Retirement Planning
401(k), IRA, Roth accounts, pension plans, withdrawal strategies, required minimum distributions, and how much you need to retire.
Latest in Retirement Planning
Long-term-care insurance bought earlier in life can spare a family from spending down savings for a nursing home
Long-term-care insurance is one of the few tools that can keep a nursing-home stay from draining a household’s savings, but it works on a narrow...
Form 8888 splits a tax refund straight into an IRA, saving it automatically
The Internal Revenue Service lets a filer divide a single federal tax refund across as many as three separate accounts, and one of those destinations...
Consolidating scattered old retirement accounts can cut fees and simplify the required withdrawals later
A worker who changes jobs several times over a career can end up with a trail of forgotten retirement accounts — a 401(k) at each...
A pension holder can often take a lump sum, but the monthly annuity usually protects a surviving spouse better
When a traditional pension comes due, many plans present a choice that is easy to underestimate: a single large lump sum now, or a smaller...
Rolling an old 401(k) straight into an IRA avoids the automatic 20% tax withholding a check made out to you would trigger
When a worker leaves a job and decides to move an old 401(k), one seemingly small choice determines whether the Internal Revenue Service takes a...
Inherited IRAs generally must be emptied within 10 years now, and missing a yearly withdrawal can trigger a penalty
The rules for inheriting a tax-deferred retirement account tightened sharply after the SECURE Act of 2019, and 2025 was the year the strictest version fully...
Missing a required IRA withdrawal can bring an IRS penalty of up to 25% of the amount a retiree should have taken
A retiree who forgets to pull the required amount from a traditional retirement account faces one of the steepest penalties in the tax code, but...
A pour-over will moves any forgotten assets into your living trust at death
A living trust only governs the property actually placed inside it, and that single condition trips up a surprising number of otherwise careful estate plans....
A no-contest clause can discourage heirs from challenging a will
A contested will can drain an estate faster than any tax, turning a modest inheritance into years of legal fees and permanent rifts between siblings....
A digital-asset clause in a will lets heirs reach online accounts and crypto
A lifetime now lives partly on servers no relative can open. Email archives, cloud photo libraries, frequent-flyer balances, online brokerage logins, and cryptocurrency wallets all...
A spendthrift trust shields an heir’s inheritance from their creditors
An inheritance handed to an heir outright can be gone within a year, and not always because the heir spent it. A lump sum that...
Medicaid estate recovery can skip a home when a sibling with equity lived there
For families whose main asset is the house, the biggest fear after a parent enters a nursing home is not the monthly bill but what...
A gift-and-annuity “half-a-loaf” plan can shield part of savings from Medicaid’s look-back
Middle-income families facing a nursing-home bill of $8,000 or more a month often believe they must spend down nearly everything before Medicaid will help. A...
A personal-care agreement lets a family pay a relative for care without a Medicaid penalty
Families who care for an aging parent often assume they cannot pay a son or daughter for that help without sabotaging a future Medicaid application....
Donating appreciated stock skips the capital-gains tax and still earns a deduction
A retiree who wants to make a large gift and happens to own stock that has soared since it was bought holds a far more...
Bunching several years of donations into one can clear the standard deduction
Since the standard deduction roughly doubled several years ago, the great majority of taxpayers no longer itemize, and a quiet consequence is that their charitable...
A charitable remainder trust can pay you income for life and trim the tax bill
A retiree sitting on a stock position or a rental property that has quadrupled in value faces an awkward math problem. Selling frees up cash...
Naming a trust as your IRA beneficiary can speed up the tax unless it’s drafted right
Naming a trust to inherit an IRA sounds like tidy estate planning: a way to control how heirs receive the money, protect a spendthrift child,...
A health savings account can reimburse years of old medical bills if you kept the receipts
Most tax breaks come with a clock ticking against them. A health savings account is the rare exception. There is no deadline for pulling money...
A 1035 exchange can turn a life-insurance policy into long-term-care coverage tax-free
An old whole-life policy bought decades ago often ends up doing a job it was never meant to do. The children are grown, the mortgage...