Articles Posted During 03/2010


It's All In Your Hands

Tuesday 03/02/2010 - 2:35:16 pm
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A Post-Divorce Action Plan

Provided by Jacob Warren

You have just gone through one of the most challenging and difficult periods that a woman can experience in her life – a divorce. While many things may still be in up in the air, one aspect of your life that you should make sure you’re in control is your finances.

Financial planning for divorced women is not that much different than financial planning for married couples. Several basic elements are the same. However, the differences offer both good news and bad news. The good news: you can make plans and decisions based solely on your needs and goals. There won’t be miscommunication or conflicting ideas. The bad news: it’s all in your hands. Any mistakes will be your own and a poor decision can’t be salvaged by the income or assets of a partner.

The following post-divorce action plan offers a few things worth considering:

One way to counter the bad news is to find a trusted professional to seek advice from.

After a divorce, friends are often split between spouses. Financial representatives can be the same way. If you lost yours in the divorce or never had one to begin with, it’s a good time to consider finding a professional who can help you make sound financial decisions for your new life.

To find one, start simply. Ask friends or acquaintances who it was that helped them when they went through a divorce. The attorney who handled your divorce may also be a good source for a referral. It’s important to have someone help you who has previously assisted or - best of all - who specializes in helping divorced women.

Selecting the right financial professional for you is a critical step. After all, this person will be helping you with the important financial decisions you now have to face.

Long-term care insurance may become even more important post-divorce.

Long-term care policies are designed to cover the costs of care if you are unable to care for yourself because of age or if you become ill or disabled. Long-term care is especially important for women because they typically pay more for it than men do. The reason is simple: women typically live longer than men and usually require longer care during those additional years.1

A woman’s retirement is usually more expensive than a man’s.

The reason that women usually need long-term care insurance more than men is the same reason that retirement income planning for women may be more important. Women live – on average - 5 to 10 years longer than men. Eighty-five percent of people over 100 are women.2 This means a woman’s retirement savings must, on average, be stretched out over a larger number of years.

While, in general, retirement planning for a single person is easier in many ways than for a couple, remember … you can no longer rely on a spouse's financial resources if a mistake is made. It’s important to review your social security estimates, any pensions you have and your retirement assets. You can then compare that to the kind of lifestyle you would like to have during retirement.

Because retirement may be more expensive, you may want to make an employer-sponsored retirement plan a larger deciding factor in any job search. Also, you may decide that you must retire at a later date than you had originally planned.

Update your beneficiaries and consider using a trust to help manage your assets. People often forget to update the beneficiaries of their life insurance and retirement accounts after a divorce. If not changed, your ex-husband may stand to inherit a large portion of your assets. Also, the estate laws give certain breaks to married couples that are not available to a single person. Establishing the proper type of legal trust may be a way to pass along more of your assets to your heirs, rather than to the IRS.

Finally, after you have moved on from your divorce there may come a time when you consider remarriage. It’s important that you understand the financial effects this may have. If you were married longer than 10 years you may be collecting or entitled to 50% of your ex-husband’s social security benefit. If you remarry you will no longer have that right. While you will become entitled to your new husband’s benefit, you must know if your new husband’s benefit will be lower or higher, and how that will affect your retirement.

Remarriage can also lead to blended families, blended assets and blended income. Your new husband may have his own family from a previous relationship. A financial professional can help the two of you prepare for this blending that satisfies the financial needs of each of you, as well as your new family.

While it’s all in your hands, partnering with a financial professional can help you move on to the next phase of your life with a more solid plan for your financial future.


Jacob Warren
Warren Wealth Management
111 West Port Plaza Drive, Ste 300, Saint Louis, MO 63146
(866) 463- 0752 ext. 52337 toll free, (314) 819-0464










---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Securities and Investment Advisory Services offered through Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, and Registered Investment Advisor. Warren Wealth Management and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc. are unaffiliated entities.


Content provided by Peter Montoya, Inc. These are the views of Peter Montoya, Inc., not the named representative or Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., and should not be considered investment advice. Neither the representative or Woodbury Financial offer tax or legal advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, the publisher makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. The publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If expert assistance is needed, the reader is advised to work with a competent professional. Consult your representative for further information.

1. http://www.wife.org/long-term-health-care.htm (2008)
2. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1827162,00.html (August 6, 2008)




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Rules Change For In-Service 401(k) Rollovers

Tuesday 03/02/2010 - 11:52:10 am
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401(k)-to-Roth rollovers are now possible before age 59½.

provided by Jacob Warren

A new possibility. Sometimes employees want to pull money out of a 401(k) before they retire. It isn’t always because of an emergency. Some workers want to make an in-service non-hardship withdrawal just to roll their 401(k) assets into an IRA. Why? They see lower account fees and greater investment choices ahead.

As a result of the Tax Increase Prevention Reconciliation Act (TIPRA), tax laws now permit in-service non-hardship withdrawals from 401(k), 403(b) and 457 plans to traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs before age 59½. Of course, the employee must be eligible to take a distribution from the plan, and the funds have to be eligible for a direct IRA rollover.1

This option may be very interesting to highly compensated employees who want the tax benefits of a Roth IRA. The income limits that prevented them from having a Roth IRA have been repealed, and they may have sizable 401(k) account balances.

Does the plan allow the withdrawal? Good question. If a company’s 401(k) plan has been customized, it may allow an in-service withdrawal for an IRA rollover. If the plan is pretty boilerplate, it may not.

The five-year/two-year rule also has to be satisfied. IRS Revenue Ruling 68-24 says that for an in-service withdrawal from a qualified retirement plan to take place, an employee has to have been a plan participant for five years or the funds have to have been in the plan for two years.2

401(k) plan administrators may need to amend their documents. Does the Summary Plan Description (SPD) on your company’s 401(k) plan allow non-hardship withdrawals? If it doesn’t, it may need to be customized to do so. This year, plan administrators nationwide are fielding employee questions about rollovers to Roth IRAs.

401(k) plan participants need to make sure the plan permits this. An employee should request a copy of the SPD. If you ask and no one seems to know where it is, then call the toll-free number on your monthly 401(k) statement and ask a live person if in-service, non-hardship withdrawal distributions are an option. In some 401(k)s, an in-service non-hardship withdrawal will prevent you from further participation; be sure to check on that.

If this is permissible and you want to make the move, you better make an IRA rollover with the assets withdrawn. If you don’t, that distribution out of your qualified retirement plan will be slapped with a 20% federal withholding tax and federal and state income taxes. Oh yes, you will also incur the 10% early withdrawal penalty if you are younger than age 59½. Additionally, if you have taken a loan from your 401(k), any in-service withdrawal might cause it to be characterized as a taxable distribution in the eyes of the IRS.3

Obviously, this IRA rollover possibility is not a big hit with the national and regional retirement plan providers, who would like to see you keep participating in their 401(k) programs rather than partly or fully bail out. But many employees would like a broader and more diverse range of investment options - and some would like the chance to direct their money into vehicles designed to produce future income streams.

Don’t forget to talk to the professionals. Retirement plan administrators and participants should talk to the financial consultant that has helped them with their 401(k) program before making a move. This article is simply an overview, and there will be different details to attend to with each employee. So be sure to touch base with the financial professional you trust.

Jacob Warren
Warren Wealth Management
111 West Port Plaza Drive, Ste 300, Saint Louis, MO 63146
(866) 463- 0752 ext. 52337 toll free, (314) 819-0464










---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Securities and Investment Advisory Services offered through Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, and Registered Investment Advisor. Warren Wealth Management and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc. are unaffiliated entities.



These are the views of Peter Montoya Inc., not the named Representative nor Broker/Dealer, and should not be construed as investment advice. Neither the named Representative nor Broker/Dealer gives tax or legal advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. The publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional services. If other expert assistance is needed, the reader is advised to engage the services of a competent professional. Please consult your Financial Advisor for further information.


Citations.
1 articles.sun-sentinel.com/2009-08-16/business/0908140293_1_roth-ira-roth-conversions-simple-ira [8/16/09]
2 smbhr.benefitnews.com/news/rolling-the-dice-with-a-roth-ira-rollover-2682826-1.html [1/22/10]
3 macpa.org/Content/22372.aspx [2/1/10]








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The Jobs Bill

Tuesday 03/02/2010 - 11:47:34 am
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How effectively could it address America’s unemployment rate?

provided by Jacob Warren

How about a tax break for companies that hire? A new jobs bill introduced by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) proposes major tax incentives for hiring businesses. If the bill becomes law, will these incentives make a dent in the unemployment rate? Or will they matter little? Not everyone is optimistic.

On February 24, the $15 billion job creation measure passed 70-28 in the Senate and headed for the House of Representatives.1 Just what is in this Senate bill?

The big perk: the “Hire Now” tax cut. If the bill becomes law, a business that hires someone who has worked less than 40 hours in the previous 60 days could skip paying its share of the new hire’s Social Security tax for the rest of 2010. That’s 6.25% of the employee’s salary. Companies could realize a payroll tax savings of up to $6,622 per new hire. (In case you are wondering, the federal government would reimburse the SSA for the lost taxes.) 2,3,4

If the new employee lasted 52 weeks on the job, the business would get a $1,000 tax credit on its 2011 federal return.3

The other perks. The Section 179 deduction limit for small business capital purchases was raised to $250,000 for 2009, and this bill would keep the limit at $250,000 for the 2010 tax year. The “Build America” bond program would be extended and expanded – that’s the program created to help state and local governments raise funds for infrastructure projects. The current federal subsidy for state highway spending would also be extended.1,2

The fine print. Any private-sector employer, any non-profit organization and any public-sector college or university would qualify for the “Hire Now” tax break. While a business that owes no tax could not get the $1,000 new-hire tax credit for 2011, it would be allowed to carry that credit forward to the future. There would be no limit on the amount of new employees a business could hire en route to claiming the credit.8

Is this really going to make a difference? Well, Sen. Reid believes that the bill could create and save as many as 1 million jobs. Analysts feel that may be stretching it. Economic Policy Institute economist Heidi Shierholz thinks the measure could result in “tens of thousands of jobs, but it is absolutely nowhere near big enough” to reduce the unemployment rate.3

Under the bill, a “new” hire does not have to be an additional employee. It can also be a worker replacing someone who quit or was fired.3 So service sector businesses with high turnover might get some major tax breaks. There might be a lot of hiring among such companies, but not a lot of net job creation.

Is another bill just ahead? According to The Atlantic, Sen. Reid plans to introduce a second jobs bill with much greater scope. This proposed (and almost certainly more expensive) legislation would extend jobless benefits and COBRA for millions, as well as numerous tax credits and programs scheduled to sunset. State Medicaid funding would be extended and Medicare physician payments would be updated through this bill as well. While The Atlantic says it has copies of the bill, Sen. Reid's office has not yet confirmed its contents. The Senator has mentioned rolling out multiple bills in the next few weeks to address the country’s unemployment problem.5

Jacob Warren
Warren Wealth Management
111 West Port Plaza Drive, Ste 300, Saint Louis, MO 63146
(866) 463- 0752 ext. 52337 toll free, (314) 819-0464










---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Securities and Investment Advisory Services offered through Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, and Registered Investment Advisor. Warren Wealth Management and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc. are unaffiliated entities.



Content provided by Peter Montoya, Inc. These are the views of Peter Montoya, Inc., not the named representative or Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., and should not be considered investment advice. Neither the representative or Woodbury Financial offer tax or legal advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, the publisher makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. The publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If expert assistance is needed, the reader is advised to work with a competent professional. Consult your representative for further information.


Citations.
1 marketwatch.com/story/senate-sends-15-billion-jobs-bill-to-house-2010-02-24 [2/24/10]
4 boston.com/business/personalfinance/managingyourmoney/archives/2010/02/tax_incentives.html [2/24/10]
2 sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/24/BU3H1C6M8V.DTL [2/24/10]
4 online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704240004575085410014175900.html [2/24/10]
5 politics.theatlantic.com/2010/02/the_next_jobs_bill.php [10/25/10]



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