Understanding Fixed Annuities

In its most basic definition, an annuity is the contract that is created between a consumer and a life insurance company when the individual pays one premium that will be disbursed to the consumer over a fixed period of time. A fixed annuity is similar to a bank CD in its mode of operation, and its rates are often competitive with those of such CDs. However, it should be noted that fixed annuities often do not guarantee a specific rate of return over the entire life of the contract. By contrast,...

Annuities Explained

Annuities are contracts between individual buyers and insurance companies or mutual fund companies. The concept is straightforward and easily understood. The annuity buyer pays the company a sum of money and the company agrees to pay it back often at a later time. This can provide a significant benefit for the purchaser by allowing him to defer income from his peak earning years to a later date when he is retired and earning less. It also can reduce the buyer's tax burden and make his reti...

There are plenty of calculators out there so I won’t bother with that, but the question to how much you need to save for retirement needs to be in your thought process. Saving for retirement is difficult when it matters most. Many people reading this are in there 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. The earlier you start to save the more you benefit from compounding interest. If you start saving around five thousand dollars a year and put it into an index fund returning about 8% in your early twenties, you wi...

Taking an IRA Distribution

The rules for taking an IRA distribution from an individually owned IRA depend upon the type of account. There are two types of individually owned IRAs – traditional and Roth. The treatment of traditional and Roth IRAs differs significantly. For both types of accounts, distribution is governed by the age of the participant as well as the reason for the distribution. If you have a traditional IRA, your contributions might be tax deductible but your distribution may be taxable. To avoid tax whe...

Spousal IRA

Stay-at-Home Moms Can Have Retirement Benefits With A Spousal IRA Married couples usually have individual careers of their own before they get married. When they were newly-weds, both of them were enjoying their personal incomes and sharing in the expenses at home, such as groceries, bills, fuel and mortgage loans. However, when the first child comes, some couples must sit down and talk about one of them giving up work to stay with their child and take care of him at home while he is very y...

403b Plans

The 403b retirement plans is a kind of retirement plan that is specially made for tax-exempt organizations, religious ministers, and workers of public schools. Lots of people would compare this to the 401k plans, which is given by business and corporations to their workers. People who wish to get the 403 plan normally have a few choices to go for when it comes to the kind of assets that their employees can endow into their personal accounts. This includes the following: Tax Deferred An...

How to Set Up a SEP IRA

Simplified Employee Pension Individual Retirement Account or SEP IRA is a retirement plan under IRA. It is intended to benefit the self-employed individuals and the small business owners. This includes sole proprietorships, partnerships, corporations, and LLCs. When you own a business, SEP IRAs should be established separately by you and any eligible employee. The employer’s contributions are then made into each eligible employee’s retirement plan. If you are looking for an easy and low-co...

Retirement savings: Planning for the future

Most people, especially the young professionals, don’t really take time and effort to save up for the future. They live each day spending as much as they can, not realizing that they simply can’t do that for the rest of their lives. Others only start planning for their future 10 to 15 years before they retire. While this is still a good time to save up for your retirement, it is always better if you could start earlier. But some who are thinking of having retirement savings are skeptical. For on...

Living Off Your Investments

When you're in the middle of a project, it's sometimes hard to imagine the final result. But, that stash of cash in your 401(k) will someday be your income, and you'll be taking money out of it rather than putting money in it. The strategies for investing while you're taking withdrawals are significantly different from the strategies for investing while you're still saving. Funds that guard against big losses in a bear market, for instance, might be better than those that post big gains in...