How Much Do You think You Need to Retire? What Age Will You/Spouse Retire? General Retirement Issues (Part 2)

A friend asked me about B Riley… I have never heard of them. Anybody using their tax and/or advising services? https://brileyfin.com/

It’s had some financial and regulatory problems recently. Unclear if the turnaround will be successful:

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Thanks. Also found this from this week

It looks like B Riley is kindof like Schwab, Fidelity, Raymond James etc… just smaller(?) And per the articles seems to be struggling.

I think the author is just trying to rationalize why he said what he did, as far as telling everyone to create a new separate Roth every time. He’s making this way too complicated. You just convert to a Roth the day after you put the money into a traditional IRA, you will have no earnings. If you do this every year, it just takes minutes. Put it into the same traditional IRA, convert the next day to a Roth. Sure, one can be suspicious about every last thing the government might do with taxation, but people have been suspicious that something is going to happen for years to the Roths, and it hasn’t. It’s not like your Roth is labeled a “backdoor Roth” on your statement. Nobody knows it’s backdoor except for you, and I sincerely doubt the IRS is going to track down how much money people made years ago to determine whether their Roth was backdoor or not, you aren’t even required to keep your tax returns that long.

Of course, the best deal is the mega backdoor Roth. We contributed the max to an after tax 401K with our company retirement accounts, and they immediately converted the money into a Roth 401K. It’s really nice to have those funds available now if we want to pull from that bucket, and we were able to put much more into there than the backdoor Roths. I don’t know why this guy is trying to make it sound so complicated. Any time you can get tax free investments, that’s a huge bonus.

I think the income limits are just for making your contributions tax deductible, and that anyone can contribute to a traditional IRA (as long as they don’t contribute more than they earn).

You are right. But someone might get confused.

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Regarding backdoor Roths… we (my husband) messed up our paperwork when doing our taxes via TurboTax, and failed to file the correct paperwork. Best case is we double paid tax on the amount we put in Roth, and I’m not sure how we “fix” it. I at least did the analysis to see which years were messed up, and there may have been more than one.

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I’m generally always in some state of confusion.:see_no_evil:

Can’t you just do a corrected tax return for those years? I’ve never done one, but I know it’s an option. What a pain.

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I actually need to do corrections for the same reason. There are threads on the Bogleheads forum that explain what to do … but there are varying opinions on exactly how. Which is why I have put it off.

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I believe you can, but there are time limits, and it’s a matter of “just getting it done.” So far that hasn’t happened. IMO dealing with the IRS is never easy/straightforward.

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Hoping you don’t actually have to deal with them personally, and can just send in the new tax return and wait. And wait. And wait…

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DH and I are trying to go through our accounts/financial picture and make sure we are both on the exact same page of knowing where everything is and how to access it. Basically getting hard copy of everything in one place (our safety deposit box).

I know there are planners/workbooks that offer a template and was wondering if anyone here has used one of those and if so, would they please recommend/share what they used?

In addition to accounts, it may be useful to have one place to go for passwords for all online accounts.

I have not tried to use a workbook or planner but my FA has software that links all my accounts (and tries to get values on a daily basis) so I can get a snapshot. It has taken a fair amount of time to set up and every once in a while, there are snafus.

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Fidelity’s website has a page they call “Full View” which lets you connect to other financial companies and manually add other assets like your real estate, and give you a consolidated view of all your assets.

If you have a Fidelity account this might help.

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We have this…and spouses and executors all know where it is!

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in many/most cases, Executors should not be using a dead person’s login credentials. There’s a good chance that the vendor will freeze teh account upon death. I’ve read all kinds of horror stories of family members taking months just to access and download all of the family pics that the deceased has stored in the cloud.

“In addition to giving your executor the actual login information to your accounts, it’s best also to give them the legal authority to access all of your digital assets. This can help stave off problems, or help your executor get access if you forgot to include an account in your inventory or forgot to update a password. You can grant the legal authority to manage your digital assets by explicitly stating in your will or living trust that your executor has this power. (See A Plan for Your Digital Assets.) In addition, if a particular account (such as your Facebook or Apple account) offers the option, you may want to utilize that particular account’s legacy contact tool.”

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I guess you can go back to Medicare from Medicare Advantage: See this WSJ article.

Not so easy for most.

Other than the first year of enrollment, switching from Medicare Advantage to Original Medicare without medical underwriting is only allowable in a handful of states. New York is one of those states.

fwiw: Medicare Supplement plans (aka Medigap) are licensed and regulated by the individual states.

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Also you can do this in Massachusetts during open enrollment (without underwriting).