In order to delay Social Security, it requires a bridge of income while delaying, assuming that you have retired. There are many options for building this bridge, but many feel that they are giving something up in the process of delaying their Social Security benefits. Primarily they may see it as a trade-off of having to deplete their investment assets during the years that they delay. What if you didn't have to deplete the principle of your investments while you delay Social Security? … [Read more...]

If you're unfamiliar with The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), I suggest you read this article that I wrote about it. Most of the time, the WEP will affect individuals who have a pension from a local, state or federal entity. Recently I ran into a circumstance where the WEP impacted an individual who had both American and Canadian citizenship. Canada has a similar system to Social Security, the Canadian Pension Plan or CPP. It is very similar in many respects including the age for … [Read more...]

It's not uncommon for me to meet with prospective clients who have a large concentration of company stock in their retirement account. Even though they've heard of stories of devastation such as WorldCom and Enron, they feel that their company is different. And maybe it is. In this article I won't argue for diversifying a concentrated position of company stock, but I will bring up a provision of the tax law that may allow for a more favorable tax treatment on the sale of this company … [Read more...]

In our last article, we discussed the importance of having at least one IRA account that is protected from market losses.  This is because Required Minimum Distributions happen each year after age 72 and RMD's will require the liquidation of investments, which could be down in value.  Since the IRS allows the satisfaction of an RMD from any IRA account, and investor could satisfy the RMD or ALL accounts from the IRA account that did not lose money. In this article, we’ll dig into … [Read more...]

You may be familiar with one of the risks that you face in retirement called the "sequence of return risk". This is the risk that you will have an unfavorable series of negative returns (especially early in retirement) AND simultaneously distribute money to cover your regular expenses.  This causes these investment accounts to run out of money much sooner than anticipated. Fortunately, there are many ways to avoid the sequence of return risk if a retiree needs regular income from a … [Read more...]