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I firmly believe most GenXer’s should make the Roth IRA the cornerstone of their future retirement plans.

In my opinion, over the next 10-15 years the Roth IRA and Roth 401(k) will quickly become the backbone for retirement planning in this country.

For Americans under the age of 45 you should put the wheels in motion to incorporate the Roth IRA into your plans ASAP; and for those over the age of 45, I strongly recommend taking a close look at how adding (or converting to) a Roth IRA may add a whole new dimension to your future plans.

(I’ll probably spend the next few days writing about the Roth IRA. While writing this piece, I experienced a surge of new ideas that inspired me to scribble down an abundance of Roth related post ideas that, undoubtedly, will beef up that section of my tag cloud. Happiness is…)

Continue Reading “8 things you need to know about a Roth IRA for 2008″

This week is going to be a light week when it comes to original planning related content.

I’ve transitioned out of mutual fund related posts and am preparing to enter into an area that I plan on spending quite a bit of time on… Down Home planning.

In my mind I know what I want to accomplish with this next phase of the blog, but figuring out exactly how to bring it to life, for my millions of readers (haha), is another animal all together.

Right now, I’m diligently researching many of the different mechanisms that will be involved in the ‘Down Home’ segment of this blog, and hope to present my ideas as clearly as possible.

I’m also in the process of building a lineup of friends that are going to be the subjects of the upcoming posts. They will remain anonymous, but are mostly the same people that gave me the answers to the straw poll I conducted before I started this weblog.

Continue Reading “Transitioning into ‘Down Home’ planning”

In 1998, the Roth IRA was introduced. Since then, many people have converted all or a portion of their existing Traditional IRA’s to Roth IRA’s, where distributions are eventually tax free. When converting from a regular IRA to a Roth IRA, the amount of the conversion is taxable in the year of the conversion.

This law is changing, starting in 2010, anyone who converts to a Roth will pay no taxes that year, taxes will be due in 2011 and 2012. If there ever was a time to convert, 2010 is it. But like everything else, you need to do your homework. Let’s take a look at the Roth IRA Conversion calculator…

Continue Reading “Roth IRA Conversion Calculator Explained”

Currently, if your AGI is less than $100,000 annually you are eligible to convert your regular IRA to a Roth IRA.

Unfortunately, for a married couple with dual incomes, making 105K, you can’t convert to a Roth IRA because you make too much money. You’re barely crossing the eligibility threshold and it just doesn’t seem fair. That’s an especially hard pill to swallow.

As I’ve written before that’s all changing in 2010 when the 100K AGI restriction is lifted. Gone. Goodbye. In the meantime, there are still a couple things you can do now to get ready…

Continue Reading “The Secret to Funding a Roth IRA, regardless of your income!”

I am a huge advocate of the Roth IRA… I believe if you can afford to convert an existing IRA to a Roth then you should have done it yesterday.

A bit of a refresher here, monies in both accounts grows tax deferred and when its time to take it out:

• the traditional IRA is fully taxed
• the Roth IRA monies are 100% TAX FREE

Some taxpayers are currently not eligible to convert a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA but those rules are changing in the very near future.

Lets take a closer look…

Continue Reading “Interested in the Equivalent of a Tax Free Loan in 2010?”