Often an individual will say that they are too old to engage in a Roth IRA conversion. Their fear is that the tax-free benefits of owning a Roth IRA with a shortened life expectancy will be outweighed by the up-front income tax cost that comes with the Roth conversion. The reality is that an individual […]

Although the majority of private sector qualified retirement plans are now defined contribution (DC) type plans (i.e. 401(k), 403(b), profit sharing etc.), there are still some legacy defined benefit (DB) pension plans being maintained by employers. It has long been known that these pension plans can become a runaway train of costs and corporate liabilities […]

Over the past decade, we have become accustomed to a low interest rate environment which has favored certain estate planning techniques and wealth transfer strategies. A number of these strategies use interest rates which are published monthly by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); the Applicable Federal Rate (AFR) reflects the minimum interest rate that the […]

When Congress enacted the SECURE Act in 2019, one of the noteworthy changes related to the period over which beneficiaries were required to take IRA distributions. Before the SECURE Act, beneficiaries of inherited IRAs could “stretch” the required minimum distributions (RMDs) over their entire life expectancies. The stretch period could be decades for younger beneficiaries, […]

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