Estate and Retirement Planning
Estate Planning
Estate planning is the process of arranging ownership and use of assets to help meet lifetime financial objectives in a tax efficient manner, and simultaneously help provide for survivors' needs and the disposition of property at death. A carefully implemented estate plan can help to
- Create and conserve assets during life
- Minimize death taxes and estate settlement costs
- Assure that cash is available to pay unavoidable taxes and costs
- Provide an orderly distribution of assets that meets the estate owner's objectives and intentions
- Provide peace of mind and family harmony.
Retirement Planning
Retirement planning is the process of planning for one's income needs during retirement. Usually, there are three main sources of retirement income
- Social Security
- Employer qualified retirement plan benefits
- Personal savings and investments
Retirement planning consists of marshaling the resources from all of these to assure a financially rewarding retirement.
The Retirement Planning section of Advanced Markets Online focuses on employer-sponsored retirement plans and other related subjects. This includes an examination of
- Qualified retirement plans in all their manifold varieties—defined benefit plans, defined contribution plans of the money purchase pension and profit sharing types, target benefit plans, Keogh plans for the self-employed, and section 401(k) plans
- Simplified employee pension plans (SEPs)
- SIMPLE retirement plans
- Individual retirement accounts or annuities (IRAs), including Roth IRAs
- Section 403(b) plans, also called tax-sheltered annuities or TSAs
- Rollovers, direct rollovers, and direct plan-to-plan transfers
- Section 457 deferred compensation plans for certain employees in the government and not-for-profit sectors of the economy
- Pension income supplemental life insurance.