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As a recent retiree who is using my cash reserves to cross my two-year “bridge” to my SS claiming date, I need to decide from which of my tax-free accounts I should withdraw to supplement our living expenses as I move into 2025. I will have used up my taxable account funds by the end of 2024.
Given our household’s low taxable income during this period I have been doing strategic (fill up the tax bracket,
I’m wondering if any other HD readers have run into this policy at TRowe Price?
Here’s what happened:
I am trying to get my year end portfolio in alignment. I am trying to generate cash to fund my taxable withdrawals from two inherited IRAs for the next two years.
On 1/29 I sold a balanced fund in an account in mother’s name and transferred the proceeds into a money market fund in the same account.
Today I tried to do the same trade in my father’s account and a T Rowe supervisor said I could not do that due to their frequent trading policy as the first sale was >
IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE familiar with what happens with Social Security benefits when someone dies. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a long, painstaking battle to get the payment to which your loved one was entitled. I found this out the hard way.
My father-in-law Bernard died in September 2015. My wife was his executor and the agent under his power of attorney (POA). But I’d earlier served as POA and executor for my mother,
I MAY NOT BE THE best source of retirement advice. After all, I’ve called myself semi-retired for a decade and yet, faced with a grim medical diagnosis, I continue to work far too hard. Moreover, even if I opt to fully retire—which is doubtful—cancer will likely ensure my retirement will be all too brief.
On the other hand, I do run a website devoted to retirement issues, and that means I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the topic.
I make no recommendations, no suggestions, no nothing, but ask what people conclude for themselves. Does the following make any sense under any scenario?
I used the SSA Quick Calculator and the SSA life expectancy table
Worker with Social Security average earnings of $75,000
Starting worker only benefits at age 70: $2578 per month
Starting worker only benefits at age 66: $1923 per month
Monthly additional benefit starting at age 70: $665
Accumulated benefits not claimed from age 66 to 70: $91,824
Estimated value of age 66 monthly benefit if invested monthly to age 70 at 7% per year: $108,751.03
Estimated monthly income from accumulated assets using 4% rule: $362.50
Life expectancy at age 70: Male 13.69 years.
I TURN AGE 62 IN January—which means I could claim Social Security retirement benefits and perhaps collect at least a few monthly checks before I succumb to cancer.
But is that the smartest strategy? One of my top priorities is ensuring Elaine is financially comfortable after I’m gone, so I want to make sure she gets as much from Social Security as possible.
We got married in late May, a few days after I was told I had lung cancer that had metastasized to my brain and elsewhere.
The year was 1988 and I was sitting across the table from my employer and his attorney, I was not a happy camper when they proposed to freeze the defined benefit (DB) pension. Instead, they would divert their contribution into a new 401k plan. I had been a pension trustee representing the union’s interest and had some awareness of some funding issues looming. Most employers are desperate to freeze those DB plans in order to escape the financial liability that can plague their bottom line.
IS IT WORTH OWNING international stocks? There’s far from universal agreement. The traditional argument for investing outside the U.S. is straightforward: diversification—since domestic and international stocks don’t move in lockstep, and sometimes diverge significantly.
At the same time, however, international stocks have lagged behind their U.S. counterparts for so many years that it’s been trying the patience of even the most tenacious investors. Domestic stocks have outpaced international stocks in eight of the past 10 years.
I read Adam Grossman’s article Riding the Rails with great interest. He gave a well balanced perspective on retirement income strategies, but I came away thinking it’s complicated and scary no matter which approach is used – the point is these strategies are beyond the ability of many people and perhaps more so as we age.
There must be a better, that is, simpler way although I admit I don’t know what it is. Does anyone want to live in retirement knowing that to sustain their income at some point they may have to cut back on spending,
A RECENTLY RELEASED book titled How to Retire is a goldmine for those in or near retirement. For the book, Christine Benz—Morningstar’s director of personal finance and retirement planning—conducted interviews with 20 experts, covering every aspect of retirement.
The result is a valuable field guide for those tackling life after work. Below are seven insights I found particularly useful.
1. Social connections. When we think about retirement planning, most of us tend to think first about the numbers.
It’s real, it’s global, it can’t be stopped and it can be good or bad.
It is inflation.
I had someone tell me recently that U.S. annual inflation has been 10% for the last several years. That is not true of course although it may feel like it to some people.
My guaranteed income is a pension and Social Security. There is no COLA on my pension. Since I retired in 2010, the buying power on the great majority of my income has eroded by 43%.
I’m reading frequently these days about Roth conversions and Required Minimum Distribution tax bombs. Since I couldn’t know my own future tax rates and situation in advance, I have attempted throughout my working years to balance tax-deferred and tax-exempt. I find myself close to retirement with the following breakdown:
45% tax-deferred (Traditional IRA, 401k, etc)
12% taxable (brokerage, savings, etc)
43% tax-exempt (Roth IRA, Roth 401k, HSA)
I haven’t done any kind of analysis to see if Roth conversions will be advantageous to me at some point,
So we’re thinking about buying a rental home, either in our college town or the town 10 miles north of us. I’ve written here before that we were briefly landlords in the late 90s when we moved to a larger home and rented out our starter home. But we felt we didn’t have the bandwidth to be landlords, so we sold the place after a year. That was a major financial mistake.
Why are we considering this now?
I am looking to get on to Medicare early next year and while reading up on this topic, I see this line, “All plans with the same letter have the same coverage, but prices can vary based on the insurance company” repeated often regarding the Medigap policies.
For example, when I look up Plan G for my state (SC), I see that there are “47 plans” and the premiums range from a low of $90 all the way up to (gulp) $493.
ANY BABY BOOMER WHO grew up around New York City is probably familiar with the name Robert Moses. He was the city planner who wielded enormous power over the development of New York from the 1920s to the 1960s.
Having grown up on Long Island, I saw his work firsthand in two main highways, the Long Island Expressway and the Northern State Parkway. They were designed to appear park-like, with arched bridges, wide grass run-offs and trees alongside the entire route.
