Dr. Ed - Former SSA Manager

You have 60 days from the day you receive a retirement plan distribution to roll it into an IRA or another qualified plan — or the IRS treats it as taxable income.

Miss that deadline and you could lose 20% to mandatory withholding, plus owe income tax and potentially a 10% early withdrawal penalty if you're under 59½.

The clock starts the day the check is issued or the funds hit your account — not when you decide to act.

Direct trustee-to-trustee transfers avoid the deadline entirely, but if you took the distribution yourself, that 60-day window is firm.

Have you rolled over a 401(k) in the past year, or are you planning to soon?

The order in which you withdraw money from your retirement accounts can make or break your income for decades.

It's called sequence-of-returns risk, and it hits hardest in your first five years of retirement. If the market drops 20% the year you retire and you're pulling from stocks to cover living expenses, you're selling shares at a loss — shares that will never recover in YOUR portfolio, even when the market bounces back.

Here's what to do: Build a 2–3 year cash buffer before you retire. That way, if the market tanks early, you can live off safe money and leave your stock accounts untouched until they recover. You're not timing the market — you're protecting yourself from being forced to sell at the worst possible moment.

The sequence matters as much as the amount you save. A $500,000 portfolio can either last 30 years or run dry in 18, depending entirely on whether you face losses early or late.

Did you set aside a cash cushion before retiring, or are you thinking about it now?