These days it's not uncommon for parents to postpone starting a family until both spouses are settled in their marriage and careers, often well into their 30s and 40s. Though this financial security can be an advantage, it can also present a dilemma--the need to save for college and retirement
If you withdraw cash or other assets from an employer-sponsored retirement plan ("employer plan") in an "eligible rollover distribution," (defined below) you can defer paying tax on the distribution by rolling all or part of it over to another employer plan or to a traditional IRA. You don't include the
What is the employee perspective on employer-sponsored retirement plans? Qualified employer-sponsored retirement plans can provide a number of tax and nontax benefits to employees. The employee perspective on these plans should certainly consider the obvious tax deferral and retirement savings benefits. Additionally, however, employees should consider various strategies to
You may have a very idealistic vision of retirement--doing all of the things that you never seem to have time to do now. But how do you pursue that vision? Social Security may be around when you retire, but the benefit that you get from Uncle Sam may not provide
If you participate in a traditional pension plan (known as a defined benefit plan) with your employer, you may receive monthly benefits from the plan after you retire. These benefits are generally based on your age at retirement, as well as your years of service and your average earnings with
IRAs and employer-sponsored retirement plans (e.g., 401(k) and profit-sharing plans) play a central role in retirement planning. After all, the tax benefits are hard to beat. With traditional IRAs and most employer-sponsored retirement plans, pretax money is contributed and grows tax deferred. It's not until you take funds out of
You know how important it is to plan for your retirement, but where do you begin? One of your first steps should be to estimate how much income you'll need to fund your retirement. That's not as easy as it sounds, because retirement planning is not an exact science. Your
A withdrawal from an IRA is referred to as a distribution. Distributions can come in the form of several payment patterns, from a one-time (lump-sum) payment to a series of distributions over a number of years. Depending on how old you are at the time of the distribution, the payment
A withdrawal from an IRA is generally referred to as a distribution. Ideally, you would have complete control over the timing of distributions from your traditional IRAs. Then you could leave your funds in your traditional IRAs for as long as you wished, and withdraw the funds only if you
A withdrawal from an IRA is generally referred to as a distribution. If you receive a distribution from your traditional IRA before you reach the age of 59½, the federal government considers this a premature distribution. Like all distributions from traditional IRAs, premature distributions are generally taxable. You will pay