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Posts under ‘Roth conversion’

What Hath Congress Roth?

… or better yet, what will they Roth in the future? You’re right, terrible attempt at a pun.
In case you aren’t a retirement and financial planning geek like myself, there has been a proposal put forth by the current administration to require all employers to automatically enroll employees in a retirement plan.  I find it [...]

Roth Conversion – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

It is expected that in 2010 there will be more Roth IRA conversions than in any year in the past – maybe all years added together.  With all this converting and cavorting going on around IRAs and Roth IRAs, there are bound to be some problems arise.
One particular type of problem that could arise would [...]

Roth Conversion Timing Where After-Tax Contributions Are Involved

Yet another point that you need to keep in mind as you plan your Roth IRA conversion strategy is the timing of the activities.  This is especially true when you have after-tax contributions to your IRAs in addition to the growth on those contributions and the typical deductible contributions.  As you’ll see below, in some [...]

11 Ways You Can Fund Your Roth IRA

With due regards to Natalie Choate for putting together this list initially, listed below are the currently-legal methods for funding a Roth IRA account:

Contributions from compensation income. These are your regular annual contributions to the Roth IRA account.  You are allowed (in 2009 and 2010) to contribute up to the lesser of your actual earned [...]

Three Reasons You May Not Want to Convert to a Roth IRA

There’s been a lot (I mean a LOT!) of press surrounding the coming “opening of the floodgates” for Roth IRA conversions. You only have to glance through the headlines lately to see wild cries about the coming tsunami of Roth conversions beginning with 2010.  Personally I think that, while there will likely be more [...]

Options For a Spousal Inherited IRA

In these articles we’ve discussed inherited IRAs and how to handle them – but we have not covered all of the options for a Spousal Inherited IRA separately.  There are some differences, specifically more options available, so this is an important topic.  It should be noted that the majority of this article applies to inheriting [...]

Deducting IRA Losses

Did you know that you could deduct losses in your IRA accounts?  It’s not as simple as it sounds… but it is available and can be a sort of consolation prize for the poor individual that fits the circumstances.
Deducting Losses on a Traditional IRA
Of course, in order to deduct a loss, you have to have [...]

Structuring the Roth Conversion (a CYA* activity)

In a recent article, I briefly covered the topic of Recharacterization.  The example that I gave was pretty simplistic – you converted an amount, and decided later to recharacterize that amount back to an IRA.  What if it gets complicateder?
There are some steps you can take in your conversion that will help you to recharacterize [...]

Help Mr. Wizard – I didn’t wanna do a Roth Conversion!

“Drizzle, Drazzle, Drozzle, Drome – time for zis one to come home…”
So you’ve done a Roth Conversion and now you’re ready to do your taxes and (horrors!) you see the bill for the conversion!  Yikes!  Somehow a simple decimal point miscalculation has caused your nice little conversion to run up a HUGE tax bill… What [...]

5 Tactics for Required Minimum Distributions

So – you’ve reached that magic age, 70½, and now you’ve got to begin taking the dreaded Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from your various retirement accounts.  Listed below are a few tactics that you might want to employ as you go through this process.  Perhaps one or another will make the process a little less [...]

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