Getting Your Financial Ducks In A Row Rotating Header Image

Your Year-End Bonus

7027608495_daeb33feb7_m61As the end of the year approaches many employers will pay and many employees will receive year-end bonuses. While often the icing on the cake for a productive year employee should be aware of the tax consequences of their bonus.

Percent vs. Aggregate Method

When it comes to taxing the bonus an employer may choose the percentage method versus the aggregate method. Under the aggregate or wage holding bracket method the employer will use the withholding tables generally used for the employee normal paycheck. Then, the supplemental wages are aggregated with the employee’s normal pay and taxes are withheld accordingly.

Keep reading…

Making Every Month Count – Excerpt from A Social Security Owner’s Manual, 3rd Edition

You can listen to this article by using the podcast player below if you’re on the blog; if you’re reading this via RSS, there should be a “Play Now” link just below the title to access the audio.

monthDid you realize that even delaying a few months can have a significant impact on your Social Security benefit? This is the case for all Social Security benefits, including your own, a Spousal Benefit, or a Survivor Benefit. This applies whether you are taking the benefit before FRA or after, since your age is always calculated by the month. Increase or reduction factors are applied for each month of delay or early application, respectively.

Keep reading…

5 Tips To Avoid Overspending for the Holidays

wpid-Photo-Nov-22-2012-933-AM.jpgThe Holiday season is the time of year when we get into the spirit of giving and start our lists of who’s been naughty and nice. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday over, there are still plenty of days left to shop for friends and loved ones.

It can be tempting to get caught up in the spirit of giving so much that after the Holidays are over we’ve put ourselves in a financial bind. The following are five tips to consider this Holiday season to avoid overspending.

Keep reading…

College Costs Increase for 2014/2015

411417417_9dd1963fd4_nBackground

Every year, the College Board releases  its Trends in College Pricing and Trends in Student Aid reports that highlight current college costs and trends in financial aid. While costs can vary significantly depending on the region and college, the College Board publishes average cost figures, which are based on its survey of nearly 4,000 colleges across the country.

Following are cost highlights. Total cost figures include tuition and fees, room and board, and a sum for books, transportation, and personal expenses. Together, these expenditures are officially referred to as the “total cost of attendance.”

Keep reading…

Five Things You Need to Know About Retirement Plans

Listen to this post:

Most of you have one or more types of defined contribution retirement plans, such as a 401(k), 403(b), 457, IRA, SEP-IRA, or any of a number of other plans. Each type of plan has certain characteristics that are a little different from other plans, but most of them have the common characteristic of deductibility from current income and deferred taxation on growth.

 

5 cents

Photo credit: jb

1. Each dollar you defer is worth more than a dollar. It’s true. As you defer money into your retirement account, each dollar that you defer could be worth as much as $1.66. How, you might ask?

Since you are not taxed on the dollar that has been deferred into the retirement account, your “take home” pay only reduces by the amount that is left over after taxation. For example, if you’re in the 25% bracket, generally your income will only reduce by 75¢ for every dollar that you defer into your retirement plan. Therefore, the 75¢ that you’ve effectively “spent” is worth 33% more ($1.00) in your retirement account. For every dollar that you defer, you effectively have set aside $1.33 (for the 25% bracket).

If you happened to be in the upper-most 39.6% tax bracket, this works out to a 66% increase in the value of each dollar deferred. This doesn’t even take into account the potential for matching dollars from your employer! Keep reading…

An Exception to the RMD Rule

401kFor many folks, attaining age 70 ½ means the beginning of required minimum distributions (RMDs) from their 401k, 403b as well as traditional IRAs. There are however, some individuals that will continue to work because they want to or (unfortunately) have to and still want to save some of their income.

At age 70 ½ individuals can no longer make traditional IRA contributions. They are allowed to make contributions to a Roth IRA as long as they still have earned income. Earned income is generally W2 wages or self-employment income. It is not pension income, annuity income or RMD income.

Keep reading…

Year-End Charitable Giving Tips

charitable givingThe end of the year, especially around the holidays, is a time when many folks’ thoughts turn to charitable giving. Many opportunities present themselves, from the gentleman with the bell and the red kettle to our local food and coat drives. With this in mind, the IRS recently published their Special Edition Tax Tip 2014-13 which details six tips for charitable giving. The actual text of the Tip is listed below.

In addition to those tips, I’ll offer one more: if you are interested in utilizing the Qualified Charitable Distribution option from your IRA – presently this option has not been extended for tax year 2014. It’s possible that it might be extended yet this year, so check back here – we’ll keep you posted.

Keep reading…

An End of Year Financial Checklist

Image courtesy of nuchylee at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of nuchylee at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s hard to imagine but another year is almost over. Soon, 2014 will make way for 2015. As you prepare for the end of the year here are some good tips to keep in mind before January 1st.

Keep reading…

Fixing Social Security

social securityFor quite a while now we’ve been reading the reports from the Social Security Administration’s reviews of the status of the trust fund – where the prediction is that we’ll end up in the year 2033 with only enough money to pay 77¢ on the dollar of the promised benefits from Social Security. So far this revelation has not resulted in policymakers’ taking any actual steps to fix things, but sometime someone has to act. What can be done about fixing Social Security?

Keep reading…

Safety with an Emergency Fund

scissors - don't run with theseToday’s message is about Safety – but not things like “don’t run with scissors” or “wait a half hour after eating to go swimming”. What we’re referring to is the old concept of having an emergency fund. The primary thing that you should take away from this Safety discussion is Peace Of Mind.

An emergency fund is a vital component of your overall financial toolkit. You should have 3 to 6 months’ worth of expenses set aside in a liquid, stable account, such as a bank passbook savings account or a money market account. By “liquid” we mean that the funds are easily valued and withdrawn as necessary. By “stable”, we mean that the funds are not at risk due to market volatility, but also that there is some return in the form of interest to the account, however small.

Keep reading…

Wants and Needs

350px-kiaules_metai1_2007-01-112Sometimes when we need more money for a specific goal in the future such as retirement, college, a down payment on a home or an emergency fund we may feel that before these things can happen we need to make more money. We may feel that once our incomes are up to a certain level that we’ll be able to afford to save for those goals.

It may not be necessary to earn more in order to achieve the above goals. For many folks the solution is simply to prioritize between wants and needs. In other words, learning to distinguish between the wants and the needs in your life and then reallocating your money to fund retirement or college goals without having to ask for a raise or get a second job.

Keep reading…

A new way to fund your Roth IRA

Photo courtesy of lee Scott on unsplash.com

Photo courtesy of lee Scott on unsplash.com

As you plan and save for your retirement, it’s nice to have multiple types of taxation for your income sources. You may have a pension, Social Security, and a traditional IRA, all of which are taxed to some degree or another.  Adding to this list you might have a Roth IRA which generally will provide you with tax-free income in retirement. The problem with the Roth IRA is that you have some strict limits on the amounts that you can contribute, and typical Roth Conversion strategies are costly and complicated. With the recent pronouncement from the IRS in Notice 2014-54, there is a brand new, sanctioned method, to fund your Roth IRA.

Keep reading…

Financial Advice to Ignore, Even if it Comes From Your Mother!

mother and childrenListed below are a few time-honored maxims that we’ve all heard.  Perhaps we’ve even heard these from very trusted sources – like our Mothers.  As you’ll see, it’s not always good advice… In the interest of full disclosure, my own Mother did not give me any of this advice.  She tended to stay with the “wait an hour after eating to go swimming” variety of advice. One of my favorites was always given as I was leaving the house during my younger years: “Have fun. Behave!” I once pointed out to her the fallacy involved there but she didn’t see the humor. :-)  At any rate, those rules have served me well through the years – thanks, Mom!Keep reading…

Apples and Oranges

apples-and-orangesWhen considering investing with a particular financial planning firm or mutual fund consider looking at what benchmark they’re comparing their returns (disclosure: the funds we use are the benchmarks).

It’s pretty easy for a mutual fund company or adviser to tout their funds when they have beaten the benchmark over a certain period of time. For example, I had the opportunity to look at a client’s investment performance report that they had with another company. Written across the top in the adviser’s handwriting was the phrase, “Looks like we beat the benchmark.”

Keep reading…

You’ve still got time to avoid tax surprises

tax surpriseEven though there are only a few more weeks left in the calendar year, there are a few things that you can do to avoid some serious and consequential tax surprises come April next year.

The IRS recently published their Special Edition Tax Tip 2014-21 which details some of the steps you could take now to avoid these surprises.

Still Time to Act to Avoid Surprises at Tax-Time

Even though only a few months remain in 2014, you still have time to act so you aren’t surprised at tax-time next year. You should take steps to avoid owing more taxes or getting a larger refund than you expect. Here are some actions you can take to bring the taxes you pay in advance closer to what  you’ll owe when you file your tax return:

Keep reading…

To Roll or Not to Roll?

puppy-110193_640At some point in almost everyone’s lifetime they have gone through the process of changing jobs. Many times those jobs offered retirement plans such as 401(k)s 403(b)s, etc. Conventional wisdom would say that for most employees it may make sense to roll their employer sponsored plan into an IRA. Based on a request from a reader (thanks David!), I thought I would go over some of the issues to consider before rolling your employer sponsored plan to an IRA.

Keep reading…

Social Security Bend Points for 2015

bend pointAlong with the increases to the maximum wage base and the Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) announced by the Social Security Administration, the 2015 bend points used to calculate both the Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) for Social Security benefits were announced as well. In addition, the Family Maximum Benefit (FMax) bend points for 2015 were also announced.

Keep reading…

2015 Contribution Limits for Retirement Plans

The IRS recently published the new contribution limits for various retirement plans for 2015.  These limits are indexed to inflation, and as such sometimes they do not increase much year over year, and sometimes they don’t increase at all. This year we saw a few increases for some contribution amounts, and the income limits increased for most types of accounts after virtually no changes to the contribution amounts in 2014.

Keep reading…

Why You Should Consider Long Term Care Insurance

bright financial futureLong term care insurance is insurance that will pay in the event that an individual needs caregiving due to a number of afflictions or diseases. For example, if an individual is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia they made needs round the clock care. Generally, that care is provided by family members, with the majority of caregivers being daughters and spouses of caregiver.

The costs for needing long term care can be expensive. Depending on the area of the country, care can range from $50,000 to $80,000 per year to stay in a nursing home and may run in the range of $20 to $30 per hour for care outside of the home. Based on the numbers above, long term care expenses can quickly drain an individual’s retirement savings, or other assets that were planned for other uses.

Keep reading…