Category: Retirement Planning

Families trying to help a parent or spouse qualify for Medicaid coverage of nursing home or home care sometimes assume that giving away savings or property ahead of time is a simple way to meet the program’s strict asset limits. Federal rules are built specifically to catch that move, and getting the timing wrong can…

A single scheduling choice on a retirement account can quietly double a person’s taxable income for a year. Savers who reach the age at which required minimum distributions begin are allowed to delay that first withdrawal past year-end, but the delay comes with a catch that shows up on the following year’s tax return: two…

A workplace retirement account can suddenly hold a lot more room for people in a specific four-year age window. Employees who turn 60, 61, 62 or 63 during the calendar year are eligible for a bigger “catch-up” contribution on top of the regular 401(k) deferral limit than colleagues who use the standard age-50 catch-up, a…

A retirement-account rule that took years to fully take effect is now firmly in force, and it changes the math for a common family event: inheriting an IRA. Anyone who receives a traditional IRA or workplace retirement account from someone other than a spouse — a parent, a sibling, a friend who named them as…

Retirement savers spent years watching Congress push back the age at which the government forces withdrawals from tax-deferred accounts, and the schedule is not finished moving. Most owners of a traditional IRA, 401(k), or similar workplace plan must now begin required minimum distributions at age 73, a threshold raised twice in recent years and set…

Workers who spend a career under a traditional pension often reach retirement facing one of the most consequential forms they will ever sign: the payout election. A single-life annuity delivers the largest possible monthly check for as long as the retiree lives, but the payments stop the instant that retiree dies, even if a spouse…

Long-term care can consume a retirement budget faster than almost any other expense, and one federal benefit built specifically to help with that cost goes unused by a large share of the veterans and surviving spouses who could claim it. The Department of Veterans Affairs pays an increased pension called Aid and Attendance to wartime…

A will tells a court how to distribute an estate, but it does not skip the court itself. A living trust does something different: property placed inside it can pass directly to whoever the trust names, without a probate judge ever getting involved, which is part of why estate planners so often bring it up…

Most people know a life insurance policy or a 401(k) passes to whoever is named as beneficiary, no matter what a will says. Fewer realize an ordinary brokerage account holding stocks, bonds, and mutual funds can work the same way, with a simple form doing the job that might otherwise require a trip through the…

Married workers with a traditional pension often assume the monthly benefit they choose at retirement is theirs alone to decide. Federal law treats it differently. Before the first check is issued, a single choice built into pension law determines whether a husband or wife keeps receiving income after the retired worker dies. That choice is…