IRA Legacy Planning

PROTECTING YOUR LIFE'S SAVINGS

If you're like most Americans, your IRA (or qualified plan) is one of your largest, most important assets and represents a lifetime of savings and sacrifice.  That's why protecting and preserving your retirement savings is critical.  If handled properly, your IRA can sustain you throughout retirement and provide an abundant, meaningful legacy for your loved ones and favorite charities.   However, without proper planning and handling, you and your beneficiaries could end up losing as much as 80% of your retirement savings to taxes, and provide a substantial windfall for the IRS. 

Legacy Planning For Your IRA

IRA Legacy Planning ensures that all aspects of your IRAs and qualified plans are in order and properly incorporated into your estate plan.  Our objectives include:

  • Increasing the magnitude and longevity of your retirement savings
  • Minimizing taxes on the distribution and transfer of your retirement savings
  • Helping you provide meaningful, long-lasting legacies for your loved ones and favorite charities
  • Ensuring the "Stretch IRA" (the ability for your beneficiaries to stretch the distributions from their inherited IRA over their lifetimes—minimizing taxes and increasing the tax-deferred growth potential of your IRA)
  • Helping you and your beneficiaries avoid common, critical mistakes and oversights that could result in excess, unnecessary taxes or (in the worst case scenario) the inadvertent liquidation of your IRA
  • Educating your beneficiaries on how to properly and effectively inherit and handle their inherited IRAs and qualified plans
  • Communicating to your beneficiaries your specific instructions for how you would like them to handle their inherited wealth as well as your hopes for how their inheritance will enhance their lives.  

 

Filling the Void in Your Estate Planning

 

Like most people, you probably assume that your estate planning attorney has properly and effectively incorporated your IRA into your estate plan.  Unfortunately, that assumption can cost you and your beneficiaries thousands (maybe millions) of dollars in excess, unnecessary taxes as well as missed multigenerational wealth-building opportunities.

 

Most estate planning attorneys are not IRA experts and do not know the complex rules and tax laws related to IRAs and qualified plans.  As a result, they make critical mistakes and oversights that can jeopardize your retirement savings and potentially cost you and your retirement plan beneficiaries a fortune in excess, unnecessary taxes. 

 

For example: Many estate planning attorneys recommend naming your living trust as a primary or contingent IRA beneficiary.  They don't know that leaving your IRA to a living trust eliminates the ability for your your benefiaries to split the inherited IRA and "stretch" the required distributions over each beneficiary's individual  life expectancy.  Leaving an IRA to a trust also creates disclaimer,  tax and management problems and can trigger the inadvertent liquidation of the inherited IRA with taxes due. 

 

In addition to their lack of IRA knowledge, few estate planning attorneys (as well as CPAs and financial advisors) know or can help you implement the specialized proprietary strategies we use to minimize taxes on the pre and post-death distributions  from our clients' IRAs and increase the magnitude and longevity of their retirement wealth.  These include:

  • Splitting IRAs during your lifetime to ensure post-death tax minimization
  • Roth conversions to minimize post-death taxes and create wealth
  • Using a little-known tax law to remove low cost-basis company stock from a qualifed plan to save a fortune in taxes
  • Maximizing post-tax IRA contributions to increase the amount that can be converted to a Roth tax-free in 2010, regardless of income
  • Using life insurance to minimize taxes and increase multigenerational wealth
  • IRA gifting strategies
  • And More!!

 

Safeguarding Your Legacies

 

Perhaps the most important goal of IRA legacy planning is making sure that your beneficiaries know how to handle their inherited IRAs and qualified plans properly, effectively and tax-efficiently.  No matter how much planning you do to help your beneficiaries minimize taxes and build multigenerational wealth, there's no guarantee that they won't make a mistake that inadvertently liquidate their inherited IRA (with taxes due) or cuases them to lose the "stretch IRA."  There's also no guarantee that they or their CPAs won't miss the large (nearly 40%) tax deduction on distributions from inherited IRAs that are subject to estate taxes.  

 

IRA legacy planning can help ensure that your beneficiaries and their advisors, as well as the trustees and executors of your estate, will know how to properly and effectively inherit and handle your IRAs and qualified plans  We'll provide you with tools to convey your hopes, dreams and aspirations for your beneficiaries and the legacies you'll provide them, as well as specific instructions on how to inherit and handle their IRAs.  We also provide you and your beneficiaries (as well as trustees and executors) with information about IRAs and the critical IRA-related rules and tax laws that must be followed at all times.

 

We'll also encourage you to include your children in the IRA Legacy Planning process to give them an even better understanding of the tax-saving, wealth-building goals we are trying to accomplish.  By getting to know your children and grandchildren during your lifetime, we hope they will feel comfortable working with us and relying on our financial expertise after you're gone.  Nothing is more meaningful than helping our clients and their families create, preserve and multiply their wealth over generations.   

 

Winer Wealth Management—The IRA Specialists

 

According to CPA Ed Slott (one of the country's leading IRA experts), fewer than 1% of the nation's financial advisors are IRA experts.  And in his PBS television special, Stay Rich Forever & Ever with Ed Slott, he recommends that individuals work only with the 1% of advisors who specialize in IRAs and have received specialized IRA distribution training—advisors like Rich Winer.

 

Winer Wealth Management's president and CEO, Rich Winer was formerly a charter member of Ed Slott's Master Elite IRA Advisor Group (an invitation-only group of IRA specialists who study directly with IRA expert Ed Slott) and nationally recognized for his IRA expertise.  In 2005, he was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal for identifying an oversight by two CPAs and saving the beneficiaries of an inherited IRA more than $700,000 in income taxes.  His ability to identify and correct common, critical mistakes and oversights has brought Mr. Winer and our firm to the attention of the national media.  He has been featured, mentioned and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Planning Magazine, The Los Angeles Business Journal and other financial publications.

 

At Winer Wealth Management, Inc., we can ensure that every issue related to your IRA(s) and qualified retirement plan(s) (including the Stretch IRA) is in order and that your beneficiaries know how to properly inherit and handle your retirement plan(s) to minimize taxes and ensure the maximum wealth-building potential of your retirement assets.  We can also help you implement specialized tax-saving, wealth-building strategies that most financial advisors don't know—strategies that can help you increase the magnitude and longevity of your family's wealth. 

 

When it comes to your IRA (and qualified retirement plans), having the right financial advisor to assist you can mean the difference between losing 70-90% of your IRA to taxes or parlaying your retirement savings into multigenerational wealth! 

Comprehensive IRA Planning

As a result of our years of specialized training in Ed Slott's Elite IRA Advisor Group, our firm has the expertise to assist high net worth individuals who need the highest, most comprehensive level of IRA distribution planning. Our specialized IRA distibution planning covers over 100 key areas related to IRAs (including beneficiary designations, required minimum distributions, inherited IRAs, alternative investments held in IRAs and rollovers) to ensure that everything related to your IRA (and qualified retirement plan) is in order and in accordance with your financial and estate planning objectives.  We can also ensure that no area of your IRA and retirement distribution planning ever falls through the cracks. 

 
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