Note: for the purposes of IRA MAGI qualification, a person filing as Married Filing Separately, who did not live with his or her spouse during the tax year, is considered Single and will use the information on that page to determine eligibility. For a Traditional IRA (Filing Status Married Filing Jointly or Qualifying Widow(er)): If you are not covered by a retirement plan at your job and your spouse is not covered by a retirement plan, there is no MAGI limitation on your deductible contributions. If you are covered by a retirement plan at work, and your MAGI is $96,000 or less, there is also no limitation on your deductible contributions to a traditional IRA. If you are covered by a retirement plan at your job and your MAGI is more than $96,000 but less than $116,000, you are entitled to a partial deduction, reduced by 27.5% for every dollar […]
12/8/2010 update
SSA Revises Withdrawal Policy
On December 8, 2010, the Social Security Administration published a revision to their “withdrawal policy”. It’s important for you to know what has changed about this rule, especially if you have been counting on this in your planning for Social Security benefits. You can see the actual text of the SSA’s announcement 20 CFR Part 404 by clicking here. What’s Changing? Essentially SSA has decided that this rule, as it stood, represented a little too good of a deal, even though very few people ever took advantage of it. The rule, in brief, allowed an individual to begin taking retirement benefits at any age, and then at any point in the future the individual could pay back all of the benefits (without interest) and re-set his or her beginning date for receiving benefits. This strategy allowed the individual to receive benefits and invest them, then pay back the entire amount […]
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More Information About the Ultimate “Do-Over”
12/8/2010 update – the SSA revised the “Do Over” a bit. See the article “SSA Revises Withdrawal Policy” for details. If you don’t know about this tactic, you can read the article The Ultimate “Do Over” by clicking the link. Briefly, this tactic provides a way for you to file for your Social Security benefit and then later, after your benefit would have been potentially increased had you not filed, you can re-pay what you’ve received and start over at your new age. (Read the article at the link above, it’s explained much better there…) I didn’t tell the complete the story in that article though: there are a few items that you need to keep in mind with regard to this tactic. I’ll finish the story below. More Information Affordable Annuity. This tactic is called the Ultimate “Do Over” because it represents an extremely affordable annuity. By this I […]
Sterling Raskie, MSFS, CFP®, ChFC®
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And if you’ve come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed “advisor’s advisor”.