Part 1 of The Rule That Taxes Your Retirement. At a certain age, the government stops waiting and makes you withdraw from your IRA every year, whether you need the money or not. What a required minimum distribution is, and the deal you made decades ago that started it.
David closed Fiscal Fridays with a picture worth keeping: Medicare is one room in your house, and your income and your family's plan live there too. A simple once-a-year walk through all three rooms.
On Fiscal Fridays, David reads a real family's question off a card and an advisor gets thirty seconds to answer it, out loud, with a buzzer and a spray bottle standing by. We tried five practice rounds ourselves. Here is how close we got.
Eight true-or-false questions from a busy week: charitable giving, the income surcharge on $0 plans, long-term care, three Medicare rumors, and Social Security's 2027 raise. Every answer links back to the article it came from.
Social Security's 2027 cost-of-living adjustment is 3.6%, about $75 more a month for the average retiree. What lands in your January deposit depends on a few numbers that are not out yet, plus some that are. A short household check before the year ends.
Starting in 2026, the first slice of every itemizer's charitable giving is no longer deductible, and top-bracket households see their deductions trimmed. If you are 70½ or older, there is a cleaner route straight from your IRA, and it has to happen by December 31.