Product Description

Don't give your nest egg away to the IRS!

Perhaps your retirement is on the horizon. Or you're changing jobs. Or are about to turn 70.5 years old....

Whatever is going on with your retirement account, IRAs, 401(K)s & Other Retirement Plans is for you! Make sense of the rules that govern distributions from retirement plans - and avoid the stiff taxes and penalties that lurk in the fine print.

In plain English, this book discusses all common types of retirement plans, including 401(k)s and other profit-sharing plans, Keoghs, IRAs and tax-deferred annuities. It covers:

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #474466 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.com Review
IRA's, 401(k)s & Other Retirement Plans, by financial specialists Twila Slesnick and John C. Suttle, is a solid self-help legal look at a critical back-end issue that most of us blissfully ignore until we absolutely must confront it. The authors themselves admit it is not a compelling page-turner, but rather a comprehensive resource that at some point should prove indispensable to everyone with a retirement plan. They describe the various plans available--including Roth IRAs, to which an entire chapter is devoted--focusing on distribution rules, associated taxes, and potential penalties. They offer details on early distributions used to pay higher-education expenses or health-insurance premiums (which are not subject to taxes, under certain explicit conditions), distributions you must take during your lifetime (when they begin, how they're computed, what happens if your beneficiary changes), and distributions made after an account holder dies (largely concentrating on administrative procedures that could help you avoid unnecessary financial loss). Helpful appendices include relevant IRS forms, notices, and schedules as well as life-expectancy tables. --Howard Rothman

Review
"Belongs on the bookshelf of anyone with an IRA, 401(k) or other type of qualified retirement plan. When the inevitable questions come up, here's where you'll find the answers." -- Kiplinger's Personal Finance

"Few resources are as valuable when it comes to financial planning in later life." -- The Wall Street Journal

"An explanation of the complicated rules on withdrawal, written for ordinary people." -- Hank Ezell, Atlanta Journal Constitution

Review
"An explanation of the complicated rules on withdrawal, written for ordinary people."

Customer Reviews

Pay attention to the sub-title
The reviewer plugging the "MarketBuster" book has totally missed the point of this NOLO book, which is given in the subtitle: Taking Your Money Out. The reviewer is talking about strategies for growing your account.

When you're in the savings/growing mode you're in a whole different situation than you're in when you're having to withdraw and/or live off your account. Going from one to the other requires a major change in strategy and, more important, a MAJOR change in mindset and, often, life style.

You're confronted with a whole new set of regulations, whether the reason for the change is retirement, inheriting an account, etc. The biggest change in mindset is that instead of the pleasant pre-retirement situation of watching the money accumulate, you have to recognize that you're now going to be watching it DECLINE. And unless you've got a tremendously more than sufficient account, you're going to have to live with the knowledge that you could outlive the account, possibly due to your own mistakes, some of which this book can help you avoid.

Four years ago I was confronted with making this shift a whole lot sooner than I'd planned, and with getting control of my retirement accounts under conditions where I had little help. Without the previous edition of this NOLO book, I would have been totally lost and probably made serious mistakes.

Now, one caveat: This book does not tell you how to MANAGE your withdrawals and account so as to produce INCOME; as one should expect from NOLO press as a LEGAL advice publishing house, it deals with the nuts, bolts, traps and hazards of the PROCESS of getting the money out.

In my situation I also found that there is not a whole lot of good material out there on the subject of managing your money and account IN the WITHDRAWAL stage, and this subject is affecting more and more people, as the country shifts from defined benefit (pensions) plans to plans like 401Ks and IRAs that place the job of investing and managing on the individual.

It is a whole lot more complex, risky, and stressful than most people realize, especially considering the general abysmal education (lack of) even young people receive on the subject, let alone people my age who were raised to count on pensions, etc. (And thank goodness for Social Security, which while far from adequate, can still supply a firm base of about 30 to 50% of a retirement income; although that's another issue)

So I recommend this book as essential for the basic procedures, but you will also need additional information on how to manage your income account(s). Personally, in addition to a good fee based financial planner, I found invaluable help from folks who have actually been doing the job for years, especially in the forums of Morningstar, for example. But you have to be on constant alert for scamsters and the whole "how to be a billionaire" publishing crowd. You're going to have to invest some serious time and effort in educating yourself for a the whole new job of retirement, and this book is an excellent place to start, preferably BEFORE you actually have to start TAKING YOUR MONEY OUT.

Good Reference Work for a "Taxing" Subject
IRS rules for withdrawing money from IRAs are pretty complicated. This book, like others from Nolo Press, offers very specific coverage of these rules. I was looking for information on how IRAs can relate to Living Trusts, and I found it here. You have to pay attention, but the book is written in easy-to-understand English as opposed to legalese.

Single Best Resource Book on Retirement Plan Distributions
In my career, I work almost exclusively with retirees, and I have found this book to be the best resource for Retirement Distributions. It explains the rules in a concise manner, and includes the special rules for Roth IRAs. This is an especially good reference book for advisors because it goes in depth- not just the basics.