WE LOOK AT OUR traditional IRAs each year and decide how much we’ll convert to a Roth IRA. We’re worried our tax rate may increase down the road, either because of tax law changes or because of the extra taxable income once we start taking required minimum IRA distributions at age 72. To head off that threat or at least limit the damage, we’ve been shrinking our traditional IRAs by converting them to Roths,

RETIREMENT SAVINGS and decent health insurance are major goals for most Americans. Politicians attempt to help. Yet the resulting laws and regulations are confusing to the point of being counterproductive.

Can the average worker figure all this out? Nope. It’s too complex and unnecessarily so. Lucky Americans may get help from an employer, but many folks are on their own. Consider seven examples:

1. You can contribute up to $19,500 to a 401(k) in 2021 if you’re under age 50.

IF THERE’S ONE STORY that seems to have captured the investing public’s imagination this summer, it’s the revelation that venture capitalist Peter Thiel has managed to accumulate more than $5 billion in his Roth IRA—where it will be entirely tax-free to him.

In its reporting, ProPublica, the news outlet that carried the story, focused mostly on the tax aspects—the fact that Thiel was able to use his Roth IRA in such unusual ways. In my opinion,

TYPE THE WORDS “safe withdrawal rate” into Google and it’ll return more than a million results. I’m not surprised by this. People debate practically everything in personal finance, but the debate around this question is particularly intense.

For at least 25 years, the conventional wisdom has been that it’s safe for retirees to base portfolio withdrawals on the 4% rule. But not everyone agrees. Some feel that percentage should be higher, while others feel it ought to be lower.

LET ME TELL YOU about Alvan Bobrow. His tale—and specifically his lawsuit—are important for every investor to understand. That’s because the legal loophole he sought to exploit is now a pothole for everyone else.

The first thing to know about Bobrow: He’s a tax attorney and, back in 2008, he had a clever idea. In need of cash, he took a $65,000 distribution—the technical term for a withdrawal—from his IRA. Ordinarily, a distribution from an IRA (unless it’s a Roth IRA or includes nondeductible contributions) is treated entirely as taxable income.

CONGRESS IS BACK at it, aiming to change the tax laws again. Just since 2017, there’s been the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the SECURE Act and the CARES Act, each of which contained tax provisions, some very significant. As I type this, Congress and the White House are horse-trading on another round of changes.
Because new legislation is still being negotiated, I think it’s too soon to change your financial plan. But there’s one strategy that makes sense for a lot of people,

THE THREE-LEGGED stool is a metaphor for how the post-Second World War generation looked at retirement. The legs represented Social Security, an employer pension and personal savings. All three legs were viewed as necessary for a solid retirement plan.
Today, that notion seems quaint. Pension plans continue to be phased out. The number of employees covered by a defined benefit pension has been declining for decades, falling to 26% as of 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

MANY EYEBROWS WERE raised during a recent city budget meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. According to the Portsmouth Herald, the city manager told city councilors that Portsmouth’s mandated contribution to the state retirement system would balloon from $290,000 to a whopping $1.9 million per year. Councilors called the development, which would cause a sizable increase in the city’s 2022 budget, “ugly” and “a kick in the shins.” Had anyone been paying attention,

MY FIRST JOB AFTER college was as an officer in the U.S. Navy. I was an engineer on a nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Albuquerque. While I didn’t make the Navy a career, it left one indelible imprint on me: the need to understand how things work.
Before ever setting foot on the Albuquerque, I spent more than a year learning exactly how nuclear power propelled a submarine, everything from how to operate a valve—it isn’t as simple as you think—to how the reactor worked on a sub-atomic level.

ONE OF THE GREATEST business books I’ve ever read is Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In it, he postulates the idea that, while things that become damaged by stress are considered fragile and things that resist stress are considered resilient, “there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile,” things that become stronger due to stress. So, he coined the word “antifragile” and then wrote an entire book about the subject.

INSPIRED BY THE TV series The Queen’s Gambit, many people suddenly want to master the game of chess. But I’m more interested in mastering the practical world of retirement gambits—and that means matching wits with Congress and the IRS.
During my working career, I saved money in taxable brokerage accounts, IRAs and 401(k)s, but never focused on Roth accounts. At age 55, having left my last employer, I had two things that compelled me to begin—time and reduced income.

I’M A DINOSAUR. Not only do I prepare my own tax return with no help from an accountant or tax preparer, but also I do it by hand. Yep, that’s right—no TurboTax or other computer program.
I really can’t use the computer programs because I often attach an oddball form or two that they don’t offer. On top of that, I always add “annotations” to parts of my return. These additional explanatory notes may be helpful to the IRS.

LATE LAST YEAR, Congress voted to kill off the so-called stretch IRA, which had allowed those who inherited retirement accounts to draw them down slowly over their lifetime. Many folks were surprised by the stretch IRA’s demise, but they shouldn’t have been.
When a tax break or some other government provision benefits only a few folks, Congress often changes the law. Think back to 2015. That year, Congress eliminated the ability to “file and suspend” Social Security—another strategy that tended to be exploited only by a privileged few.