The only way to pass a TIAA-CREF account beyond the current generation requires that you elect not to annuitize. You must instead elect the Minimum Distribution Option, because that avoids the conversion of the account into a premium. The first benefit, assuming that this comports with your values and resources, is that you will have responsibility for your own financial destiny. To underline the point, you have rejected the safety net of a lifetime annuity and have chosen instead to take distributions at your own pace, subject to the governmentally prescribed minimum. (more…)

Employer-sponsored defined benefit pension plans in which the benefit is defined by account value rather than monthly lifetime retirement income. Cash balance plans are often referred to as “hybrids” because they have some of the characteristics of traditional “defined benefit” (DB) pension plans and some of the characteristics of “defined contribution” (DC) plans, such as 401(k). In general, traditional defined benefit plans promise qualified employees an income benefit for life (or some other period) starting at “normal retirement age,” without regard to how much (or little) the employer must contribute to the plan to fund the benefit. Defined contribution plans, on the other hand, promise only how much the employer will contribute to a qualified employee’s account from time to time until the employee retires but they make no promises with regard to investment earnings or results, let alone a monthly income benefit for life. (more…)

In this part, we describe the various distribution options that are avail able for the withdrawal of your TIAA-CREF accumulation after you have retired. The rules governing almost all of these options originate in the Code. Again, we will try our best to describe them in nontechnical terms.

The transition from a working environment to retirement poses financial as well as emotional challenges. (more…)

We have alluded to the Transfer Payout Annuity from time to time, and now it gets the attention it clearly deserves. The Transfer Payout Annuity is literally an annuity, and it represents the mechanism by which funds are transferred from a TIAA accumulation to either one of the other investment choices in the TIAA-CREF family or as a taxable distribution after age 59 1/2 to the participant. (more…)

This also apparently routine topic produces its share of confusion, and we would like to dispel as much of it as we can.

We tend to think of the Transfer Payout Annuity as a transfer of funds in the same way that we think of movement of money from one bank account to another. If we choose to make the transfer over a period of ten years in relatively equal payments, then a balance will remain in the old account until the final transfer is made. A Transfer Payout Annuity is not a regular account. As with any annuity, you use a sum of money, in this case the amount you wish to transfer, to purchase a cash flow that will take place over a period often years. (more…)