Category Archives: Retirement Income

What happens to your retirement plan if you lose your job and need the money?

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A plan is setup to reach a goal, in this case retirement. Sometimes obstacles such as work or life get in the way and how we once saved is no longer possible and we cannot complete what we started. There are solutions to solving this problem that allow individuals the rights to certain parts of their saved monies.

 

And we want to address the question today,

 

“What happens to your retirement plan if you don’t complete it? If you stop working, if you don’t put money in anymore?”

 

 

Can you access the money?

This is a very important question that many people have never considered. You know, it depends on the type of plan you have. Obviously, if you have a 401K or an IRA that’s dependent on your contributions, if you stop putting money in, then that plan is going to have whatever balance it is plus the future growth.

 

What most people don’t realize is because that is a qualified retirement plan, even though you quit working and you’re not adding to the plan, you still do not have access to that money all the way until you reach qualifying retirement age, which is fifty nine and a half.

 

Many folks don’t realize that until it’s too late that all that money they saved is simply not available to them.

 

Other options

 

Well, the good news is there are alternatives.

 

And I would like to explain to you that you can opt for a plan, such as ones we help people with at Barber & Associates, that when you stop working and you don’t need to contribute anymore that those monies are immediately available to you so that you can use them for whatever purposes.

 

If you still want to let them grow to provide a retirement income in the future, that certainly is an option. But you’re not restricted as you are under many retirement plans that those monies are not available to you.

 

So this is a very important issue when you’re looking at your retirement plan. What happens to that money if you leave that employer and you don’t need to add to it anymore?

 

Finding the answers

 

I created twenty videos responding to the most important questions that people ask me about their money, their financing, their investment, and their retirement plans.

 

These are available to you free as our gift here on our website, BarberAssociatesFinancial.com.

 

If you’d like to know the answer to these questions, sign up and we will send you, as a free gift, these twenty videos responding to these most important questions.


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Is there a better retirement plan than your 401K?

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The 401K. The grand daddy of all retirement plans.  Or is it? Sometimes exploring alternatives can exceed the benefits of going with a traditional retirement plan.

 

“Is there a better retirement plan than your 401K?”

 

 

Think Long Term

 

You know, many people, when they go to work and their company has a 401K, they automatically sign up and never think about the long term consequences of tax deferring so much of their money.

 

Well, at Barber & Associates, we’ve helped people for thirty eight years design tax efficient retirement plans using an investment that you probably would never understand would be so helpful in retirement, and that is life insurance.

 

Life Insurance can exceed your 401K return

 

You know, life insurance, typically, you think of as a type of investment that’s going to cover you. What happens if you die? But if used properly, the inside growth of a life insurance policy can be returned to you on a tax free basis at retirement; many times, exceeding what you would actually receive after tax from your 401K plan.

 

Now, I recognize this is probably starting information to some of you, but a wonderful idea for you to check into because there are alternatives to your 401K or your IRA plan that over time, may be far more efficient for you to consider.

 

Finding the answers

 

I created twenty videos responding to the most important questions that people ask me about their money, their financing, their investment, and their retirement plans.

 

If you’d like to know the answer to these questions, sign up and we will send you, as a free gift, these twenty videos responding to these most important questions.


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What do high-income earners do differently about retirement plans?

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If you are a successful person within your career, you are going to expect the amount of your success to be reflective in what you’ve earned. When you retire, you’d like a retirement income that’s going to display the years of saving and sacrifice you’ve exhibited.

 

“What do people who earn a lot of money do differently about their retirement planning?”

 


Options for High Income Earners


You know, frequently, folks find out that they are very limited in what they can put aside into their 401Ks and their IRAs because they earn a lot of money. And so they seek out what are other options where they can invest their money?

 

If you’re very successful in your career and the job that you have and that’s reflected in what you earn, then you’re also going to be very successful in the amount of money that you have available to invest for your retirement. And that means when you retire, you’d like a retirement income that’s going to reflect all of the years of saving that you had and all the years of sacrifice.

 

Tax Free Options

 

For that reason, many people, when they look at what other options are available, find out there are plans available that you can deposit your money for retirement.

 

You can guarantee that you will never lose any money and the best yet — when you take that money back at retirement, it can be tax free to you if you do it properly.

 

So many people who are very affluent in their careers and what they earn have found very attractive retirement plans available to them outside of what they can do in a traditional 401K and an IRA.

 

 

Finding the answers

 

I created twenty videos responding to the most important questions that people ask me about their money, their financing, their investment, and their retirement plans.

 

If you’d like to know the answer to these questions, sign up and we will send you, as a free gift, these twenty videos responding to these most important questions.


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Will you be in a lower tax bracket when you retire?

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Could being successful actually hurt your retirement plan? Saving a lot of money is not always the key to a great retirement. Having a great plan, now that is something to work with.

 

“Will you be in a lower tax bracket after retirement”?

 


 

Investing the Right Amount

 

You know, that’s the belief of many people that as your working you should put as much into your 401K or as much into your IRA now while you’re working in the hope that once you retire, you will be in a lower tax bracket and those dollars coming back will mean something to you.

 

After 38 years of experience in working with people preparing for retirement, here is what I have found about many of these people.

 

If they are successful, and many people are in saving for retirement, they wind up with a lot of money, in fact many times way too much money that they’ve put into their 401K’s and IRA’s.

 

And when they reach mandatory distribution age that happens after your 70 years old. Those distributions come back many times pushing them into higher and higher tax brackets. And they realize, that was just a delusion that they believed all those years.It was because they were successful that they did not end up in a lower tax bracket.

 

True Tax Free Retirement 

 

We help people establish retirement plans to where they do not pay taxes on their money when they take their distributions. And that’s about as good as it gets.

 

If you can receive your retirement money without any taxation, if it were truly tax free, then you wouldn’t be concerned with what tax bracket you were in retirement. So I would encourage you, think about that question, “will you really be in a lower tax bracket after retirement”?

 

Finding the answers

 

I created twenty videos responding to the most important questions that people ask me about their money, their financing, their investment, and their retirement plans.

 

If you’d like to know the answer to these questions, sign up and we will send you, as a free gift, these twenty videos responding to these most important questions.


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How important is tax deferral in retirement savings?

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Tax deferral is the age old question about every retirement plan. It is a tricky situation and must be treated as such so that taxes do not creep up on you and your retirement long after you start saving.

 

“Just how important is tax deferral?” 

 

 

Savings or burdens

 

Many folks are so encouraged by financial institutions and their employers, and even the government, to put as much as possible into their savings plans for retirement, knowing that they’re deferring those taxes, they’re being able to deduct those each year as they save those dollars.

 

But on the other end, at Barber & Associates Financial Group, we work with many people who are already at retirement and what they find out is those minimal tax savings that they incurred as they put the money in turn out to be huge burdens as the taxation on those monies coming back out is incurred in retirement.

Many of them find that that belief that they would be in a lower tax bracket turns out not to be true because they successfully deferred so many taxes.

 

Many people find out when they go to take their retirement money back that they may have spent decades saving in their 401K or in their IRA and yet, they pay back all of those taxes they saved for decades in just a few years.

 

Tax deferral

 

And yet, it doesn’t stop there. They continue to be taxed year after year after year as they take money out of their tax plans.

 

So I find that a lot of folks at retirement look back and say, tax deferral, we weren’t really given the entire story there because the taxes we end up paying back are quite a bit more than they ever counted on.

 

So think about tax deferral. That’s a pretty important issue when you’re doing your retirement savings.

 

Finding the answers

I created twenty videos responding to the most important questions that people ask me about their money, their financing, their investment, and their retirement plans.

 

If you’d like to know the answer to these questions, sign up and we will send you, as a free gift, these twenty videos responding to these most important questions.


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What happens to your retirement plan if you die?

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When the most unfortunate of times are upon us, our pre planned choices are extremely important when striving to take care of the ones we love. This often avoided subject can also be one of the most important you will ever make.

 

“What happens to your retirement funds if you die before retirement?”


The Importance of a Beneficiary

 

Well, the first thing that every person who has a retirement plan should understand is all retirement plans go to a named beneficiary, whoever you put on that document when you first set that plan up.

 

So if you have a 401K, you should go to your HR department and make sure that your beneficiary is current. If your IRA is held at a brokerage company, you’d want to call them and make sure that that beneficiary form is suitable to you.

 

Restrictions on your Retirement Funds 

 

But more importantly in a bigger picture question, and that is if you die before retirement, what happens to the person as they receive that money?

 

And let’s use an example; your retirement funds go to your wife. Well, your wife would find that she has the same restrictions on that retirement money as you do, meaning those funds are not available to her until she reaches a qualifying age, generally, of fifty nine and a half.

 

And so if you die too early, counting on those retirement funds to provide an income for your spouse before retirement, that would be quite a disappointment for her.

 

Look at the Bright Side

 

The good news is I help people with a variety of different retirement plans, many of which transfer all of your retirement money absolutely tax free using death benefits that are unrestricted, so that your beneficiaries have immediate use and control of that money. They are not burned with the tax rules that other types of qualified plans impose upon them. So I would encourage you, take a look at all of the alternatives.

 

Finding the answers

I created twenty videos responding to the most important questions that people ask me about their money, their financing, their investment, and their retirement plans.

 

If you’d like to know the answer to these questions, sign up and we will send you, as a free gift, these twenty videos responding to these most important questions.


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