RMD Rules For Inherited IRAs Remain Confusing

RMD Rules For Inherited IRAs Remain Confusing

It used to be relatively simple. Prior to 2020, if you inherited an IRA from someone, rather than having to liquidate the account and pay taxes on the balance, you were allowed to “stretch” the annual required minimum distributions (RMDs) over your life expectancy. Then came the SECURE Act (2020) and the IRS interpretation of…
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It’s A Dangerous World Out There

The U.S. Justice Department recently released the 2022 FBI Elder Fraud Report. It does not make for enjoyable reading. There were almost 90,000 victims of fraud over the age of 60 last year. And they lost in aggregate over $3.1 billion, an increase of 84% over 2021. What are some of the biggest scams and…
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What Is The Yield Curve Really Telling Us Today?

The yield curve is the difference between yields (current interest rates) on ten-year U.S. treasury bonds as compared to two-year treasury bonds. Last year the yield curve inverted, meaning the yield on the shorter-maturity two-year bonds is higher than that for the longer bonds. This is an unusual situation since longer bonds – which are…
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A Major Banking Scandal Finally Ends

You may be familiar with the term “LIBOR.” It stands for the London Interbank Offering Rate, and had been used for decades by banks worldwide for interbank short-term lending and more popularly as the base rate in the U.S. for calculating the interest on a variety of personal loans. Well, it’s gone. As of July…
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In Memoriam: Harry Markowitz

Harry Markowitz died last month. You probably didn’t hear about it in the traditional media sources. They tend to limit their obituaries to entertainment and sports stars, politicians, and other well-known personalities. Yet I contend that Markowitz has had a much greater impact on your life than practically any of those others. Markowitz was the…
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Is Bitcoin Almost Ready For Prime Time?

For many years the only way to purchase cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has been through unregulated private exchanges. And investing in such digital assets has not been for the faint of heart. Aside from the extreme volatility of the assets themselves, the exchanges have suffered a number of high-profile failures. In 2022 alone Terraform, Celsius,…
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