The New Three-Legged Stool, A Tax Efficient Approach to Retirement Planning

Business, Money & Investing

By Rick Rodgers

Publisher : MarketPlace Books

ABOUT Rick Rodgers

Rick Rodgers
Rick Rodgers, CFP® is an author, keynote speaker, wealth manager and President of Rodgers & Associates, “The Retirement Specialists”, in Lancaster, PA. Rick’s articles on retirement planning have appeared in Wealth Manager magazine, CPA Magazine and Physician’s Money Digest.  More...

Description

Frank Richardson was a good man who served four years in the United States Army and fought for his country in the Korean War. He then spent 25 years building a successful business. Frank worked hard to improve both his own life and the lives of others around him, employing 1,000 people in the town—people like you and me who got up every morning, drank coffee, took their kids to school, built lives.

 

Unfortunately, Frank didn’t work as hard to protect his retirement account from the IRS.  By the time Frank’s estate was settled, 85.8% of a $2.5 million retirement account went to pay taxes.  Don’t let this happen to you!


Imagine you’re playing a game called Retirement Distribution.  Your opponent, the IRS, wrote the rules of the game. The secret to winning this game is to keep the IRS out of your financial affairs before they have the right to interfere.  To win, you will need a guide to the fine print in the rule book, and a sound strategy.

 

The New Three-Legged Stool ™contains a step-by-step formula for setting up a retirement that will not be ravaged by taxes.  In this book you will learn:


·         Why tax-deferral is bad in retirement.

·         How to invest tax-efficiently to minimize risk and taxes.

·         What is the R/D Factor™ and how to use it to control taxes.

·         How to maximize your Social Security benefits.

·         Five ways to take money from your IRA before age 59 ½ without penalty.

·         Why you don’t want to hold stocks in your IRA account.

·         Five reasons to reexamine your estate plan.

·         When to start drawing Social Security early and when to wait.

·         How to transfer your least tax-efficient assets to an IRA without penalty.

·         How to save up to 30% in taxes when taking assets from a 401(k) plan.


By following the strategies in The New Three-Legged Stool™, you may be able to cut your income tax bill in half during retirement.


This book can provide you these tools—with Rick Rodgers serving as your guide through the fine print, and his Three-Legged Stool™ plan as your winning strategy. To emerge victorious when facing a formidable opponent like the IRS, you will need a three-fold approach, including:

·         Tax-Deferred Savings Strategies,

·         After-Tax Savings Strategies, and

·         Tax-Free Savings Strategies.

Rodgers will guide you through these three and will create a strategy that covers all eventualities; so in the end, you win and the IRS loses.


Most people dream of retirement as a relaxing, worry-free time in their lives. What many do not realize is that the IRS is also looking forward to the day you retire. Our complicated tax system can mean the government is entitled to a significant amount of your retirement assets— unless you protect them properly.Now, Rick Rodgers, founder of Rodgers & Associates, a wealth management firm that specializes in working with individuals who are retired or about to retire, helps you retain as much of your hard-earned retirement assets as possible.  His unique Three-Legged Stool™ approach to financial security makes it both easy to understand how to achieve this retirement security and difficult to “lose balance”—that is, to get off-track once you’ve established your plan.

Leg One, Tax-Deferred Savings Strategies

Leg Two, After-Tax Savings Strategies

Leg Three, Tax-Free Savings Strategies

Plus, a closer look at :

• The all-important Retirement Distribution (R/D) Factor

• Social Security

• Estate planning


With real-life case studies, tips, and recommendations from Rodgers’ own experiences as a Certified Financial Planner and Certified Retirement Counselor, this guide will help you establish a plan to build the retirement you and your family have always dreamed of—and deserve.

July 18, 2009

 

The New Three-Legged Stool:

A Tax Efficient Approach to Retirement Planning

Rick Rodgers

Marketplace Books (2009)

ISBN:  9781592803637

***** (5 stars) New Book Teaches Wise Retirement Planning and How to Pay as Few Taxes As Possible

How should you invest your money? Should you contribute to your company’s 401k, put the money in a Roth IRA, or just buy mutual funds? Can you expect to receive any money from Social Security when you retire? How much of your retirement money will the IRS take in taxes? These are the important questions Rick Rodgers expertly answers in The New Three-Legged Stool with clear explanations, followed by practical, concise instructions to make the most with the money you have. This tax-efficient approach to retirement planning is one that readers will refer to again and again.

The New Three-Legged Stool refers to the three types of investments you should have, and balance properly to support your retirement. These three investments are Tax-Deferred Savings, After-Tax Savings, and Tax-Free Savings. Rodgers takes the reader through an explanation of why each of these types of savings is important, how to invest in it, and how to withdraw the money to achieve the maximum benefit at the time of retirement. Tax-Deferred Savings include company 401(k) plans and IRAs (including SEP and SIMPLE plans). After-Tax Savings include mutual funds, bank and brokerage accounts, and investment real estate—anything that isn’t technically a retirement account. Tax-Free Savings are Roth IRA’s and Roth 401(k)s that have no immediate tax benefits. Rodgers devotes considerable time to explaining the benefits and disadvantages of these investments, and why a healthy balance must be achieved among all three.

One of The New Three-Legged Stool’sgreatest strengths is the examples it offers in the form of various retirees’ stories. The book opens with “The Un-Funniest Story Ever Told” about a successful businessman with an estate worth over $4.4 million. Because the man never consulted a retirement planner or made an effort to do estate planning, when he passed away, his children ended up paying 85.8% of their father’s retirement account in taxes! Many more examples of retirees’ experiences are illustrated in the book, often comparing two people’s strategies to see which ends up being more beneficial.

Besides telling readers how to manage their money according to the current IRS tax laws, Rodgers provides an explanation of how the IRS functions, why it tries to get as much money as possible, based on the U.S. Government’s failure to handle its money properly, and the origins of Social Security, as well as the approaching crisis that by 2017 more money will be withdrawn than is annually contributed to Social Security.

Rodgers closes with advice on finding a good retirement advisor and how to do estate planning, including writing a will or setting up a trust to protect your hard-earned money so you will have enough for the remainder of your life and money left over for your heirs. Several useful charts accompany the discussions, illustrating how much money a person will need to live on, depending on current income, age of retirement, expected longevity, and when a person chooses or is required to draw income from various retirement accounts, including Social Security.

Rick Rodgers has produced a much-needed, well-organized, friendly to read, and refreshingly short book (202 pages) that will give readers much to think about and plan for, and which they will return to time and time again. I hope Rodgers will update the book as time goes by so it is current and future readers can equally benefit from it as tax laws change.

Rick Rodgers is well qualified to provide advice on tax-efficient retirement planning. He is an industry veteran of twenty-five years, has published numerous articles on investing in such publications as Wealth Manager, been a guest on TV and radio shows, and been quoted in Investment News and Smart Money magazine. In 1996, he founded Rodgers & Associates “to help families create and conserve their wealth in preparation for worry-free and dignified retirements.” For more information about Rick Rodgers and The New Three-Legged Stool, or to contact him for personal investment assistance, visit www.TheNewThreeLeggedStool.com.

            — Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D., author of the award-winning Narrow Lives