Managing a High-Income Roth IRA Conversion

There is a lot of hoopla surrounding the ability to convert pre-tax IRA (or 401k) dollars into tax-free Roth IRA dollars. Much of this hoopla is deserved and much is not. As with most anything, the devil is in the details. How this strategy may apply to you could be vastly different when compared to someone else.

The article from Money Magazine linked to below does a good job of discussing some background information on the Roth conversion and considerations for determining whether or not to convert; and if so how much. If this strategy seems to be something for you to investigate, I'd recommend obtaining professional help from a good CFP or CPA. This is one area that can easily trip you up as effectively implementing a conversion strategy can get quite complex.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/25/pf/expert/roth_iras.moneymag/index.htm

To Your Prosperity ~ Kevin Kroskey

Diversification: Disciplinarian of Disciplinarians

Disciplined diversification works when you do and even when you don't want it to. Diversification in effect forces you to sell the thing that has been doing so well in your portfolio and to buy the thing that hasn't. While this makes rational sense, it is emotionally difficult to execute. Think back to the tail end of 2008--were you selling bonds and cash to buy stocks? Most likely you weren't unless your advisor or some sort of automatic trigger did it for you. Carl Richards of www.behaviorgap.com provided a good reminder of how diversification works in a recent NY Times blog post. The diversification he discusses here is more so related to equity asset-class diversification but also touches on the three basic building blocks--equities, bonds, and cash. He doesn't discuss alternative asset classes -- an asset class that doesn't fit neatly into the three basic categories -- being used to further diversification, but that's a detailed topic for another day.

The Value of Double-Checking & Monitoring Your Retirement Strategy

Motivational speaker Denis Waitley once remarked, “You must stick to your conviction, but be ready to abandon your assumptions.” That statement certainly applies to retirement planning. Your effort must not waver, yet you must also examine it from time to time. 1 Perhaps you may realize that you under-estimated your health insurance costs and will need more retirement income than previously assumed. Or perhaps, with today's low interest rates you are not getting the level of investment returns you counted on. With those factors and others in mind, here are some signs that you may need to double-check your retirement strategy. Your portfolio lacks significant diversification. Many baby boomers are approaching retirement with portfolios heavily weighted in U.S. equities. As many of them will have long retirements and a sustained need for growth investing, you could argue that this is entirely appropriate. Yet, U.S. equities by some measures may be over-valued by

65-80 Year Olds … A New and Exciting Demography

Should today’s 70-year-old American be considered “old?” How do you define that term these days? Statistically, your average 70-year-old has just a 2% chance of dying within a year. The estimated upper limits of average life expectancy is now 97, and a rapidly growing number of 70-year-olds will live past age 100. Perhaps more importantly, today’s 70-year-olds are in much better shape than their grandparents were at the same age. In most developed countries, healthy life expectancy from age 50 is growing faster than life expectancy itself, suggesting that the period of diminished vigor and ill health towards the end of life is being compressed. A recent series of articles in the Economist magazine suggest that we need a new term for people age 65 to 80, who are generally healthy and hearty, capable of knowledge-based work on an equal footing with 25-year-olds, and who are increasingly being shunted out of the workforce as if they were invalids or, well, “old.” Indeed, the a

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