Some employees have Stock Options, or the option to buy the stock of the company that they work for within their retirement plans. A unanimous Supreme Court decision in 2014 might discourage employers from offering their employees a stake in the business in future years, because they can now be held liable if the value of the stock drops. Employers can now also be held liable under insider trading laws for certain actions they make within the retirement plan, with respects to company stock.
But what if you do happen to have some company stock in your retirement plan? If you do, be sure to read Chapter 9 for some very important tax planning tips! When you retire and take a lump sum distribution from your retirement plan, the distribution may include employer stock that is (hopefully) worth more than the fair market value at the time it was purchased in your plan. The difference between the value of the company stock at the time you take your lump sum distribution and its value at the time it was purchased is called Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA).
If you own company stock within your retirement plans, you should make sure that you understand Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA) rules outlined in Chapter 9 before you roll over or take distributions from the plan. Many financial advisors don’t understand these rules and, if you don’t, you could end up paying significantly more in taxes than you need to. This is especially true if the company stock in your 401(k) has increased in value!
Stay tuned for an update on our classic case study of Eddie & Emily from Chapter 10!
– Jim
A nationally recognized IRA, Roth IRA conversion, and 401(k) expert, he is a regular speaker to both consumers and professional organizations. Jim is the creator of the Lange Cascading Beneficiary Plan™, a benchmark in retirement planning with the flexibility and control it offers the surviving spouse, and the founder of The Roth IRA Institute, created to train and educate financial advisors.
Jim’s strategies have been endorsed by The Wall Street Journal (33 times), Newsweek, Money Magazine, Smart Money, Reader’s Digest, Bottom Line, and Kiplinger’s. His articles have appeared in Bottom Line, Trusts and Estates Magazine, Financial Planning, The Tax Adviser, Journal of Retirement Planning, and The Pennsylvania Lawyer magazine.
Jim is the best-selling author of Retire Secure! (Wiley, 2006 and 2009), endorsed by Charles Schwab, Larry King, Ed Slott, Jane Bryant Quinn, Roger Ibbotson and The Roth Revolution, Pay Taxes Once and Never Again endorsed by Ed Slott, Natalie Choate and Bob Keebler.
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The Center for Disease Control annually publishes a document called the National Vital Statistics Report. This report estimates the life expectancy of men and women in the United States. At birth, the life expectancy for a male is 76.7 years and, for a female, 81.4 years. What is interesting about the report, however, is that it shows that, the longer you do live, the more your life expectancy increases. If you’ve already made it to age 65 and are male, you are likely to continue to live until age 83. If you’re a 65-year old female, you can be expected to live until age 85.5. If you’re a male and you’ve already made it to age 80, you can expect to live until age 88.3; an 80-year old female can expect to live until age 89.7. When your life expectancy continues to increase, how can you possibly make sure that the money you’ve saved for retirement lasts for your entire life?
Earlier this year, President Obama announced that he wants to create new rules that give financial advisors a “fiduciary” status under the law. I welcome this wholeheartedly because a fiduciary is required to always put his clients’ interests ahead of his own. This means that a financial advisor cannot make investment recommendations based on the commission they would receive from the investment, and that they must first consider the benefits that would be received by their client. As a fee-based advisor I have always served as a fiduciary to my clients and believe that it is an immensely important role.
Those of you who have attended my workshops or read the previous editions of my book may remember a rule of thumb I used to use that said, “Spend your after-tax dollars first, tax-deferred dollars second, and then your Roth IRA”. Well, guess what? The changes in the tax laws now mean that there are no more rules of thumb! My new advice is, “Spend your after-tax dollars first, and then withdraw traditional IRA and Roth IRA dollars strategically to optimize tax results.”
Over the years, I’ve met with many clients who have managed to accumulate small fortunes over the course of their working careers – even though their incomes were never even high enough to put them in the top two or three tax brackets. I call these clients my “savers.” These individuals seem to share one trait – mainly that they simply don’t feel the need to spend money if they don’t have to. Instead, they set the money aside for the times when they absolutely must spend and, more often than not, they spend far less than what they could.
The third edition of Retire Secure! has been completed and will be going to the printer shortly. Some of you may be thinking, “So what? I already read that book.” Since the second edition of Retire Secure! was published in 2009, there have been two major revisions to the tax code and several landmark court decisions that have significantly changed the way we approach the cases we handle in our office. We try to keep you informed of these changes through our newsletters. If you’re a client, we also meet with you at least once a year to review your situation and, if needed, we help you make changes so that you can achieve the best results possible based on the current laws.
The Third Edition of Retire Secure! is almost complete!