Changing careers can be rewarding for many reasons, but career transitions don’t always go smoothly. Your career shift may take longer than expected, or you may find yourself temporarily out of work if you need to go back to school or can’t immediately find a job. Consider these four tips to help make the financial
An estate plan is a map that explains how you want your personal and financial affairs to be handled in the event of your incapacity or death. Due to its importance and because circumstances change over time, you should periodically review your estate plan and update it as needed. When should you review your estate
Answer: If you leave your company, you can often continue your life insurance coverage with the same insurance company. The group life insurance contract under which you are insured may have a conversion privilege available to all employees who are insured under the employer’s group plan. A conversion privilege will be subject to certain conditions
The combination of investments you choose for your retirement portfolio can be as important as your specific investments. The mix of various asset classes, such as stocks, bonds, and cash alternatives, account for most of the ups and downs of a portfolio’s returns. Deciding how much of each you should include is one of your
The Bipartisan Budget Act passed in early 2018 relaxed some of the rules governing hardship withdrawals from 401(k)s and similar plans. Not all plans offer hardship withdrawals, but the ones that do will be required to comply for plan years beginning in 2019. In order to take a hardship withdrawal from a 401(k) or similar
Answer: Possibly. In most cases, the IRS imposes a 10 percent penalty tax on the taxable portion of withdrawals made from traditional IRAs prior to reaching age 59½. This penalty can be a major drawback for IRA owners under age 59½ who need money and don’t have other assets to draw on. There are a
Often, tax-qualified retirement accounts such as IRAs make up a significant part of one’s estate. Naming beneficiaries of an IRA can be an important part of an estate plan. One option is designating a trust as the IRA beneficiary. Caution: This discussion applies to traditional IRAs, not to Roth IRAs. Special considerations apply to beneficiary
Tax-deferred annuities can be a valuable tool, particularly for retirement savings. However, they are not appropriate for everyone. Five questions to consider Think about each of the following questions. If you can answer yes to all of them, an annuity may be a good choice for you. Are you making the maximum allowable pretax contribution
Owning shares of stock or stock funds might increase the value of your portfolio in one of two fundamental ways: capital appreciation (i.e., price increases) and dividend payments. Of the two, capital appreciation carries the greatest potential for return, but it also carries the greatest potential for loss. And any gains or losses are only
If you earned a government pension from a job not subject to Social Security tax withholding (“noncovered employment”) and are also eligible for Social Security benefits through a job where Social Security taxes were withheld, two provisions might reduce your benefits: the windfall elimination provision (WEP) and the government pension offset (GPO). The WEP affects
