DB for the rest of the article.) DB plans are generally the old standard pension-type of plan, and this category of plan is named as it is because the benefit is a defined amount in a pension plan.

By a defined amount, we mean that a formula is used to calculate the amount of pension that you’ll receive. The formula typically uses factors such as your years of employment, your average salary (either over your entire career, or perhaps over the most recent five years, as an example), your age when you begin receiving the pension payments, and other factors.

Let’s look at an example. Your final five years of salary averaged $50,000 per year and you had 25 years of service with the company. Your defined benefit calculation might be something like 2% per year of service times the average salary during your final five years, or 50% of $50,000 – for a pension of $25,000. Pension calculations can be very complicated, this was a very simple example. A few of the variances include:

a flat amount formula unrelated to years of service or earnings;
a flat percentage of earnings, unrelated to years of service;
a flat amount per year of service, unrelated to earnings; or
a percentage of earnings per year of service, reflecting both earnings and service.

Once the amount of your pension is defined, you will know how much benefit you’ll receive when you begin receiving it – and it’s a guarantee. It is for this reason that DB plans are often considered to be more valuable than Defined Contribution (DC) plans. As you’ll see in the next section, DC plans don’t have such a guarantee.

This guaranteed benefit comes at the cost of the employer. Since the employer must provide that specific benefit, variables such as the rate of return on investments, inflation, and the like, can have a negative affect on the funds available to pay the benefit. This can cause the employer to have to purchase insurance products that will account for those variables, which can be quite costly.

Defined Contribution (DC) Plans

This type of retirement plan is the newer of the two types, but it’s also the one that requires more participation from the employee. The DC plan is generally a savings plan, such as a 401(k) plan, and the employee and employer make contributions to the account. The amounts that can be contributed to the plan are limited by IRS definitions, and that’s the reason that these plans are called Defined Contributions – since the Contribution amount is defined.

There are a couple of types of DC plans – profit-sharing plans and stock bonus plans. These can also be mixed together to create a hybrid DC plan. The profit-sharing type of plan is where the profits of the business are shared among the employees in cash, where the stock bonus plan is a distribution of company stock to the employees.

Since the contribution is the amount that is defined in a DC plan (rather than the benefit, as in DB plans), the benefit that the employee will receive during retirement is not known. The amount that the employee may receive during retirement is based completely on the following factors:

How much the employee and employer contribute to the plan;
What rate of return the plan experiences; and
How long the funds are allowed to grow in the plan.

The amount that the employee contributes to the plan is totally up to the employee – these plans are voluntary in nature. Contributing more to the plan is the primary thing that you can change to improve your chances of increasing the amount of funds that your plan will eventually have upon your retirement.

Rates of return are completely variable – this depends solely on what happens with the various investment choices that you use for investing your DC account. If the investments you choose increase in value over time (which we hope that they would) then you’ll see your investment nest egg increase in value. Sometimes you’ll see the investments go up in value, sometimes the investments will go down.

This is the same for both DB and DC plans – but in the case of the DC plan you’re not guaranteed a specific benefit, so reductions to your investments are borne solely by you, the account holder. On the other hand, if there is a reduction experienced by the investments in a DB plan, the employer (or the insurance company that owns the pension annuity) must make up the difference to ensure that you receive the benefit that has been defined for you.

Comparison

Below is a table which compares the two types of plans:

	Defined Benefit	Defined Contribution
Cost variability and Risk	Borne by the employer	Borne solely by the employee
Funding	Employer	Employer and employee
Most Beneficial to	Longer-term employees; encourages longer tenure as benefits are often increased by years of service	Shorter-term employees; may encourage changing jobs to provide access to the account’s funds.
Cost to Employer	Higher cost due to variances in returns	Lowest costs; administrative costs only
Access to Account	Generally not accessible pre-retirement	Loans may be available, as well as inservice distributions after a specific age
Tax Benefit	Employer only	Employer and employee both receive tax benefits

Pay Yourself First

Dec 17th, 2012

by sraskie.

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One of the first steps to saving is to get yourself on an automatic pay plan. You’re going to learn to pay yourself first. It doesn’t matter if it’s only a minimal amount. What does matter is that you are going to pay yourself first. This concept is found in the book, The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Classon. Consider yourself the first bill you have to pay.

Here’s how you can apply this to your life:

First, one of the easiest things you can do is take a portion of your paycheck and stick it right in the bank, right away, the day you get paid. One of the best ways I know of to accomplish this is through the genius of direct deposit. If your employer allows it, have your paycheck directly deposited into your bank account each and every payday. Some employers even allow a net direct deposit and a fixed direct deposit. Net direct deposit involves the majority of your paycheck going into your checking or savings account. Fixed direct deposit entails a small portion of the same paycheck going into a different account. You can make this any amount you wish, but for now, I recommend you start small. You can always add more at another time.

The beauty of this system is that you automatically put money into a separate savings account, and you never have to worry about spending it, cashing a paycheck and physically putting the money into the account, or trying to remember to save the money in the first place. After a few months, you may even forget about it until you receive your bank statement and see a nice sum of money already growing – and you’re still living comfortably on what’s left!

Another thing you can do if you get paid by paper check is to set up a savings account with an automatic bill payment service. That way, when you cash your check and deposit it into your account, each month on a specific date a certain sum of money will be withdrawn from your checking account, into your savings account to pay the bills. This is the same as paying your bills online or having your bills automatically taken out of your account. Treat your new savings account like you would a bill. Never miss a payment.

Never.

There are two ways that you can save. The first is to participate in your employer’s 401(k), 403(b), 457, SEP, SIMPLE, or profit sharing plan. The same concept applies where you’ll dedicate a percentage or fixed amount to be saved from your paycheck every pay period. You now get the benefit of saving money, and the tax benefit of being taxed at a lower rate, since employer sponsored plans take money out on a pre-tax basis, meaning you’re taxed on the sum left over after you’ve already saved.

The second is after you get paid via direct deposit, have your bank wire the money to your IRA or transfer an amount to another savings account. That way it’s already done for you, and you needn’t write a check.

I recommend starting out by saving 10% of your income. If that’s a stretch for you, start saving 5% or even 1%. The main point is to start – now! You’ll be amazed at how quickly it grows, and how easy it becomes to save even more. A funny thing happens when your money grows: it attracts more money. You’ll become motivated to save greater and greater amounts. You’ll be excited when you look at your account and it may even put you in a good mood.

Of course money doesn’t buy happiness, but can you remember how you felt the last time you found a $5 bill or a $10 dollar bill? Heck, even a buck! Felt pretty good, didn’t it? The same will happen when you forget about what you’re saving and then suddenly you’ll open up your statement and be delighted at the tidy sum nestled away.

5 Facts You Need to Know About Your Retirement Plan

Feb 29th, 2012

by jblankenship.

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Many of us are covered by one or more types of defined contribution retirement plans, such as a 401(k), 403(b), 457, or any of a number of other plans. What many of these plans have in common is that they are referred to as Cash Or Deferred Arrangements (CODA), as designated by the IRS. These plans are also often referred to as Qualified Retirement Plans (QRPs). Each type of plan has certain characteristics that are a little different from other plans, but most of them have the common characteristic of deductibility from current income and deferred taxation on growth. (Note that this list of plans does not include IRAs. IRAs have certain characteristics that are completely different from QRPs, and vice-versa.)

1. Each dollar you defer is worth more than a dollar. It’s true. As you defer money into your retirement account, each dollar that you defer could be worth as much as $1.54. How, you might ask?

Since you are not taxed on each dollar that has been deferred into the retirement account, your “take home” pay only reduces by the amount that is left over after taxation. For example, if you’re in the 25% income tax bracket, generally your income will only reduce by 75¢ for every dollar that you defer into your retirement plan. Therefore, the 75¢ that you’ve effectively “spent” is worth 33% more ($1.00) in your retirement account.

If you happened to be in the 35% income tax bracket, this works out to a 54% increase in the value of each dollar deferred. This doesn’t even take into account the potential for matching dollars from your employer!

2. Matching – FREE MONEY. Well, it’s not exactly free, you must defer some funds in order to take advantage of it, but other than that, your employer is actually chomping at the bit to give you this money. The reasons can be far-reaching, but the point is that it’s literally yours for the taking (and totally yours if you’re vested in the plan). It should be noted that some companies do not match your funds at any level in a plan.

So, what should you do about this? If you aren’t currently participating in your company’s 401(k) or other deferred compensation plan and they match your funds, you are throwing money away by not participating. Depending upon the options in your plan, you could be turning your back on as much as a 100% return on your investment – guaranteed! Everyone should take advantage of AT LEAST the matched portion of your deferred compensation plan. After that, it may make good sense to put money aside in a Roth IRA (up to the maximum annual amount), before adding more to your deferral to max out your 401(k).

3. Don’t Overload On Company Stock. Even (especially?) if you’re in a company where the stock has experienced dramatic increases in recent history, you need to make sure that your overall exposure to any one company is limited. A rule of thumb that I use is: no more than 5% of your overall net worth should be invested in any one company. If you are inclined to have a larger stake in your company because you work there and enjoy the sense of ownership, I wouldn’t put any more than 10% in that stock. The figure is doubled for the company that you work in because, at least presumably, you are more in tune with the value and internal events of that company and could make adjustments if an event were coming up that could seriously impact your holdings.

Of course, the reason behind this is to limit your exposure to the ebb and flow of a single company’s stock price. For example, what if you held stock in one company that amounted to 30% of your overall net worth, and that stock took a major hit of a 25% price reduction? This one event would have the impact of yanking down your net worth balance by 7.5% – quite a serious impact, to say the least. The folks at Enron (and countless other dot-com craze companies) found out the hard way how much damage can be done by having too large of an exposure in a single company.

4. Diversify, diversify, diversify. Most of us understand the concept of diversification, but how do you actually accomplish it?

In order to properly diversify, you need to review the available investment choices in your plan, and then use those choices to spread your investments among capitalization categories (large-cap and small-cap), as well as between value-oriented and growth oriented, as well as domestic companies and international companies. You should also consider what amount of fixed-income investment (bonds) makes the most sense in your portfolio.

Keep in mind, diversification doesn’t simply mean you put an equal amount of money in each available choice of investment. Each person needs to consider this individually, in respect to their overall portfolio and risk tolerance, including assets held outside of the deferred compensation plan, such as other IRAs or taxable accounts. You need to make a decision as to what allocation makes the most sense for you and apply it across all of your accounts. If you’re fairly young and have a lot of years to grow your funds (as well as recover from any downturns), you can probably take on a greater amount of risk. If you’re nearing retirement, most likely your risk profile will be much less risky.

5. Don’t Take A Loan. No matter how tempting it is, taking a loan out from your qualified retirement plan in more cases than not, results in derailing your hard work in saving and building up your account. Not only are you strapped with having to pay back the funds to your account (with interest), but you have also given up whatever growth might occur within your account (since the funds are being used for another purpose).

Experience tells us that you would be much better off to temporarily suspend or reduce your contributions to your retirement plan in order to save up money instead of taking a loan from your retirement plan. It may take a little while longer, but you’ll probably appreciate it a bit more as a result of your saving.

8 Things to Consider Before Rolling Over Your 401(k)

Feb 22nd, 2012

by jblankenship.

1 comment

K’nex (Photo credit: -Snugg-)

Employers have been giving us lots of opportunities to make this decision of late: when leaving an employer, whether voluntarily or otherwise, we have the opportunity to rollover the qualified retirement plan (QRP) such as a 401(k) from the former employer to either an IRA or a new employer’s QRP.

This decision shouldn’t be taken lightly – although often it is the best option for you. Moving to an IRA gives you much more control over your destiny, so to speak, by allowing you to choose from the entire universe of allowable investment choices. Using your new employer’s QRP can give you a better sense of control over the account as well, although the flexibility of an IRA is generally preferable to another QRP.

But sometimes it makes the most sense to leave your money in the old plan. Listed below are eight possible reasons that you might want to do just that.

If you are happy with your former employer’s plan, consider it well-managed, low cost, and possibly with some investment options that are not readily available (such as desirable mutual funds that are closed to new investors), you may want to leave the plan intact. This would be especially beneficial if you don’t have another employer plan to roll over into, or you are squeamish about establishing your own IRA.
If you have commingled deductible and non-deducted IRA contributions in your outside IRA accounts, having an active 401(k) plan can help you to “separate” the deductible IRA assets from the non-deducted. See this article for more information. Essentially this benefit gives you a way to bypass the “little bit pregnant” rule wherein the IRS treats all IRA funds pro-rata taxable and non-taxable when making distributions… a common issue when doing a Roth IRA conversion, for example. If you don’t have an active 401(k) plan available, this option is lost.
If you have an investment in your former employer’s stock in your 401(k), you need to consider the ramifications of utilizing the Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA) option – before doing a rollover. The point is, if you’ve taken even a partial rollover of your 401(k) in a prior year, the NUA treatment is no longer available to you.
If you think you may be returning to this employer, it might make sense to leave your funds where they are. This is especially true for government employers with section 457 plans – due to the nature of these plans’ ability to provide you with retirement income without penalty much earlier than an IRA or a 401(k) plan could. With the vagaries of governmental policy changes, if you’ve withdrawn and closed your account and come back to work for the same agency, the old plan may no longer be available to you since you’re a “new” participant.
If you’re in the year when you’ll reach age 55 or older, and are not moving to a new employer (either retiring or undertaking self-employment), maintaining the 401(k) plan gives you an option to begin taking distributions prior to age 59½ without penalty. If you move these funds over to an IRA, this option is lost.
On the off-chance that you might need a loan from your retirement funds, you should know that IRAs do not have this provision. Retain at least some balance in the plan if you might need this option – but also you should check with your plan administrator to see if this option is available for non-employee plan participants, because it might not be (and actually, it likely is not). But keeping in mind #4, if you’ve maintained a healthy balance in the plan and you return to work with this same employer, you’d have a much larger account to work with if you needed to borrow.
Funds in a 401(k) account are protected by ERISA – and as such are generally not available to creditors. Depending upon the state you live in, IRA assets may be available to your creditors in the event of a bankruptcy. At any rate, ERISA protection is pretty much an absolute, so this is yet another reason you might consider leaving funds in a former employer’s 401(k) plan. Funds moved from an ERISA-protected account can carry the protection on, but new contributions to the account do not.
Take your after-tax contributions out first, if your plan happens to include these. If you’ve made after-tax contributions, as some plans allow, it makes sense to separate these contributions from the pre-taxed amounts. You can convert these contributions directly over to a Roth IRA in most cases. This is because the 401(k) isn’t subject to the “little bit pregnant” rule alluded to earlier. Once you’ve removed the after-tax contributions and put them into a Roth IRA, you can then rollover the rest of your 401(k) if it makes sense.

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