Happy New Year! A new year is a great opportunity to reflect on the past and look forward to the future. Perhaps you are already working on some new goals or are revisiting some past goals that didn’t quite progress as you’d planned.

Have you made any new resolutions for 2024? I really don’t understand why people would wait until the start of a new year to resolve to do something different in their life, especially if they have known for some time the need for a change. If you recognize anytime in the year that something needs to change in your behavior, why wait? Get it done and be the person you know you should be in 2024.

You may already be retired, so you might not think this article is for you. You already have your investment plan in place and what could go wrong anyway. Well politicians change, policies change, laws change, social norms change and the economy changes.  Your health also changes. In my life getting older hasn’t been the problem, it is the side effects. For those not retired yet, hopefully these topics will help you in planning your retirement.

Beginning in 2023, the SECURE 2.0 Act raised the age that you must begin taking RMDs from age 72 to age 73 (it is now age 73 if born 1951-1959 and age 75 if born 1960 or later). If you reach age 72 in 2023, the required beginning date for your first RMD is April 1, 2025, for your first RMD in 2024. You will use the ending value of your IRA on 12/31/2023 for this calculation. The SECURE 2.0 Act changed some of the rules governing Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). However, much remains the same. Here’s where things stand as of 2023.