There is a special exception to the retirement plan early withdrawal rules for a public safety employee, who may start withdrawals as early as age 50.
457
Everything But The Retirement Plan!
Conventional wisdom says that when you leave a job, whether you’ve been “downsized” or you’ve just decided to take the leap, you should always move your retirement plan to a self-directed IRA. (Note: when referring to retirement plans in this article, this could be a 401(k) plan, a 403(b), a 457, or any other qualified savings deferral-type plan). But there are a few instances when it makes sense to leave the money in the former employer’s plan. You have several options of what to do with the money in your former employer’s plan, such as leaving it, rolling it over into a new employer’s plan, rolling it over to an IRA, or just taking the cash. The last option is usually the worst. If you’re under age 55 you’ll automatically lose 10% via penalty from the IRS (unless you meet one of the exceptions, including first home purchase, healthcare costs, […]
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Investment Allocation in Your 401(k) Plan
When you participate in your employer-sponsored 401(k) plan (or any type of Qualified Retirement Plan, including 403(b), 457, etc.), the first step is to determine how much money you will defer into the plan. We discussed this previously in an article about contributions to your 401(k) plan. Once you’ve determined the amount you’ll contribute, the next step is to allocate your funds within the account. This starts with an overall plan for your investment allocation – which you should take time to plan in advance. For the purposes of our illustration here, we’ll say that you have a plan to split your account 75% to stocks and 25% to bonds. Within the stock allocation, you want to split this as 1/3 each to large cap stock, small cap stock, and international stock. In the bond category you want to split this to 80% domestic bonds and 20% international bonds. Now […]
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Mechanics of 401(k) Plans – Distribution
For the next in our series of articles regarding the mechanics of 401(k) plans, we’ll review distributions from the plan. As with our other articles in this series, we’re referring to all sorts of qualified retirement plans (QRPs) – including 401(k), 403(b), 457, and others – generically as 401(k) plans throughout. There are several types of distributions from 401(k) plans to consider. Distributions before retirement age and after retirement age are the two primary categories which we’ll review below. Another type of distribution is a loan – which will be covered in a subsequent article. But first, we need to define retirement age. Generally speaking, retirement age for your 401(k) plan is 59½, just the same as with an IRA. However, if you leave employment at or after age 55, the operative age is 55. If you have left employment before age 55, retirement age is 59½. This means that […]
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Roth 401(k) Conversions Explained
Earlier in 2013, with the passage of ATRA (American Taxpayer Relief Act) there was a provision to loosen the rules for 401(k) plan participants to convert monies in those “regular” 401(k) accounts to the Roth 401(k) component of the account. Prior to this, there were restrictions on the source of the funds that could be converted, among other restrictions. These looser restrictions apply to 401(k), 403(b) and 457 plans, as well as the federal government Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). Recently, the IRS announced that guidance was available to utilize the new conversion options. As long as the 401(k) plan is amended to allow the conversions, all vested sources of funds can be converted, even if the participant is not otherwise eligible to make a distribution from the account. This means that employee salary deferrals, employer matching funds, and non-elective payins to the 401(k) account can be converted to a Roth […]
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Retirement Plan Contribution Limits for 2014
The IRS recently published the new contribution limits for various retirement plans for 2014. 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 virtually no increases for most all contribution amounts, but as usual the income limits increased for most types of account. IRAs The annual contribution limit for IRAs (both traditional and Roth) remains at $5,500 for 2014. The “catch up” contribution amount, for folks age 50 or over, also remains at $1,000. The income limits for traditional (deductible) IRAs increased slightly from last year: for singles covered by a retirement plan, your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) must be less than $60,000 for a full deduction; phased deduction is allowed up to an AGI of $70,000. This is an increase of $1,000 over the limits for last year. For […]
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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”.