Hopefully you already know this – if you have a loan from your 401(k) plan and you leave employment, either on your own or if you’re terminated, the loan is considered a distribution from your plan, and therefore taxable. It’s important to note – this only applies when you leave employment. Here’s an example: you [...]
Posts under ‘retirement plan’
Your Retirement Plan and Where You Live
We’ve covered a lot of ground with regard to how various tax laws impact your retirement plans: pensions, IRAs, 403(b) and 401(k) plans. But we’ve primarily focused on the US income tax laws (the IRS) affect your plans – and there are many nuances that you need to take into account with regard to state [...]
Paying Off Your Debts Using 401(k)
Being in debt can be extremely stressful. Thousands of Americans are resorting to debt settlement services to reduce their debt burden. If you think that your debts are a major hindrance to securing financing for major purchases, then you might consider reducing your debt load by borrowing against your 401k. More and more people are looking at their 401k as an option to get out of debt. The best advantage that you get by doing this is that 401k loans are not normally reported to credit bureaus. Read on to know how you can go about it.
A Terrible, Terrible Idea
My thanks for Natalie Choate for analyzing and pointing out the following information. Ms. Choate is truly a rock star in the world of IRA law, and much gratitude is owed to her by those of us in the financial community for her thorough analysis and commentary that she provides on such matters as this. [...]
Roth Conversion While Receiving 72t Payments
With all of the conversation going on with regard to Roth IRA Conversions, I thought it would be useful to address a special set of circumstances with regard to Conversions. As the title implies – we’re talking about the eligibility of an IRA for conversion if it is also subject to 72t, or a Series [...]
Should You Separate Your Rollovers From Your Contributory IRAs?
For the most part, it is often recommended to merge all of your IRA money together into a single account, to simplify record-keeping, allocation, and paperwork in general. However, there may be circumstances where it could make very good sense to separate your contributory IRAs from 401(k) plan rollovers – and it pertains to creditor’s [...]
Rolling Your IRA into a 401(k) – to Avoid RMD
In a recent article I pointed out a few additional reasons that might make you want to rollover your old 401(k) plan into an IRA – but there are also good reasons, in particular circumstances, that it might make sense to move your IRA funds into a 401(k) plan. One of those reasons might be [...]
More reasons to keep on rolling (to an IRA, that is)
We have discussed in the past that it is usually better to rollover an old 401(k) plan from a former employer to an IRA – more flexibility in investments, (usually) lower costs, more control, etc., are among the chief reasons to do so. However, in some cases your old 401(k) plan may have access to [...]
Post-Death Options for Directing a Retirement Plan to a Spouse
There are many cases where an IRA or other retirement plan owner has directed his or her account to someone other than his or her spouse – such as the estate, a trust, or other person(s), or – the owner may not have named a beneficiary at all. It could be that the original owner [...]
Tax Diversification for Investments
In past articles I have advocated the concept of spreading your tax-treatment out – so that you have money allocated in three major types of accounts: deferred tax (such as IRAs and 401(k) plans), tax-free (Roth IRAs), and capital gains taxable accounts. The reason behind this is that our fine government has this tendency to [...]
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