Freedom for Retirement™

Medicare open enrollment advice usually says to pick the lowest premium or leave your plan alone. Both skip the numbers that decide what you pay. Josh Duncan, partner at F5 Financial Planning, a fee-only fiduciary firm, treats the choice as a cash-flow decision. Your plan renews on its own, and the notice of changes it sent this fall shows whether keeping it will cost more next year. A switch take...

📄 Get the free one-page chart that shows where a Roth conversion starts to cost more: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6a6e0cd7d1eab6461dcabb63/6ac8b942b8335498f04d5560_22-38%20-%20Roth%20Conversions%20and%20the%20Senior%20Deduction%20Image.pdf Roth conversion advice says to fill your tax bracket. After 65, the same converted dollars can also shrink the senior deduction you were counting on. Jo...

A business exit strategy starts three to five years before the sale, not when a buyer shows up. By then, most of what decides your outcome is settled. Josh Duncan, partner at F5 Financial Planning, a fee-only fiduciary firm, compares two owners who sell similar businesses at the same price. The first spent years working out what the sale needs to fund and measures the offer against that number. Th...

No tax on Social Security never became law. What passed is a $6,000 deduction for people 65 and older, and your income decides whether you see a dollar of it.   Josh Duncan explains how the deduction works when you file: $6,000 per person 65 or older, $12,000 for a couple who both qualify, claimed on the new Schedule 1-A whether you itemize or take the standard deduction, and stacked on the extra...

Gifted stock carries your cost basis to your children, tax bill included. Josh explains why that is still no reason to hold everything until you're gone. Josh Duncan, partner at F5 Financial Planning, a fee-only fiduciary firm, treats the tax cost as one input among several: how much you can afford to give, what your children need right now, and how appreciated the asset is. A gift you can't comfo...

Letting your health savings account grow is the right move for some people and the wrong move for others, and the difference is cash flow, not discipline. An HSA is the only account in the tax code where money goes in untaxed, grows untaxed, and comes out untaxed for qualified medical expenses. Most people collect two of the three and treat the account like a coupon for this year’s doctor visits....

Two changes to the charitable deduction take effect in 2026, and a qualified charitable distribution from your IRA sidesteps both of them. Starting in 2026, itemized charitable gifts only count once they exceed half a percent of adjusted gross income, and the top value of any itemized deduction falls from 37 cents on the dollar to 35 cents. Required distributions push a retiree’s income higher eve...

Medicare will not pay for most long-term care. The costs land on you, and there are exactly three ways to cover them. Josh Duncan puts numbers on the risk a 65-year-old actually faces: about a 70% chance of needing care someday, paid help at home near $80,000 a year, a private nursing-home room near $130,000. The dangerous cases are the long ones, and they land late in retirement, when a plan has...

Most people don't need the annuity they're being sold. The simple kind that can help pays the seller least, and the complicated kind gets pushed hardest. Josh Duncan, partner at F5 Financial Planning, sells no annuities and earns nothing on them, so nothing here rides on what you decide. He slows down on the numbers a sales presentation moves past: indexed and variable contracts can stack fees of...

🔗 Download the Social Security Claiming reference sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s0jIZgcTOkXjTFnqNg18nyHXMFcXfOWs/view?usp=sharing The Social Security break-even calculator points at age 80 and asks whether you'll live that long. The better question is which account funds the wait. Josh Duncan, partner at F5 Financial Planning, walks the claiming window with 2026 numbers: a permanent 30%...

🔗 Download the beneficiary payout reference sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s1jxjM2eclB-_ueHo0P9qMIoTOYLQtQk/view?usp=sharing The stretch IRA is gone. The 10-year rule forces heirs to empty an inherited IRA on a hard deadline, and many owe a distribution every single year. Josh Duncan, partner at F5 Financial Planning, walks through the IRS final regulations of 2024, the penalty relief th...

🔗 Download the IRMAA reference sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JbeJlcFiITCE7_jowwL_h2kdLDLAO6tZ/view?usp=share_link IRMAA is the income test that decides what you pay for Medicare Part B and prescription drug coverage, and it reads a tax return you filed two years ago. A conversion that fits perfectly inside a tax bracket can still land above an IRMAA threshold, because the two sets of nu...

Trump Accounts are not just for babies. Josh Duncan opened one for his fifteen-year-old, who will never see a dollar of the government’s seed money. That seed money reaches only children born between 2025 and 2028. The account itself runs on a different rule entirely. Any U.S. citizen child under 18 with a Social Security number qualifies, nothing is means tested, and no income limit phases a fami...

Your required minimum distribution isn't one fixed age or one fixed amount. It depends on the year you were born, the accounts you hold, and the moves you make in the years before it ever begins.  Handled late, an RMD can push you into a higher tax bracket and raise your Medicare premiums two years later. Handled early, it's a number you've already managed down. Josh Duncan, Partner at F5 Financia...

If you own a business, your retirement plan probably has one line in it: sell the company someday. But there's a whole set of owner-only plans that can shelter far more from taxes long before that sale, and most owners never set them up.  This episode walks through the four that matter: the SEP-IRA, the SIMPLE IRA, the Solo 401k, and the defined benefit or cash balance plan, with a sense of how mu...

Turning sixty-five does not automatically mean a portfolio needs more bonds. The danger most retirees watch for is a market drop, but the one that does the most damage is quieter. A portfolio that feels safe because it barely moves can still fall behind rising costs for groceries, insurance, and health care. That gap does not show up in one dramatic moment. It builds slowly over ten, fifteen, or t...

⬇️ Download The Retirement Tax Map: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_MfdH_PtdisSqLSWcXrUtw1jU3o5yd46/view?usp=share_link Two retirees can save the same amount, spend the same amount, and earn the same returns, and still end up with very different tax bills based on the order they pull money from their accounts. Take an extra $20,000 from a bank account and the tax impact is minimal. Take the same...

Most retirement plans do not fail at year-end. They fall off track mid-year, when nobody stops to check. Markets move. Spending shifts. A Roth conversion, a property sale, an IRA withdrawal—each decision touches your taxes, your Medicare premiums, and the shape of your long-term plan. Waiting until December to sort it out means losing months of options. This episode walks through five things every...

The death of a spouse triggers some of the most significant financial shifts a family will ever face. And for many, income falls at the exact moment taxes rise. In this episode, Josh Duncan walks through five changes that occur when the first spouse dies. Social Security income can drop by 40% overnight. A household receiving $5,000 per month may be left with $3,000. The surviving spouse moves to...

Most couples assume that once both Social Security checks are in the mail, the decision is final. For many, it isn’t. If one spouse’s benefit is significantly lower than half of the other’s full retirement age benefit, there may still be an opportunity to claim a spousal top-up — and most couples never ask. In this episode, Josh Duncan walks through exactly how spousal Social Security benefits wor...

Could a Roth conversion help reduce taxes in retirement or create an expensive mistake? Many investors hear that Roth conversions are one of the most powerful retirement planning strategies available. But what often gets overlooked is that every Roth conversion comes with tradeoffs. Converting too much can increase your tax bill, affect Medicare premiums, create cash flow challenges, and reduce th...

Can you retire at 60 with $1 million? The answer may surprise you. For many families approaching retirement, $1 million sounds like a comfortable target. But retirement planning is about far more than reaching a number. Your spending habits, healthcare costs, Social Security strategy, taxes, investment allocation, and estate planning all play a major role in determining whether early retirement is...

Retirement planning is about far more than investments and account balances. In this episode, we break down the seven retirement mistakes people regret most and how to avoid them. (Only three are actually about money!) Many families spend decades building wealth, preparing for retirement, and focusing on financial security, yet still find themselves facing unexpected regret after leaving work. Why...

Indexed Universal Life insurance—often called IUL—is frequently marketed as a powerful retirement strategy with market upside, downside protection, tax-free retirement income, and a death benefit all wrapped into one product. But how much of the illustration is actually guaranteed? In this episode, we break down the hidden risks of indexed universal life insurance and explain why many high-income...

You’re in the home stretch, just months away from retirement. The numbers look good. The plan feels solid. But here’s the reality: your last year before retirement may be the highest-stakes financial year of your life. In this episode, we break down 4 critical retirement mistakes that even well-prepared, high-net-worth families make and how to avoid them before it’s too late. From failing to stres...