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The examples and case studies in this article are hypothetical but represent real situations I have encountered in my practice working with Washington State public employees.
One of the things I ask clients about is their account security. How they protect their online logins. Whether they use unique passwords. What kind of verification they have set up on their financial accounts. The answer is almost always the same. Same password across most accounts. Verification codes sent by text message. Maybe a vague sense that they should probably do more, but it hasn’t felt urgent enough to act on. These are people who have done everything right when it comes to saving. They’ve been contributing to their DCP for years. They’ve maxed out Roth IRAs. They’re sitting on solid PERS, LEOFF, or TRS pensions. And yet this one area, the security around their accounts, almost never gets any attention. I get it. It doesn’t feel like financial planning. But after looking at the latest data on cybercrime, I think it might be one of the most important financial planning conversations we’re not having. It’s not your investments that keep me up at night I spend a lot of time helping clients think about pension options, Roth conversions, tax-efficient withdrawal strategies, and building a proper war chest for early retirement. Those are the big, tangible planning decisions. But here’s what I’ve started telling people more often: a gap in your cybersecurity can do just as much damage to your retirement as picking a bad investment. If not more. According to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, Americans lost nearly $20.9 billion to cyber-enabled fraud last year.1 That was a 26% increase from the year before. And investment-related fraud was the single largest category, accounting for more than $8.6 billion of those losses.1 The people losing money aren’t careless. They’re retirement savers. People who spent decades building a nest egg. How a six-digit code can unlock your entire retirement Here’s what I think most people don’t realize. When you log into a financial account, you assume there are three separate things protecting you: your username, your password, and that multi-factor authentication code that gets texted to your phone. Three layers sounds pretty safe. But think about what happens when you forget your password. Most financial institutions ask you to verify a few pieces of personal information, like your name, date of birth, the last four digits of your Social Security number, and your zip code. Then they send you a verification code to reset everything. After years of large-scale data breaches, that personal information may already be out there for a lot of Americans. Which means that six-digit verification code might be one of the last real barriers protecting your retirement savings. Account takeover fraud, where someone gains access to your financial accounts through social engineering, resulted in roughly $360 million in reported losses across approximately 4,700 incidents last year.1 And since that only reflects what was actually reported, the real number is almost certainly higher. The pattern to watch for What I’ve learned from studying these situations is that the scam almost always follows the same pattern. Someone contacts you, claims to be from your bank or brokerage, and says there’s suspicious activity on your account. They create a sense of urgency. Then they ask you to verify your identity by reading back a code that was just sent to your phone. And that’s it. That one code can give a thief full access. The FBI actually has a term for people who show up at the exact moment you feel most vulnerable. They call them "rescue merchants." They present themselves as the helpful professional rushing in to save you. It works because when someone tells you your money is at risk, your instinct is to act, not to pause. Why this matters for Washington public employees specifically If you’re a Washington public employee approaching retirement, you likely have money spread across multiple accounts: your DRS pension, a DCP 457(b) plan, maybe a Roth IRA or traditional IRA, and possibly a taxable brokerage account. Each of those accounts is a potential target. And the more accounts you have, the more entry points exist. Washington residents filed over 25,600 cybercrime complaints in 2025, with total losses exceeding $458 million.1 For Washingtonians over 60, the numbers were especially concerning: more than 5,300 complaints and nearly $180 million in losses.1 Your pension itself is protected by the state retirement system. Nobody is draining that. But your DCP account, your IRAs, your brokerage accounts? Those are held at financial custodians, and they’re only as safe as your login credentials and the security practices you put around them. What you can do about it Never share a verification code with anyone who contacts you. If your bank or brokerage calls, don’t give them anything. Hang up, then call the number on the back of your card or type the institution’s website directly into your browser. If there truly was suspicious activity, they’ll know about it when you call them. Switch to an authenticator app. If your financial institution offers one, use it. Authenticator apps generate codes directly on your device, which makes them much harder to intercept than codes sent via text message. Add a verbal password to your accounts. Some institutions allow you to set up an extra PIN or verbal password before any changes can be made over the phone. It’s a simple step, but one more hurdle for anyone trying to access your money. Freeze your credit. This won’t stop every scam, but it prevents someone from opening new accounts in your name. You can freeze and unfreeze your credit for free at each of the three major bureaus. Consider a password manager. Using the same password across accounts is one of the most common vulnerabilities I see. A password manager generates unique, complex passwords for each account so you don’t have to remember them all. The bigger picture I think there’s a reason most people focus on their investments and not their security. Investment decisions feel tangible. They feel like you’re doing something productive. Figuring out how to freeze your credit or set up an authenticator app feels like a chore. But here’s the thing. You could have the perfect pension option selected, a beautifully diversified portfolio, and a tax-efficient withdrawal strategy, and a single text message and a six-digit code could put a meaningful chunk of that progress at risk. It’s one of those areas where a small amount of effort up front can save you from a devastating outcome later. And if you’re within a few years of retirement, the stakes are even higher, because you may not have the time or the earning years to recover from a significant loss. So take an hour this weekend. Update your passwords. Turn on an authenticator app. Freeze your credit if you haven’t already. These aren’t exciting steps. But they’re the kind of thing that protects everything else you’ve worked so hard to build. Sources 1. Federal Bureau of Investigation. “2025 Internet Crime Report.” Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). 2025. https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2025_IC3Report.pdf 2. Securities Investor Protection Corporation. “What is SIPC?” https://www.sipc.org/for-investors/what-sipc-protects 3. Fidelity Investments. “What is SIPC coverage?” April 23, 2025. https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/sipc
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The examples and case studies in this article are hypothetical but represent real situations I have encountered in my practice working with Washington State public employees. I was reviewing a client's DCP statement recently when she pointed at her bond fund and said, "This one is clearly the winner." She wasn't wrong, exactly. On paper, the bond fund had delivered the best return for the amount of risk taken. The smoothest ride of anything in her portfolio. But that number was telling her something incomplete. And it was pointing her toward a decision that could actually hurt her in retirement. The smoothest ride isn't always the best ride There's a common way to evaluate investments that basically asks: how much return did I get for the amount of volatility I had to endure? Financial professionals use it all the time. It’s called the Sharpe Ratio. And on the surface, it makes sense. Who doesn't want a smooth ride? But consider three hypothetical investments over the past 25 years. By that "smoothness" measure, a bond fund came out on top. A large cap stock fund came in second. And a small cap stock fund came in last.¹ Now look at what actually happened to a hypothetical $10,000 invested in each. The bond fund grew to roughly $29,000. The large cap stock fund grew to about $74,000. And the small cap fund, the "worst" performer by the smoothness measure, grew to nearly $97,000.¹ The smoothest ride left the most money on the table. I think about this a lot when I'm working with Washington State public employees who are retired or nearing retirement. They have a pension coming. They have years of contributions in their DCP 457(b). And they're trying to figure out how to position everything for a retirement that could last 30 or 35 years. A smoothness score doesn't know any of that. It just rewards low volatility. It doesn't care about your goals. Why I evaluate investments as a team, not as individuals Here's what I think matters more. How do your investments work together? Take someone like hypothetical Lisa. She's 53, a parks department supervisor with 24 years in PERS Plan 2. She has about $350,000 in her DCP account and another $180,000 in a Roth IRA she's been building. Lisa's PERS pension is going to provide a stable, predictable income floor for the rest of her life. That changes everything about how we should think about the rest of her portfolio. When you already have a pension, you don't need your bond allocation to generate income. You need it to do something different. You need it to protect your portfolio during the worst moments in the stock market, so you never have to sell stocks at a loss to pay your bills. This is where the type of bonds you own starts to matter more than most people realize. The bond choice most people don't think about Research from the Financial Planning Association examined how U.S. government bonds and corporate bonds each performed inside a diversified portfolio alongside stocks.² The findings were striking. When you look at corporate bonds and government bonds by themselves, corporate bonds have historically earned slightly higher returns. That makes sense. They carry more risk, so they should pay you more. But when you put them inside a portfolio with stocks, the picture flips. Government bonds have historically moved differently than stocks.² When stocks fall hard, government bonds tend to hold their value or even go up. Corporate bonds tend to fall right alongside stocks during the worst downturns.² The credit risk and liquidity risk in corporate bonds show up at exactly the wrong time. One analysis found that once you account for the higher trading costs, fund expenses, and taxes on corporate bond interest (Treasury interest is exempt from state and local taxes), the slim return advantage of corporate bonds essentially disappears.² Another study of 60/40 portfolios over more than 90 years found nearly identical returns whether you used corporate or government bonds, but the portfolio with Treasuries had a meaningfully smaller maximum drawdown.³ That last point is the one I keep coming back to. In retirement, the size of the drop matters just as much as the size of the gain. What this means for your retirement portfolio For someone like Lisa with a PERS pension as her income foundation, the role of bonds in her portfolio isn't to generate the highest possible return. It's to be the part of the portfolio she can draw from when stocks are down, without locking in losses. This is what I call the war chest approach. I typically suggest keeping roughly five years of portfolio withdrawals in high-quality, short-duration government bonds. Not because bonds are exciting. Not because they score well on any single metric. Because they do their job when you need them most. If you want higher returns in your portfolio, the research suggests it's more effective to adjust your stock allocation, rather than reaching for yield with riskier bonds.³ The pension does the heavy lifting on stability. The bonds protect you during bad markets. And the stocks drive long-term growth. Each piece has a role. And evaluating any one piece in isolation misses the whole point. What to think about from here If you're a Washington State public employee approaching retirement, take a look at what's actually inside your DCP bond funds. Are they holding mostly government bonds, or a mix that includes significant corporate bond exposure? Think about how your full picture fits together. Your PERS or TRS or LEOFF pension, your DCP, your IRAs, and Social Security. Each piece should complement the others. And be cautious about chasing the investment that looks best on any single measure. The best portfolio isn't the one with the smoothest individual pieces. It's the one you can stick with for 30 years because it's built to weather the storms that are guaranteed to come. Sources
-Seth DealThe examples and case studies in this article are hypothetical but represent real situations I have encountered in my practice working with Washington State public employees. I keep running into the same conversation. Someone sits down across from me. They’ve got a PERS 2 pension, a healthy DCP balance, maybe some savings in a Roth IRA. On paper, they’re in great shape. But when I ask what they’re looking forward to in retirement, there’s this long pause. And then they start talking about what they’re afraid of. Running out of money. Spending too much. What happens if the market drops right after they retire. They’ve spent 25 or 30 years accumulating. And now the idea of actually using that money feels almost impossible. I think about this a lot. Because there’s a growing body of research suggesting that the hardest part of retirement isn’t saving enough. It’s giving yourself permission to spend. What the research actually says about money and happiness You’ve probably heard some version of the idea that money only buys happiness up to about $75,000 a year. That number comes from a well-known 2010 study by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, who analyzed over 450,000 survey responses and found that day-to-day emotional well-being stopped improving beyond that income level¹. The finding went everywhere. And most people took it to mean that once your basic needs are covered, more money doesn’t matter. But that’s not quite right. A 2023 follow-up study, published in the same journal, told a more nuanced story. Researchers Killingsworth, Kahneman, and Mellers found that the original flattening pattern only applied to the least happy 15 to 20 percent of the population. For everyone else, happiness continued to rise steadily with income well beyond that threshold². For the happiest 30 percent of people, it actually accelerated past $100,000. So what does this mean for someone approaching retirement with a pension and a portfolio? It means the question isn’t just “do I have enough?” It means the question is also “am I going to use it in a way that actually makes my life better?” The spending problem nobody talks about Here’s what I’ve observed working with Washington State public employees. Most people approaching retirement have been in saving mode their entire careers. Paycheck deductions into DCP. Steady pension contribution. Maybe some extra going into a Roth or a taxable account. That discipline is what got them here. But it also created a deeply ingrained habit that’s really hard to reverse. Consider a hypothetical couple. Let’s call them David and Karen. David is 57, retiring from a county job with 28 years of PERS 2 service. Karen still works part-time. Between his pension, their DCP savings, and Social Security down the road, they have more than enough income to maintain their lifestyle. But David can’t bring himself to book the trip to Portugal they’ve been talking about for years. He keeps looking at their account balances and thinking, “Maybe next year.” The truth is, David’s pension already does something incredibly powerful. It takes the worst-case scenario off the table. Why your pension changes everything Behavioral finance research points to a concept called “taking the worst case off the table.” The idea is simple. When people feel like their basic needs are permanently secured, they’re far more willing to spend on the things that actually bring them joy. For most retirees, this means building a safety bucket of cash or conservative investments. A cushion they can point to and say, “No matter what happens, I’m okay.” But Washington State public employees start with something most private-sector retirees don’t have. A guaranteed monthly pension check for life. That pension is your foundation. It covers your baseline. And when you combine it with a war chest of 3 to 5 years of portfolio withdrawals held in high-quality short-duration bonds, you’ve created a level of security that should genuinely free you up. Not to be reckless. But to be intentional. What actually makes retirement fulfilling The research on well-being in retirement consistently points to a few key areas where spending money makes a meaningful difference¹. Deepening relationships. Trips with family. Dinners with friends. Visiting grandkids. The research is clear that spending on shared experiences with people you love has a lasting impact on happiness. Buying back your time. Hiring someone to do the things you don’t enjoy. Yard work. House cleaning. Tax prep (though I might be biased on that one). Eliminating tasks you dislike is one of the most effective ways to use money in retirement. Giving it away. Charitable giving, especially when paired with volunteering, is one of the strongest predictors of well-being in retirement. This doesn’t have to be a large dollar amount. It just has to be meaningful to you. Staying engaged. One of the biggest risks in retirement isn’t financial. It’s losing your sense of purpose. People who retire without a plan for how they’ll stay challenged, connected, and growing tend to struggle. Research on human flourishing identifies engagement, relationships, meaning, and personal growth as essential, not just leisure. The common thread is that none of these things happen by accident. They require you to actually deploy the resources you’ve built. Giving yourself permission From a tax perspective, this is where planning really matters. If David and Karen want to take that Portugal trip, we can look at the most tax-efficient way to fund it. Maybe we pull from DCP in a year when their income is lower. Maybe we use Roth funds that come out tax-free. Maybe we harvest some capital gains in the 0% bracket. The point is that smart spending isn’t the opposite of smart planning. It’s part of it. I think about something I’ve heard attributed to people reflecting on their lives near the end. They rarely wish they had worked more hours or saved a little more aggressively. They wish they had spent more time with the people they loved. And worried a little less about things that, looking back, didn’t matter as much as they thought. Your pension, your DCP, your Social Security. These aren’t just numbers on a statement. They’re tools. And the best use of a tool is to build something that matters to you. If you’ve done the hard work of saving, the next step isn’t to keep saving. It’s to figure out what kind of life you actually want to live. And then go live it. Sources 1. Kahneman, D. and Deaton, A. “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. September 21, 2010. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1011492107 2. Killingsworth, M.A., Kahneman, D., and Mellers, B. “Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. March 1, 2023. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120 -Seth DealNote: The examples and case studies in this article are hypothetical but represent real situations I have encountered in my practice working with Washington State public employees.
I spend a lot of time talking with Washington State public employees about what to do with their DCP savings, their IRAs, and the other investment accounts they've built alongside their pension. And one of the most common things I hear is some version of this: "I've got a chunk of my money in a few individual stocks. They've done well. I don't see a reason to change." I get it. When something is working, it feels right. But a recent academic study caught my attention, and the data behind it tells a story that I think every pre-retiree needs to hear. A Century of Data, One Surprising Finding Finance professor Hendrik Bessembinder at Arizona State University recently published a study called One Hundred Years in the U.S. Stock Markets.¹ It covers nearly 30,000 individual stocks over the full century from 1926 to 2025. The headline number is familiar. The overall U.S. stock market returned roughly 10% per year over that period.¹ A dollar invested in the broad market in 1926 would have grown to over $15,000 by the end of 2025.¹ That sounds great. And it is. But when you stop looking at the market as a whole and start looking at individual stocks, the picture changes dramatically. The median return across all nearly 30,000 individual stocks measured was negative 7%.¹ Not positive. Negative. Let that sit for a moment. The Numbers That Should Worry Stock Pickers Only about 48% of stocks generated a positive return over their lifetime.¹ Fewer than half. It gets worse. When you compare individual stock returns to Treasury bills (essentially a cash equivalent), only about 41% of stocks managed to beat that low bar.¹ Said another way, if you had randomly picked a single stock and held it for its entire life, there was roughly a 60% chance you would have been better off just holding cash. And only about 28% of stocks outperformed the overall market.¹ Roughly three out of four stocks trailed what you could have earned in a simple index fund. Bessembinder's earlier study, published in 2018 and covering data through 2016, found similar patterns with a slightly smaller dataset.² The updated research just makes the case even stronger. Where the Wealth Actually Comes From So if most stocks lose, how does the overall market do so well? The answer is concentration. A tiny number of extraordinary companies do the heavy lifting for everyone else. According to the study, just 46 companies (out of nearly 30,000) created half of all the net wealth generated in the U.S. stock market over the past century.¹ And only about 3.7% of all companies accounted for 100% of the market's net gains.¹ The other 96% of stocks collectively just matched Treasury bills. The top five wealth-creating companies alone (Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon) accounted for over 21% of all wealth created.¹ And here is what really struck me. The concentration has gotten more extreme in recent years. In Bessembinder's earlier study using data through 2016, it took 89 companies to account for half of all net wealth creation.² In the updated study through 2025, it only takes 46.¹ What This Means If You're Approaching Retirement If you have a pension and are getting ready to retire, you already have something most investors don't. A pension. That guaranteed income stream provides a foundation that changes the way you can think about your other investments. But it doesn't eliminate the risk of holding a concentrated stock portfolio in your DCP account or your IRA. Here is the concern. When you're still working and contributing to your accounts, a bad stock pick is painful but recoverable. You have time, and you're adding new money. In retirement, the math changes. You're pulling from your portfolio, not adding to it. A concentrated bet that goes wrong can do real, lasting damage to your retirement income plan. A Better Approach This research reinforces something I talk about with clients all the time. Broad diversification through low-cost funds is not a boring strategy. It is how you make sure you own the small handful of companies that will drive the market's returns going forward. Nobody knows which 46 companies will create half the wealth over the next century. We do know that trying to pick them in advance is a bet against the odds. There are also ways to be more intentional about how you own the broad market. Evidence-based strategies allow you to tilt a portfolio toward characteristics that academic research has linked to higher expected returns, like smaller companies, value-oriented companies, and companies with higher profitability. You still own the whole market. You just own a little more of the areas the evidence suggests are likely to reward you over time. This kind of approach can also help reduce the concentration risk that comes with a traditional S&P 500 index fund, which today is heavily weighted toward a handful of mega-cap tech stocks. Three Things Worth Doing If this data has you thinking about your own portfolio, here are a few steps worth considering. First, take an honest look at any individual stock positions you hold. If a large portion of your retirement savings is tied up in just a few companies, the historical odds are not working in your favor. Second, resist the urge to chase whatever is working right now. Nineteen of the top 30 wealth-creating companies from the last nine years were not in the top 30 over the prior 90 years.¹ Tomorrow's biggest winners probably are not today's headlines. Third, remember that time is still on your side. If you're in your 50s, you may have a 30 or 40-year investing horizon ahead of you. The companies with the biggest cumulative returns in this study were not always the flashiest. Many were simply businesses that compounded at solid rates for a very long time. Small differences in annual returns lead to enormous differences in outcomes over decades. Your pension from DRS provides a stable income floor. That is a real advantage. Pairing it with a broadly diversified, evidence-based investment portfolio in your DCP and other accounts is, in my view, the most reliable way to build the retirement you're working toward. Sources
The examples and case studies in this article are hypothetical but represent real situations I have encountered in my practice working with Washington State public employees. I had a conversation recently with a client who had done everything right. She had 27 years of PERS 2 service. A healthy DCP balance. An IRA from a previous job. She was 56 and thinking seriously about retiring at 58 or 59. We were talking about Roth conversions when she stopped me: "Wait. If I convert this year, I cannot touch that money for five years, right?" It is one of the most common questions I hear. And the answer is almost always: it depends. The Roth conversion 5-year rule is one of the most misunderstood pieces of the tax code. Even reputable financial publications get it wrong.1 There are actually two different 5-year rules, one for contributions and one for conversions, and mixing them up can lead to unnecessary taxes or unnecessary fear of a strategy that could save you real money.2 A quick refresher on Roth conversions A Roth conversion is when you move money from a pre-tax account (like a Traditional IRA or your DCP) into a Roth account. You pay income tax on the converted amount that year. But after that, the money grows tax-free, withdrawals are tax-free, and there are no required minimum distributions.3 For Washington State public employees with a pension, the years between retirement and claiming Social Security can be a golden window for conversions. Your taxable income may drop significantly once you stop working. That creates room to convert at lower tax brackets. But before you convert a single dollar, you need to understand how the withdrawal rules work. And that starts with two simple questions. Two questions that simplify everything Here is the easiest way to figure out how the 5-year rule applies to your situation. Answer these two questions: 1. Do you currently have a Roth IRA that was funded at least 5 tax years ago (with any dollar amount)? 2. Are you age 59 ½ or older? If you answered yes to both, you are in what I think of as the golden scenario. You can withdraw everything from your Roth IRA (contributions, conversions, and earnings) completely tax-free and penalty-free. Full stop.2 This is the part that surprises people. If you are over 59 ½ and you have had any Roth IRA open for at least five tax years, a brand new conversion you do today is accessible immediately. No new 5-year waiting period on the converted amount.4 The scenario that matters most for pre-retirees Let me walk through a hypothetical that comes up frequently. Say Tom is a 57-year-old county maintenance supervisor with 25 years of PERS 2 service. He opened a Roth IRA eight years ago and put in $500 just to get it started. He is now thinking about doing a $50,000 Roth conversion from his Traditional IRA. Tom might assume he has to wait five years before touching that $50,000. But here is what actually happens. Because Tom is under 59 ½, this conversion does start its own 5-year clock for penalty purposes. If he tried to withdraw the converted amount before five years pass and before he turns 59 ½, he would face a 10% early withdrawal penalty.2 But here is the key. When Tom turns 59 ½ (about two and a half years from now), that penalty clock becomes irrelevant. The 10% penalty only applies to early withdrawals. Once you are 59 ½, you are no longer "early." And because Tom already has a Roth IRA that is more than five tax years old, he satisfies both conditions for a qualified distribution.4 At 59 ½, Tom can withdraw the full $50,000 conversion plus any growth, tax-free and penalty-free. No five-year wait required on the conversion itself. This is the piece that gets misreported constantly. The conversion-specific 5-year rule is an anti-abuse rule designed to prevent people under 59 ½ from using Roth conversions to dodge early withdrawal penalties.1 Once you are past 59 ½, it simply does not apply to you. Where people actually get tripped up The scenario that can catch you off guard is when you are over 59 ½ but have never had a Roth IRA before. In that case, you can access your converted principal right away (you already paid tax on it). But any earnings on that conversion are not tax-free until the Roth has been open for five tax years.2 It is a narrow issue, but it matters if you are converting a large amount and it grows significantly in the first few years. This is why starting a Roth IRA early, even with a tiny amount, is such a valuable move. It starts the clock. And once that clock has run, it never resets, even if you close the account and open a new one later.1 One thing every Washington State employee can do right now If you do not already have a Roth IRA, open one and fund it with any amount. Even $50. If your income is too high for a direct Roth IRA contribution, you can do a small conversion from a Traditional IRA instead. Either way, you start the 5-year clock.2 This is one of those rare pieces of financial planning advice that costs almost nothing, takes 15 minutes, and could save you real money down the road. Especially if you are a PERS, TRS, or LEOFF 2 member planning to retire in your late 50s and considering Roth conversions during those bridge years between retirement and Social Security. Now that the 2017 tax rates were made permanent by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the old "convert before rates go up" urgency has faded. But the underlying math has not changed. Roth conversions remain one of the most powerful tools to manage your tax bill across a multi-decade retirement.5 The 5-year rule is not a reason to avoid the strategy. It is a detail to understand so you can use it with confidence. And as always, work with your CPA or financial advisor before making any conversion decisions. The rules are nuanced, and your individual tax situation matters. Sources 1. Slott, Ed. "The most misunderstood Roth conversion tax rule." InvestmentNews. October 8, 2019. https://www.investmentnews.com/ira-alert/the-most-misunderstood-roth-conversion-tax-rule/169866 2. Kitces, Michael. "Understanding The Two 5-Year Rules For Roth IRA Contributions And Conversions." Kitces.com. January 1, 2014. https://www.kitces.com/blog/understanding-the-two-5-year-rules-for-roth-ira-contributions-and-conversions/ 3. Internal Revenue Service. "Roth IRAs." https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/roth-iras 4. Taylor, Joy. "What to Know About the Five-Year Rules for Roth IRAs: The Kiplinger Tax Letter." Kiplinger. January 14, 2025. https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/five-year-rule-on-roth-ira-contributions-and-payouts-kiplinger-tax-letter 5. Internal Revenue Service. "Publication 590-B: Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)." https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590b -Seth Deal |
AuthorsBob Deal is a CPA with over 30 years of experience and been a financial planner for 25 years. Archives
May 2026
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