Retirement Watch Weekly
Making Roth IRAs From Employer Plans
Many 401(k) account owners don’t realize they may be able to convert these accounts to Roth IRAs. The opportunity to convert traditional IRAs to roth iras now is well-known. We’ve been helping readers plan for it since 2008. The law now also allows the conversion of most employer-sponsored defined contribution plans to Roth IRAs. There […]
Avoiding Income Limits on Roth IRAs
Most of the IRA news for 2010 focused on converting a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. But there’s more to consider. For ex-ample: What about people who want to make annual IRA contributions? Is there a way for all of them to contribute to Roth IRAs? Converting a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA […]
Paying Taxes Now Instead of Later
Many financial strategies are changing, and one of the oldest tax planning strategies should be among them for many of you. Since the beginning of the income tax, taxpayers have been told to defer taxes whenever possible. Don’t pay a tax today when you can put it off to a future year. The advantages are […]
July 2010
July 26, 2010 12:30 p.m. A Week of Surprises Last week was filled with surprises in the economy, markets, and media. Here are some items that grabbed my interest during the week. For some time the stock market moved based on surprises in economic and financial data. Positive surprises and a rising stock market dominated […]
Estate Planning for Avoiding Probate, Or Not
With the estate tax eliminated for 2010 and changes on the back burner until fall, this is a good time to take a look at another key element of Estate Planning. One of your key estate planning issues is to what extent, if any, your estate should avoid Probate. This is very different from decisions […]
Exchanging Other Policies for Long Term Care Insurance
Consumers can exchange tax free old life insurance policies or annuities for long-term care insurance (LTCI) policies, under a 2006 law that became effective Jan. 1, 2010. Unfortunately, few people have been able to take advantage of the law. The idea behind the law is to give another option to people with cash value life […]
Planning to Avoid the Coming Medicare Surtax
The new Medicare surtax is a major source of funding for the recent health insurance reform. The tax has two elements. A 0.9% surtax is added on earned income over $200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. There’s also a 3.8% surtax on unearned income (investment income) of taxpayers with adjusted […]
June 2010
June 25, 2010 11:00 a.m. Always Interesting Investments There always are interesting investments, said Rob Arnott, manager of the PIMCO All Asset fund, a component of our hedge fund mutual fund portfolio. Arnott forecasts that inflation hedges will be a very interesting investment over the next year or two as a deflationary trend takes hold […]
