The Dallas Morning News hosts an annual financial planning hotline and web chat to allow readers to get free financial advice from members of the Dallas-Fort Worth Financial Planning Assocation. I’ve participated in this event for each of the last 3 years, and this year’s questions reflected many of the issues that Texans are facing right now.
We received many inquiries on debt and how to dig out of some very tough situations. My advice to an online reader on debt settlement vs. debt consolidation was featured in Pamela Yip’s column about the event .
We also fielded questions on Roth IRA conversions. Many folks are considering converting this year because of the unique opportunity to choose between paying all the taxes with your 2010 return or split them over 2011 and 2012. While the opportunity to convert doesn’t go away after this year, the deadline to split the taxes over 2 years is fast approaching on December 31 this year.
There were also questions about contributing to a 401k when an employer has stopped matching, rolling your 401k to an IRA after leaving an employer and many other topics. If you’re interested in reading Ms. Yip’s column on the event, it’s available at DallasNews.com.