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It's barely started, but 2020 is proving to be a busy, crazy year. Much of the mayhem is tied to the passage of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of late 2019.
As Washington Bureau Chief Melanie Waddell highlights in "Washington Watch," the Internal Revenue Service has been rushing to share guidance on new rules affecting required minimum distributions under the Secure Act, which pushed RMD starting age up to 72 from 70½.
Advisors "should reassure any client who turns 70½ in 2020 that they do NOT have an RMD this year, even though they received a statement from their IRA custodian saying they do. That statement is incorrect — so advisors can tell clients not to worry," said IRA specialist Ed Slott of Ed Slott & Co. (Clients who turned 70½ in 2019, though, do have RMDs.) "There is lots of confusion here for advisors to deal with," Slott added.
And it's not just investors in their early 70s who are fretting about retirement-related issues. In a recent Schwab survey, 65% of those within five years of leaving the workforce say they feel overwhelmed by the need to save enough for retirement, and 52% are overwhelmed by how they can manage their different sources of income in retirement.
Even worse, 70% of those polled say they know little to nothing about RMDs, and a similar number are in the dark about the tax implications of retirement account withdrawals. Plus, about 50% worry about paying too much for advice on managing retirement income. Roughly 60% find it difficult to project how long their savings will last and to how they will manage unexpected expenses.
The Secure Act may help, explains Michael Finke of the American College of Financial Services, in this month's cover story "A New Road to Retirement Income." By lowering the fiduciary risk of adding an annuity to a retirement plan (via a safe harbor) and paving the way for no-cost annuity portability, a large number of plan sponsors interested in offering lifetime income solutions could start adding annuities to their plans, Finke explains.
