The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) recently released the results of a poll conducted among its members listing the best advice for people 5, 10 and 20 years away from retirement. Though not one of the members asked, the findings were similar themes I stress with clients, such as maximizing retirement savings, minimizing taxes when possible and planning for a longer time horizon than you’d expect....
Estate and Gift Tax Exemptions Updated for 2016
One last bit of updating from the IRS for 2016, dealing with estate and gifting exemption maximums. It looks like you can pass on a little bit more to your heirs tax-free starting next year: estate and gift tax exemptions have been increased to $5.45 million per person (up from $5.43 million in 2015)....
No Increase to 401(k) Contributions in 2016
It appears that there is another casualty of the government’s inflation calculation that will affect retirement: due to the cost-of living index not reaching the threshold that would have triggered an upward adjustment, the Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday that retirement plan contribution limits would remained unchanged for 2016....
CPI-W vs CPI-E: Why the difference is so important to seniors
An interesting follow-up to last Thursday’s post regarding the fact that there would be no Cost of Living Adjustment for Social Security in 2016. In talking to many seniors, they've often lamented that whatever the government uses to calculate inflation for COLAs is a far cry from what they actually experience in real life. Perhaps even the government concedes they have a point, though the research is still in it's early stages...