Savant Blog
Savant offers perspective on a variety of topics. Entries range from current events to timeless insights in the world of finance and investments.
24
Apr
April 24, 2014
The IRS just slapped Alvan and Elisa Bobrow with taxes of $51,298 plus penalties of $10,260 for doing IRA rollovers too close together.
What?
Note the term rollover. Do you know the difference between an IRA rollover and an IRA transfer? It’s an important difference, those two words.
Why?
The IRS allows an unlimited number of direct IRA trustee-to-trustee transfers every year; however, you can only do ONE IRA rollover per year. A recent court case involving Mr. and Mrs. Babrow changed a long-standing
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22
Apr
April 22, 2014
Now that the 2013 tax due date is essentially behind us and Tax Freedom Day – the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year – is expected to be April 21, 2014 (three days later than last year), it’s good to know that we all get to keep every dollar we earn for the balance of the year. For those who take a little more pragmatic approach,
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21
Apr
April 21, 2014
Starting January 1, 2015, individual retirement account (IRA) owners will only be allowed to make an IRA-to-IRA rollover one time in any 365-day period. An IRA-to-IRA rollover is simply a distribution from one IRA that gets sent to another IRA. Typically, an individual will have more than one IRA when they have worked for several employers. Each time they leave one employer for another they role their employer-sponsored retirement plan, such as a 401(k), into an IRA. This can also
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14
Apr
April 14, 2014
By now many of you have heard the news of a recent website security issue called the Heartbleed Bug. This issue that was identified last week has to do with vulnerability in a popular website security mechanism called OpenSSL. The purpose of OpenSSL is to encrypt traffic to and from a client computer and a web server. It is used by many websites, and it’s suggested that over 500,000 sites were using the version of OpenSSL that was flawed. Essentially,
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13
Apr
April 13, 2014
Mosquitoes, bugs, and vampire bats – they just don’t have a chance
they try to draw out blood from me – when I wear shorter pants
they ‘light upon my arms and bite – they then begin to draw
but watch ‘em close, they thinner get – like sucking backed up straw
they drop from me, they fall down dead – they’ll never bite another
it looks like life and air was choked – it looks like they’ve been smothered
it’s hard
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