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Ep 56: Four Ways The SECURE Act 2.0 Might Impact You

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After being discussed in Congress for nearly a year and a half, the SECURE Act 2.0 passed in January. Listen to today’s episode to see what you need to know and learn four ways the new changes might impact you.

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Disclaimer:

PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.

Here is a transcript of today’s episode:

Marc: Welcome into another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. We’re going to tap into the SECURE Act 2.0, a couple of items you might want to be aware of if you’re not and four ways that it could impact you. They went ahead and got this passed at the very, very end of 2022, right before the Christmas break, and some more changes coming down the pike. A lot of changes really in the SECURE Act, but we’re going to touch on some of the bigger ones today. There’s a lot of little nuance, so if you definitely have questions around it, absolutely make sure you’re talking with your financial professional or reach out to John and Nick and have those chats with them at pfgprivatewealth.com. Nick, what’s going on buddy? How are you?

Nick: Doing pretty good. I can’t believe it’s already almost February.

Marc: Yeah, at the time we’re taping this, it’s like a day away. So we’ll be dropping this first week or so of Jan… or February, excuse me. Yeah, time is moving quickly, so, for sure. John, what’s going on with you, my friend?

John: Not too much. Doing all right. Looking forward to… Nick’s probably not looking forward to this, but the upcoming Super Bowl. Two good teams.

Marc: Yeah.

John: So looking forward to checking out those quarterbacks go at each other.

Marc: Yeah. Yeah, it was an interesting playoff season, for sure. So not the result I was looking for either, Nick, but all good. So…

Nick: Yeah.

Marc: It is what it is. But let’s talk about some of these changes, guys, because they did a ton of them, but I want to touch on some of the bigger ones and any other ones you feel are important you want to touch on as well. But like I said, right there before Christmas, literally like the Friday before Christmas, they went ahead and passed this as part of that omnibus bill, all sorts of stuff in there. And they went tinkering around with some more things. And the first one on the list that might affect most people is the RMDs, the age. They changed it again. So you can give us a little backstory if you’d like from how you want to go, with whatever angle you want to go in, but explain to us what they did.

Nick: Sure. So for many years, the RMD, or required minimum distribution age for pre-tax retirement accounts was 70 and a half. And at least… I was just personally excited when they got rid of the half year, because why in the world did they have it in the first place?

Marc: Right.

Nick: But so in early 2020, they pushed it back to age 72, so people picked up about a year and a half. And now, for anyone born between 1951 and 1958, the starting age is 73, so they bumped it back one more year, and for those born in 1959 or later, the age is 75. So from a standpoint of impact for people, there are… I would say, a big chunk of people out there are taking withdrawals from their retirement accounts, and the amount that they’re taking is pretty close to their RMD amount that would be required anyways. But for those that aren’t, it gives them more time to defer funds, let them continue to compound. And from our side of things, it kind of just lets us be a little bit more strategic on creating a liquidation order and helping clients figure out which accounts we should start taking withdrawals from when. And this just builds in more flexibility, which is nice.

Marc: Yeah. So overall, do you kind of like this concept of them pushing this back a little further? I mean, either way, to me, it feels like it works for them to get more tax revenue, right? Because either the accounts get bigger and they get more RMDs you have to pay taxes on, the government will get their share, or people are doing Roth conversions, they have more time to plan for something like that, for example, and they’re getting tax revenue that way. So either way, to me, it seems like it’s a win-win for them.

Nick: Yeah. And realistically, yeah, I think just in general, people don’t like to be told what to do. So anytime, from looking at it from a client standpoint, just to know that there’s flexibility, because I can say that I’ve had more than one and probably more than 10 clients be unhappy when they realize that requirement distributions are a thing to only realize that they were taking the money out anyway. So it’s just literally the psychological impact of choosing to do it versus being forced to do it.

Marc: Okay. All right. So that was one big change that they did. John, let’s talk a little bit about the special catch-up contribution. Give us a quick breakdown on normal catch-up contributions, something that happens all the time. They change the numbers from year to year, what it is, but then also this new little wrinkle they added, and let’s get your thoughts on that.

John: So normal retirement contributions are what the normal limits are for 401k. Whether you’re going to make a contribution or not to it, you do max out. And what is the current [inaudible 00:04:43]

Marc: 22,500, I think.

John: … up as well.

Nick: Yeah.

Marc: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s 22,500 for the current-

John: Yeah, so 22,500 is kind of normal. Catch-up provision is once you’re over the age of 50, you’re able to actually do an additional amount, which they consider, hey, catching up for basically your retirement. So for 2023 it’s going to be 7,500, which is a nice jump from last year. What makes it even better is anyone between the ages 60 and 63, starting in 2025 can be up to about $10,000. So that is really significant. And why that is, we found a lot of people, when they get into their fifties, they’re kind of in their highest income earning years. So it really comes up quite a bit where it’s like, hey, I want to save more money, but I’m really limited in what I could do. So this is really going to help people defer more for retirement, which ultimately in the long run helps them overall have a larger nest egg and more retirement income.

Marc: Yeah. And so it’s interesting what they did that. So yeah, they moved it on, they added this extra four year thing. So again, what’s your thoughts on that? It doesn’t kick in until 2025, but do you think that’s a useful tool to add even more room for people to sock away?

John: Yeah. I think anything that encourages people to save is definitely a positive for retirement.

Marc: Yeah. So what’s your thoughts on that, Nick?

Nick: Yeah. I mean, again, it’s one of those things where when you add in flexibility and the ability for people to kind of adapt, especially knowing how many 401k plans allow for Roth contributions now. So even if it’s from the perspective of, hey, maybe they don’t want to add more pre-tax money, but they want to take advantage and use some of that buffer for Roth funds, it’s just nice to have the flexibility and ability to be able to put in more funds.

Marc: Yeah. Okay. An interesting one that caught a lot of people off guard, guys, especially a lot of advisors, was the 529 to Roth transfer option. So let’s talk a little bit about that. That’s been a kind of nice little wrinkle. People have been pretty surprised by this.

Nick: Yeah, this is interesting from a perspective… So for those that aren’t super familiar with 529 plans, they are essentially education accounts, and there are funding restrictions. And one of the, in theory, downsides on 529 plans previously were the way and the timing of when you had to use the funds. And so essentially, using funds in the years that costs are incurred, there were some ability to be able to transfer funds from one person to another. But now, essentially what they’re doing is they’re kind of reducing the quote, unquote risk of overfunding a 529 plan, and they’re letting people essentially use 529 funds to make Roth contributions when they start working. So as a reminder for people, to be able to contribute to a Roth IRA, there has to be earned income. So when there’s earned income, you can contribute up to a hundred percent up to of the earned income, up to the maximum amount. And then there are income limitations and restrictions on how much you make versus how much you can put in. To be honest, realistically, this is probably going to be something that is much more tiered towards higher income earners. Definitely the kind of, maybe there’s grandparents that have a significant amount of money and they can overfund a 529 plan for a grandkid, and it can be a way to essentially start to kind of build in some future wealth transfer, which is cool, to be able to have a creative way to be able to do that. Most likely, that’s how I see it playing out overall. So it’s just nice to have that flexibility. And I was pretty surprised as well that it was something that they came up with to integrate into the plan.

Marc: Yeah. So if you wind up not using it, maybe you got the one kid that doesn’t use it or you’re going to give it to the other kid or you don’t have a second kid, it just gives you options. I mean, other people still looking at different ways to fund for college, but it’s nice to have that extra wrinkle in there. So a lot of people have been fairly pleased and surprised by that one. John, any thoughts on that from yourself since you’ve got a couple of little ones?

John: Yeah. Yeah, I think I like this. Because one of the things that I’ve always thought about is let’s kind of take off the table overfunding, but what if they don’t use it at all? What if they decide to go a different route from traditional college or what if they get a ton of these grants and things like that? So I think it’s a nice feature. Kind of puts a little peace of mind where it’s like, hey, if they don’t end up using it and you try to just pull it out, you get hit with these taxes and penalties on the growth. So I think it puts my mind at ease a little bit more knowing, hey, if I contribute to this, that it’ll still be going to them and they’ll still be able to benefit even if they don’t use it for school.

Marc: Yeah, definitely. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about the other changes kind of addressing, I guess, maybe students if you will. And there’s a lot of changes that they did, guys, to just, I think in general, company-sponsored plans, a lot of little nuances. Again, you may want to talk with your financial professional to see. They did some little things like moving, I think, Roth options right now, so matching contributions can go to a Roth, and lots of little stuff. So you may want to have those conversations. But let’s talk about the changes to the company 401k match, especially for younger folks. I think this was maybe to address the whole student loan debacle and all the conversation that’s going on about to forgive, not to forgive, whatever the case is. So explain a little bit what they’ve done with this. Whoever wants to take this one.

John: Yeah, I’ll start with it. So yeah, I definitely agree with you there, Mark, on kind of throwing this in there to help with what we have going on with the student loan issue there. But this is pretty cool in my opinion. I got a younger sister-in-law, and she’s got… law student, hefty amount of student loans. So we were talking about some different things and we talked about helped her out with picking some stuff in her employer plan. And it came up to this, and this exact conversation came where she said, hey, I’m paying such a big amount on my student loans. I don’t have any extra really to save for retirement. So this is a great way, in my opinion, to try to… That way they can get something going to the retirement account because, as you know, Nick and I do planning for people, there is sometimes a shortfall and the earlier you can start the better. So I think this is definitely a great way to get people to at least get the money into the retirement accounts, and ultimately, when they have the cash flow, they start to see what their match is doing and growing, I could see them starting to contribute themselves a little bit more as well.

Marc: Yeah. What’s your take on it, Nick?

Nick: The student loan burden is so significant for so many people, and that’s separate… The whole validity of it and does it make sense and all that kind of stuff, I think, is a separate conversation. And so the reality is that there are a ton of people living with that, and so anything that can be done to provide some sort of options and flexibility and encourage employers to assist with that, I think, is a big deal. Because ultimately so many employers, they are looking to have these sorts of certain certifications, certain underlying education requirements, all that kind of stuff.

Marc: Right.

Nick: So they’re a participant in kind of the machine, so to speak. So to me, it makes sense to integrate some kind of creative thinking into it.

Marc: Okay. Well, so that’s some of the major changes. Anything else I missed, guys, you want to bring up? I know like with the RMDs, little things like they reduced the penalty, which was a pretty hefty penalty even though a lot of times I don’t think they enforced it. Any other little items that you want to share?

John: No, I think these are the main ones that are good. And like you say, always if people have any questions, definitely reach out to us. And as we’re meeting with clients, if something pertains to them, we always bring up kind of what makes sense for them.

Marc: Yeah, okay. All right. Well, there you go. So some major items there that they updated when it came to the SECURE Act 2.0. There’s no really big gotchas, it doesn’t seem, like there was with the first one with the removal of the Stretch IRA, for example. That one seemed to be annoying for a lot of advisors and stuff like that. Any big gotchas here that you feel like that’s make it a real concern? Or for the most part overall some decent changes?

Nick: Not that I’ve seen so far.

Marc: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you never know, right? I mean, they still got, I mean, what is this, 10 years on some of this stuff? Some of the stuff starts in ’23, some of it ’24, some of it ’25, some of it 2033. So they got a while to roll some of this stuff out, so we’ll see how it all plays out. But if you’ve got questions, again, make sure you reach out to the guys, have a conversation. Don’t forget to subscribe to us on Apple, Google, Spotify, all that good jazz. And you can find all of that information at pfgprivatewealth.com. That’s pfgprivatewealth.com. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me. As always, appreciate your time for John and Nick. I’m Mark. We’ll see you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

Ep 13: Secure Act Changes – Stretch IRA

On This Episode

We continue our conversation about the SECURE Act. Another big piece to this new law is the removal of the stretch IRA. Nick walks us through the things we need to know about this big change.

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Here is a transcript of today’s episode:

Mark: Hey, everybody. Welcome into another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined. Thanks for tuning into our podcast about investing, finance and retirement with the guys from PFG Private Wealth. On this episode, just Nick joining me again. That’s all right. I like talking to Nick. How are you buddy?

Nick: Pretty good. Pretty good.

Mark: Hanging in there. Hope you had a good week since the last time we talked.

Nick: Yeah, absolutely. This is kind of my favorite time of the year from the standpoint of climate in Florida. Most people are in a pretty good mood overall, including myself.

Mark: Well, I’ll tell you what, you guys have in the weird weather we are? It’s in the 70s in North Carolina.

Nick: It’s definitely warmer than I prefer, but I know that it’s going to kind of cool back down. It’s still at least not 90 for four months in a row. I’ll take it.

Mark: Well, the bad part about the warmer winters is it doesn’t get a chance to kill the bugs. I’m showing my old man age there by that, but it’s really true. Every year I get older, it’s like, man, we do kind of need a cold snap during the winter to kind of kill off some of the stuff that is going to haunt us come spring in summer, right? We don’t get rid of some of those bugs. It just makes it that much worse. Hopefully another cold snaps on the way.

Nick: You must live near the woods.

Mark: Woods or water, man. Woods or water.

Nick: There you go. There you go.

Mark: You’ll get it with that. All right. Well, let’s get into our show this week. As I mentioned the last time, we talked about the SECURE Act on our previous podcast. If you haven’t subscribed to the show, please do so on Apple, Google or Spotify or whatever platform of choice you’d like. We’re all over the place with those. We talked about the increase to the RMD age limit and also the contributions for IRAs with the new SECURE Act. The SECURE Act, as I mentioned before, for those of you who’d just be catching this, that is the most significant piece of legislation the government has passed for our listening audience since really the Pension Protection Act of ’06. The SECURE Act is setting every community up for Retirement Enhancement Act.

Mark: This was $1.4 trillion budget piece that they kind of snuck it into at the end of December there last year in 2019. This week we’re going to talk about a really big component, Nick, and that is the elimination or the altering of what was termed the stretch IRA. Really a lot of people they’re saying this is the big negative to this piece of its great for the government because is basically a tax generating… This is the way to create more tax income for the government, but not so great for folks who planned on using this as a generational tool, which is primarily what it was done for to leave wealth to their heirs.

Nick: Yeah, absolutely. It’s going to have a pretty significant ripple effect from the standpoint of people that were planning to leave their IRAs or maybe had adjusted the way that they were taking from their investments throughout retirement and trying to preserve the IRA to pass. That’s going to have a pretty significant impact on that. Plus it’s also going to probably cost some people some money in legal fees as they adapt and adjust their estate plans and legal documents to take these sorts of things into account.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely. What was the stretch or kind of give us a quick overview and then what they’ve done to alter it?

Nick: Yeah. One of the things I always kind of tell people is from the standpoint of a stretch IRA is that it’s really kind of a nickname and it’s a concept. A joke that I would kind of make is if somebody passed away and you had inherited funds that were in an IRA and you walk into the bank and you tell the bank teller that you want a stretch IRA, they may look at you cross-eyed. It’s not an actual legal name for an account type. The real kind of legal name for the account type is an IRA BDA or a beneficiary designated IRA. Essentially what happens is if you inherit IRA funds or you’re listed as a beneficiary on an IRA, there are kind of two classifications for how they look at or at least that’s kind of been the rule up to now where it’s either spouse or non spouse.

Nick: The way that it would work is that if you were to inherit an IRA from a spouse, you could either put those funds into your own IRA, or you could put it into the beneficiary designated IRA. The rules for withdrawals would kind of dovetail from there. For a non spouse, you would also open it as a beneficiary designated IRA. But then the required minimum distributions that would have to be taken from that account would be based upon multiple factors, including your age, the year at which the person passed whether or not they had started taking distributions already, et cetera, et cetera. There are some different rules that went on with that, but in theory you could really stretch that over your entire lifetime by taking the minimum out, and you could also list a beneficiary yourself on the account.

Mark: The reason for doing that was to if it was a larger account for tax purposes, right?

Nick: Absolutely. Let the account continue to compound, avoid taking out in a lump sum and having to pay taxes on the entire lump sum amount. Because just as a reminder for people, when you inherited a traditional IRA or traditional IRA funds, the full account balance has… Taxes are due, federal taxes. If you live in a state where you pay state income taxes, income taxes are due on that full amount. That could be a pretty significant kind of tax bomb dependent upon what happened, especially if you made a mistake in how you had to take it out. Really this new provision essentially applies to people that are going to inherit these funds starting on January 1st of 2020 moving forward. It is not a retroactive rule. Essentially what it does is it says that you must deplete that account within 10 years.

Nick: From what I’ve seen so far, correct me if I’m wrong, the rules on how you need to take out distributions within those 10 years are not as strict as they used to be. However, that account needs to be depleted within the 10 years.

Mark: Right. Yeah. You can do it over like annually obviously, but at the end of 10 years, whatever’s left, you got to pull it out and pay the taxes.

Nick: But you can defer within those 10 years as well.

Mark: Yes.

Nick: Again, that could create a pretty big tax bond dependent upon the size of the account. There’s a little bit of a flexibility and a little less accounting or paperwork on trying to track those required minimum distributions that would have to come out and the amount on are you doing it correctly, are you calculating it correctly, or some people most likely, and we haven’t gotten into it yet with any clients with it being so early in the year, but my assumption is dependent upon the overall situation, people are going to probably take it out equally over the 10 years or try to defer and be a little bit strategic with how they take it out dependent upon maybe there’s an impending retirement. Maybe a husband and wife are 60 years old and they both plan on retiring at 65.

Nick: Wife’s father passes away, leaves them money in the inherited IRA. Our goal is going to be that we’re going to take it out post retirement where the income has come down, try to minimize the taxation, and maybe even let that fill in the income hole that they have between 65 and 70 or even 65 and 72 now that the RMD age for their own accounts has bumped up to 72, and they can let their own account kind of accumulate and grow and defer accordingly. It will definitely add another level of strategy and just kind of thinking outside the box a little bit so that we don’t have to deal with that, but it’s going to be interesting to kind of adjust and adapt to the new rules.

Mark: Oh yeah, for sure. Now, for some of those folks listening who are thinking about this now, I do know there are definitely some exceptions I guess if you will, if you want to call them that. There are definitely some pieces to ponder when it comes to some exceptions I guess if you will. Obviously if you’re a spouse, that kind of stays the same. This is really kind of targeting the heirs, so like basically if you were leaving this to your kids, but there are also a couple of exceptions there like chronic illness I think is one. There’s a couple of others as well.

Nick: Yeah, chronic illness is definitely one. If there’s a disability, that changes and adds a different set of rules. Those sorts of kind of deeper details are the things or the aspects of the new legislation that everybody’s kind of digging through. The attorneys are kind of reading through all the paperwork to make that everybody has a really good grasp and understanding of what those exceptions are and how those funds can be used. Attorneys typically do a good job of interpreting the new rules and laws and coming up with new strategies that allow us to work around them a little bit.

Mark: Yeah, no, that’s a great point. That’s why it’s really important to talk with your advisor about how this may affect you if you are planning on leaving. A lot of people do that. Some people are saying, Nick, with the way this whole SECURE Act is working together with the increase to the RMD limit at 72, age of 72, and then with this, a lot of folks, they’re kind of looking at it saying it’s a tax grab for the government, which of course, I mean, it’s always something, but it’s one of those deals where if you’re living longer and you’re putting more money and you don’t have to take it out and you choose to leave it to your heirs, like these IRAs or whatever, then that’s kind of where this is coming from.

Mark: That’s kind of how the two pieces of the puzzle in some people’s minds are working together in order to generate more tax revenue for the government. It’s certainly a piece where you want to talk with your advisor about how you can now be planning more efficiently.

Nick: Yeah. As an example with that, just kind of a thinking outside the box and how people may adjust and those sorts of things, if there are substantial funds in the IRA and it’s important to you to try to leave money to your beneficiaries, this change in the law may kind of push people to look a little bit more at using a tool like a permanent life insurance policy where they’re going to use their own distributions that they’re taking from their IRA in retirement, apply some of those distributions towards a life insurance policy that is going to pay out tax free after they pass on and avoid that potential tax bomb that the IRA would leave.

Mark: Got you.

Nick: There’s different things. The fun part, and we can put that in quotes as far as the fun part, but the part that we enjoy the most as far as financial planning and retirement planning, et cetera, is that people are different. There are enough rules, laws, product strategies, et cetera, that there’s usually something for everybody. It’s just important for us to kind of get to know them, figure out what’s most important to them, and adapt and adjust the strategies that we recommend so that it fits within their life and what they’re trying to do. This is just another change that we take it into account. We adapt. We adjust. One of the things that we always preface, and this is a really good example of why is…

Nick: In these classes that we teach, one of the most common questions that people will ask us is, should I contribute money to a traditional IRA or a traditional 401k or Roth IRA or Roth 401k? They start to understand by the end of the class together that we say it depends for a reason, things change. The only thing that we know for certain is that things will change. This is a great example. We always emphasize building in the ability to be flexible and adapt to whatever changes we do have happen to us so that we aren’t all in on one certain strategy that we have no control over whether or not it changes. This is just a perfect example, and it emphasizes even more that it’s important to have multiple sources of income in retirement, multiple account types.

Nick: That goes for the funds that you’re going to use in retirement, as well as the funds that you want to leave in retirement.

Mark: Got you. Got you. Okay. That’s why we kind of preached that on the show that anytime you hear anything, whether it’s our podcast, somebody else’s, a different show, a radio show, a television show, you may be hearing some information that kind of peaks up your ears there and kind of gets you to thinking about something. But before you take any action, you should always check out what’s going to affect your specific situation by talking with a qualified professional financial advisor like the team at PFG Private Wealth, John and Nick here on the podcast. As always, we’re going to sign off this week. Really good information here on the show.

Mark: If you’ve got questions about how the stretch IRA, the removal of that or the changes to that are going to affect you or how the SECURE Act in general is going to affect you, make sure you talk with your advisor or reach out to John and Nick at (813) 286-7776 here in the Tampa Bay area, (813)-286-7776. You can also find this online and subscribe to the podcast via the website pfgprivatewealth.com. That’s pfgprivatewealth.com. You can subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Stitcher, whatever platform it is that you choose. Nick, my friend, thanks so much for your time this week. I appreciate you. We’ll talk more I’m sure about the other components of the SECURE Act and how it’s going to affect things in the weeks to come.

Nick: Thanks, Mark. Have a good day.

Mark: You do the same, and we’ll see you next time right here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

***Image credit: Trainer Academy

Ep 12: Secure Act Changes – RMD

On This Episode

After it simmered in Congress for a year, the SECURE Act is now law. If you have a retirement account of any kind, or will one day inherit a retirement account, this will affect you. Today Nick will discuss the details around the new age specifications.

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Here is a transcript of today’s episode:

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome into another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined. Into 2020 with our first podcast of the new year, joined this week with just Nick on the show with me. Nick McDevitt joining me here from PFG Private Wealth. Nick, buddy, what’s going on? How are you?

Nick M.: Just recovering from the holidays and getting ramped up for the new year.

Speaker 1: Yeah, aren’t we all? It’s so weird. Are you used to 2020 yet? I don’t know, it’s a weird number to me.

Nick M.: It is weird. Honestly, I was having this conversation with somebody the other day and the craziest thing to me is, with the age that I am, my grandparents were born in the early 30s, late 20s and it takes me back to thinking about in grade school, learning about The Great Depression and realizing that, that was 100 years ago almost.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Nick M.: World War I and how far back, growing up in the 90s, how far back the 20s seemed and now here we are again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, to that point, I’m a little older than you is, my dad was born in ’32. Actually my grandfather was born in 1890, go get that. And here it is 2020, so that just totally trips me out. My family had this weird and I’m only 50. But my family had this weird tradition of having, well, they had a lot of kids back in the day, but then they also had them late. My dad was 40 when I was born and so on and so forth. So yeah, maybe that’s why, my wife’s grandfather was born at the same time my dad was, and it’s just really weird how different people’s family dynamics work.

Speaker 1: But to that point, 2020 is bringing us a lot of change obviously and we’re going to spend probably, we’re going to the next two podcasts around this topic, but obviously we’re going to have an election later this year. The market popped 29,000, the DOW did for the first time, actually I think has done it twice now. It went over and then went back down at the time of this podcast taping, here in the early couple of weeks of January. So we’ll see. It didn’t drop very much, but it’s gone over and down. So that’s new records and new things happening, a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1: But out of all of that, one thing that really affects our listener base here for retirees and pre-retirees is the passing of The Secure Act. We talked about it months ago that it was sitting before the house and it looked like it was dead, The Secure Act. But then all of a sudden in December, there at the end, they slipped it through with some budget stuff. So let’s talk a little about The Secure Act this week, shall we?

Nick M.: Yeah, yeah. For sure. I was pretty surprised that it pushed through as quickly as it did. I had some clients that touched base towards the end of the year. And I told them what I always tell everybody from the standpoint of once it’s passed and it’s done, then we can talk about it.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Nick M.: Because there’s always little adjustments and amendments and things like that, that are made. But a lot of the key aspects carried through. And so we’re still pouring through the details or really getting into the nitty gritty. But we figured today, we could at least cover one of the topics.

Speaker 1: Yep, sure.

Nick M.: And focus on that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, we’re going to do that with this week’s podcast and next week. We’re going to cover the two biggest components that it pertains to a lot. There’s multiple facets to The Secure Act and like any piece of legislation, there’s good and there’s bad. And of course, the government had to give it this name, secure. So for folks who are wondering, it actually is an acronym, it’s setting every community up for retirement enhancement. So that’s a mouthful.

Nick M.: Yeah, I always wonder how many people got in a room to try to figure out those sorts of things and how long it took them.

Speaker 1: How much money they spend just coming up with a name.

Nick M.: Yes, yes. And it actually takes away, fortunately, as you alluded to, the biggest aspect of this is changing the age at which required minimum distributions are required.

Speaker 1: Let’s get into it.

Nick M.: From 70 and a half, to 72 years old.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Nick M.: Which ruins one of my favorite jokes about, again, the previous rule was so confusing to so many people and so absurd to make it a half a year and people trying to figure that out. We’re constantly befuddled, so now this is pretty cut and dry and pretty easy for people to understand, which I think it is probably a bigger benefit even than the increase of age.

Speaker 1: Well, okay, so let’s dive into that a little bit. So they did raise the RMD limit to 72, as Nick just mentioned. That’s the required minimum distribution, was 70 and a half. Now we should say Nick, to clarify, that if you have already started your RMDs at that 70 and a half threshold, it’s not like grandfathering but you have to stick with that. So make sure you are talking with your advisor about that. You don’t get to switch.

Nick M.: Correct, yes. So if you turn 70 and a half before 01/01/2020, then you are-

Speaker 1: On the old system, yeah.

Nick M.: So it’s everybody from 2020 moving forward, which again is a positive. A lot of people are working longer. And for those that don’t need the full distribution, defer income to live on, it helps them accumulate and grow money for a longer period of time.

Speaker 1: Right.

Nick M.: We’re definitely a big fan of the change.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think it needed to be done. I think from that standpoint, it’s good and it does clear up that confusion piece, but we just have to get through this initial weirdness, right, for folks who maybe just turned or are just planning at the end of last year, that kind of thing. So there may be a few areas where you want to try to have that conversation with your advisor about where you fall in that. So it’s certainly a piece you want to ask.

Speaker 1: So as you’re listening to this podcast, if you are new to our podcast and you’re not working with John and Nick yet, make sure you reach out to them. If you’re working with another advisor, ask them that same question, how it’s going to affect you because you still don’t want to get hit with that God awful penalty that the RMDs have, which is 50%.

Nick M.: Correct. Yeah. So just as a reminder for everybody, when those required minimum distributions are calculated. And from my understanding, again, we’re digging through all the language, the actual tables that are used to calculate the amount of money that has to come out, those tables themselves haven’t changed. So it’s just the time that you can wait as a little bit longer.

Speaker 1: Right.

Nick M.: And as a reminder to everybody, as an example, let’s say that the required amount needed to come out as $50,000. And for the last three years you’ve been taking out $2,000 a month from your account or $24,000, the penalty would be the difference between the amount due, which is 50, minus the 24,000 so 26,000. It’s 50% of that $26,000 so it’d be a $13,000 penalty, which is absolutely not a penalty that you want to participate in.

Speaker 1: No, that’s like a death sentence and it’s just terrible. I mean, so they don’t mess around when it comes to making sure you do that. Now this piece of legislation, by the way, The Secure Act, folks, it’s the most significant change since the 2006 Pension Protection Act that has come through. And there’s like I said, there’s a lot of components. We’re just going to talk a little bit about the age limit today. And along with that line, Nick, they also did eliminate age limits for contributions. So tell us a little bit about that.

Nick M.: Correct. So previously, if somebody had a traditional IRA and they were continuing to work, so as a reminder for everybody, if you want to be able to contribute to a retirement account, you must have earned income. So for those people that were maybe, let’s say, one of the things that we’ll see a lot is, to keep themselves busy, people would work a part-time job, so they would have earned income. And they were over 70 and a half and they weren’t necessarily working for the income. Of course, some are. But for example, even if you weren’t, if you were over seventy and a half, you could not contribute that money into a traditional IRA, even though you had the earned income.

Nick M.: So that rule or that restriction has been lifted. So it allows people that are working longer, which is much more common than it used to be, to be able to add money to the traditional IRA and dependent upon other factors, to potentially deduct that. So that’s a nice bonus because the other thing that happened is, because even if you were working in and this is how some of these two tie together. Let’s say you’re 71 and you were still working and you had IRA money and 401k money. Previously you would’ve had to take your RMD out of the IRA, although you could defer or wait on the money that was in the 401k for a business owner. So now that extra year and a half buffer, it can really, on some situations, it can really have a significant impact for some people on avoiding having to pay as much in taxes.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it really also expands the opportunities for backdoor Roth conversions, as well for older clients, so that’s nice as well.

Nick M.: Yes, absolutely. And for those of you whose ears perked up a little bit on the Roth conversion, there’s a lot of caveats and we’re actually going to have a podcast in the future that talks specifically about those. There’s some hoops that you have to jump through, but that can be a really good tool to be able to use to produce some Roth money.

Speaker 1: Exactly. So yeah, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. That’s a great segue for me to mention that. We are going to talk next time about the stretch IRA and what happened to it in The Secure Act. So by subscribing to the podcast, you’ll get notifications for new episodes and really that’s pretty much it. So it’s a pretty easy thing to do. We just let you know about new episodes. You can listen to past episodes and you can find it a couple of ways. Whether Apple or Google or Spotify or whatever is your platform of choice, you can simply search on their a window, like if you’re on Spotify and hit search. You could certainly just type in retirement planning redefined and get us that way or Apple or whatever platform you choose.

Speaker 1: You can also go to the guy’s website@pfgprivatewealth.com. John and Nick have got the site there for their service, for their company. And while you’re there, there’s the podcast page. You can check that out. So that is pfgprivatewealth.com. That’s pfgprivatewealth.com and you can also call them. As we mentioned before, it’s very important. There’s a lot of changes, a lot of components to The Secure Act. We’re just going to cover over the next couple of episodes what’s going to affect most of our listening audience, but there are a lot of little pieces, so you want to make sure you’re having a conversation with your advisor and about the planning opportunities that may arise from these changes in The Secure Act law.

Speaker 1: Call John or Nick, give them a ring at the office there, if you need to talk with them. (813) 286-7776 in the Tampa Bay area, (813) 286 7776. Anything you can think of extra this week about the RMD component or shall we say goodbye for this week and hit it up next week?

Nick M.: I think we’re good to go.

Speaker 1: With that, we’ll say goodbye for this week on the podcast. So again, talk to your advisor about the RMD age limit change with The Secure Act. Reach out to John and Nick if you need a second opinion and we’ll catch you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined.