The financial news that actually matters
Prescription drug bills are among the sharpest expenses in later life, and yet a federal program built to blunt them goes unclaimed by a large number of the people it was designed to reach. Extra Help, the low-income subsidy attached to Medicare’s Part D drug coverage, can wipe out or sharply reduce the premiums, deductibles,…
Millions of older Americans watch the Medicare Part B premium come straight out of their Social Security check every month without realizing that a state-run program may cover that cost entirely. Medicare Savings Programs exist for exactly that purpose: to pick up the Part B premium, and sometimes far more, for people whose income and…
Inheriting a retirement account from a husband or wife is one of the few moments in tax law where a widow or widower gets a genuine advantage over every other kind of heir. A surviving spouse who is the sole beneficiary is not locked into the same ten-year drawdown that binds children and other relatives….
When a retirement account passes to an adult child, a sibling, or a friend, the tax rules that once let heirs draw the money down slowly over a lifetime are largely gone. For most people who inherit a traditional IRA today, the entire balance has to come out within ten years, and every dollar pulled…
Most tax breaks reward spending — on a mortgage, on medical bills, on business costs. One does the opposite: it hands lower- and middle-income workers a credit simply for setting money aside for retirement. Yet the federal government estimates that a large share of the people who qualify never claim it, often because they have…
Charitable giving and retirement withdrawals usually live in separate corners of a tax return. A provision in the tax code lets older savers merge the two — routing money directly from an individual retirement account to a charity in a way that both satisfies a mandatory withdrawal and keeps the amount off the taxable-income line….
Retirement accounts spend decades growing tax-deferred, but the government does not let that arrangement last forever. Once a saver reaches a set age, the IRS requires money to start coming out of most traditional retirement accounts every year — and the penalty for ignoring that requirement is one of the harshest in the tax code….
When a parent claims Social Security retirement benefits later in life, the paperwork usually stops at the retiree and, sometimes, a spouse. Yet a quieter provision can put a second or even third monthly payment into the same household: a still-dependent child of that retired worker may qualify for a check of their own. It…
A divorce rarely severs every financial thread between two people. One of the most durable of those threads runs through Social Security, where a person who was married for at least a decade can often collect a monthly benefit built on a former spouse’s earnings. A frequent fear stops eligible people from ever asking about…
Grief and a new relationship rarely arrive on a convenient schedule, but for a widow or widower counting on a late spouse’s Social Security, one birthday quietly changes everything. Remarry a day before turning 60 and the right to a survivor benefit can vanish for as long as that new marriage lasts. Wait until the…