Secure Act 2.0 rewind, Age 72 b-day in 2023 receives a one year RMD deferral Whether conversions, having the up front tax hit, make sense … that’s a different matter and msf for one has effectively, I think, cast that into doubt. Still, conversions at lower market valuations seem a good idea to me.
Assuming no change in tax rates, you can come out ahead doing conversions if you can pay the taxes with money from a taxable account. If the tax money comes out of a tax-sheltered account, it's a wash.
At lower valuations, you come out even further ahead if paying taxes with taxable account money. Curiously, if you're paying taxes with tax sheltered money, it's a wash regardless of whether the market is up or down.
Briefly, that's because when the value of the investment you're converting is down, so is the value of the portion of the investment you're using to pay the taxes. Still, if you want to convert a given dollar amount, lower valuations let you convert a bigger percentage of your IRA at a single time.
Also, there are other benefits to Roth conversions beyond saving money. For example, heirs (who may be younger, working, and in higher tax brackets) won't have to deal with taxes on inherited IRAs. Especially now that they have to pull everything within 10 years. Also, when you pull from Roths instead of traditional IRAs you have a lower MAGI for things like IRMAA.
Secure Act 2.0 rewind, Age 72 b-day in 2023 receives a one year RMD deferral Down to 21.5% left in Traditional IRA (compared to 100% when I retired over 20
years ago). Most now in Roths. Some in TOD. When you pull necessary funds from a Roth w/o the immediate tax-hit it’s kind of reminiscent of a Yogi Berra expression:
”And they give ya real money.” The plan has been to pull mainly from the Traditional IRA annually for normal needs, saving the Roth $$ for the occasional larger needs. Whether conversions, having the up front tax hit, make sense … that’s a different matter and
@msf for one has effectively, I think, cast that into doubt. Still, conversions at lower market valuations seem a good idea to me.
Lots of websites will calculate your RMD - including, I believe, some from the govt. Doesn’t hurt to do some cross-checking among sites if the amount / time periods are critical for you.
Under recent market conditions have been tilting the Roth more in the direction of growth, while fixed-income holdings and a few small equity hedges are concentrated in the traditional account. Were the equity markets to bounce hard, would probably gradually increase income-oriented component of the Roths as a defensive measure.
Secure Act 2.0 rewind, Age 72 b-day in 2023 receives a one year RMD deferral @Graust To add to YBB's comment; this is from Lord Abbett Investment Company site:
529 plan to Roth IRA rollover – Effective in 2024, SECURE 2.0 authorizes 529 plan funds to be directly transferred to a Roth IRA tax and penalty free. Importantly, several conditions must be satisfied to be eligible: The Roth IRA receiving the funds needs to be in the name of the 529 plan beneficiary, the 529 plan must have been maintained for a minimum of 15 years, any contributions (plus earnings) to a 529 plan in the last five years are ineligible to be transferred, the annual transfer limit is the Roth IRA contribution for that year (i.e. $6,500 in 2023), and the lifetime rollover is limited to $35,000.
Perhaps to let the 'dust' settle on this legislation for the full language markup, if needed. No actions may be taken until 2024, so you have enough planning time. Further clarification will be able to be discovered at the IRS site.
T. Rowe Price Emerging Europe Fund to close to all investors The strategy had $400million+ in assets 10 years ago....now, $33million. It's been a tough time to focus on this part of the world. A tough 10 year run. Economics can't make sense to keep this running.
M-Mkt Funds Dropping Fee-Waivers/ER-Caps Probably stating the obvious here - but the waivers became necessary several years ago as short term rates sank to near 0 to keep money market fund yields from potentially going negative. I get the print version of Barron’s. Don’t recall seeing the article last weekend. Perhaps it will publish in the Feb. 6 issue?
T. Rowe Price Emerging Europe Fund to close to all investors Year 2000 inception. Down for the full period by -49.47%. For the previous 1-year, to 02 Feb, it's down -80.38%. Share price at inception was typical: $10.00. Share price tonight = $2.96. Rather dismal. I suppose it's been exactly the wrong geographical area to open a new dedicated fund. Think about Hungarian nonsense with Orban. Think about the putrid leadership in Belarus, Russia. Think about the invasion of Ukraine. Moldova might be a bright spot, but there's corruption there, so I've read. But at least the leadership supports Ukraine. The Russian-led insurgency in Transnistria is like a boil on the ass of Progress, not to mention the injustice of it all. (Integrity of national borders, and all that good stuff. But that means nothing to the Poot-doink.)
Montenegro: In 2015, the investigative journalists' network OCCRP named Montenegro's long-time President and Prime Minister Milo Đukanović "Person of the Year in Organized Crime." Dreadful.
The wrong fund at the wrong time. But 23 years ago, things looked different, surely.
For convenience, here's the ticker: TREMX.
This Tale of Humira Made Me Doubt My Healthcare Holdings @markYes should be "less" Thanks. Don't get me started on VA! They do the best they can, given the restrictions imposed by politics.
@BenWPHumira Story gets worse.
From Barrons
"ABBV ‘s anti-inflammatory drug Humira, one of the top-selling prescription drugs in history, is facing generic-style competition for the first time this week since its introduction 20
years ago.
Hopes that competition would bring immediate cost savings was tamped down on Tuesday, however, when Amgen (ticker: AMGN) announced a pricing scheme for its generic-style competitor that raises new questions about how effective so-called biosimilars will be reducing spending on high-price drugs.
The first, Amgen Amjevita, launches Tuesday. The company said early Tuesday it will sell Amjevita at two different list prices: One at 55% below Humira’s list price, and one at 5% below Humira’s list price. Humira’s list price is $6,922.62 for a four-week supply.
Both prices buy the same product. It’s up to the middlemen known as pharmacy-benefit managers, or PBMs, which are generally owned by big insurance companies, to decide whether to pay the higher or lower price. The high-price version appears to be intended to allow Amgen to pay higher rebates to the PBMs.
“This pricing strategy is likely designed to give PBMs and plans the flexibility to choose the version that suits their needs, either a low price/low rebate or high price/high rebate version depending on the plan’s individual strategy,” Cowen analyst Yaron Werber wrote in a note early Tuesday."
Seems like this really should be illegal.
Bed, Bath & Beyond Default They had some pretty decent stores in northern Michigan. Used to visit / shop in them occasionally. But, how does one compete with the likes of Amazon? (on small appliances especially.) And with inflation, it’s likely now that more low-income folks are turning to the Dollar stores.
Good article in the WSJ few days ago. Focused on the two gentlemen co-founders who are retired, 80+, and living in Florida. Apparently the franchise slipped from profit to loss very quickly - within 2 or 3 years. One wonders if “activist” investors may have been involved - just a guess.
Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum. I have filed K-1s on TurboTax for several years. It takes extra time and occasionally some fudging ( PTP income requires two separate K-1s for each company) but it can be done without hiring an accountant.
OF course the sums involved in my case are not huge ( under $5,000) so if I screwed up the IRS probably doesn't care.
The biggest problem is some of the companies do not issue K-1s until late, even after April 15th.
If you want to invest in energy MLPs a lot easier to use one of the ETFs or Mutual funds that do so, although it will charge the management fee
