The financial news that actually matters
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…
For decades, teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public employees who also qualified for Social Security ran into a frustrating surprise at retirement: their earned benefit, or the survivor benefit from a spouse, arrived far smaller than expected — sometimes wiped out altogether. Two obscure rules were the reason. A law that took effect at…
A retiree who takes Social Security early and keeps a job can be in for a jolt: the monthly check shrinks, sometimes to nothing, once earnings climb past a certain point. The reaction is often anger, followed by a decision to quit working. Both are usually mistakes. The reduction is real, but it is not…
A retiree who already gets a monthly Social Security deposit may assume the size of that check is settled for good. It is not. Between full retirement age and age 70, the government lets beneficiaries hit pause on their own payments — and every month spent on hold quietly ratchets the eventual benefit higher. It…
Plenty of people sign up for Social Security the day they become eligible, then watch their finances settle into a stronger shape and wish they had held off. What many of them never learn is that the decision is not always final. Federal rules give retirees a limited chance to erase an early claim, hand…