Category: 401K
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Traditional IRA Deductibility Ranges
If you thought that anyone could contribute to a Traditional IRA and then deduct that contribution on their taxes, you’d be wrong. If your employer has a retirement plan, like a 401(k), then your contribution is not fully deductible unless you fall underneath the income phase out ranges. In fact, here are the tables: Year…
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Retirement Saving After 401k and IRA
So, what are you supposed to do if you want to save an extra $20,000 a year towards your retirement and you’ve already maximized the contributions to your 401(k) and Roth? (Should you even contribute more if you’ve maxed out your 401k and IRA?) Well, if you read Walter Updegrave’s retirement columns recently, you would’ve…
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Borrowing Money To Fund Retirement
Have you considered borrowing some money to fund your retirement? I’m talking about borrowing some money, perhaps via a 0% balance transfer from a credit card, so that you can contribute more towards either a 401K or an IRA. You might be thinking that borrowing money in order to invest it is a risky proposition,…
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These are Things Six through Ten of the Ten Things Your 401(k) Provider Will Not Tell You courtesy of those brilliant folks over at Smart Money. 6. “…but you still aren’t diversified.” One interesting tidbit out of the article was the fact that the two most popular holdings in 401(k)s are stable-value funds and company…
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Ten Things Your 401K Provider Won’t Tell You, Part 1
I love Smart Money’s series, Ten Things Your [Insert Someone Here] Won’t Tell You, because it really opens your eyes to some of the shady practices of some operations you may otherwise think are being honest and above board. In the latest installment, Smart Money takes a look at 401K’s and the little things that…
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Review Your 401K Plan Fees
Some companies are large enough that they have their own institutional funds to offer their employees in the 401K, some companies aren’t and thus rely on the offerings of a large brokerage house like T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, or Fidelity. Either way, it’s crucial that you review the fund fees of the funds you’re invested…
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Freezing Pensions, Moving to 401K
More and more companies are doing what Goodyear recently announced that they would do, freeze pensions and move towards 401k’s as the standard retirement vehicle for most workers. Pensions, in general, are very expensive, as you may have surmised by the numbers Goodyear has put out for how much they would save, and employers are…
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Diversify Your Tax Profile
Taxes change, just like investments do, and in order to be prepared for whatever comes through the chambers of Congress, you have to diversify your tax profile. Simplistically, this just means that you need to have good mix of investments that are both tax-deferred and tax-free. For example, a Roth IRA is a tax-free investment…
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No Employer 401K Match? Still Contribute
If your employer offer a 401K match of some kind, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that you should probably take advantage of free money and sock away a little bit for retirement. However, what if your employer doesn’t offer any sort of match, should you still contribute or should you consider other…