If you've recently changed jobs or retired, you may have an old 401(k) with a former employer. As the year comes to a close, it's an ideal moment to assess your choices. This post delves into handling your old 401(k), the mechanics of rollovers, and the benefits of transferring those funds to an IRA for increased flexibility, improved management, and potentially reduced expenses. It’s one of the simplest ways to take charge of your retirement savings heading into 2026. goldenacrewealth.com/noteboo… #RetirementPlanning #401k #Investing #FinancialPlanning #WealthManagement

A spousal Social Security benefit tops out at 50% of the worker's full-retirement-age amount, and it stops growing at the spouse's own full retirement age. Delayed retirement credits build your own benefit, not a spousal one. Waiting past that age to claim a spousal-only benefit adds nothing.

Gift appreciated stock to your kids while you're alive and they take over your cost basis. Leave the same shares to them at death and the basis generally steps up to the value on that date, erasing the built-in gain for income tax. Same shares, same family, very different tax bill.

Couple, both 60, marketplace plan, $80,000 of income. Subsidy worth $16,344 a year. Convert $10,000 and it goes to zero, because $90,000 is over the $84,600 line. The conversion costs 178% of what was converted. goldenacrewealth.com/noteboo…

If you hold several IRAs, you can total the required distributions and take the whole amount out of just one of them. 401(k)s do not work that way. Each plan figures its own RMD, and each one has to be satisfied from that plan. The account people forget is the old 401(k) still sitting at a former employer.

The most expensive Roth conversion I see is the small one. A couple at $80,000 of income has $4,600 of room before the subsidy cliff. Convert $10,000 instead and the lost subsidy plus tax runs about $17,794.

If you retired before 65 and buy your own health insurance, work out your 2026 headroom in November, not December. A Roth conversion that crosses the subsidy cliff cannot be undone once the year closes.

The ACA premium subsidy now cuts off completely at 400% of the federal poverty level. For a couple in 2026 that is $84,600 of income. Not a phase-out. One dollar over and the whole year's subsidy is gone.Aaron Randak, CFP®, EA - Golden Acre Wealth Management. Educational only, not individualized advice.

The Fed raised rates a quarter point today. The part that confuses people about bonds: A rate rise lowers the price of bonds you already own and raises the income on bonds you buy next. Those two effects run in opposite directions, and duration tells you how long the second takes to outrun the first. A holding with a duration near six years falls roughly 6% in price when rates rise a point, then earns the higher yield from there. If the money is needed sooner than that, the price side dominates. If it's needed later, the income side does. Aaron Randak, CFP®, EA - Golden Acre Wealth Management. Educational only, not individualized advice.

A missed estimated tax payment has a fix most people do not know about. Taxes withheld from an IRA distribution are treated as paid evenly across the year, no matter when in the year they are actually withheld. An estimated payment is credited on the date you make it. So a December IRA distribution with a large percentage withheld can cure an underpayment from March. The same dollars sent in as a Q4 estimate cannot. They count from Q4 forward. It is one of the few places where the timing rules work in your favor. Aaron Randak, CFP®, EA · Golden Acre Wealth Management, Scottsdale AZ. Educational only, not individualized tax or investment advice.

You can do one 60-day IRA rollover per 12 months. Not one per account - one across all of your IRAs. A second one inside that window is not a rollover. It is a taxable distribution, and the amount put back into the IRA counts as an excess contribution with its own penalty. Trustee-to-trustee transfers are unlimited and do not count against it. That is the whole workaround.