What is a Stretch IRA?

What is a stretch IRA and what are the benefits associated with having this type of Individual Retirement Account? Joe and Al discuss why beneficiaries should understand stretch IRAs and how stretch IRAs compare to other IRAs. Also on today’s podcast: seven unwanted retirement surprises and three retirement loopholes that are about to be closed.

2:48 “It’s not about how much you’ve saved for retirement, it’s not even about your investments or the return you get on your investments; it’s really about what you do with that money and how everything works together”

6:05 “Sometimes just a weekend trip will cost you a thousand bucks or more, think about that when you’re retired and travelling more—that adds up pretty quickly”

7:34 “A paid-off mortgage can pay off personally for non-financial reasons”

8:44 “Do you want to protect your money, mitigate your risk and have a rock solid game plan to transform your savings into income in retirement?”

11:40 “What we’re looking at today is: what surprised retirement experts when they retired?”

12:00 “Medicare is a God send but it doesn’t cover all of your health care; just know that you’ll probably have a lot more additional expenses that Medicare will not pick up”

13:03 “Paying off a mortgage might make you sleep better at night; although financially speaking it might make sense to keep it, if you pay it off there are other benefits that you might want to consider”

14:39 “Today’s markets are a little bit skewed because there’s something that’s called tracking error”

17:32 “Sometimes Social Security is taxable, sometimes it’s not taxable, depending on your income level”

18:24 “If you’re near retirement, tax planning becomes more important than ever, and most folks don’t realize that they have a certain amount of control over their taxes in retirement, much more so than in their working years”

20:57 “Investment risk can lose its allure–that’s number four in this article”

22:55 “Even if you’re retired you can do a Roth conversion; you can take some of your IRA or 401(k) and convert it to a Roth. Yes, you will pay taxes on what you convert…pay the tax while the tax rate’s lower, then all that future growth and income principal is tax-free”

32:17 “When you look at tax-free income in retirement, it’s very powerful; if you do it right you can extend your overall living expenses”

33:55 “The loophole is this: as long as you have earned income, you’re allowed to do an IRA contribution; it doesn’t matter how much money you make—it’s just non-deductible”

34:10 “There’s a huge caveat here: if you have other IRAs, you have to add all your IRAs together as if they were in a single account”

36:23 “There is something called a stretch IRA, which allows the non-spouse beneficiary to stretch that tax liability out over their life expectancy, so everything doesn’t have to come to them all in one fell swoop—they can stretch that thing out over their life”

36:40 “It saves hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes and is a great wealth transfer tool”

37:00 “When they take the money out of the IRA to spend it, it’s fully taxable regardless of whether the state had to pay estate taxes or not; it’s fully taxable. Here’s the idea: instead of having to pay the tax on that all at one time, you can extend it over your lifetime; that’s what a stretch IRA is”

38:03 “Make sure your kids and beneficiaries understand this stretch IRA rule”