How Women Can Prepare for Retirement

When our parents retired, living to 75 amounted to a nice long life, and Social Security was often supplemented by a pension. The Social Security Administration (SSA) estimates that today’s average 65-year-old woman will live to age 86½. Given these projections, it appears that a retirement of 20 years or longer might be in your future.1 Are you prepared for a 20-year retirement? How about a 30-year or even 40-year retirement? Don’t laugh; it could happen. The Society of Actuaries predicts that an average healthy woman that reaches age 65 has a 44% chance of living past 90, and a 22% chance of living to be older than 95.2 Start with good questions. How can you draw retirement income from what you’ve saved? How might you create other income streams to complement Social Security? And what are some ways you can protect your retirement savings and other financial assets? Enlist a financial professional. The right person can give you some good ideas, especially one who understands the challenges women face in saving for retirement. These may include income inequality or time out of the workforce due to childcare or eldercare. It could also mean helping you maintain financial equilibrium in

December 2, 2022 No Comments

Tax planning for the self-employed

Self-employment is the opportunity to be your own boss, to come and go as you please, and oh yes, to establish a lifelong bond with your accountant. If you’re self-employed, you’ll need to pay your own FICA taxes and take charge of your own retirement plan, among other things. Here are some planning tips. Understand self-employment tax and how it’s calculated As a starting point, make sure that you understand (and comply with) your federal tax responsibilities. The federal government uses self-employment tax to fund Social Security and Medicare benefits. You must pay this tax if you have more than a minimal amount of self-employment income. If you file a Schedule C as a sole proprietor, independent contractor, or statutory employee, the net profit listed on your Schedule C (or Schedule C-EZ) is self-employment income and must be included on Schedule SE, which is filed with your federal Form 1040. Schedule SE is used both to calculate self-employment tax and to report the amount of tax owed. Make your estimated tax payments on time to avoid penalties Employees generally have income tax, Social Security tax, and Medicare tax withheld from their paychecks. But if you’re self-employed, it’s likely that no

March 4, 2019 No Comments

Azzad staff boost retirement plan expertise

On June 28, our qualified retirement plan consultant, Maha Ahmed, attended a special retirement plan symposium sponsored by Federated Investors. Led by an attorney team from Morgan Lewis, the panel discussed ways in which plan sponsors (employers who offer retirement plans) can defend themselves against allegations of fiduciary breach. The panel stressed that retirement plan sponsors have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their plan participants (their employees). In the past decade, there’s been a notable increase in litigation against the sponsors of very large plans. Moreover, the Department of Labor continues to target qualified retirement plans for audits. One of the ways sponsors can protect themselves is by using experienced investment advisors to assist them in managing their plan. An experienced financial advisor can help the plan adhere to its investment policy statement. An advisor can relieve some (but not all) of the fiduciary burdens from a plan sponsor, such as conducting ongoing due diligence on investment managers. Of course, hiring an advisor is not a guarantee that the sponsor will be free from liability, especially if the sponsor doesn’t follow the advisor’s recommendations. A qualified retirement plan can help your business save a significant

August 7, 2018 No Comments

Charles Schwab goes halal

Azzad has been working with Charles Schwab to make the portfolios in the Azzad Ethical Wrap Program available in its retirement plans. If your employer retirement plan is on the Schwab platform and it allows for a Schwab Personal Choice Retirement Account® (PCRA), you can now access Azzad’s full complement of halal investment portfolios through your existing retirement plan. The portfolios: Azzad’s investment portfolios and mutual funds now available through a Charles Schwab PCRA include large-cap growth and value, mid-cap growth and value, small-cap growth and value, international, dividends, real estate investment trusts, and halal fixed income. The money managers: This program gives you access to an array of experienced portfolio management teams at institutional management companies that specialize in their asset classes. Essentially, Azzad maintains the halal screening process and the portfolio managers do the stock-picking within those parameters. How it’s halal: All potential investments are screened using Azzad’s proprietary software, which follows halal investing guidelines established by AAOIFI (the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions). Zakah and purification: Azzad will calculate your zakah and purification totals on that account and inform you of the amount each year for you to pay to charities of your choice.

July 31, 2017 No Comments

Will you be ready when the DOL comes knocking?

Deferring taxes can be a powerful investment decision. Qualified retirement plans such as 401(k) plans allow you to defer significant amounts of money. Moreover, combining tax free contributions with tax-deferred growth can be a sound long term investment. The dollars that would have gone to pay taxes remain in your account. It’s more money working for potential returns. If you’re an employer who sponsors such plans, it also means meeting your fiduciary responsibilities. Your plan is subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) which is administered by the Department of Labor (DOL). Under ERISA, you have important responsibilities because you act on behalf of participants (employees) in a retirement plan and their beneficiaries. The following seven tips will help you consider some of your responsibilities: Are the plan and all fiduciaries appropriately bonded? How is the investment asset mix determined, modified, monitored and re-balanced? Who is rendering appropriate investment advice, is this entity a fiduciary and has it acknowledged its fiduciary status in writing? Are employees in a safe harbor 401(k) plan receiving annual disclosures about the plan (download a template from our website)? Are you reporting all employees on the annual employee census form? Are you aware of and in

February 11, 2014 No Comments