If you have a 529 college savings plan with leftover money, the IRS now lets you move up to $35,000 of it into a Roth IRA without taxes or the usual 10% penalty on…
If you own a traditional IRA, 401(k), 403(b), or any other pre-tax retirement account, the IRS has been patient with you for decades. That patience ends the year you turn 73. That’s when required…
A 65-year-old retiree with $400,000 set aside is considering an annuity that pays roughly $2,600 a month, guaranteed for life. That comes to about $31,200 a year, arriving like clockwork until death. No market…
Fidelity’s retirement benchmark calls for roughly 8x salary saved by age 60. So a couple earning around $100,000 a year should ideally have at least $850,000 saved by the time they’re 59 years old.…
Constance retired last year at 66 with a portfolio most planners would call enviable. She has $900,000 in a traditional IRA, $200,000 in a Roth, $200,000 in a taxable brokerage, and gets roughly $30,000…
$4 million sounds like a lot of money. But stretched over a long retirement, the number results in a fairly modest annual income. Imagine a married couple, both 70, sitting on $4 million in…
A retiree turns 73 and takes his first required minimum distribution (RMD) from a long-untouched traditional IRA. Two years later he opens a letter from Social Security explaining his Medicare premiums are jumping by…
A retired public school teacher, age 71, lives on a $48,000 state pension and pulls roughly $36,000 a year from a $1.1 million 403(b). That puts her ordinary income near $84,000 before Social Security…
Among the most common surprises of retirement are required minimum distributions (RMDs) and the tax consequences that come with them. Under SECURE 2.0, RMDs begin at age 73 for people born between 1951 and…
A 66-year-old retired mechanical engineer sits on $1.6 million in total assets, with $1.1 million still parked in a former employer’s 401(k) he never rolled over. He has not touched it because nothing felt…
Picture a 62-year-old retired firefighter living comfortably on a $78,000 public-safety pension. He has $410,000 in a 457(b) and about $400,000 in other savings. The truck needs replacing and the kitchen needs a remodel,…
A 68-year-old federal retiree sits down with his account statements and has a startling revelation. His Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) holds $1.2 million, his FERS or CSRS annuity arrives like clockwork, and on paper…
A couple in their mid-60s sold a rental house two years ago, paid the capital gains and depreciation recapture taxes they expected, and assumed the chapter was closed. Then their Medicare premium notice arrived.…
A 55-year-old caller called into Suze Orman’s Women & Money podcast episode “Caution, Caution, Caution!” published June 11, 2026, with a question that paralyzes a lot of late-starting savers. Her employer matches both her…
When you have spent your working life saving and investing toward a retirement number, actually pulling the plug can feel surprisingly difficult. That is the predicament facing one Reddit user in the fatFIRE community,…
