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
A brokerage’s cash “sweep” often pays far less than a money-market fund you choose yourself
Every brokerage account has to do something with the cash that lands in it between trades, from a dividend payment, a maturing bond, or a...
Keeping a year or two of spending in cash lets a retiree ride out a market drop without selling low
A retiree who keeps one to two years of living expenses in cash holds something a rising market cannot supply: the freedom to leave investments...
You can move leftover 529 college savings into a Roth IRA for the student, up to a lifetime cap
A change written into the SECURE 2.0 retirement law removed one of the biggest fears attached to college savings: that unspent money would be trapped...
A “net unrealized appreciation” move can cut the tax on company stock held in a 401(k)
Employer stock sitting inside a 401(k) carries a tax break that most rollovers quietly forfeit. Under the net unrealized appreciation rules, the growth on company...
Contributing to a traditional IRA can still cut this year’s tax bill for many workers
A traditional IRA remains one of the few moves that can lower a tax bill after the calendar year has already ended, and for 2026...
You can withdraw an excess or unwanted IRA contribution before the deadline to avoid a penalty
Putting too much into an IRA is a common mistake, and the tax code punishes it in an unusually persistent way: a 6 percent excise...
Naming a charity as your IRA beneficiary passes the account free of income tax
A traditional IRA is unusual among inherited assets in that it arrives with a tax bill attached. The money inside was never taxed on the...
A surviving spouse can claim a partner’s unused federal estate-tax exemption through portability
When one spouse dies, the survivor can inherit not only the couple’s property but also whatever slice of the deceased partner’s federal estate-tax exemption went...
Gifting an appreciated home to children can hand them a big capital-gains tax bill
A parent who signs the family home over to a child during life often believes it is the generous, tax-smart move. It can be the...
A living will and health proxy keep a family out of court if you can’t speak for yourself
A sudden stroke, a bad fall, or the slow arrival of dementia can leave an older person unable to say what care they want. When...
A brokerage account with a transfer-on-death registration skips probate for your investments
Stocks and mutual funds are among the assets most likely to get stuck in probate, and among the easiest to route around it. A brokerage...
Filing a beneficiary form on every account keeps money out of a slow, costly probate
A carefully drafted will can still send a family through months of probate court, but a one-page beneficiary form quietly sidesteps the whole process. Banks...
A Roth’s five-year clock must pass before earnings come out completely tax-free
The great promise of a Roth IRA is tax-free income in retirement, but that promise comes with a timing rule that catches savers off guard,...
Some states let Medicaid pay a family member to provide a senior’s home care
A growing number of state Medicaid programs will pay an adult child, and sometimes a spouse, for the hours they already spend caring for an...
A surviving spouse can face higher tax rates as a single filer, the \”widow’s penalty\”
The loss of a spouse carries a tax consequence that catches many survivors off guard, and it arrives after the grief, not during it. Once...
A surviving spouse can roll a late partner’s IRA into their own and delay withdrawals
Inheriting a retirement account triggers very different rules depending on who does the inheriting, and a surviving spouse holds the most valuable position in that...
A married couple can now shield up to $30 million from federal estate tax
The federal estate and gift tax exemption has risen to $15 million per person for 2026, which means a married couple can pass roughly $30...
A working spouse can fund a full IRA for a partner who has no earned income
A common assumption sidelines a whole category of retirement saving: that a person needs a paycheck to fund an individual retirement account. For married couples,...
Leave a job at 55 or later and you can tap that 401(k) without the early-withdrawal penalty
Turning 55 while still attached to a job opens a narrow but valuable escape from one of retirement saving’s harshest rules. Ordinarily, money pulled from...
After 65, health-savings-account money can be spent on anything with no penalty
A health savings account changes character the year its owner turns 65, and the shift is one of the more generous quirks in the federal...