Knowledge Base
Roth conversions, rollovers, contribution strategies, and the retirement account structures that optimize your tax position over a 40+ year horizon.
39 articles in this category — page 3 of 4
Fidelity & Guaranty's indexed universal life policies attract serious attention from high-net-worth buyers for legitimate reasons: tax-deferred accumulation, flexible death benefit structuring, and estate planning utility. But the standard F&G IUL reviews you'll find online are written for people bu
A max funded IUL (Indexed Universal Life insurance policy) is a permanent life insurance contract funded as close to the IRS-defined premium ceiling as possible without triggering Modified Endowment Contract status. The goal is to maximize the cash value component, which grows tax-deferred and can b
Roth IRA principal, meaning your direct contributions, can be withdrawn at any time, tax-free and penalty-free, because you already paid income tax on those dollars before they entered the account. That rule is straightforward. What gets expensive is misunderstanding what counts as "principal" onc
Class-action litigation against indexed universal life insurers has exposed a structural problem: retail buyers are frequently sold a tax-arbitrage narrative that only works at institutional pricing. If you hold an IUL policy or are evaluating one for estate planning, the lawsuit record tells you mo
The 401k to Roth IRA conversion is straightforward mechanically. The complexity is in the timing, the tax math, and the second-order effects that most generic advice ignores entirely. For anyone sitting on $2M+ in pre-tax retirement accounts, the window created by the 2025 TCJA sunset makes this one
Roth 401(k) inheritance rules determine whether your heirs receive a decade of tax-free compounding or a forced lump-sum payout the plan administrator controls. The rules changed materially with SECURE 2.0 in 2024, and most estate plans written before that haven't caught up. Here's what matters now.
For most executives comparing deferred comp vs Roth IRA, the standard advice misses the point entirely. Standard 60/40 guidance is written for someone with a $400K household income and a 30-year runway. If you're sitting on a $5M+ net worth, a concentrated equity position, and a non-qualified deferr
The 60-day rollover rule sounds simple: take a distribution, redeposit it within 60 calendar days, and the IRS treats it as if the money never left. For most people, that summary is enough. For someone moving $500K or more between accounts, the gaps in that summary are where the tax bills live.
The Roth 401(k) vs backdoor Roth decision looks simple on the surface: one is employer-sponsored with higher limits, the other is self-directed with more flexibility. At $500K+ income, the real question is how they interact with your existing IRA balances, your state tax situation, and whether your
A Vanguard IRA to Roth conversion takes about ten minutes to execute on the platform. The decision behind it can take months to get right. For someone holding $2M to $10M in pre-tax IRA assets, the tax bill on a poorly timed or poorly structured conversion can easily exceed $500,000. This guide cove
For high-net-worth individuals evaluating the IUL vs annuity decision, the core question is not which product looks better on an illustration. It is which product solves a specific problem in your balance sheet: tax-efficient accumulation with a death benefit, guaranteed income you cannot outlive, o
The backdoor Roth IRA at Merrill Edge is a two-step process: contribute to a traditional IRA using after-tax dollars, then convert that balance to a Roth IRA. For 2025, the Roth IRA income phase-out for married filing jointly starts at $236,000, which means most people reading this are already disqu