Have a thrift savings plan with the government? Running behind on your taxes? Bad news, President Obama just signed a bill that specifically allows the IRS to levy (fancy legal talk for take away) your thrift savings plan. There really…
On October 17th, a district court affirmed a bankruptcy decision that said the mere act of signing the Merrill Lynch IRA account app caused the IRA to be fully distributed because the language in the application causes the IRA owner…
Way back in 2008, the IRS issued some guidelines to a strategy they called the Rollover as Business Startup (ROBS). Reading between the guidelines (sorry, couldn’t resist) it was apparent the service didn’t like the idea one bit. If you…
Are self directed IRAs about to be trampled due to the fight between the presidential candidates? Some Democrats in the house just wrote a letter about self directed IRA valuations to the IRS and DOL requesting an evaluation as to…
One of the cardinal rules of IRAs is that they have to be “administered” by a bank, trust company, or something called a non-bank custodian. Apparently in the wake of the Madoff scandel the IRS decided to crack down on…
There is a common misconception that you have to be over 59.5 before you can take a distribution from your retirement plan and not be hit with a 10% early withdrawal penalty. What most people don’t know is that in…
The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (OIEA) and the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) recently issued a notice warning investors about fraudulent investments in self directed individual retirement accounts. This is the dirty little secret of checkbook…
I’m of the opinion that there is going to be a lot of litigation in the coming years with self directed IRAs. Investors jumped onto the self directed band wagon and made all sorts of flakey investments, but my guess…
Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a broken record at this point. I can only discuss 401k Roth conversions. The reason is the payoff is simply too big to ignore, tax free wealth along with some of the strongest asset protection.…
For the last 2 years the big news trumpeted by the financial planning community was the ability to convert your traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. A concept I believe is going to cause nothing but trouble for people. Last…