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. 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 […]
qualified retirement plan
To Roll or Not to Roll?
At 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.
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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.
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Why You Should Participate in a 401(k)
We all know that we should save money for a rainy day, a message we’ve received since we were little ones, but this article covers some more reasons why you should participate in a 401(k) plan, if you have one available. It’s on you Back in the olden days when the earth was still cooling, employees could count on (or at least thought they could count on) a pension benefit from their employer upon retirement. This pension plan provided a safety net that allowed the employee to go into retirement with relatively little concern about whether there would be enough money to live on.
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Roth 401(k) In-Plan Conversions
As of the beginning of 2013, a new provision became available for participants in 401(k), 403(b) and 457 deferred compensation retirement plans: the Roth 401(k) In-Plan Conversion. This provision allows current employees participating in one of these Qualified Retirement Plans to convert funds from the traditional 401(k) (or other) account into the Designated Roth Account (DRAC) that is part of the plan. This is new and different because previously the only way to convert funds from the 401(k) plan to a Roth-like account was to have left employment by the sponsoring employer.
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Roth 401(k) Rules
If your employer has a 401(k) plan available for you to participate in, you may also have a Roth 401(k) option available as a part of the plan. (We’re referring to 401(k) plans by name here, but unless noted the rules we’re discussing also apply to other Qualified Retirement Plans (QRPs) such as 403(b) or 457 plans.) Roth 401(k) plans are not required when a 401(k) plan is offered, but many employers offer this option these days. The Roth 401(k) option, also known as a Designated Roth Account or DRAC, first became available with the passage of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001, with the first accounts available effective January 1, 2006. The Roth 401(k) was designed to provide similar features present in a Roth IRA to the employer-provided 401(k)-type plans. Similar to traditional 401(k) Certain features of the Roth 401(k) are similar to the traditional […]
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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 – Loans
Continuing our series of articles on the mechanics of 401(k) plans, today we’ll talk about loans from the account. As with all of these articles, we’ll refer generically to the plans as 401(k) plans, although they could be just about any Qualified Retirement Plans (QRPs), including 403(b), 457, and other plans. Unlike IRAs, 401(k) plans allow for the employee-participant to take a loan from the plan. There are restrictions on these loans, but they can be useful if you need funds for a short-term period and have no other sources. 401(k) Loans If you have a balance in your 401(k) account, often your plan administrator will have a provision allowing you to take a loan of some of the funds in the account. (Not all plans allow loans – this is an optional provision, not a requirement.) Sometimes the plan administrator will place restrictions on the use of the loan […]
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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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Are Target Date Funds Off Target?
It seems that an easy fix for saving for retirement for many folks is to simply choose a target date fund. Generally how target date funds work is a fund company will have a set of different funds for an investor to pick from depending on a best guess estimate of when the investor wants to retire. For example, an investor who’s 30 years old and wants to retire at age 65 may choose a 2045 fund or a 2050 fund. In this example since the investor is age 30 in the year 2014, 30 more years gets him to 2044. Most target date funds are dated in 5 year increments. If the investor was age 60 and wanting to retire at age 65, then he may choose a 2020 fund to correspond to his timeline. Generally, the goal of target date funds is to follow a glide path […]
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Mechanics of 401(k) Plans – Vesting
In this article in our series on the mechanics of 401(k) plans, we’ll be covering the concept of vesting. As with the other articles in the series, we’ll refer specifically to 401(k) plans throughout, but most of the provisions apply to all types of Qualified Retirement Plans (QRPs), which go by many names: 401(k), 403(b), 457, etc.. Vesting refers to the process by which the employer-contributed amounts in the 401(k) plan become the unencumbered property of the employee-participant in the plan. Vesting is based upon the tenure of the participant as an employee of the employer-sponsor of the plan. Generally, when an employee first begins employment there is a period of time when the employer wishes to protect itself from the circumstance of the new employee’s leaving employment within a relatively short period of time. Vesting is one way that the employer can protect itself from handing over employer-matching funds […]
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Have a HEART
Yes, I am organizing this writing around Valentine’s Day as a clever way to introduce a benefit military service members and their families can take advantage of as well as tie it into the title itself. The Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act or HEART Act provides service members and their families with certain pension and tax benefits while living or in the event of the service member’s death. According to http://myarmybenefits.us.army.mil/ these are some of the benefits that can be taken advantage of due to the HEART ACT: Accelerated vesting in the retirement plan (but not any imputed additional benefit accruals for the period of military service) Additional life insurance benefits Other survivor’s benefits depending on the benefits of the employer Employers also have the choice of treating the disabled or deceased service member as if they had returned to work the day before the disability or death occurred. […]
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November is “Add 1% More to Your Savings” Month
That’s right, we unofficially declared November to be “Add 1% More to Your Savings” month. So you can add that to the month-long observances like: No-shave November International Drum Month Sweet Potato Awareness Month and many more (see the list at Wikipedia) In November we encourage folks to increase their retirement savings rate by at least 1% more than the current rate. It’s a small step, but it will pay off for you in the long run. Below is the list of my fellow bloggers who have written articles showing ways that you can start to increase your savings rate, as well as showing what the benefits can be. Thanks to everyone who has participated so far – and watch for more articles in the weeks to come! The 1 Percent Solution by John Davis, @MentorCapitalMg Friday Financial Tidbit-What increasing your retirement contributions 1% can do for your retirement account by Jonathan White, […]
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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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NUA Allocation Twist – Not as Easy as it Looks
I’ve written much about the Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA) treatment for company stock in a 401(k) plan – this is the provision that allows you to pull out company stock as part of a full distribution from the plan and get favorable tax treatment for the gain on the stock. More about NUA can be found in this article about Net Unrealized Appreciation Treatment. One of the factors in that article speaks to a special way to allocate the basis (original cost) of the stock. Specifically, if handled correctly, the ordinary income tax on the NUA move can be minimized or eliminated, and the capital gains treatment maximized. However. (As you know, there’s always a however in life!) The problem with this move is that you absolutely must get the 401(k) administrator to go along with your plan – in order to make sure that the 1099R generated by your […]
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What You Can Do If Your 401(k) Has High Fees
Now that we’ve all been receiving 401(k) plan statements that include information about the fees associated with our accounts, what should you do with that information? Some 401(k) plans have fees that are upwards of 2% annually, and these fees can introduce a tremendous drag on your investment returns over a long period of time. There are two components to the overall cost of your 401(k) plan. The first, and the easiest to find, is the internal expense ratios of the investments in the plan. Recent information shows that, on average, these investment fees are something on the order of 1% to 1.4% or more. The second part of the costs is the part that has recently begun to be disclosed: the plan-level fees. These are the fees that the plan administrator has negotiated with the brokerage or third-party administrator to manage the plan. These fees can average from 1% […]
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Book Review: The 7Twelve Portfolio
The 7Twelve Portfolio is an excellent concept for financial planners and novice investors alike. The book is very well written and easy to comprehend as Dr. Israelsen keeps the concepts simple and analogies easy to follow. The crux of the book is regarding diversification and Dr. Israelsen uses the analogy for making salsa as a reference. For example, you don’t have salsa of you just have diced tomatoes and it really doesn’t improve if you simply add some onions and salt. It improves a little bit, but still isn’t salsa. The same is true for diversification. You’re not diversified if you own one stock or bond in your portfolio and have all of your holdings in that one asset. The benefits of diversification begin when you start adding additional ingredients to the mix. This starts to lower risk and help maximize return. This is a concept us nerdy planners call correlation. The […]
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The Airplane Analogy
Many parents face the decision during their working years to try to fund both retirement and college education. Some can adequately do both while others are forced to do the best they can with what money they can save. Sometimes parents can get caught up in wanting to save as much as they can for their children’s college education and forgo the need to save for or save more for retirement. When this situation presents itself, I have given my clients my airplane analogy. It goes something like this: Have you ever flown on an airplane before? If you have you know that once you’re scrunched in and belted and the plane makes its way from the gate the flight attendants break radio silence and start with their routine flight instructions. After you’re taught where the exit rows are and how to use your seat as a floatation device they […]
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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 […]
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Don’t Just Walk by That Dime on the Ground!
Have you ever been walking along the street and saw a dime on the ground? Did you just walk right by, or did you stop to pick it up? Heck, it’s only a dime, it’s not hardly worth the effort to bend over, right? But what if it was a dollar? Or a hundred dollars? You wouldn’t just walk by that, would you? What about $1,200? Unfortunately, many folks do this very thing with their 401(k) plan employer matching funds. Most employers that sponsor 401(k) plans provide a matching contribution when you defer money into the plan. Often this is expressed as a certain percentage of your own contribution, such as 50% of your first 6% of contributions to the plan. So if you make $40,000 a year and you contribute 6% to the 401(k) plan, that means you’ll be contributing $2,400 to the plan from your own funds, pre-tax. […]
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 
A Medicare Owner’s Manual, is updated with 2020 facts and figures. This manual is available on 
Social Security for the Suddenly Single can be found on Amazon at 
Sterling’s first book, Lose Weight Save Money, can be 
An IRA Owner’s Manual, 2nd Edition is available for purchase on Amazon. Click the link to choose the 
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”.