Guides for real money decisions

Guides › Roth Conversions Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the Roth rollover is one of five doors for leftover 529 money, and it is often not the best one. The full menu: (1) change the beneficiary — free, instant, keeps compounding for a sibling, grandchild or even yourself; (2) the Roth rollover — $35k […]

Guides › Roth Conversions Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: federal law made 529-to-Roth rollovers tax-free; your state may not have. The failures come in two distinct flavors. Nonconformity states tax the rollover as if it were a nonqualified withdrawal: California — verified against the FTB’s own Form 3805P instructions — taxes the earnings portion […]

Guides › Roth Conversions Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the Roth IRA income limits do not apply to 529-to-Roth rollovers. A graduate earning far past the MAGI phase-out — who cannot contribute to a Roth directly — can still receive the full annual rollover from a seasoned 529. For high-earning young professionals it is […]

Guides › Roth Conversions Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the 529 must have been open 15 years before any Roth rollover — and the question every family asks next has no official answer: does changing the beneficiary restart the clock? The IRS has not issued guidance. We are not going to pretend otherwise, and […]

Guides › Roth Conversions Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the 529-to-Roth rollover does not get its own bucket — it shares the beneficiary’s annual IRA limit. For 2026 that limit is $7,500 (under 50): if your daughter contributes $7,500 to her own Roth in March, the 529 can send her $0 that year; if […]

Guides › Roth Conversions Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the $35,000 lifetime 529-to-Roth rollover is real, but it is a multi-year project with four separate caps, and the one everybody misses is this: the annual rollover shares the beneficiary’s regular IRA limit — every dollar they contribute to their own IRA or Roth that […]

Guides › Transfer-on-Death Deeds Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: 35 of 51 U.S. jurisdictions (states plus D.C.) currently authorize a transfer-on-death deed for real property. If you have read a different number — 27, 29, 32 — the article was written before the newest enactments: Georgia (effective July 1, 2024) and Delaware (effective December […]

Guides › Transfer-on-Death Deeds Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the TOD deed’s tax profile is its best feature, and it is three sentences long. Recording one is not a taxable gift — the transfer is revocable, so nothing complete has been given. At your death the beneficiary takes a full step-up in basis to […]

Guides › Transfer-on-Death Deeds Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: adding a child to your deed as joint tenant — the folk remedy for probate — is an immediate gift of half your house. A TOD deed achieves the same probate avoidance while giving away nothing: you keep full ownership, full control, and full revocability […]

Guides › Transfer-on-Death Deeds Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: they solve the same problem with different machinery, and articles constantly conflate them. A TOD deed is a statutory instrument: record it, and the property passes at death; the beneficiary has no interest whatsoever while you live. A Lady Bird deed (enhanced life estate deed) […]

Guides › Transfer-on-Death Deeds Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: yes — for that one property. A properly recorded TOD deed passes the home outside probate entirely: no court, no personal-representative commission on it, no months of waiting. What it does NOT do is keep the rest of the estate out of probate, and it […]

Guides › Transfer-on-Death Deeds Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: TOD deeds fail at the edges, not in the concept. The five failure modes that actually happen: a beneficiary who dies first (no contingency → probate anyway), co-beneficiaries inheriting as co-owners with no exit plan, the mortgage and liens riding along, Medicaid estate recovery in […]