One Of The Few Gifts From The IRS A Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD), available at age 70 1/2, is one of the best tax gifts that the IRS has given you. If you are age 72 or older, IRS rules require you to take required minimum distributions (RMDs) each year from your tax-deferred retirement accounts.…
Key Numbers as You Plan for 2024 Are you familiar with how our federal tax code originated? In 1909, progressives in Congress attached a provision for an income tax to a tariff bill. Hoping to kill the idea for good, conservatives proposed enacting such a tax as they believed 75% of states would never ratify a…
If you’re a big fan of St. Patrick’s Day, you will wake up on the 17th, daydreaming of what’s to come. You can smell delicious, corned beef, cabbage, and the faint richness of Guinness floating in the air. You can almost taste it. Everywhere you look, you’re seeing green. Shamrocks on clothing, grand banners, even…
It’s tax time! For many of you it’s a complicated few months if not more because of extensions. Many of you may have received all of the tax forms you need and your ready to file. Other’s will need to wait a bit. Some may also get revised 1099s and other tax forms…never fun!…
Who Will Pay? How many times have I asked you, “Do you believe taxes will be higher in the future?” For those who look out at Pikes Peak every day, picture a little snowball rolling down the mountain getting ever larger. If you’ve ever hiked the mountain, the snowball has past the Golden…
One of the charts I watch daily is the 10-year treasury yield. It’s now started creeping higher again since about the first of the month. Traditionally, growth stocks with lots of debt typically do not do well in a rising rate environment. The US Debt Clock shows that the interest paid on the record $30.7…
You may be tired of hearing me harp on taxes. Now some mainstream news sources are starting to chime in. This is a 4th of July article from Kiplinger. I am going to quote the very first sentence of the article. “Traditional IRAs are set up in a way that basically incentivizes you (and…
Many different factors drive the retirement decision and when to retire. To name a few I’ve seen in the last 2 years: Health or Spouses’ Health Age Job Issues Social Security Enough Money Layoffs Covid Marriage I have heard several stories of people running out of money or running short of money in retirement. Some…
Over the years, one of the most popular ways to save for retirement is to contribute to an Individual Retirement Account, or IRA. That’s because IRAs enable you to invest (and hopefully grow) your money for retirement in a way that also brings significant tax advantages. As you can imagine, much of my time as…
Imagine Rip Van Winkle woke up from a two-year nap and cornered you on the street. “What’s been happening?” he asks. “What did I miss?” After catching him up on the last two years – COVID, the presidential election, Russia invading Ukraine, etc. – he asks you: “By the way, how are the markets doing?” …