Getting Your Financial Ducks In A Row Rotating Header Image

ira money

How to Easily Maximize Your IRA

Recently I had a chance to have some fun with some of my undergraduate students. Polling my entire class I asked them to make a list of wants (not needs) that they frequently spent money on. Answers varied from smartphones (and the respective bill), cable and satellite TV, dining out, coffee shops, beverages (you know which ones), and appearance (spending extra to dye hair, pedicures, etc.). Here’s a list of how each expense was broken down as told by the students. In other words, it was their numbers not mine.

Book Review: A Random Walk Down Wall Street

Right from the start this book will be an excellent read for both financial advisors as well as their clients. Dr. Malkiel provides academic insight on the reasons why passive management works and some great commentary on the use of index funds as part of someone’s overall portfolio. This was the second time I read this book and certainly not the last. It’s great reinforcement on why we invest our clients’ money the way we do and provides solid academic evidence that doing anything to the contrary is counterproductive, more expensive and simply playing a loser’s game. Some of the bigger takeaways from the book are Dr. Malkiel’s thoughts and research on the different part of the Efficient Market Hypothesis or EMH. The EMH consists of three parts – the strong form, the semi-strong form and the weak form. The EMH essential admits that markets are efficient – meaning that current […]

Which Account to Take your RMDs From

Image via Wikipedia When you’re subject to the Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) and you have more than one IRA account to take the distributions from, you have a choice to make.  Even though you have to calculate the RMD amount from all of your IRA accounts combined, the IRS provides that you could take the total of all your RMDs from a single account if you wish. With this provision in mind, you could take all of your RMDs from the smallest account, which would provide you the opportunity to eliminate one of the accounts in your list, thereby simplifying things.  By reducing the number of accounts that you have, you could simplify the calculation of RMDs, estate planning, and just general paperwork. However, it might not always work to your best interests to reduce the number of accounts that you have.  You may have multiple accounts in order to […]

One Way to Use IRA Funds to Invest in Your Business

As you know, it is against all the rules to use your IRA to invest in anything which benefits you or a related party.  This is one quick way to get your entire IRA disqualified, quite likely owing a big tax bill and penalties as well. However – and there’s always a however in life, right? – there is one possible way that you could use funds from an IRA to invest in your own business.  It’s a bit tricky, but it is a perfectly legal, in fact encouraged, method. Howzat?  The IRS encourages the use of IRA funds for your own business?  Not exactly.  There’s more to it than that.  The IRS encourages by preferential law the use of Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) funds to invest in your business.  An ESOP is a type of qualified retirement plan that is designed specifically to invest in the stock of […]

NonDeductible IRA Contributions: Good or Bad Idea?

Image by Sean MacEntee via Flickr If you find yourself in the position of having too high of an income to make a deductible contribution to your IRA for the year ($110,000 for joint filers in 2011, $66,000 for Single and Head of Household), you may be wondering if it’s a good idea to make a non-deductible contribution to your IRA. There are two opposing camps on this issue, and the deciding factor is how you’re intending to use the funds in the near term. It’s a Good Idea If you’re intending to convert your IRA to a Roth and your income is too high to just make the contribution directly to the Roth account, the non-deductible IRA may be the right choice for you.  This way you’re effectively working around the income limitations of the Roth contribution ($179,000 for joint filers in 2011 or $122,000 for single or head […]