Second chance on Rebate and Tax Increase?

Since the final legislation for the stimulus package and the rebates has been enacted, various news reports are indicating that it's in effect a prebate on 2008 taxes, except that payments this year are based on 2007 payments and in some circumstances don't have to be paid back.

The IRS is less forthcoming, and their web site does not indicate that there's a second chance at the rebate in 2009 when filing the tax return for 2008. And no indication whether the tax credit will be phased out for those with an AGI above $75000 this year, so I still don't know whether the Tax Rebate is a Tax Increase for Some.

If the phaseout is in effect based on 2008 AGI, and your income is just above the phase-out threshold, then it may be possible to get the rebate by increasing your 401(k) before-tax contributions, since this will lower your AGI.

Hopefully the IRS will soon update their web site, so that it won't be necessary to parse the language of the legislation to figure this out.

Tax Rebate = Tax Increase for Some

The title is counter intuitive, so let me explain. The tax rebate as proposed is phased out for "high" income, for example a single with an AGI of $75,000. The $600 rebate is phased out over the $12,000 of AGI between $75,000 and $87,000. For someone with an income in this range, this is effectively a marginal tax increase of 5%. With an original marginal tax rate that's probably 5% (assuming deductions near the standard value), the effective tax rate is now 30%.

I am caught in this. If I had known about the tax rebate terms last year, I could have adjusted the amount of tax-deferred savings I converted to a Roth IRA.

I can see some merit to the argument that the tax rebate is really the US government borrowing money from the Chinese so the poor can buy Chinese goods. Either the bill for the tax rebate will have to be paid, or interest will be paid in the mean time. Probably increasing the taxes I'll have to pay on tax-deferred savings withdrawn in retirement. So in the end the extra taxes I effectively paid on part of my Roth conversions may balance out in the end.

Psychology of Personal Finance

Investopedia has an interesting article on Behavioral Finance. While much of the article discusses behaviors particular to investors such as herd behavior, there are behaviors which can effect anyone's finances.

One behavior is mental accounting. This is treating money differently. "Found money" such as an income tax return can be splurged while money that was earned is more valuable.

Prospect theory is how we react to certain events, treating negative events as more significant than positive ones. For example, someone who gains $100 and then loses $50 is unhappy while someone who only gained $50 is happy, even though they're even in terms of results.

Check out the behavioral finance article and see if any of its concepts apply to you.

Future Programming for Analog TV: Snow

An acquaintance commented last night that her TV broke. When she went to buy a cheap one, there were none to be found. In the group conversation that developed, no one was aware that analog TV broadcasts stop in just 17 months, on Feb 17, 2009. Only digital TV broadcasting will remain after that date. Right now it is illegal to sell a new set that doesn't include a digital tuner.

So what do you do if you have an analog TV set? If your TV reception goes through the cable company, then the issue is up to them. Your existing converter box probably will continue to work. On the other hand, if you use an antenna then you will have to do something yourself.

There is a Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program scheduled to begin next year. Under this program, all US households will be eligible to request two $40 coupons towards converter boxes. These boxes are expected to retail for approximately $60 each, but are still under development.

If you use an antenna and want to use your analog set, I recommend that sometime next year you take advantage of this program. You may want to wait a few months for prices to stabilize. Next summer may be the optimum time. If you use rabbit ears you may find that a roof-top antenna is necessary. That has been my experience with a digital TV as I'm in a fringe area. While analog TV degrades into snow and perhaps ghosts, digital TV is perfect and then with degraded signals you might see a bit of pixelization, and a dark screen. Don't wait until the last minute to sort this out.

Reasons For Not Participating in a 401(k) Plan

Occasionally the topic of retirement savings comes up at work. I'm amazed at some of the thinking.

One colleague made the comment that if he had $50,000 he could retire. Being an immigrant, I thought perhaps he was planning to return to his home country and live in a mud hut. But I didn't pursue the topic. Then a couple of years later, he was looking at needing to retire and told me that all he had was Social Security. When I asked about his 401(k) he said that he wasn't participating. When I asked why he said "It might go down". Well, with a 50% employer match and 100% match after 5 years, it has to go down a lot to lose money. And if afraid that "it might go down" the plan offers a money market fund. So he lost out on the employer match for 6 years at this employer. And with the relatively small amount he could have saved, he would pay very little if any taxes on his distributions if he spread it out over a number of years.

Another fellow employee told me that he wouldn't participate because he didn't want his money in our employer's stock. Yes, it's a good idea to diversify. But beginning last year, those who were vested had the option to sell their company stock and chose other investments. After the conversation, I got to thinking that maybe he thought his contribution had to be invested in company stock. Which was never the case, although that has always been an option.

Another colleague who is participating thought that the only way to get funds of the employer match out of the company stock was to pursue our unique option of being able to have up to a certain limit distributed each year -- he wasn't aware of the plan change last year allowing diversification.

Before making decisions about participating in your employer's 401(k) plan, get a copy of the Summary Plan Description and read up on the rules. And if it's been awhile since you've read yours, get a fresh copy because they can be amended periodically, and review the information there.

Any other excuses for not participating?

I Wonder if Ray Got a Letter Too

The Federal Trade Commission has published a press release "FTC Warns Mortgage Advertisers and Media That Ads May Be Deceptive". On this page is a link to a sample letter they sent out.

The press release included the following:

For example, some ads touted rates as low as “1%” but failed to disclose adequately:

* that the stated rate was a “payment rate” – not the interest rate – that applied only during the loan’s initial period;
* that low advertised payments applied for only a short period; and
* the loan’s Annual Percentage Rate, the uniform measure of the cost of credit that enables consumers to shop for and compare mortgage offerings.

Some ads promoted only incredibly low monthly payments but failed to disclose adequately the terms of repayment, including payment increases and a final balloon payment.

I wonder if Ray Vinson got one about his "No-Spin Mortgage". Perhaps so -- I haven't heard any such ads from him or Bill O'Reilly recently. I was never able to find out any details about his loans on his web site, just an application form. What do you think the chances are that I would have found out if I'd taken the trouble to apply?

While over at the FTC website, you might want to check out their page with links to articles with consumer information about mortgages.

How and Why I Rolled Over 401(k) Funds to a Roth IRA

Actually I didn’t do this exactly as I’ll explain later. First I’ll discuss the “why”.

As I discussed in this post, you should have some of your retirement funds in tax-deferred savings such as traditional IRA or 401(k) funds. This is because some taxable income is not actually taxed. The taxable income on which you pay no taxes at all is that which is less than your personal exemption and standard deduction. The standard deduction amount is increased slightly for someone 65 or older. This adds up to almost $10,000 for a single person over 65 in 2007, and this amount is indexed annually for inflation.

However, the effective tax rates for a retiree can quickly escalate once taxes are paid. If other income including withdrawals from tax-deferred savings added to 50% of your Social Security benefit exceeds $25000 for a single person, you begin paying taxes on $.50 of Social Security for each $1 of additional other income. With even more income, you pay taxes on $.85 of Social Security for each $1 of additional other income. This can effectively turn a 15% tax bracket into 22.5% or 27.75%, and a 25% bracket into 37.5% or 46.25%. It would be terrible to pay 46.25% taxes on money you deferred at 25%. Also, the $25,000 threshold for testing whether or not some of your Social Security is not indexed for inflation which will result in more and more people paying more taxes on Social Security benefits.

Once you reach the age of 70 ½, the IRS expects you to take Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from your tax-deferred accounts. Failure to take your RMDs can result in punishing penalties -- 50% of the amount you were supposed to have distributed but did not.

I have sufficient tax-deferred savings that I’m concerned about ending up in an effectively higher tax bracket due to taxation of my Social Security benefits. I am also concerned that tax rates will increase in the future as right now they are at historic lows. So I am converting 401(k) funds to a Roth IRA, but as I stated earlier I couldn’t do this exactly, or at least not directly. First I had to rollover the 401(k) funds to a rollover traditional IRA and then I converted funds from the rollover IRA to a Roth IRA.

My employer’s 401(k) plan rules allow me to distribute up to $25,000 per year of the company match. Most people probably don’t have this option, but I did. However, you may have funds from prior employers that you’ve either left with them or have already rolled over to an IRA. (If you spent them – shame on you.)

Last year, I created a rollover account at Vanguard which initially was unfunded. Then I contacted my 401(k) plan administrator and asked for a partial distribution with the check made out to Vanguard as the custodian of my rollover account. By having it made out to my IRA custodian I avoided having taxes withheld from the distribution. The check was mailed to me. I then placed it in an envelope with a form I downloaded from Vanguard’s site and filled out with my personal and account information to fund the rollover IRA account I had setup previously.

Later on and before the end of 2006, I converted part of my rollover account to a Roth IRA account which I had previously set up and funded with normal IRA contributions. The part I didn’t convert is still in my rollover IRA. The amount that I converted to Roth added to my tax bill. In order to avoid penalties for underpayment of taxes, I made sure to increase tax withholdings from my salary to exceed the amount I had paid in taxes the prior year, and I went ahead and had enough withheld to cover the taxes on the amount I converted to Roth. I estimated this with a spreadsheet and actually ended up with a small refund due to the telephone tax refund.

In retrospect, I should not have done this with my current employer’s 401(k). I have funds left in a prior employer’s 401(k) plan. I should have started my conversion with those funds. The reason is that if I leave my current employer during or after the year I turn 55, then I can withdraw plan without penalty from my 401(k) sponsored by that employer. I don’t have that option for employer’s I’ve left at a younger age until I reach 59 ½. I also don’t have that option with funds that I’ve rolled over. While taking and spending distributions from my 401(k) is not currently in my plans – well, life happens and it’s good to have options.

I want to reiterate a few points for someone contemplating doing this.
(1) Make sure that you have enough tax-deferred savings or a taxable pension so that when in retirement you use up the standard deduction and personal exemption amount on which you wouldn’t pay taxes anyway.
(2) Make sure the distribution is directly to your rollover account custodian to avoid withholdings.
(3) Plan your income tax withholdings and/or estimated tax payments so that you don’t get hit with a large tax bill and possible penalties the following April.
(4) If you have funds in any traditional IRA which are after-tax, the complexity of your tax returne will increase. Those funds are “non-deductible contributions” to a traditional IRA, see IRS form 8606 that will need to be filed if you do a conversion.
Another consideration is that the funds I’ve converted must remain in my Roth IRA for 5 years or I will pay a penalty.

This year I plan to rollover funds from my prior employer's 401(k) plan and convert them to Roth. I understand that beginning in 2008 that the "two step" won't be required and that 401(k) funds can be directly converted into a Roth IRA. While my employer offers a 401(k) plan with some great funds, I hope they make it even greater by adding a Roth 401(k) option.

Your Dinner is About to Be Interrupted

Having my evening interrupted with telemarketing phone calls is an unpleasant but receding memory. Many states including my own passed do-not-call legislation in 2002. The fine print is that the registrations for the lists automatically expire after 5 years. After all, many people move and we don't want the person who "inherits" the old number be deprived of the wonderful experience of having their dinners interrupted by someone pitching timeshares. So if you signed up for your state's do-not-call list in 2002, that registration may be expiring if you didn't sign up again. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are two such states.

The national do-not-call legislation was enacted in 2003 also with a provision for 5-year expiration of registrations, so if you've registered for that list your registration is still in effect and won't expire before next year.

Last year I got a now-rare phone call from a telepest. After giving them a hard time and filling out a complaint on the web site of my state attorney-general, I checked-up on my registration to make sure it hadn't expired. While I was at it, I went ahead and re-registered my phone number protecting me until 2011.

If you haven't registered your phone number on the national do-not-call list, you should do it now. Even if you have already registered, why not re-register it now that you're thinking about it so that you won't have a gap in your protection next year if you forget to renew it?

The registration process is fairly simple. Just go to the National Do Not Call Registry and fill in their form. You will need to give them an email address to verify your registration. Make sure that you follow the instructions in the email to compete the registration process. The web site also offers the capability to verify your registration.

No 401(k) for Snow

In a recent post, I discussed the Zeroeth Law of Financial Security (spend less than you earn)and gave the example of Tony Snow not being able to make it on $168,000 per year.

Seems it's even worse, according to this editorial. While not the main point of the editorial, it stated:
......., it was clear that he had relied entirely on others to save for his retirement. Snow conceded: "As a matter of fact, I was even too dopey to get in on a 401(k). So there is actually no Fox pension. The only media pension I have is through AFTRA [a union]."

Tony needs to get serious about his own personal finances, or hope that the union pension is lucrative. Even maximum Social Security benefits if he waits until the age of 70 to start them will be less than 24% of the $168,000 he couldn't get by on. And the benefits would be about the same as an average worker makes.

Hopefully Tony will beat his cancer. If so, I expect we'll be seeing him on Faux News for a long time to come.

Improving Your FICO Score -- Correcting Errors

FICO scores are determined from data in your credit report. But many credit reports are in error. When I became aware several years ago that you could get a copy of your own credit report free from www.annualcreditreport.com, I pulled a report from one of the 3 credit-reporting agencies. When I saw the errors present in my report, I wrote a letter and had the errors corrected. I also pulled the reports from the other 2 agencies, found errors in them and wrote letters to have them corrected as well.

Since then, I spread out my reports among the 3 agencies, getting a sample from one of them every 4 months to get a heads-up if there's a problem. While I'm not in the market for loans, FICO scores can effect other aspects of life such as insurance premiums, and can even keep you from getting a job.

In my case it was fairly easy to get the errors corrected. Perhaps your situation is a bit more complicated. Check out this MarketWatch story How to Correct Your Credit Report for a six-step guide.

FICO scores are less of a concern. Paying your bills on time and not over-utilizing your credit line will go a long distance to getting you that high FICO score. And correcting errors may help as well.

Which Came First, the FICO Score or the Loan?

How does someone without a credit history obtain a loan? It's sort of like asking whether the chicken or the egg came first. I remember the difficulty I had in getting my first credit card -- and this was after I had obtained a mortgage. I was turned down even when applying as a student, not for a poor credit history but for no credit history. This was around the time FICO scores were introduced.

According to this article in the Kansas City Star, an alternative scoring method is being developed based on an individual's payment history for utility bills, rent payments, and even payday loans.

This alternative scoring method is not yet accepted by all lenders. However it may provide more options to those trying to break through the credit history barrier to get their first credit card.

Driving a Car to Death Saves You ... How Much?

The headline of this CNN article says that it's $31,000. Compared to the cost of trading in and buying new every 5 years, keeping a Honda Civic EX for 15 years saves you $20,500. The car used in this example is a Honda Civic EX -- the Civic is one of Honda's cheaper models and the EX is a package that adds power windows, automatic transmission, etc. The other $10,300 comes from interest before inflation on your savings, savings at 5% and inflation at 3%. Personally, I prefer to leave inflation out of it -- but the $20,500 of savings is enough motivation. That's over $1300 per year that can be added to retirement savings.

I have a Honda Civic DX which has basically nothing extra, except for air conditioning and a CD player. I don't mind cranking up the windows by hand or shifting the transmission myself. My other vehicle has power windows two of which have required expensive repairs. I get better gas mileage with standard transmission, in the mid 30's around town and easily over 40 mpg on a long trip. The only feature I miss in my basic car is cruise control when on a long trip. I considered Honda's hybrid model, but estimated that the $5000 extra it cost would not be repaid by reduced gas consumption, even with rising gas prices.

In order to keep your vehicle for 15 years, it has to hold up. Regular maintenance goes a long ways, some of which is relatively simple such as checking your fluid levels regularly. The make of the vehicle is a factor: some of the longest running cars are made by Honda. On the other hand, some luxury vehicles such as BMW, Jaguar, and Mercedes are less likely to last 200,000 miles. (Here's the other assumption in the article: driving around 13,000 miles per year.)

I've had my Honda for almost 3 years and have put over 36,000 miles on it. I've had zero problems with it, compared to an American vehicle that required several trips back to the dealer for repairs, the first within 30 days.

Most people make car payments and view the cost of ownership as the amount of the monthly car payment (after you've paid off the note it's free). Their view of the cost to go on a trip is the cost of the gas. I have a different model. I've paid cash for my last two vehicles. I estimate the depreciation as the cost of the car divided by 100,000 miles. Each month I look at the odometer and plug the number into my spreadsheet. The spreadsheet calculates how much I need to set aside to buy the next car. I expect the car to last more than 100,000 miles, but also expect that repairs will be needed more frequently as the miles pile up. And when it's time for a new vehicle, I have the money to pay cash for it. And with my financing model, I think a bit more about the cost before deciding to take a trip.

Perhaps some people look at me as I drive up in my appliance-white small vehicle and assume that I don't have much money. But I don't care about impressing anyone. I get more satisfaction from a higher balance in my 401(k).

My Net Worth Says "Ouch"!

Here's a chart of my latest net worth estimate. Ouch!! My 401(k) (pink area at the top) took a hit from the recent stock market decline.

For now though, I'm remaining in the stock market, my 401(k) plan offers some good index funds.

I haven't made any adjustment to my property value (area in green) yet. I have been basing the value of my house on the tax appraisal that comes out one a year. Given the housing market slowdown due to the credit crunch, I'd expect that to happen. But the cynic in me suspects that they'll never reduce the tax appraisal.

The Retirement Reality Game Show

Welcome to the Retirement Reality Game Show. Here are the rules: you have 6 months to prepare by storing up all the supplies you need, and then you will be locked in your house for an average of 6 months, during which time additional contests will be played.

Contestant Bob buys up 6 months worth of food and other supplies, and is locked in his house. A jar with 364 black balls and one white ball is prepared. Every day, the game show host pulls out at random one ball. If a black ball is pulled, then Bob stays in his house another day. If the white ball is pulled, then Bob is released from the house.

On average, Bob will stay in the house for 183 days, which is about 6 months. But there's a 50% chance that Bob will stay in the house longer. If Bob plans his meals to last 183 days, there's a 50% chance that the viewers of the show will watch him starve.

Let's look at the graph of the probability that Bob will still be locked in the house on a certain day.
Now let's take another look at the probability of a 65-year-old surviving to a certain age.
The life expectancy graph was previously presented and explained in this post.

Aside from the fact that one graph is a simple straight line and the other is curved, these graphs are similar. If Bob prepares for an average stay in the house, he has a significant chance of starving. If you plan your retirement savings and withdrawals in retirement for an average life expectancy, there is a significant chance that you will run out of money and suffer whatever consequences follow.

While no analogy is perfect, it should put in basic terms the idea that if you prepare for the average, there's a significant chance that you will have under-prepared.

Putting the Personal in Finance

Grace over at GRACEful Retirement had this comment recently about my blog.
EMF at Engineering My Finances tends to be a bit more general and way more math-oriented. I read him, but I don't always understand him!
I have to say that I agree with her, and take it as a reminder that I need to improve my writing skills when communicating some of the complex topics I take on.

Unlike many in the Personal Finance Blog-o-sphere, I never had the situation with a financial meltdown to overcome. I've never had to answer the phone worried that a bill collector was on the other end. I've never had to decide which utility bill I might get by without paying that month.

Does that mean that I always had it easy? Or that I inherited money? No, quite the opposite. Growing up in a large family, I never went hungry. But there were few extras, and my parents struggled to pay bills. I did not live in a house with indoor plumbing or a TV until almost a teenager. When a teenager, I did not have an allowance handed to me. Instead I got small amounts for doing chores, and later on I got jobs. I will say that some of the low skilled jobs I had as a teenager were lower paying yet harder than jobs I had later as an adult.

Then as an adult, I was not provided a free education -- I had to earn it. After 4 years in the military, I had the Vietnam Era GI bill. But with a wife and child, the GI bill did not pay enough to get by, so I had to work full time and did not graduate until in my 30's. But with the GI bill I was able to pay my tuition and buy textbooks as I went along and had no student loan debt.

My experiences growing up taught me the value of money, and impressed upon me that I didn't want to be caught without it. So I've always tried to live reasonably but within my means. My wife didn't agree, wanting to spend freely, and ended up divorcing me. Within a year she had spent the entirety of the divorce settlement. Although I didn't think so at the time, in the long run she did me a favor by divorcing me.

As Grace pointed out, I am math oriented. A few years ago, some friends came into a lump sum and were arguing whether to pay off credit cards or pay ahead on their mortgage. When asked, I gave the logical financial answer that it was better to pay off the credit cards because the interest rate was higher and also not tax-deductible. Being a few years older and having reflected a bit, I would now give the personal answer. Which would be along the lines of "Unless you understand why you have this credit card debt, I would pay down the mortgage. Because if your credit limit or the payments is what's keeping you from charging more, that's the better course. Because in 20 years you won't have anything to show for what you've charged except for the debt -- you'll have none of the crap you charged, but at least your house will be paid for. On the other hand, if you have control of your credit card spending and can pay the credit card bill in full each month, then go ahead and pay them off. Then take the money each month you would have been paying on your credit card bills and apply it to your mortgage." Actually, because it is personal and I'd want to keep them as friends I wouldn't put it quite so bluntly.

So I recognize the need to remember the personal as well as the finance. Even though some of my posts have been and will continue to be more on the side of finance.

Tax Considerations for Investments in Retirement Accounts

Humberto Cruz has an article entitled “After-tax allocation tricky to calculate”. It reminds us of two factors for considering our retirement savings.

First, funds in a before-tax account such as a traditional IRA should be discounted based on your expected taxes when withdrawing them. $100,000 in a traditional 401(k) is not the same as $100,000 in a Roth IRA or even $100,000 in a normal after-tax account. While I expect at least some of my 401(k) savings to be withdrawn at a lower tax rate, I also expect to pay some taxes on it. For current tracking purposes, I discount the value of my 401(k) and traditional IRA accounts by my current marginal tax rate when calculating my net worth.

The second factor to keep in mind is that withdrawals from before-tax accounts are taxed at your ordinary tax rates at the time. Long term gains from stocks do not enjoy the capital gains income tax rate of 5% or 15%.

Read Humberto’s article to see how he handles these two factors.

The Zeroeth Law of Financial Security.

CNN reports that Tony Snow may be stepping down. No this is not turning in to a political blog. From the CNN article:

"I'm not going to be able to go the distance, but that's primarily for financial reasons." Snow said. "I've told people when my money runs out, then I've got to go."

According to The Washington Post, Snow makes $168,000 as the White House spokesman.

$168,000 is more than the income of the vast majority of Americans. Tony Snow-job took a cut in pay from his job at Faux News. And it would appear has not changed his spending habits, so has depleted whatever savings he had which appear from the article to include college money for his kids.

Financial security isn't what you make. At any income level, it's also what you spend. So let me restate it:
The Zeroeth Law of Financial Security "Spend less than you earn."

Why not call it the first law? Even Dave Ramsey doesn't include it in his list of "Baby Steps". It's so elementary that it shouldn't need to be stated. Unfortunately, too many people forget it and end up in trouble. At least Tony Snow has his eye on his situation.

When Will You Die?

Average life expectancy seems to enter into on line discussions on deciding when to collect Social Security benefits, with the goal of maximizing benefits collected during your lifetime. Some comments imply that if you're age X you'll live Y years and die, for instance one commenter stated that a 65-year-old has a 20-year life expectancy implying a certain death age of 85. But I'm sure that if put to them that way, they would tell you that's not what they meant.

I decided to look into it a bit further. On the Social Security Administration's web site, I found a table with life expectancy data calculated by their actuaries. Excel has the capability to import HTML data formatted like the chart. I did so, and with some added calculations, I was able to produce the graph shown below. In case you have difficulty reading the legends, the blue curve shows the probability of an average male aged 65 surviving to a particular future age, and the vertical blue dashed line shows the average life expectancy for that male. The pink curve and dashed line is the equivalent data for a female aged 65. As you might expect, the average life expectancy for a 65-year-old female of 84.2 years is longer than the 81.33 years for a 65-year-old male, almost 3 years longer.

If we look at the curves, a straight line approximation starting from 1 at age 65 and dropping to zero at age 100 would be a reasonable approximation. Certainly not perfect, but a lot closer to the curves than an approximation which has a value of 1 from age 65 and then falls to zero at the average life expectancy. So no, the average person doesn't live to their life expectancy and then fall dead.

This is significant to retirement planning. If you are among the more than 50% who live longer than your average life expectancy and that's the age to which you planned your savings prior to retirement and spending after, then you'll suffer the consequences.

Yes, I said that you have a greater than 50% chance of exceeding your average life expectancy. If you'll look closely at the graph, you'll see the life expectancy lines intersect their curves above the 50% line. For females, the median life expectancy is almost a year longer than the average life expectancy.

With a bit more computation on the data I downloaded to analyze the data for an average 65-year-old, I produced the following graph: Using the same blue-for-boys/pink-for-girls coding scheme, this graph shows the probability that an average 65-year-old will die at a particular one-year span of age. Note that the probability is less than 4.5% at any age, and the highest probability for a one-year span is at greater than average life expectancy.

Meaning that when 65 years old, your chances of dying in a year other than your average life expectancy is greater than 95%. A very high degree of uncertainty when planning your retirement. I plan to discuss this further in a future post.

Means Testing of Social Security Benefits Already in Effect

Jed Pittman on HelpYourMoney has a post entitled "Thoughts on Social Security" which discusses the possibility of means testing for Social Security benefits, and ends that part of the discussion by quoting Ben Stein who said "Those who have saved will be made to pay for those who haven’t ..... "

It just so happens that a mechanism for means testing Social Security benefits is already in place for taxing those who have saved for retirement while not taxing those who haven't.

The way it works is that a test amount is computed based on adding your taxable income (which includes withdrawals from tax-deferred retirement savings) to 1/2 of your Social Security benefit. If the test amount reaches $25,000 for a single person or $32,000 for a married couple, then each additional dollar of income results in taxation of $0.50 of Social Security benefits. At higher test amounts, an additional dollar of income results in $0.85 of Social Security being taxed for each $1 of other income. Specifically when I say that Social Security is taxed, up to 85% of your benefit can be added to your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). But if your AGI is less than your exemptions and deductions, then it still won't be taxed. Refer to the worksheet for line 20 of the 1040 tax form for details, although the computations are rather mind numbing -- I set up a spreadsheet to do them so I could see how it worked.

The problem is that the $25,000 and $32,000 exclusion amounts in the test computation are not adjusted for inflation.

Let's consider a single person who has not saved for retirement at all and only has income from Social Security. This person has no pension, no portfolio of stocks -- just Social Security. That person would need to have more than $50,000 in Social Security benefits before 1/2 of it exceeds $25,000 and any of his benefit is added to his AGI. Exemption and standard deduction for a single person adds up to almost $10,000 in 2007 for a single person 65 or older. So this year over $80,000 of Social Security benefits would be needed before he would pay any taxes at all. Since the exemption and standard deduction amounts are indexed for inflation, this will increase beyond $80,000 in future years.

An average earner retiring at age 66 would draw somewhere around $16,000 in Social Security benefits. Social Security benefits are adjusted for inflation. Even so, at a modest 3% annual inflation rate it will be decades before he would have to pay taxes.

Let's compare our spendthrift to another average earner retiring at the same time who has saved enough for an initial withdrawal of $24000 from tax deferred savings with annual adjustments for inflation. The test amount for that person would be $32,000 and he would add $3500 of Social Security to his AGI and unless he had lots of deductions would pay taxes on it.

And as our conscientious saver increased his tax-deferred withdrawals for inflation, more and more of his Social Security benefits will be taxed. He's at the level where every $1 of additional taxable income results in taxation of $.50 of Social Security benefits. So instead of being in the 15% tax bracket, he's really in the 1.5 x 15% bracket or 22.5%. And if in the future the 15% bracket becomes 20%, his marginal tax rate is 30%. With more income such that $.85 of Social Security is taxed for each dollar of other taxable income, then his tax rate gets multiplied by 1.85. (Kind of hurts if the taxes were 15% or even 25% when deferred.) At a 3% inflation rate, the rule of 72 says that his tax-deferred withdrawals 24 years from now will be $48,000 and his Social Security benefit $32,000, of which $27,200 or the limit of 85% would be taxed.

And if he thought he could reduce his tax bill in retirement by investing in municipal bonds, guess what! The interest from the bonds is not taxed at the federal level, but the interest is added to the test amount used above to compute how much Social Security is added to his AGI. So he could effectively pay some federal taxes on it anyway. Don't be surprised if in the future Roth distributions are treated similarly.

At the same time, the spendthrift would be a long way from having any Social Security added to his AGI, and because of exemptions and standard deductions which would be inflation adjusted by then to $20,000 it would take even longer before inflation would result in his paying any taxes at all.

When this means-test equivalent was originally put in place, only the very wealthy were effected. With the inexorable march of inflation, more and more Boomers who have saved responsibly will pay more and more taxes. Taxes that will help pay the benefits for the irresponsible who haven't saved.

An Anecdote of the Credit Crunch

A coworker recently bought a new (used) house as part of his plan to downsize now that he's expecting to be an empty nester. But he made the purchase before placing his old house on the market.

Talk about bad timing!!! In the last three weeks he's had no one even come to look at his house. And the local economy is not depressed. Nor is his house in a depressed area.

I suggested that he look at finding a renter. Insurance companies don't like to underwrite empty houses, and he is losing much of his coverage because the house is unoccupied.