Product Description

“America ’s IRA expert”(Mutual Funds magazine) Ed Slott shows readers how to make the most out of their retirement plans.

• Achieve unlimited tax-free income after retirement and keep assets in the family
• Protect retirement funds from creditors, divorce, bankruptcy, lawsuits, or other problems that could expose it to loss
• Use a Roth IRA to build a tax-free fortune Slott’s three-step strategy cuts through the tax laws and provides simple, easy-to-follow instructions for managing IRAs and other retirement income.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26723 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780143115168
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
“Ed Slott’s easy-to-understand tax strategies mean money in your bank account, not the IRS’s.”
—Jan M. Rosen, coauthor of Wall Street Secrets for Tax-Efficient Investing and financial columnist for The New York Times

About the Author
Ed Slott has been a CPA and financial adviser for more than twenty years. He is regularly consulted by major media outlets and corporations alike.

Customer Reviews

Good IRA Reference, but Stretch IRA Wildly Overhyped
This is both a very good and very bad book. Slott is a CPA and his bio indicates that he specializes in IRA law and estate planning. The retirement column in the Wall St. Journal uses him as an IRA expert. If you've seen Slott on PBS, you know he is also a pitchman and showman. This book is a mixture of expert IRA info and advice and wild overselling.

On the plus side:
This book is full of IRA information and good IRA advice presented in a very readable manner. I made dozens of notes in the front cover while reading this book. An excellent IRA reference. And I think the book does a service by pointing out that the IRA code has (sort of) a loophole that allows the 'effective' taxes paid on the IRA to be greatly reduced if the IRA is passed on to younger family members who should (Slott recommends) only take out the minimum annually over their lifetimes. Slott calls this the 'stretch' IRA.

On the negative side:
Your IRA can grow into a FAMILY FORTUNE, he screams, with pages of tables showing a 100 thousand IRA growing to millions (in one case to nearly 300 million if left to grow into well into the 21 century!). Nonsense, what about the time value of money? Slott never heard of it (or pretends he never heard of it). The reality, of course, is that if your income tax rate is, say, 33% then when you withdraw IRA funds you lose 1/3rd of it to taxes. The best that even a perfect tax strategy can do is recover this 1/3rd. Nice, but hardly a fortune.

Slott provides a useful check list of features an IRA contract should have. You would think that maybe he would read the IRA contracts of top IRA providers (like Fidelity, Vanguard) and tell us how they stack up? Nope, that's our job, not his.

Convert to a Roth IRA and your money will grow TAX FREE he screams. Slott's very positive on Roth IRA's, too positive. I worked through a Roth conversion example and find that the extra shielding that a Roth IRA allows can boost your after-tax returns a little. (Calculation details are in 'Roth Primer' section of the 'Charity' essay on my home page.) I calculate in a 6% market environment that Roth IRA will yield 6% vs an after tax yield for a traditional IRA of approx 5.4%, or an extra 0.6%/yr investment gain. However, there can be a serious downside to doing a Roth conversion that Slott doesn't mention. A large Roth conversion will likely be taxed at a much higher incremental income tax rate than normal minimum withdrawals, and since Roth has only a tiny yield advantage over a traditional IRA it could easily take a decade or more just to get even.

Requried Reading for Anyone with an IRA.
This book focuses on ensuring that your IRA is properly set up, so that it can be passed on to beneficiaries intact, effectively establishing a "stretch IRA". The stretch IRA describes an IRA held by a beneficiary, and which will pay out over their lifetime.

This book is very well organized, and the author is clearly very enthusiastic about his subject. He does quite well making his case, that you should ensure your IRA passes intact to a beneficiary, in that it can offer them HUGE tax advantages for their entire life time.

He is also quite good about explaining the steps you need to achieve this. Much of the book is reference material that will not apply to everyone at any given time, but that is not a real criticism. The book is cheap enough, and the sections that apply to all are worth the entire purchase price.

If you have an IRA, and you have any desire to pass your assets along to a beneficiary, this book is an excellent starting point.

Concise info on stretch IRA's
Ed Slott is considered THE expert on stretch IRA's. Book is aimed at investors who will probably die before depleting their IRA funds. It explains how to structure a stretch IRA to pass this money on to future generations with minimal taxation.

Book is better organized than Slott's previous books. It is very readable. I keep it for a reference and have purchased additional copies for gifts.