Providing retirement benefits was a key provision of the Social Security Act of 1935. Older Americans were especially financially vulnerable during the Great Depression, and Social Security was enacted partly to provide them with some continuing income after retirement. Today, although the scope of the program has been widened through

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

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 of money from an employer-sponsored retirement plan is generally referred to as a distribution. When you have money in a plan maintained by your current or former employer, you need to be aware of your distribution options for several reasons.   First, not every option may be available

When you change jobs, you need to decide what to do with the money in your 401(k) plan. Should you leave it where it is, or take it with you? Should you roll the money over into an IRA or into your new employer's retirement plan?   As you consider

What is it?   If you have a traditional IRA or participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan such as a 401(k) plan, you are generally required to complete a beneficiary designation form with the IRA custodian or plan administrator. As you may know, the beneficiary or beneficiaries you name (you