In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon and Murs discuss a comprehensive year-end tax checklist designed specifically for those in or nearing retirement. As the calendar winds down, it’s easy to overlook critical financial decisions that can significantly impact your retirement income tax and long-term retirement planning. This conversation walks through the most important year-end financial checklist items to help you avoid costly mistakes, missed deadlines, and unnecessary taxes as you plan for retirement.

Learn how a proactive retirement checklist can help you move from simply reacting at tax time to intentionally planning retirement with confidence. From required minimum distributions and the RMD deadline to charitable giving strategies and health savings account strategy, this episode reinforces why year-end planning is essential for retiring comfortably and helping to secure your retirement.

Listen in to learn about the practical steps you should take before December 31st to align your retirement planning with tax efficiency. Radon and Murs break down complex topics like capital gains tax planning, tax loss harvesting, and donor advised fund strategies into clear, actionable guidance. Whether you’re already retired or still planning retirement, this episode helps you connect year-end decisions to long-term retirement success.

In this episode, find out:

• How to avoid penalties by meeting the RMD deadline and properly handling required minimum distributions
• Why tax loss harvesting and capital gains tax planning can play a major role in retirement income tax management
• How charitable giving strategies, like a qualified charitable distribution and a donor advised fund can create powerful tax benefits
• Why a health savings account strategy is one of the most overlooked tools in retirement planning
• How a year-end financial checklist supports a smarter plan for retirement and long-term peace of mind

Tweetable Quotes:

• “If you wait until the end of the year to think about taxes, you’re already behind—retirement planning works best when it’s proactive.” — Radon Stancil
• “A simple year-end tax checklist can be the difference between unnecessary penalties and retiring comfortably with confidence.” — Murs Tariq

Resources:

If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement!”

To access the course, simply visit POMWealth.net/podcast.

Here’s the full transcript:

Welcome to Secure Your Retirement Podcast. It is amazing to sit here with you,

Mers, and know that we are at the end of 2025. It’s crazy. I mean, so we

hopefully have put out a lot of good content, a lot of good reminders and we said,

hey, we’re right here at the end of the year. What could we do to kind of say,

hey, you’re listening to this. Maybe you’re getting ready for the holiday. Maybe

you’re getting ready to leave. You know what? Let’s do a checklist. That last minute

checklist that says don’t make a mistake before the end of the year. And so that’s

what we want to do today. We’re going to talk about some key areas that we need

to make sure that we don’t forget about. And we’re going to run through these

things. We’re to try to give you as much as we can. I would encourage you that if

you’re listening to this episode and you’re kind of in, maybe you’re walking or

you’re driving, we’ve got a blog on it as well. So, it’ll have all this information

in there. But this is going to be that last minute. Don’t forget, oh my goodness,

this could make a big deal. So, Mers, I’m just going to turn it over to you.

And if you can kind of take us through some of these key elements that we want to

think through, why we need to think through them, how we need to go figure out,

did we do it right or not? Yeah.

Another big one is what we would call capital gains management or tax loss

harvesting. So, in non -IRA type accounts, like a brokerage account where you bought

some stocks in and they’ve appreciated over time and maybe you have some stocks that

have done well, maybe you have some stocks that haven’t done as well, it’s a time

at the end of the year where a lot of people will jump to, hey, I can do some

optimization of this account by selling some of the quote -unquote losers so that I

can harvest a loss for my capital gains. And now I can keep maybe one of those

winners in check that maybe is starting to get to be too big of a position in my

portfolio. I can sell some of that. Because I have harvested a loss, I can offset

some gains at basically a net zero type of tax One of the issues with this type

of account, brokerage account, is that if we don’t monitor it and if we’re not

actively harvesting losses, we can get to a place where we’ve got very concentrated

stock positions. Some key stocks that a lot of people have fallen into this

situation are with your stocks like Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft,

right? We see it all the time. And the common phrases, I’ve got these golden

handcuffs because they’ve done so well for me, but now I can’t sell them no matter

how I feel about the stock because I don’t want to deal with the tax implications.

One important thing that I think that is to talk about here is, you know, Raden, a

lot of people wait to the end of the year to do what we call tax loss harvesting.

But in a nutshell, if you want to just kind of bring up a different strategy, I

think is a little more proactive when it comes to harvesting losses and gains. Yeah,

one of the things that we have set up for our accounts that

right now, let’s think about, well, in 2026, let’s do it all year long. We actually

have a whole system in place that’s going to make sure those checks and balances

get done throughout the year. I will tell you; it’s not something that you just

can, you know, just think you’re going to go in and do and forget about it. It

has to be a systematized approach, but it can mean a lot. Let me just give you an

example. If you were just saying, hey, I want to invest my money I want to make

sure, that I’m tracking either an index or I just want a portfolio that’s going to

keep me at a pretty good risk tolerance.

Could you imagine what if you’re making another one to two percent extra because of

the tax advantages of that? All net dollars to you. Now, think about that over

time. That’s pretty massive. That compounding is unbelievably massive over a long

period of time. So, I’m going to tell you we are seeing great, great benefits. We

are seeing exactly those numbers that I’m just explaining to you, one to two percent

a year. We’re seeing clients right now that are getting many, many thousands dollars

a year in benefit on their accounts because of doing this. So, it is huge. And I’m

going to tell you, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s one of those

reasons why you might want to have a conversation with us. Yeah, absolutely. Okay,

another one. Another big checklist item is charitable giving. So, if you’re charitably

inclined, we want to make sure that you are giving in the right way, so you get

the most tax benefit for it. Again, this is one that has an end of year deadline.

And, you know, if you’re already itemizing on your tax return, then just make sure

you get your checks to the charities, so you get the benefit of those charitable

contributions. However, a lot of you are not itemizing. A lot of you you’re taking

the standard deduction. And the way that it works right now is that your standard

deduction, you don’t really get a ton of benefit for charitable giving unless you do

certain things. So, there’s two key ones that we talk about with clients all the

time if they’re charitably inclined. One is the qualified charitable distribution. That

is if you’re of the age of 70 and a half and above, you can pull from your IRA.

Normally when you pull from your IRA, it’s 100 % taxable. But if we do it properly

through a QCD to a charity, that is.

by the end of the year. So, this is one if you say, man, I wish I did this. Just

take note for next year. But if you want to try to get it in this year, just

work with your, wherever your IRA assets are and try to get it moving quickly.

That’s a big one. The other one, if you’re not of the age of 70 and a half, you

say, well, I want some charitable benefit. What can I be doing? We’ve done an

episode on donor advised funds. It’s basically a charitable account that you get to

create for your family. It gives you the ability to go from being in the standard

deduction to itemization, which now gets you a lot more benefit.

quickly here, get this set up for the end of the year. So that’s a big one on

charitable giving. Also, with the donor advised fund itself, you know, you can donate

stock to it. You don’t have to donate cash to it. So, if you’ve got a highly

appreciated Nvidia stock or Microsoft stop, you can put the stock directly into the

donor advised fund. This is going to avoid the capital gains tax on the actual sale

of the stock itself. And then now you get to get your deduction too. So, it’s a

double tax benefit for you. Okay, as we approach the end of the year, making sure

that we’re kind of in line for taxes, taxes paid, taxes due is another big one.

Taylor on our team, who we talk about on this podcast all the time, she has spent

the last six months really working with clients and with our wealth advisors to make

sure, withholdings and estimated taxes are in line so that there are no surprises

come April of next year and that we owe a lot more than we expected or we run

into a penalty situation.

one’s just kind of a, hey, take a, take a glimpse at what your 2025 looks like

and, you know, any new documents. If you updated your estate plan, if you updated

any medical documents, make sure you’ve got a good place where you’ve stored them.

Make sure that people know how to access them. If you’ve updated websites or, you

know, different types of subscriptions and all these different things that we sign up

for and we kind of forget about, you know, make note of where you’re paying money.

Make note of your budgeting, your expenses. A big one that we just did an episode

on is cybersecurity and passwords and all these different types of scams that are

out there. So, we need to be extra vigilant when it comes to monitoring our

passwords, monitoring the websites that we are logging into. So, it’s always a good

idea to keep a running list of that in some secure fashion or manner. So those are

the big ones that we see that we want to make sure that you guys are talking

about or thinking through as far as the checklist as we approach the end of the

year. But we want to be a

$150 if you’re over, not over 50. If you are a family, 8 ,550,

you do get a little bit of extra if you’re over 55. But the key there is, it’s a

really big tax benefit. I can put the money in tax advantage, meaning it’s going to

deduct off my income. It will grow now tax deferred, and then I can take it out

tax free for medical benefits. Beauty is on this account,

even if I don’t want to use the money as I go, I can keep those receipts and

somewhere down the future, I could go take that money out. So, I’ve been funding

this now for years. I never take the money out for medical expenses. I’m just

letting it sit and grow. But if in a few years I decide I want to go and use

this money to go buy a car, as long as I’ve got my receipts that say that I

spent at least that much money on medical expenses, I can go buy the car for tax

-free. And because I spent the money along the way on the medical expenses. So, it

is something that is a really, really big benefit. If you do not understand those

rules, again, those are things that talk with us about. All right, let’s talk about

required minimum distributions. What is a required minimum distribution? Well, when we

hit key ages and now it’s IRS, you know, has really done it again to us.

I’m just going to say it this way, depending upon what year you were born, if you

already started, many of you have started your required minimum distributions when you

turned 70 and a half. That means that you are now required to take a minimum

distribution out of an IRA, your 401k, your 403B,

anything that was tax deferred, you’re required to start taking a minimum

distribution. Now, just recently, the government updated this, and based on your years

of a year of birth, for some of you, it’s going to be 73, and then for some of

you, it’s going to be 75. A different episode to go through all the differences of

that. Just know that if you’re in that range, you might want to check and say,

hey, do I have to take a required minimum distribution? All right, here’s the big

part of this. If you have hit those key ages for what year you were born. You

need to take that requirement of distribution, and here is a big part of this. You

do not have to April 15th. You have to do this by December 31st. So, if you’re

listening to this and you’ve not done it yet; this is a big one because it comes

with a hefty penalty if we do not take it. And a hefty one it is. I mean, it is

a big-time penalty. So, we want to make sure that we are on it when it comes to

this idea of taking this requirement of distribution. Now, there’s some rules here as

to how we could deal with whether we take it from IRAs, 401Ks, 403Bs,

because I could do things a little bit different depending upon those accounts. So,

Mers, if you kind of want to walk us through, let’s just take IRA first and make

sure, everybody understands that, and then we can talk about the differences between a

401k, 403B. Yeah. So, what’s nice is the calculation for the requirement of

distribution, a lot of times the custodian is doing that for you. So, custodian being

like a Schwab or a fidelity or an insurance company, they’re running that math for

you so you don’t have to. Now you can reach out to them and ask what that

required minimum distribution is. And you want to kind of get the total or get

every single account that is required to take a distribution, you want to know what

that number is for every single account. And let’s just say you’ve got five IRAs

out there and they’re all traditional IRAs subject to RMDs. What you can do,

and sometimes it makes a ton of sense to do this, depending on your investment

strategy, is you can take those five accounts, and you can add up each of the

required minimum distributions. Let’s just say each one of those is $10 thousand

dollars. So, five times 10, that’s $50 ,000 of total distributions that need to be

done. What the IRA allows you to do is that you can combine those and pull all 50

,000 from just one account. That can make a lot of sense for people, just depending

on how your investment strategy is. A common mistake that is made in this case is

sometimes people think, hey, I can just take all of my RMDs, regardless of where

they’re supposed to come from, from an IRA or 401k or a 403B, or even an inherited

IRA, I can take it all from my one IRA, like that $50 ,000 example, and I’m going

to be good. Well, that’s not the case. The IRS wants us to differentiate between

the different types of retirement -based accounts. So don’t make the mistake of

combining everything altogether. In a simple rule of thumb, your IRAs,

you’re the required minimum distributions, those can be combined, your 401Ks. We want

to make sure, check with your custodians, check with your advisor. In most cases,

those need to be taking separately. So, if you have two 401ks, you need to

withdraw those from the 401K, each individual 401K, 401Bs.

Just assume that those need to be taken separately unless you’re told otherwise.

Also, I mentioned the inherited IRA. That is always going to be separate based off

of the inherited account that you have there. Those are really important. And those

are under different rules. Those are under a handful of different rules depending on

which year that you inherited it. So bottom line there. And the thing is, I’ve said

the custodians will do the calculation for you on your IRAs and your 401ks and your

403Bs, they will not do the calculation for you on anything that has an inherited

idea to it, an inherited IRA, right? So those ones,

you need to be working with someone to make sure you’re doing the proper amount and

the proper planning around them because some of them, you have to be done within 10

years. Some of them, you have a lifetime to be able to take them out. So

understanding those rules is often a misstep that we see that we want to make sure

it doesn’t happen so we can avoid some of those penalties that Radon talked about.

What else do we want to talk about?

We are sitting here at the end of the year, and we’ve given you all some homework to do. I do want to remind you all that we do have a blog that’s written on this. You can go to our website pomwealth.net. You can go to the resources tab and then go to the blogs, and it’s a really good way you can go back and review this. If we have discussed something that you want to get some more information on, feel free to reach out to us. Again, you can go to our website and go to the contact page, feel free to reach out we would love to have a conversation with you. We hope you have a couple of weeks of a great year, and we’ll talk again in 2026. We will we think we will have some good information there as well. We will talk to you again next week.