Retirement Planning Terms

The 10-year rule requires most beneficiaries of an inherited retirement account to empty it by December 31 of the tenth year after the triggering event. In some cases annual withdrawals are also required in years one through nine, and whether they are turns on whether the original owner had reached their required beginning date.

A 72(t) distribution is a withdrawal taken under the substantially equal periodic payments (SEPP) exception in Internal Revenue Code Section 72(t)(2)(A)(iv), which lets someone tap a retirement account before age 59½ without the 10% early withdrawal penalty: provided they commit to a fixed, IRS-calculated payment schedule and don't break it.

A 401(k) is an employer-sponsored retirement account funded straight from your paycheck, often with matching money from your employer. You can contribute up to $24,500, plus catch-up contributions starting at age 50, and choose between pre-tax (traditional) and after-tax (Roth) treatment.

A 401(k) loan lets a participant borrow from their own workplace plan balance and repay it with interest into that same account. Because it is a loan rather than a distribution, nothing is taxed: unless it defaults or is offset when you leave, which are two legally different events with different consequences.

A 401(k) rollover is the process of moving money out of a 401(k) plan, typically after leaving a job, into another retirement account, such as a new employer's plan or an IRA, without triggering current income tax.

A 403(b) is an employer-sponsored retirement plan for employees of public schools, tax-exempt nonprofits, and certain ministers. It works much like a 401(k) — payroll-deducted contributions, a deferral limit of $24,500, and traditional or Roth treatment, but with its own investment menu and quirks.

A 457(b) is a tax-advantaged deferred compensation plan offered by state and local governments and some nonprofit employers. It shares the deferral limit of $24,500 with 401(k)s and 403(b)s, but governmental and non-governmental versions work very differently once you look past the contribution limit.

A 529-to-Roth rollover moves unused money from a 529 plan into the beneficiary's Roth IRA without tax or penalty, up to $35,000 over the beneficiary's lifetime. It requires a 15-year-old account, a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer, and enough earned income in the beneficiary's hands.

After-tax 401(k) contributions are a distinct, non-Roth contribution type that some plans allow on top of the regular deferral limit. You get no deduction going in, the contributions become basis you recover tax-free, but the earnings on them stay pre-tax and are taxable when distributed.

Annuitization is the act of turning an annuity contract into a stream of payments. The moment it happens sets the contract's annuity starting date, which permanently changes how every payment is taxed and fixes the numbers used to calculate it.

An annuity is a contract with an insurance company: you pay a premium, and the insurer promises a stream of payments, often for life. It is the only private product that insures against outliving your money, but costs, surrender charges, and commission-driven sales make careful evaluation essential.

Asset location is the decision about which account holds which investment (taxable brokerage, tax-deferred, or Roth) in order to reduce the tax your portfolio generates. It is not the same as asset allocation, which decides what you own in the first place.

Automatic enrollment is a retirement plan design that starts deferring a percentage of an employee's pay unless the employee opts out. For most 401(k) and 403(b) plans created after 2022 it is no longer optional: Internal Revenue Code section 414A requires it, along with an annual escalation of the default rate and a default investment.

A backdoor Roth IRA is a two-step strategy for high earners who make too much to contribute to a Roth IRA directly. You make a nondeductible contribution to a traditional IRA, then convert it to a Roth IRA. Done cleanly, little or no tax is due, but the pro-rata rule can change that.

Barista FIRE is a semi-retired middle path: you leave full-time work before your portfolio can fully support you, using part-time income, often a job with health benefits, to cover the gap while your investments keep growing.

A bond ladder is a set of bonds bought with staggered maturity dates so that one comes due at regular intervals. What makes it different from a ladder of bank certificates is that each rung is a security with a market price, and that the credit behind the rungs does not stagger at all.

A bucket strategy divides a retirement portfolio into segments by time horizon (near-term cash, medium-term bonds, long-term stocks), so that spending in a falling market comes out of the cash segment instead of forcing a sale of stocks at a loss.

A cash balance plan is a defined benefit plan that expresses each participant's benefit as a hypothetical account balance growing by annual pay credits and interest credits. It looks like a 401(k) from the outside, but the assets are pooled, the employer bears the investment risk, and the interest credit is the employer's promise.

A catch-up contribution is an additional amount the IRS allows people age 50 and older (and, for some workplace plans, ages 60 through 63) to contribute to a retirement account beyond the standard annual limit, meant to help people closer to retirement save more in their remaining working years.

Coast FIRE means you've already saved enough that compound growth alone should carry your retirement accounts to a full retirement number by traditional retirement age, so you only need to earn enough to cover today's expenses.

A contribution limit is the maximum dollar amount the IRS allows a person to put into a tax-advantaged account, such as a 401(k) or an IRA, in a single calendar year.

A cost-of-living adjustment is an automatic increase to a benefit, pension, or wage that is computed from a price index rather than decided each year. It is an umbrella term, because the formulas differ by program, so two people in one household can receive different increases from the same movement in prices.

A custodian is the institution that holds your assets, keeps the records, settles the transactions, and sends you the statements. It does not choose the investments and does not guarantee their value, and inside a retirement account the tax code treats it as a trustee.

A deferred annuity accumulates value first and pays income later, if at all. Unlike an immediate annuity, it does not have to become a stream of payments; you can withdraw or surrender instead, which is where surrender charges and most of the annuity market's complexity live.

A defined benefit plan is a retirement plan that promises a specific payout, usually a monthly amount for life, calculated from a formula based on salary and years of service. The employer funds it, invests it, and bears the risk of being able to pay what it promised. Almost everyone calls it a pension.

A defined contribution plan is a retirement plan in which contributions, not the eventual benefit, are set by a formula. 401(k)s, 403(b)s, TSPs, and profit-sharing plans are all defined contribution plans: the account balance depends on what goes in and how it's invested, not on a promised payout.

Delayed retirement credits are the permanent increases Social Security adds to your benefit for each month you postpone claiming past your full retirement age: two-thirds of one percent per month, accruing until age 70 and then stopping.

A designated beneficiary is a beneficiary of a retirement account who counts as an individual for the required minimum distribution rules. The status is not about who you love or who you named; it is a technical test, and one non-individual named alongside your children can cost all of them the longer payout schedule.

A direct rollover is a transfer of retirement money straight from one plan or account custodian to another, the funds never pass through your hands, which avoids the mandatory tax withholding and 60-day deadline that apply to an indirect rollover.

Early retirement means stopping work before the age the retirement system is built around. It is an umbrella term rather than a single status: at least five legally distinct "early" ages exist, and none of them unlocks the others.

The early withdrawal penalty is an additional 10% federal tax the IRS charges on money taken out of most retirement accounts before age 59½, on top of any ordinary income tax owed.

An eligible designated beneficiary (EDB) is one of five statutory categories of retirement account heir who is excepted from the 10-year rule and may instead take distributions over their own life expectancy. The categories are fixed by law, and status is determined as of the account owner's date of death.

An emergency personal expense distribution is a penalty-free withdrawal of up to $1,000 a year from a retirement account for an unforeseeable or immediate personal or family emergency. You certify the need yourself, and taking one locks you out of taking another from the same plan for three years unless you put the money back.

ERISA is the 1974 federal law that sets minimum standards for private-sector retirement and health plans. It does not require an employer to offer a plan; it governs the plans employers choose to offer, and it is the reason you are entitled to plan documents, vesting protection, a claims appeal, and a federal right to sue.

An employer match is money your employer contributes to your workplace retirement plan, like a 401(k), based on how much you contribute yourself, typically up to a stated percentage of your pay.

An excess contribution is money put into a tax-favored individual account beyond what the law allows. Under Internal Revenue Code section 4973 it carries a 6% excise tax for every year it stays in the account, and the tax keeps recurring until the excess is removed or absorbed.

Fat FIRE is financial independence with a generous budget: retiring early without downsizing your lifestyle, which requires a substantially larger portfolio than standard FIRE targets.

The financial order of operations, also called a savings hierarchy, is a step-by-step priority list for where each new dollar should go: employer match first, then high-interest debt and an emergency fund, then tax-advantaged accounts, then ordinary taxable investing.

FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is a movement built around saving a very large share of income to reach financial independence and make retirement possible decades ahead of the traditional timeline.

The five-year rule is one of several IRS holding-period requirements — most commonly the rule that a Roth account must be open at least five years before its earnings can qualify for tax-free withdrawal.

A fixed annuity is an annuity contract in which the insurer credits interest at a rate it declares in advance, rather than tying growth to markets. The best-known version is a multi-year guaranteed annuity (MYGA), which locks a single rate for a set term much like a bank CD — except that it is not FDIC-insured.

A fixed indexed annuity is an insurance contract that credits interest based on the movement of a market index, subject to caps and other limits, and credits zero rather than a loss when the index falls. It is generally not an SEC-registered security; it is regulated as insurance under state law.

Form 8606, titled "Nondeductible IRAs," is the IRS form that records after-tax money contributed to a traditional IRA and tracks it from year to year. That running total is your IRA basis, and it is the only thing standing between you and paying tax twice on the same dollars.

Full retirement age is the age at which you can collect 100% of the Social Security retirement benefit your earnings record has produced, 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Claiming earlier permanently reduces the benefit by a set formula; waiting past it earns credits until 70.

A glide path is a schedule for how an investment mix changes over time, almost always shifting from more stocks toward more bonds as a target date approaches. A target-date fund is one packaged product that follows a glide path; the concept itself is broader than any fund.

A hardship distribution is money taken out of a workplace retirement plan while still employed, because of an immediate and heavy financial need that the distribution is necessary to satisfy. It is permission to access the money: not relief from the taxes on it, and not relief from the early withdrawal penalty.

A health savings account (HSA) is a tax-advantaged account for people with high-deductible health plans that offers a triple tax break: deductible contributions, tax-free growth, and tax-free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses.

Held-away assets are accounts a financial advisor gives advice on but does not directly manage or bill against: most commonly workplace retirement plans like a 401(k), plus HSAs, 529 plans, and accounts you manage yourself.

A highly compensated employee is, for retirement plan testing under IRC §414(q), anyone who owns more than 5% of the business in the current or prior year, or whose prior-year compensation exceeded an indexed threshold ($160,000 for 2026). The label identifies whose numbers get compared; it does not cap anything.

An immediate annuity converts a lump sum into a stream of payments that begins right away, usually within a year of purchase. It is the simplest annuity to compare because the entire quote is dollars per month, and the simplest to regret because the lump sum is generally gone for good.

An in-service withdrawal is money taken or moved out of a workplace retirement plan while you are still working for that employer. Some routes are taxable distributions; one, an in-service rollover, moves money without any tax at all. All of them exist only if the plan document allows them.

An indirect rollover is a retirement-account rollover in which the distribution is paid directly to you, giving you 60 days to redeposit it into another eligible retirement account before it becomes taxable: and, if the money came from an employer plan, subject to mandatory 20% federal tax withholding along the way.

An individual retirement arrangement (IRA) is a tax-advantaged retirement savings vehicle that anyone with earned income can open on their own, outside of a workplace plan. "Arrangement" is the IRS's umbrella term: it covers both individual retirement accounts, which are trusts or custodial accounts, and individual retirement annuities, which are insurance contracts.

An Inherited IRA is an individual retirement arrangement you receive as a beneficiary after the original owner dies, and how quickly you must withdraw the money depends on your relationship to that person and when they died.

An IRA income phase-out is the income band across which an IRA tax benefit shrinks to nothing rather than stopping at a cliff. There are two separate regimes with their own bands: one limits the deduction for a traditional IRA contribution, the other limits how much can be contributed to a Roth IRA at all.

Lean FIRE is financial independence on a deliberately frugal budget: reaching early retirement with a smaller portfolio by keeping annual spending low.

Longevity risk is the risk of living longer than your money lasts. It is not a risk of markets but of arithmetic (the longer a retirement runs, the less any given portfolio can safely pay each year), and it is the one retirement risk that gets worse the better things go.

A lump-sum distribution is the payout of your entire balance from an employer retirement plan in a single tax year. The phrase has an everyday meaning and a strict statutory one, and only the strict version unlocks the net unrealized appreciation election.

A mega backdoor Roth is a strategy that uses after-tax contributions inside a 401(k), on top of the normal deferral limit, then converts them to Roth. It can let a saver move far more into Roth accounts each year than a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k) contribution alone would allow, but only if the employer's plan supports it.

A money purchase pension plan is a defined contribution plan whose document fixes the employer contribution by formula, so the employer must fund it every year. Because it is legally a pension plan, it carries minimum funding rules, survivor annuity requirements, and a bar on in-service withdrawals that a profit-sharing plan does not.

A Monte Carlo simulation is a planning technique that tests a financial plan against hundreds or thousands of randomized market scenarios to estimate the probability the plan succeeds.

Net unrealized appreciation is the growth on employer stock held inside a workplace retirement plan, measured above what the plan paid for it. A special election lets you pay ordinary income tax only on the plan's cost and treat all of that growth as long-term capital gain instead.

A nondeductible IRA contribution is money paid into a traditional IRA that you take no deduction for. Those dollars become after-tax basis, which should never be taxed again, and the room to make such a contribution appears precisely as the deduction phases out.

Nonqualified deferred compensation is an agreement to pay an employee or other service provider in a later year, outside the qualified retirement plan rules. It has no contribution limit, and no trust protection: the promise is an unsecured claim against the employer, and IRC §409A governs the timing elections rigidly.

A pension buyout is an employer's move to get a pension obligation off its books, either by offering participants a one-time payment instead of their monthly benefit, or by paying an insurance company to take the obligation over. In both cases the federal pension guarantee ends when the benefit leaves the plan.

Per stirpes is an instruction for what happens to a beneficiary's share when that beneficiary dies before you: it passes down to that person's own descendants rather than being redistributed among your other beneficiaries. There is no national definition of the phrase, and the terms sitting next to it mean different things in different states, which is why the governing document and the governing state both matter.

Phased retirement is an employer-sanctioned arrangement in which an employee reduces hours on the way to full retirement instead of stopping on a single day, sometimes while drawing part of a pension. Federal employees have a statutory version; in the private sector it is usually informal.

The plan administrator is the person or entity legally responsible for running a retirement plan: filings, disclosures, claims, and interpreting the plan's terms. In most small and mid-sized plans it is the employer itself, by operation of law rather than by choice, and it is a fiduciary role.

The pro-rata rule treats all of a person's traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs as one combined account for tax purposes, so any withdrawal or Roth conversion pulls out a proportional mix of pretax and after-tax money.

A profit-sharing plan is a defined contribution plan in which the employer decides each year how much to contribute, including nothing, and the plan document specifies how that amount is divided among participants. Despite the name, the contribution does not have to come out of profits.

Provisional income is the income measure that determines how much of your Social Security benefit is taxable: your adjusted gross income (with a few exclusions added back), plus all of your tax-exempt interest, plus half of your Social Security benefits.

A qualified charitable distribution (QCD) is a direct transfer from an IRA to charity, available starting at age 70 1/2, that counts toward your required minimum distribution and never shows up in your adjusted gross income at all. Despite the similar name, it is unrelated to a qualified distribution, which is a Roth withdrawal that meets the age and five-year tests.

A qualified default investment alternative, or QDIA, is the investment a workplace retirement plan puts contributions into when the participant never chooses. Meeting the federal QDIA rules shifts responsibility for the resulting investment outcome from the plan's fiduciaries to the participant. It does not make the investment a good one.

A qualified distribution is a withdrawal from a Roth IRA or Roth workplace account that meets IRS requirements for coming out completely free of federal income tax and the early withdrawal penalty. Despite the similar name, it is unrelated to a qualified charitable distribution, which is an IRA-to-charity transfer available from age 70 1/2.

A qualified domestic relations order (QDRO) is a court order directing a workplace retirement plan to pay part of a participant's benefit to a former spouse, child, or other dependent. It is how an employer plan benefit gets divided in a divorce, and it has no role at all in dividing an IRA.

A qualifying longevity annuity contract, or QLAC, is a deferred income annuity bought inside a traditional IRA or an employer retirement plan that meets specific IRS requirements. Its distinguishing feature is that the premium comes out of the balance used to compute required minimum distributions until the annuity's own payments begin, which must be no later than age 85.

A rabbi trust is a trust an employer uses to informally fund nonqualified deferred compensation. Once irrevocable it stops the employer from spending the money on anything else, but the assets must stay reachable by the employer's creditors, so it offers no protection in a bankruptcy.

Recharacterization is the election to treat an IRA contribution as having been made to the other kind of IRA all along, moving it by trustee-to-trustee transfer before the tax return is due. It applies to contributions only. Conversions have not been reversible since 2018.

A recordkeeper is the company hired to track a retirement plan's accounts: balances, contributions, investment elections, loans and distributions. It is the website and statements you see as a participant, it is generally not a fiduciary, and a federal disclosure rule exists specifically to reveal what it is paid.

A registered index-linked annuity (RILA) is an insurance contract registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission whose return is tied to a market index over a set term, with a buffer or a floor that absorbs only part of a decline. Because the protection is partial, a RILA can lose principal.

A replacement ratio is retirement income divided by pre-retirement income, expressed as a percentage — a quick gauge of whether a retirement plan is in the right neighborhood. The familiar 70% to 80% target is industry convention rather than a rule set by any authority, and it measures income rather than spending.

The required beginning date (RBD) is the deadline for taking your first required minimum distribution: April 1 of the year after the year you reach the applicable age, or after you retire if you are still working and the plan allows it. It is a date, not an age, and it falls in the calendar year after the year that triggers it.

A required minimum distribution (RMD) is the amount the IRS makes you withdraw from pre-tax retirement accounts each year once you reach a set age, currently 73, rising to 75 for people born in 1960 or later. The withdrawal is taxed as ordinary income, and skipping it triggers an excise tax.

A retirement account beneficiary is the person named to receive an IRA, 401(k), or similar account when its owner dies. What arrives is not a sum of cash but a tax-deferred account with withdrawal deadlines attached, and the options available differ sharply depending on whether you were the owner's spouse.

The retirement earnings test withholds part of a Social Security benefit from someone who claims before full retirement age and keeps working. It reaches earnings from work only, and at full retirement age the withheld months are removed from the early-claiming reduction, which raises the monthly benefit from that point forward.

Retirement income planning is the process of turning savings and benefits into a reliable paycheck that lasts as long as you do. It is a different discipline from saving for retirement, and it is organized around a sequence of decisions rather than a single number.

A reverse mortgage is a loan against home equity that requires no monthly repayment while the borrower lives in the home, so the balance grows instead of shrinking. It comes due when the last borrower dies, sells, or stops living there.

A Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) is an advisor who has completed The American College of Financial Services' designation focused entirely on turning retirement savings into reliable lifetime income.

A Rollover IRA is a Traditional IRA set up specifically to receive money moved from an employer retirement plan, like a 401(k) or 403(b), when you leave a job or the plan is discontinued.

A Roth 401(k) is the after-tax version of a 401(k): contributions get no upfront deduction, but qualified withdrawals in retirement are entirely tax-free. Unlike a Roth IRA, it has no income limit, and since 2024 it carries no lifetime required minimum distributions.

A Roth conversion moves money from a pre-tax retirement account, such as a traditional IRA or 401(k), into a Roth account. You pay ordinary income tax on the converted amount now in exchange for tax-free growth, tax-free qualified withdrawals, and no lifetime required minimum distributions later.

A Roth IRA is an individual retirement arrangement funded with money you've already paid tax on. Investments grow tax-free, qualified withdrawals in retirement are tax-free, and the account never requires minimum distributions during your lifetime. The contribution limit is $7,500, plus a $1,100 catch-up at age 50.

The rule of 55 is an IRS exception that lets you take penalty-free withdrawals from your current employer's 401(k) or 403(b) if you leave that job during or after the year you turn 55.

A safe harbor 401(k) is a plan design in which the employer commits to a required contribution, a set matching formula or a nonelective contribution for everyone eligible, in exchange for an exemption from certain annual nondiscrimination tests. It buys predictability, not a blanket pass.

A safe withdrawal rate is the percentage of a retirement portfolio you can spend in the first year, adjusting for inflation afterward, with a high probability that the money outlasts you. There is no single correct figure: the sustainable rate depends on your time horizon, asset allocation, fees, taxes, other income, and how willing you are to adjust spending.

The Saver's Credit is a federal tax credit worth up to $1,000 per person ($2,000 for a couple) for contributing to a retirement account on a modest income. It is nonrefundable, so it can only reduce tax you already owe, and it is scheduled to be replaced after 2026 by a federal matching contribution called the Saver's Match.

The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 is a federal law containing roughly 90 separate retirement provisions — a later age for required withdrawals, larger catch-up contributions, mandatory Roth catch-ups for high earners, 529-to-Roth rollovers and more, whose effective dates are staggered from 2023 through 2033.

Semi-retirement is working less rather than stopping — leaving full-time career work for part-time, contract, or self-employed work that covers part of your expenses while savings, a pension, or Social Security cover the rest. It describes a life stage, not a legal or plan status.

A SEP IRA is a retirement arrangement funded entirely by employer contributions into a traditional IRA opened for each eligible employee. SEP stands for Simplified Employee Pension. Employees cannot defer their own salary into it, and whatever percentage the owner contributes for themselves has to be contributed for everyone eligible.

Sequence of returns risk is the danger that the order of investment returns, not just their average, damages a portfolio you're withdrawing from. Poor markets in the first years of retirement force you to sell more shares to fund the same spending, and the portfolio may never recover even if returns later improve.

A SIMPLE IRA is a small-employer retirement plan in which employees defer part of their pay and the employer is required to contribute, either a dollar-for-dollar match up to 3% of pay or 2% of pay for everyone eligible. It is limited to employers with 100 or fewer employees and must generally be the only plan they maintain.

Social Security break-even analysis compares the total benefits you would collect by claiming early against the total you would collect by claiming later, and identifies the age at which the later, larger benefit catches up. It is a planning technique, not a Social Security program or an official term.

The Social Security Fairness Act of 2023 is the law that repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset — the two rules that cut Social Security benefits for people with a pension from work not covered by Social Security. Signed January 5, 2025, it applies to monthly benefits payable after December 2023, so December 2023 was the last month either rule ever applied.

Social Security retirement benefits are monthly, inflation-adjusted payments from the federal government, earned through payroll taxes over your working life. You can claim anytime from age 62 to 70; claiming before your full retirement age of 67 permanently shrinks the check, and each year you wait past it adds roughly 8%.

The Social Security Statement is the record the Social Security Administration holds of your reported earnings, together with estimates of the benefits those earnings would produce. The earnings half is the part that matters, because it is the input to every figure and the only part you can correct.

Social Security survivor benefits are monthly payments to the surviving spouse, children, or certain other family members of a worker who has died, based on the deceased worker's earnings record. A surviving spouse can claim as early as 60 at a reduced amount, or wait for up to 100% of what the worker was receiving.

A solo 401(k) is an ordinary 401(k) plan covering a business owner who has no employees other than a spouse. The IRS calls it a one-participant 401(k) plan and is explicit that it is not a separate type of plan, so the rules are the same as any other 401(k). What makes it distinctive is the absence of employees.

A Spousal IRA is an individual retirement arrangement opened in the name of a spouse who has little or no earned income, funded using the working spouse's compensation, so both spouses can save in their own IRA even though only one of them is employed.

A spousal Social Security benefit lets a husband or wife collect up to 50% of the other spouse's full retirement age benefit, based on that spouse's earnings record rather than their own. Social Security itself calls it a "spouse's benefit."

A stretch IRA was the industry name for a strategy in which a beneficiary took the smallest allowed annual withdrawals from an inherited retirement account, spreading the money, and the tax deferral, across their own lifetime. The SECURE Act largely ended it for people who inherit from someone who died after 2019.

A summary plan description is the plain-language booklet an employer must give you describing how your retirement or health plan works. ERISA requires it within 90 days of becoming a participant, and it is the document to reach for before asking anyone at work how the plan works.

A surrender charge is a fee an insurer deducts when a contract holder takes money out of an annuity or a cash-value life policy early. It is a sales charge collected on the way out rather than on the way in, and it falls to zero once the contract's schedule expires.

Survivor benefits are payments that continue to a spouse, child, or other dependent after someone dies. They are not one program but a category — Social Security, employer pensions, the military, annuities, and life insurance each pay them under their own rules, and most of the decisions that determine what a survivor receives are made years before the death.

A target-date fund is a single diversified fund named for a year (2045, 2060) that automatically becomes more conservative as that year approaches. It is designed to be an investor's entire portfolio, and it is the default investment in most workplace retirement plans.

Tax deferral means postponing tax on income or gains to a later year rather than paying it now. The money that would have gone to tax stays invested and compounds, which is where the benefit comes from, but deferral is not forgiveness, and the bill still arrives.

A tax-advantaged account is any account that gets special treatment under the tax code: a deduction going in, no annual tax while the money grows, tax-free qualified withdrawals, or some combination of the three. In exchange, the account comes with contribution limits and rules about when and why you can take the money out.

The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is the retirement savings plan for federal civilian employees and uniformed servicemembers. It works much like a 401(k) — sharing the same deferral limit of $24,500, but with a small, low-cost menu of index-style funds and, for most participants, automatic agency contributions.

A retirement plan is top-heavy for a plan year when more than 60% of its account balances or accrued benefits belong to key employees, measured on the last day of the previous year. The consequence is a required minimum employer contribution for everyone who is not a key employee.

A traditional IRA is the pre-tax flavor of the individual retirement arrangement: contributions may be tax-deductible in the year you make them, investments grow tax-deferred, and every withdrawal in retirement is taxed as ordinary income. Required withdrawals begin at 73, or 75 for those born in 1960 or later.

A variable annuity is an annuity contract whose value rides on investment subaccounts you choose, so it can rise and fall. It is the one annuity that is a security under federal law: registered with the SEC, sold by prospectus, and regulated by the SEC and FINRA in addition to state insurance departments.

A withdrawal strategy is the plan for which accounts you take retirement income from, and in what order. It is a tax decision rather than an investment one, and it is separate from how much you withdraw each year, which is the safe withdrawal rate question.