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At Huiskamp Collins Investments, LLC,
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The Secure Act & Eligible Designated Beneficiaries

The SECURE Act (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement) was one of the biggest blasts to retirement planning to come down the chute in many years when it was signed into law in 2019 and took effect the beginning of 2020. One big bonus was the...

IRA Estate Planning With Your Spouse in Mind

I’ve been opening IRA retirement accounts for clients for nearly 20 years and the estate planning and choice of beneficiaries is pretty rote: name your spouse as your Primary Beneficiary and your child or children as Contingent Beneficiary(ies). Nothing wrong...

The Stretch IRA Is Dead. Now What??

I’ve been a licensed financial planner for about 20 years and it was pretty much a default that a married couple would name the other spouse as the primary beneficiary of their retirement money and then name their children as the contingent beneficiaries in the case...

Qualified Charitable Distributions & the QCD Anti-Abuse Rule

A boon for most taxpayers was the increase in the standardized deduction starting in 2018. Prior to the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, a full 30% of households itemized deductions; since the change, a mere 10% do. This year, single people can deduct $12,950.00...

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE “WIDOW’S PENALTY”

You’ve lived a life together. You can close your eyes and remember walking down the aisle with grains of rice being sprinkled on your head and those early days of cheering each other on in your daily journeys whether that be a career or juggling all manner of duties...

The “Skinny” on Social Security and Payroll Taxes

Benjamin Franklin was famously quoted as saying that death and taxes are the only things in this life that are certain. If you are currently retired or nearing retirement, the big question is whether taxes collected, including payroll taxes of current and future...

No More Stretch IRA? Try This!

Last month’s column was devoted to describing the consequences of late 2019’s SECURE (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement) Act’s impact on the widely-used legacy-giving vehicle known as “Stretch IRAs”. Prior to January 1, 2020, a Stretch IRA...

The Secure Act and Stretch IRAs

At the end of 2019, Congress abolished a time-tested wealth legacy strategy called the “Stretch IRA” with the passage of the SECURE (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement) Act. The rationale was that they were closing a “loophole” used mostly by...