United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The financial blogosphere has responded with many articles recommending ways that all Americans can increase their savings rates this coming year. This has been a concerted effort by financially-oriented bloggers to help folks come up with ways to increase savings during this time of employer-benefit enrollment. We have several more bloggers who are going to put their posts up soon. See the original post for details on how to join the action: Calling All Bloggers! Listed below are the articles in our movement so far (newest are at the top): From Ken Weingarten: The 1% Challenge (Should you dare to accept) From Richard Feight: The 1% Challenge! From John Hunter: Save What You Can, Increase Savings as You Can Do So From Emily Guy Birken: Increase your savings rate by 1% From Jonathan White: Ways to increase your retirement contributions 1% in 2013 From Alan […]
retirement plans
Maximizing Your Pension Using Term Life Insurance
There are many, many ways that life insurance can be used. Sometimes it is to replace lost income, when a wage earner dies during his or her working years. Other times it may be to help pay taxes on a large estate upon the passing of the second spouse in a couple, so that your heirs can receive the full fruits of your labors and won’t have to worry about a tax haircut. Another use for life insurance is to help you to maximize a pension. I know, everyone believes that pensions have gone the way of the buggy-whip. That may be the case for many folks, but I still find a lot of people retiring these days who have a traditional pension. For those of you who are familiar with pensions, you’ve probably seen the payout options that are typically available: lump sum, single life annuity, joint and 100% […]
The 403(b) and 457(b): A One-Two Punch for Retirement
Many non-profits, public schools, universities, state governments have access to either a 403(b) or a 457(b) retirement plan. Both the 403(b) and the 457(b) are retirement plans that these institutions can offer employees in addition to or in lieu of a defined-benefit pension. For ease of simplicity, think of these plans as a 401(k), but for non-profits. We won’t get into the minutia of exactly how they’re different here. Like their 401(k) counterpart, the 403(b) and the 457(b) allow their owners to defer from their salaries up to $17,000 annually, on a pre-tax, tax-deferred basis. For those aged 50 and over, the IRS allows an additional $5,500 age-based catch-up contribution. These numbers are for 2012, they are indexed annually for inflation. There is a select group of people that may have access to both the 403(b) and the 457(b). For these chosen few, there is an opportunity to save even […]
What types of accounts can I rollover into?
OMG IRA (Photo credit: girlonaglide) When you have money in several accounts and you’d like to have that money consolidated in one place, the question comes up – Which type of account can be tax-free rolled over into which other type of accounts? Thankfully, the IRS has provided a simple matrix to help with this question. At this link you’ll find the matrix, sourced from IRS Publication 590. In terms of explanation, here are a few rules to remember: You can generally rollover one account of any variety (IRA, Roth IRA, 401(k), and so on) into another account of the exact same type. You can rollover a Traditional IRA into just about any other tax-deferral plan, including 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), as well as a SEP IRA. The same goes for each of the accounts in reverse as well as between all of these types of accounts. In general, employer plans […]
Sterling Raskie, MSFS, CFP®, ChFC®
The latest in our Owner’s Manual series, A 401(k) Owner’s Manual, was published in January 2020 and is available on 
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Jim’s book – A Social Security Owner’s Manual, is now available on Amazon. Click this link for the 
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”.