Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.
Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.
Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information.
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey.
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.
We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
Dougal Waters/Digital Vision/Getty Images
You can’t take it with you, and that definitely pleases the IRS. But the tax collector doesn’t want you to leave a lot of your money to heirs, either. This forces senior citizens to dip into their nest eggs each year or pay additional taxes.
When you turn 70 1/2, you must begin taking money from your tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as a traditional IRA, workplace 401(k) or self-employed retirement plans.
It’s no secret why the IRS wants you to start drawing down these accounts. Your money sat in the account for years, tantalizingly out of reach of the IRS as it accrued tax-deferred earnings.
The IRS has created tables to calculate these annual withdrawals, known variously as required minimum distributions, or RMDs, or minimum required distributions, or MRDs. Regardless of which acronym you choose (and here at Bankrate we’re going with RMD), the payouts use longevity data and are designed to ensure that most of your retirement benefits are paid to you during your lifetime.
Although RMDs are triggered once you turn 70 1/2, you get a bit of timing leeway for your first required withdrawal. You have until April 1 of the year that follows the calendar year you turn 70 1/2, which is 6 calendar months after your 70th birthday.
Share