Individual retirement accounts (IRAs) can get complicated. How are they taxed? What are the fees? What are the contribution limits and withdrawal rules? What happens to your IRA once you pass? Joe and Al cover all these questions and more by explaining six common and very costly mistakes you don’t want to make with your IRA. Follow along and feel more confident in your financial future.
Important Points:
0:51 “Your individual retirement account is a very key component to whether you’re successful or not”
3:03 “There are things that you need to think about with your IRAs – we’re going to talk about six costly mistakes”
3:17 “Did you know that if one of the spouses worked then the other one can do a spousal IRA on the working spouse’s income?”
4:04 “It’s easy putting money in (to your IRA), but then once you start taking distributions that’s where you have to be careful because it’s infested with tax and if you pass away and the beneficiaries don’t know what to do then it could be fully taxable to them”
6:00 “The cool thing with the Roth 401(k) or the Roth provision in the 401(k) is that there is no AGI (adjusted gross income) limitations”
8:29 “You can’t do a $5500 Roth contribution AND a $5500 IRA contribution”
11:00 “I have a question – I retired and I have IRAs. Should I convert any of that over to a Roth? Part of it? All of it?”
12:37 “Let’s get into the next mistake, and that’s withdrawing your IRA funds too early. There’s penalties – with the federal government and state government”
15:08 “If you don’t take the money out (of the IRA at 70 ½), it’s a 50% tax penalty”
16:00 “You have to take money out of your IRA at age 70 ½ whether you want to or not, and your taxes depend on your tax bracket”
18:35 “In most cases people do not understand the complexity of naming a trust as the beneficiary on the retirement account”
23:05 “Pensions do not qualify as earned income”
