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The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act, better known as the SECURE Act, was signed into law on Friday. Here are the significant changes. RMDs Will Start age Age 72, not 70 ½ - Starting Jan. 1, 2020, the new law pushes the age at which you need to start withdrawing money from your traditional IRA retirement accounts to age 72 from age 70 ½. If you turn 70 ½ in 2019, you will still need to take your RMD for 2019, no later than April 1 of 2020.

Certain financial decisions may help a woman grow and sustain her retirement assets across the decades to make up for time out of the workforce and the prevalent earnings gender gap. Obviously, one fundamental move would be to start saving and investing for retirement as early as possible – but other, sometimes underrecognized choices may also allow a woman to make more financial progress. For example, stay-at-home moms and caregivers who are joint filers can consi

It is easy think of retirement planning as a means to an end: a series of purposeful meetings leading up to a life transition. This transition is not the end of retirement planning. Think of this transition (and the steps preceding it) as the first phase. The second phase focuses on managing your spending, plus enhancing your income and savings.It may be useful to plan your spending with the “bucket” approach. In this strategy, you withdraw assets from three “buckets&

If retirement feels less like a possibility and more like an oncoming certainty, then it is time to respond. This is the time to firmly decide whether you want to “age in place” in your current home or move. This is when you work on sustaining the friendships you have made in your career, while also figuring out how to move into new social circles. Two important questions need answers: what do you want to do next, and how can you begin doing it?This is also the moment to crunch the n

Help kids learn to save and spend wisely.Too often, kids grow up with little interest in or understanding of financial matters. Just five states (Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia) require high school students to take a course in financial literacy. It may not surprise you that recently, when the FINRA Foundation offered a financial literacy test to consumers, only about a third of the test-takers passed.  The good news is, life offers plenty of opportunities to communicate t

You have spent decades saving for retirement, and you might have a decade or more of saving to go before you retire. At times, your resolve may be tested. The stock market may falter; household money pressures may mount; new near-term priorities may arise. What can you do to stay on point and stick with this financial commitment you have made to your future self? First, keep picturing the future you want. Envision the dreams and goals you want to carry out. If you want to retire t

Whenever you alter jobs, you have the right of moving your former employer 401k into your new employer 401(k) or into your own Individual Retirement Account (IRA). Which way is better? The majority, rolling over a 401(k) into an IRA is the most suitable option. This is often what I would advocate for these reasons: