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What to do with $1,000

Jun 10th, 2013
by jblankenship.
1 comment
One Thousand Dollars!

One Thousand Dollars! (Photo credit: The Consumerist)

I occasionally get this question – especially around the time of tax refunds.  When someone comes up with an additional $1,000 dollars, they want to know how to best use that money to help out their overall financial condition.

Of course this question has different answers for different situations.  I’ll run through several different sets of conditions that a person might find him or herself in, and some suggestions for how you might use that $1,000 to best improve your financial standing.  It’s important to note that you don’t have to have an extra $1,000 lying around to use this advice – you could have an extra ten or twenty or fifty bucks a week and put it to work with the same principles.  The point is to find money that isn’t being spent on something critical, and put it to work for you!  Even small steps amount to wonders.

Debt

If you have consumer debt, including credit card debt, auto loans, student loans and the like, it makes the most sense to use this money to bring down your overall debt balance or eliminate it if you can.

If the interest rate on your debt (or a portion of your debt) is greater than about 3% or 4%, you aren’t likely to find a better way to “invest” than to eliminate some of your interest costs.  This is because debt is a negative investment – when you have debt that carries an interest rate of 8%, year over year while the debt balance is there, you are “earning” a –8% return on that money.

Some folks recommend eliminating all debt, but that’s a bit impractical in today’s world.  Low-cost mortgage debt and auto loans can be good uses of leverage – especially mortgage debt at the rates we’ve seen of late.  I suggest that you focus on the highest rate consumer debt first and foremost, eliminating this drag on your financial state.  Once you’ve eliminated every debt except for mortgage debt, you can move on to other pursuits.  Eliminating consumer debt at high interest rates is the best move you can make to  improve your financial self.

Emergency Fund

An emergency fund is an amount of money set aside that can be used to cover all of the unexpected expenses that come up and surprise you: new tires for the car, roof replacement, or medical expenses not covered by insurance, for example.  The other thing that an emergency fund is for is to give you some “cushion” if you find yourself unemployed for an extended period of time.  It’s for this reason that an emergency fund is typically referred to as a certain number of months’ worth of expenses – such as 3-6 months’ worth of expenses.  You should have an emergency fund of an amount that would provide for your living expenses for several months should you be unexpectedly laid off.

If you don’t have an emergency fund, or if your emergency fund is smaller than you should have set aside, this is another great place to put your extra $1,000.  Typically an emergency fund is in a place that’s a bit difficult to get at – such as a bank savings account without debit card or ATM access.  This way you’re not tempted to invade this money for non-emergency purposes.  Sometimes folks use a Roth IRA as a dual-purpose account until they can establish separate accounts for retirement and emergency funds.

A Roth IRA could be used as your emergency fund, since you can withdraw your contributions to your Roth IRA at any time for any purpose without tax or penalty.  I don’t recommend this option for your long-term use, because if you have to get at the funds for an emergency purpose and you’re not able to replace them in the account within 60 days, you’ll lose the Roth treatment of those contributions forever.  You can always put more into the Roth IRA at a later time, but once you’ve got the money in there, you shouldn’t take it out before retirement without a very, very good reason.

Knowledge

The most important tool for achieving financial success is knowledge.  For this reason, I suggest that you use some of your new-found riches to improve your financial knowledge.  There are many good books out there (I’ve reviewed quite a few of them, click this link for a list of financial books I’ve reviewed) that will help you to better understand your finances and how you can improve things.

I wouldn’t suggest spending all $1,000 on education – maybe as much as $50 or $100 for several good books.  This will help you to make good decisions with your remaining money.

Retirement Savings

If you haven’t maxed out all of your retirement savings for the year, such as 401(k) plans and IRAs, this is another good place to put your $1,000 to work.  For an IRA or Roth IRA (if you’re eligible by your income level) it’s simply a matter of making the contribution to the account and investing it appropriately.

If on the other hand you haven’t maxed out your 401(k) plan, you can defer this additional $1,000 by your paychecks throughout the remainder of the year and earmark this additional $1,000 to make up the difference in reduced take-home pay.  If you started in July and you have 13 more pays left in the year, you’d set aside around $75 per paycheck (if paid every two weeks) and your income will be reduced by a little less than that, since the money you deferred isn’t taxed.

Who Does Each Option Work Best For?

Folks who are just starting out in improving your financial situation quite often need to focus on all of the options I mentioned above – debt reduction, emergency fund, knowledge and retirement savings.   The list was put together in priority order, so you should focus on debt reduction first, then emergency funds, and so on.

If you’re a little farther down the timeline and have eliminated all consumer debt and have established an emergency fund, improve your knowledge first, and then add more to your retirement savings.  I mentioned before that the most important tool that you have is your knowledge.  The most important action you can take to improve your financial standing is to increase your bottom line.  We did this first when we eliminated all debt.  The next step is to add to savings.  Both moves will increase your net worth – your assets (savings and possessions) minus your liabilities (loans and other debts) equals your net worth.  The key to financial success is to make moves that will have a positive impact on your net worth.

Students who don’t have any debt accumulated should focus first on the emergency fund, and then on retirement savings.  In some cases it makes good sense here to put the money into a Roth IRA, since money in a Roth IRA won’t be counted on your financial aid forms, since it’s a retirement account.

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

May 29th, 2013
by jblankenship.
6 comments
English: A clock made in Revolutionary France,...

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.

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Avoid Awkwardness in the Afterlife–Confirm Your Beneficiary Designations

May 24th, 2013
by jblankenship.
1 comment
Withholding Water

This is a topic that I cover with all clients, and one that I recommend you for everyone with retirement plans and other accounts with beneficiary designations.  Too often we think we have the beneficiary designation form filled out just the way we want it, and then (once it’s too late) it is discovered that the form hadn’t been updated recently – and the designation is not what we hoped for.

I made this recommendation to a client not long ago.  He assured me that he had all of his designations set up just the way he wanted.  His wife, sitting next to him in our meeting, asked him to make sure – talk to the IRA custodian and get a copy of the designation as it stands today.  A bit miffed about it all, he agreed to do so, and did the next day.  Guess what he found – as it stood on that day, his IRA beneficiary designation form indicated 100% of his IRA would pass to his ex-wife from 15 years ago!  Plus, he had no secondary beneficiaries named, which meant that if the ex predeceased him, HER heirs would be the primaries.  Thankfully he had checked on this to avoid this awkward and possibly devastating situation.

Know what was fixed pretty much immediately?

Take the time

You owe it to yourself and your heirs to take the time to review your beneficiary designations and keep copies of them in your “dead file”.  This includes IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)/403(b)/457 plans, and other pensions or retirement plans.  You also may have POD or TOD (Pay on Death or Transfer on Death) designations on non-retirement accounts – confirm these and keep copies as well.

For your standard retirement accounts, such as IRAs, 401(k)s and the like, you typically have the option of naming a primary beneficiary (or beneficiaries) and a secondary or contingent beneficiary or beneficiaries.  It makes a huge difference on these accounts that you name a specific person (or persons) as the primary beneficiary, and a specific person (or persons) as the contingent beneficiary.  With IRAs, if you leave the designation blank, you may be taking away important options for your heirs.

If you leave the primary beneficiary designation blank you are leaving the transfer of your IRA up to the custodian’s default designation.  Quick! What’s your IRA custodian’s default beneficiary designation??  I didn’t think you’d know.

Often this default is your spouse first, and then your “issue” – meaning your children and other descendants.  Other times, the default beneficiary is your estate.  In the event that the estate is the default beneficiary, any beneficiaries of the estate will receive the IRA, but they will not be able to utilize the “stretch” option of receiving payout of the account over their remaining lifetimes.  This is because the IRS rules state that a “named beneficiary” must be in place in order to use the stretch provision.  If no “named beneficiary” exists, the stretch option is not allowed.  If the default is your spouse and your issue, these can be treated as “named beneficiary” if they are alive.

Discuss with your heirs

At face value, even though you think your intent for your beneficiary designations is clear, it might not be clear to your heirs.  For example, you may have chosen to pass along half of your IRA to your youngest child and only a quarter to the older two children because you believe the youngest child can use the money more than the other two.  Or maybe you decided to leave the entire IRA to your oldest daughter, and you want to designate your three sons to split up the farmland – which you believe is an equitable division.

Whatever you’ve decided, especially if there are perceived inequities in your division plan, you should take the time to review your plan with your heirs.  If that makes you uncomfortable, there are a couple of things to consider: First, if you’re uncomfortable discussing it with them, imagine how uncomfortable your heirs may be when the time comes to distribute your estate.  Maybe it’s not such a good idea after all if it could cause contention among your heirs.  Second, if you still believe your split is the right way to go, you should explain your plan to someone – your designated executor would be a good choice. And the designated executor should be a disinterested separate party, someone who isn’t receiving benefit from your estate plan, in order to keep the process “clean”.  Otherwise, if one of the heirs is your executor and the executor is perceived to receive preferential treatment, again you’ll have some contention among your heirs.

If there are complex instructions involved, consider making an addendum to your will.  Instructions in your will would have no impact on the beneficiary designations on your IRAs and other plans (these pass outside of your estate as long as you’ve made specific designations) but other asset divisions aside from retirement accounts may require explanation for your heirs to understand your intent.  Don’t expect that everyone will understand or agree with your thought process when you’re gone.  Explaining your thought process in advance will likely help to ensure that your division plan doesn’t result in a family rift.

Take the time to review your beneficiary designations.  Make sure that you have the primary beneficiary or beneficiaries that you want, and the percentages that you’d like each to have.  Also make sure that you have named contingent beneficiary or beneficiaries in the event that your primaries have predeceased you.  Lastly, make sure that you note how division is done after the death of the beneficiaries: per stirpes or per capita.

A Few Facts to Know About Retirement Plan Contributions

Apr 5th, 2013
by jblankenship.
No comments yet
Deadline

As we near the tax filing deadline, there are a few things you need to be aware of as you consider your retirement plan contributions for tax year 2012 (or whatever the prior tax year is, if you’re reading this sometime later).

Regular IRA contributions are due by the filing deadline, with no extensions. That means April 15, 2013 for the 2012 tax year. Your contribution for 2012 is considered made “on time” if your payment is postmarked by midnight on April 15, 2013.

Perhaps you wish to make a more substantial contribution to a retirement plan – in 2012, you can contribute up to $50,000 to a Keogh plan. That amount is limited to 20% of the net self-employment income, or 25% of wage income if the individual is an employee of the business. Keogh plan contributions can be made by the extended due date of your return – in most cases this is October 15, 2013 (for tax year 2012). The downside is that you must have established the Keogh plan by December 31, 2012 in order to make contributions for the 2012 tax year. If you have not established your Keogh plan yet, it’s too late for tax year 2012.

However, you still have another option if you want to make significant retirement plan contributions (above and beyond the $5,000/$6,000 limit on traditional IRAs) – and this is to establish and fund a SEP-IRA. The funding limit for SEP-IRAs is the same as for Keogh plans, but you can establish the SEP-IRA as late as the extended filing date (October 15) and fund it for the prior tax year.

Happy saving!

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Don’t Forget to Pay Tax on Your 2010 Roth Conversion

Feb 27th, 2013
by jblankenship.
2 comments
Forget-me-not

Remember back in those heady days in 2010, when you finally had carte blanche eligibility to convert your IRA funds to a Roth IRA regardless of your income?  And then there was a special provision that the IRS made available: you could convert money to your Roth IRA in 2010, and delay recognizing the income and paying the tax over the next two years… remember that?  That was so cool.

However.

(Ever notice how there’s always a “however” in life?)

Here we are, two years later, and NOW you have to pay tax on the Roth conversion that happened way back then.  You might have forgotten it altogether, but you can bet the IRS hasn’t forgotten.

Hopefully you didn’t forget this on your 2011 tax return that you filed in 2012 as well.  At that time, you should have recognized half of the deferred Roth IRA conversion from 2010 on your 2011 return, and paid tax on that half.  Now, in 2012, you’re up to the point where you can finish this off.  On your 2012 return you will recognize the remaining half of the 2010 conversion, and pay the tax on it.

The good news is that the tax rates haven’t gone wild like a lot of folks projected – as long as your income didn’t dramatically increase your rates should be roughly the same as they were in 2010.  In addition, if you decided to do your Roth Conversion as soon as possible in 2010 and you invested in the S&P 500 (for example), you would have experienced an increase of more than 33.3% to this writing (February, 2013).  That should help take the sting out of the tax cost.

Just don’t forget to finish paying the taxes on your conversion this year. The penalties and interest on the unpaid tax could take all of the benefit out of your conversion/delay strategy.

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

Feb 20th, 2013
by jblankenship.
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Beethoven

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.

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Defined Contribution vs. Defined Benefit Plans

Jan 28th, 2013
by jblankenship.
1 comment
Silage at Mount Pleasant: Define 'Pleasant'

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:

  1. How much the employee and employer contribute to the plan;
  2. What rate of return the plan experiences; and
  3. 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
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What is a 401(k)?

Jan 23rd, 2013
by jblankenship.
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Many of us have access to a 401(k) plan at our workplace – have you ever wondered exactly what a 401(k) is?

The 401(k) plan is named for a specific section in the Internal Revenue Code – Section 401, subsection k, to be exact.  This code section lays out the rules for these retirement plans, which are employer-sponsored plans providing a method for the worker or employee to defer a certain amount of income into a savings plan on a pre-tax basis.

Often the employer also includes a matching contribution to the employee’s account.  These matches are typically based upon the amount of contribution that the employee makes to the plan – such as a dollar-for-dollar match for contributions made by the employee up to certain percentage of the employee’s income.  The deferred income is not subject to ordinary income tax, but it is still subject to FICA (Social Security) and Medicare taxes.  The employer match is not subject to any of these taxes.

The income that the employee voluntarily defers into the 401(k) plan is immediately vested with the employee, meaning that the contributions that the employee makes belongs exclusively to the employee.  Employer-matching funds are usually subject to a schedule for vesting. An example would be that the employee must remain employed for a specific period of time (say, five years) before the employer-matching funds are vested with the employee.  Leaving employment prior to meeting that vesting schedule could result in the employee relinquishing a portion or all of the employer-matching funds in the account.

The income that is diverted into the 401(k) plan can be allocated to a variety of investment choices.  The choices are generally limited to a defined group of stocks and mutual funds by the plan administrator.  Lately many plans also offer an option to use a regular brokerage account to provide investment in virtually any domestic holding.

Restrictions

In addition to the restricted group of investments that you may have available to choose from, there are many other restrictions on your 401(k) account.  For example, once you divert your income into a 401(k) plan, you generally cannot withdraw the funds from the account while you’re still employed with that employer.  Some plans do have in-service distributions available after the employee has reached a particular age (generally 59½), but this is relatively rare.

After you leave employment you have the option of withdrawing the funds from the account.  There are a few ways that this can be done -

  1. A direct rollover to another retirement plan (another 401(k) or an IRA), which is a non-taxable event; or
  2. A cash distribution to you, which will be subject to a mandatory 20% withholding, since this is potentially a taxable event (even if you rollover the distribution to another plan within 60 days); or
  3. A distribution of the securities that you own in the plan.  Part of this distribution may be taxable (see this article on NUA, Net Unrealized Appreciation, for more details).  The portion of the distribution that is taxable will be subject to the mandatory 20% withholding mentioned above.

If any of these distributions occurs before you reach age 59½ you may be subject to an early distribution penalty of 10% unless you meet one of the exceptions, which includes purchase of a first home and payment of certain medical expenses, among other exceptions.

Loans can be available to access the funds in your account while still employed.  The loans are limited to 50% of your total vested account balance, with a maximum loan amount of $50,000.  The loan must be paid back over the course of five years, at a prescribed rate of interest.  If you leave employment while your loan is still outstanding (at whatever amount), the loan must be paid back immediately, either from outside funds or from funds in the 401(k) account.  If the funds are paid back from within the 401(k), what happens is that you will be considered to have withdrawn the amount of the loan from the account, and the withdrawal will be subject to ordinary income tax and possibly a penalty if you are under age 59½ at the time you leave employment.

Contribution Limits

There are certain limits to the amount of contributions (income deferrals) that can be made into a 401(k) account.  For 2013, the annual limit for deferral of income is $17,500.  There is an additional “catch-up” contribution amount that folks over age 50 can make – up to $5,500.

There is also a maximum amount that can be contributed in total – including the employer match.  For 2013 this limit is $51,000, or $56,500 when the catch-up contribution is used.

All of these limits are based upon the employee’s salary, as well. If the employee’s salary is less than the annual maximum contribution limit, then the contributions are limited to 100% of the employee’s salary for the year.

Roth 401(k)

Briefly, there is another type of account that can be included in an employer’s 401(k) plan: the Roth 401(k), which is also known as a Designated Roth Account, or DRAC.  The DRAC allows the employee to divert income into the account on an after-tax basis – meaning that money contributed to the DRAC is taxed as if the employee received it in cash.  The funds in the DRAC account are subject to the same limitations of withdrawal (while employed) as the “regular” 401(k) account.  In return for the pre-payment of tax on these restricted funds, when the employee leaves employment he or she can access these funds tax-free once the employee reaches age 59½.

Wrap up

This article was not intended to cover every nuance of 401(k) plans; rather, it was intended to provide a brief overview of this important part of your retirement plan.  We’ll cover more specifics on the 401(k) plan in future articles.

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History of the 401(k)

Jan 9th, 2013
by jblankenship.
11 comments
President George W. Bush signs into law the Pension Protection Act of 2006

Back in 1978, the year of 3 popes, Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1978 which included a provision that became Internal Revenue Code section 401(k).

The 401(k) has roots going back several decades earlier, with many different rulings (Hicks v. US, Revenue Ruling 56-497, and Revenue Ruling 63-180, among others), providing the groundwork for the specialized tax treatment of salary deferrals that Section 401(k) enabled.

More groundwork for the 401(k) as we know it was laid with the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974, in that the Treasury Department was restricted from putting forth a particular set of regulations that would have reduced or eliminated the tax-deferral benefits of deferred compensation plans. After the Treasury Department withdrew the proposed regulations in 1978, the way was cleared to introduce the 401(k) plan with the Revenue Act.

This particular section of the Code enabled profit-sharing plans to adopt “cash or deferred arrangements”, or CODAs, funded via pre-tax salary deferral contributions. When the 401(k) code section became effective in January 1980, and the IRS proposed the regulations for Section 401(k) in late 1981, the idea came forth to replace existing bonus arrangements with the new tax-deferred alternative.  The real “kicker” that caused the 401(k) plan to garner interest by employers was the ability to save on taxes while still maintaining competitiveness with the earlier bonus plans – and the employer matching arrangement of 401(k) plans did just that.

Several large corporations very quickly began replacing after-tax thrift plans with the new 401(k) plan, and adding 401(k) options to existing profit-sharing and stock bonus plans.  The new 401(k)-type of plan provided the employee with deferred taxation on funds diverted into the plans, and provided the employers with the ability to make significant matching contributions on a tax-favored basis.

In 1984, the Tax Reform Act of ‘84 enacted rules for “non-discrimination” testing in the 401(k) plans – meaning that highly-compensated employees couldn’t receive benefit from the plans if non-highly-compensated employees weren’t participating in the plans to an allowable degree.

Then the 1986 Tax Reform Act further tightened the non-discrimination restrictions and set the maximum annual allowable amount of deferral of compensation by employees at $7,000.  Up to this point, there was only an annual limit on all contributions by both the employer and employee, which was set at $30,000 from 1982 through 2003.  These amounts have gradually increased to today’s levels, of $17,500 for regular deferral by employees and a total annual limit of $51,000.

The 20% mandatory withholding requirement for distributions from 401(k) plans was added with the 1992 Unemployment Compensation Amendments.  This requirement applies to distributions that are not rolled over into another retirement plan.

In 1996, the passage of the Small Business Job Protection Act provided an additional boost to participation in 401(k) plans with the release of limits on the contributions that could be made to a retirement plan by an employee that is also participating in a regular pension, or defined benefit, plan.

One more piece of legislation that had a great impact on 401(k) plans was the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA), which bumped up the annual maximum contribution by employers and employees (it had been frozen at $30,000 since 1987), as well as adding the “catch-up” contribution provision.  The catch-up contribution provision allows participants who are age 50 or older an additional amount to defer into 401(k) plans annually, not limited by the annual maximum contribution amount.  This was set at $3,000 initially and has been indexed by COLA to the 2013 limit of $5,500.

EGTRRA also introduced the Roth 401(k) feature, which allows participants to elect a designated separate account within the 401(k) plan that accepts salary deferrals on an after-tax basis, and then provides for a Roth-IRA-type of treatment for qualified distributions.

After EGTRRA, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 came along, which made permanent the provisions of EGTRRA (originally these were set to expire in 2010), as well as providing methods for employers to automatically enroll employees in the plans and choose default investments.  The purpose of these provisions was to bolster participation in 401(k) plans and facilitate the best used of these plans.

Most recently, the 2013 American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) provided a method for converting “regular” 401(k) account funds to Roth 401(k) accounts – previously, a participant in a 401(k) plan could only convert funds from a regular account to a Roth account if he or she was in a position to otherwise distributed funds from the account.  Generally this means that the employee/participant has left the job associated with the 401(k) or has reached a retirement age set by the plan administrator.  With the new rules provided by ATRA, these conversions could be undertaken by a currently-employed participant of any age.

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