You have made some great investments in Real Estate or in a Stock Portfolio. Congratulations! Now you are ready to retire on your gains. But wait. To benefit from your investment appreciation, you're going to have to sell some or all of those assets.

Like most people, you’ve accumulated substantial retirement savings in your IRA or company retirement plan. But what happens when you retire, and you find yourself with sufficient sources of income to support your lifestyle without taking more than the minimum amount out of your IRA? Under current rules your beneficiaries can inherit your IRA and take out distributions over their lives while the principal continues to grow untaxed. This is the so called “Stretch IRA”. To illustrate the power of this concept assume we have a husband and wife both aged 65 with a $150,000 IRA and a 35 year old daughter. Assuming an 8% return the value of that IRA over the life of the family is over $1.6 million dollars! As good as this sounds most people make mistakes that cost their families hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. The sad part is that these mistakes can usually be avoided using simple steps. This article will tell you the five most common IRA mistakes and how to avoid them.

A 401K plan is a retirement savings plan that is funded by employee contributions and a matching contribution from the employer. Contributions are made from pre-tax salary and the funds grow tax-free until they are withdrawn. Companies, non-profit and other tax-exempt organizations can establish these plans for their employees. 401K retirement plans are named after the section of the Internal Revenue Code that prescribes the rules under which it operates. It is also known as cash or deferred arrangement (CODA) plan.