By Sarah Brenner, JD
Director of Retirement Education

When you contribute to a traditional IRA you make a deal with Uncle Sam. You can get a tax deduction and tax deferral on any earnings in your IRA. However, eventually the government is going to want its share and will require funds to come out of these accounts. That is when you must start required minimum distributions (RMDs). You may not need the money and you may not want the tax hit. Here are some strategies that can help reduce your RMD.

Ian Berger, JD
IRA Analyst
Would you like to make charitable donations from your IRA but aren’t eligible for a qualified charitable distributions(QCD) because you’re under age 70 ½? Are you eligible for QCDs but want to donate more than the $100,000 annual limit? Are you interested in making charitable gifts from your 401(k) or other company savings plan? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you should be aware of a tax strategy just for 2021 that we call the “Mega QCD.”

By Andy Ives, CFP®, AIF®
IRA Analyst

By now, we all know the SECURE Act outlined a group of people that are still permitted to stretch inherited IRA payments over their own single life expectancy. This group is called “eligible designated beneficiaries” (EDBs). Yes, anyone who inherited an IRA prior to the SECURE Act is grandfathered and can continue to stretch required minimum distribution (RMD) payments. However, if you inherit IRA assets after the SECURE Act (i.e., if the original IRA owner died in 2020 or later), only EDBs can stretch.

Sarah Brenner, JD
Director of Retirement Education

The pandemic has upended the workplace and caused many people to rethink their career path. For some older workers this may mean considering early retirement. For those workers, access to retirement savings can be key, and avoiding early distribution penalties is critical. While most distributions taken from a retirement account before age 59 ½ are subject to an early distribution penalty, the tax code carves out an exception for distributions from certain employer plans taken by those who are age 55 or older in the year they separate from employment. Here are 5 things you must know about the age-55 rule.