A self-employed ophthalmologist in her late 50s earning $500,000 a year from her private practice can legally shelter more than $150,000 of that income from federal taxes in a single year. The vehicle is…
Maximizing your Social Security benefits is one of the smartest moves you can make due to some special features these benefits offer. Specifically, your benefits have automatic inflation adjustments built into them. This means…
If you’ve been paying attention at the pump, you may be aware that gas prices are soaring these days thanks to the Iran conflict. But higher gas prices aren’t just a problem for…
A $750,000 portfolio generating $51,000 a year in dividends requires a blended yield of roughly 6.8% across your holdings. Whether that is achievable without taking on uncomfortable risk depends entirely on where you look…
Many parents and grandparents wanting to save for children’s education have heard of 529 college-savings plans. But did you know about the Coverdell education savings account (ESA)? And which is better? A recent caller…
“I have never met someone that became a millionaire when they owned cars with payments,” financial host Dave Ramsey recently told Bridger, a 21-year-old from Salt Lake City. Bridger and his 20-year-old wife earn…
A traditional 401(k) balance of $800,000 looks like a retirement success story, and at age 75, with Social Security coming in and the portfolio still intact, the numbers look manageable. In practice, the IRS…
A $100,000 annual income is the target millions of Americans aim for in retirement: enough to cover housing, healthcare, travel, and comfort without touching principal. The question is how much capital it takes to…
An $850,000 brokerage account sounds like a lot of money until you do the math on what it actually pays. To pull $55,000 a year out of that account in income, you need every…
A 30-year-old single mother carrying $74,000 in debt wants to know whether she should open a 529 college-savings account for her 4-year-old son. Dave Ramsey had a quick answer for the caller on his…
A recent Animal Spirits episode centered on a listener who had reached $1 million in investable assets and hated it. He called it “the single worst level of realistic wealth a normal person can…
Six years. That is how much time separates retirees from a Social Security system that, by its own projections, runs out of money. If you are 56 years old today, you will be 62…
In litigation-exposed professions, the creditor protection gap between a 401(k) and an IRA is one of the most consequential and least discussed features of the retirement system for high-balance savers. A $1.8 million 401(k)…
If there’s one thing that tends to upend retirement budgets, it’s inflation. You can estimate your monthly costs at the start of retirement and do a good job of not spending beyond what you’ve…
Inheriting a $500,000 traditional 401(k) triggers mandatory distributions under the SECURE Act‘s 10-year rule, and the tax consequences can accumulate across the full distribution window. The SECURE Act eliminated the stretch inherited 401(k) for…
