Planning Strategies
Sterling analyzes 32 Planning topics against every household.
| Topic | What it does |
|---|---|
| 529 Plan to Roth IRA Conversion | Identify eligible 529 plans and recommend annual rollovers to the beneficiary's Roth IRA under SECURE Act 2.0. |
| 529 Plans for the Family | Take advantage of potential state income tax savings and tax free growth while saving for educaitonal goals. |
| 529 State Matching Grant | Identify state 529 matching grant programs the household may be eligible for and recommend applying when income-eligible; no directives — the action is a state-specific application. |
| 72(t) Distribution | Identify candidates for a 72(t) SEPP plan to bridge early-retirement income before age 59.5. |
| ABLE Account | Evaluate ABLE-account eligibility and funding for tax optimized contributions and growth. |
| Cash Reserve | Check the household's liquid cash against a 1–6 month band and, when short, set up a Cash Reserve checking account funded surplus-first, taxable-second. |
| Consolidate High-Interest Debt | Identify multiple high-interest debts that could be consolidated into a lower-rate instrument and frame the blended-rate improvement. |
| Deceased Spousal Social Security Benefit | Identify whether the client or spouse has a prior marriage that ended in the former spouse's death and may be eligible to claim Social Security survivor benefits. |
| Employee Retirement Contributions (Client) | Maximize the client's elective deferral into their employer retirement plan, layering age-50 and SECURE 2.0 age 60–63 catch-ups. |
| Employee Retirement Contributions (Spouse) | Evaluate the spouse's elective deferral into their employer plan and emit tiered transfer directives — base, age-50, and age 60-63 enhanced catch-up — to bring the spouse to the federal annual limit through retirement. |
| Ex-Spousal Social Security | Confirm whether the client or spouse is eligible to claim Social Security on a living former spouse's record and would receive a larger benefit by doing so. |
| Excess Cash | Evaluate cash held above the six-month ceiling of the adequate reserve band and emit directives to invest the excess into a taxable brokerage account. |
| Flexible Spending Account (FSA) | Recommend healthcare and dependent-care FSA elections sized to projected qualifying expenses, current-year only. |
| Health Insurance Through Spouse | Evaluate whether the household should move family health coverage onto the spouse's W-2 employer plan when the other spouse is self-employed. |
| Hire the Spouse | Flag the hire-the-spouse strategy for business-owner households where the spouse can legitimately work in the business. |
| HSA Contributions | Maximize HSA contributions for the household during their eligible years. |
| HSA Deferral | Confirm whether the household has the cash flow to pay current medical expenses outside the HSA and to defer HSA reimbursements for decades to maximize tax-free compounding. |
| Inherited RMD Requirements | Explain the RMD obligations on inherited retirement accounts under SECURE 2.0 rules and the distribution-smoothing levers. Advisory-only — the engine already models the required schedule, so no directives are emitted. |
| IRMAA Monitoring | Monitor household proximity to IRMAA brackets and flag income-management decisions in the 2-year lookback window. |
| Long-Term Care Insurance | Evaluate LTC insurance need against the household's self-insurance capacity and emit a purchaseInsurance directive sized to a recommended monthly benefit when the household sits in the middle wealth band. |
| Maximize Company Match | Ensure every working household member is contributing enough to capture the full employer match; emit per-earner transfer directives to bring contributions up to the match threshold. |
| Medicare Supplement Plan | Evaluate Medigap vs Medicare Advantage tradeoffs for each Medicare-enrolled household member and recommend a supplement structure aligned with the household's health and travel profile. |
| Mega Backdoor Roth (Client) | When the client's 401(k) permits after-tax contributions and in-plan Roth conversions, fill the §415(c) headroom and convert immediately to Roth; emit chained transfer directives sized to that headroom. |
| Mega Backdoor Roth (Spouse) | When the spouse's 401(k) permits after-tax contributions and in-plan Roth conversions, fill the §415(c) headroom and convert immediately to Roth; emit chained transfer directives owned by the spouse, sized to that headroom. |
| NIIT Monitoring | Monitor household proximity to the Net Investment Income Tax threshold and surface income-timing decisions. |
| Pay Off High-Interest-Rate Debt | Identify household consumer debt with an annual percentage rate above roughly 8% and recommend paying it off from available liquid assets, prioritizing the highest-rate balance first. |
| Premium Tax Credit | Identify Premium Tax Credit opportunities and income-management strategies for marketplace-insured households. |
| Qualified HSA Funding Distribution | Identify the once-per-lifetime IRA-to-HSA transfer opportunity and emit the funding directive when advantageous. |
| Refinance Mortgage | Identify mortgage refinance opportunities based on rate comparison and break-even analysis, and replace the existing mortgage with a new lower-rate loan when net savings clear the break-even within expected time in home. |
| Rule of 55 | Flag household members eligible for the Rule of 55 penalty-free 401(k) withdrawal and recommend deferring rollovers when bridge income is needed. |
| Social Security Timing | Optimize Social Security claiming ages for eligible household members to maximize lifetime (Net Legacy) value. |
| Unclaimed Property Search | Recommend that the household search state unclaimed-property databases for forgotten assets in every state they have lived in. |