Ed Slott’s Virtual 2-Day IRA Workshop For Financial Advisors
It’s incredibly important to our team that we’re always learning and refreshing our understanding of the information needed to safeguard, manage, and grow your accounts. This means we often attend training, more specifically, specialized training from Ed Slott’s Elite IRA Advisor Group. (Click here to learn more about Ed Slott and his team.) Most recently, several of our team members attended Ed Slott’s Virtual 2-Day IRA Workshop for Financial Advisors.
During this training workshop, we reviewed the latest retirement tax law changes, including those pertaining to the SECURE Act, new 2024 RMD (Required Minimum Distribution) rules from IRAs, and the even more complicated inherited IRA tax laws. Additional highlights from the event included…
Workshop highlights included…
- We reviewed the 3 sweeping law changes that have impacted IRA planning since 2019: SECURE Act, CARES Act, and SECURE Act 2.0. Each of these upended decades of precedent when it comes to IRA and beneficiary planning. Firms that don’t consistently study this information and have resources ready at their fingertips, such as those provided by Ed Slott and his team, run a real risk of giving poor advice and the client ultimately paying the price.
- Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) were discussed as a potentially great option for certain retirement planners. An important factor to mention is that QCDs can only be completed from IRAs, and if a client is still working and making deductible contributions to an IRA, some of the QCD will become taxable. Having an advisor who understands these mechanics is crucial in helping maximize the taxable impact for clients.
- We also discussed the exceptions to the 10% early withdrawal penalty on tax-deferred accounts like IRAs. In fact, several more exceptions were added this year, but there are still no hardship withdrawal provisions, i.e. withdrawals made out of heavy economic need. Many court cases have been heard around hardship withdrawals and invariably, the IRS has been allowed to impose the 10% penalty. If you require assets due to financial hardship, our Advisory team will do everything we can to work within the rules to free up cash for your tax benefit, but there’s very little recourse if you do the wrong thing on the front end before consulting us.
- Another significant takeaway from the training was the discussion surrounding inherited 401(k)s. When inheriting 401(k) plan money, you shouldn’t rush into rolling it over to an inherited IRA immediately because there are sometimes complicated stipulations surrounding these accounts. For instance, inherited 401(k)s receive creditor protection; IRAs do not. Additionally, inherited 401(k)s allow you to convert assets into an inherited Roth while inherited IRAs don’t have that conversion capability. It’s crucial that you review inherited accounts with your advisor to make sure you can strategize how to best fit them into your financial plan.
Not only did our team members take away valuable information that will help us better serve our clients, we had a great time in the process! If you have questions about any of this information, we’d be glad to help. Please contact any member of our team for more details. (Click here for contact information.)
Ed Slott is not affiliated with Storen Financial and LPL Financial.
Blog by Ronnie Jackson, CFA® – Financial Advisor
Learn more about Ronnie and the rest of the Storen Financial team here.