I hate to admit this, but a few years ago, before Trump was returned to office, at the end of the year my wife was forced to take a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from her IRA (I take a normal monthly draw from my IRA so I don't need to take an RMD at the end of the year). Anyway, this happens every year and sometimes she takes the money and spends it on something extra that she wanted but that year she didn't really need the extra cash so our wealth manager (they used to be called financial analysts, but wealth manager sounds more positive) suggested that she purchase some stocks instead. He made a recommendations at the time, Palantir Technologies. We agreed and he bought 97 shares. The following year, after Palantir had dropped, he took my wife's RMD and added more Palantir shares. The last purchase was in April 2023. This put our cost basis at around $16/share. By then we had 223 shares of Palantir.

As of the market's close yesterday, Palantir was trading at $137.30/share, a gain of just over $27,000, for an annualized return of over 85%.

That last time our wealth manager added to the shares of Palantir, he also bought some Home Depot, which has only given us an annualized return of just under 5%, not bad, but I sure wish he had used that money to buy more Palantir, but it had just dropped to about a third of what our initial shares had cost us and he wanted to diversify a bit. At the time, it seemed the right thing to do as he was sure that both Palantir and Home Depot were a good investment, and while he was correct, it could have been a lot better if he had only invested in Palantir.

Anyway, we're now thinking of having our wealth manager sell the Palantir and take the profits, but then we'd have to pay at least capital gains tax as this stock account is not tax-deferred as it's been funded from the RMD's from my wife's IRA.

OCU

My advice would be to use the money to change your IRA withdrawal from monthly to once, annually.

I always tell clients to set the dispersion for December 15. That way, you a) get the advantage of the market gains, year in and year out, b) extend the life and value of the IRA, and c) have two weeks to make sure it happened, since if it didn't, that's legally YOUR fault.

Anyway, I also applaud your advisor's recommendation to diversify. While investing hindsight is always 20/20, we all remember Enron, and the lesson about putting all the eggs in one basket.

#6 | Posted by Danforth at 2025-06-21 01:57 PM

Note that both of our IRA's are very diversified and our return has been well above the market averages. That stock account is just where my wife's Required Minimum Distributions were deposited and is only about a quarter of what her IRA is worth. Note that the annual RMD's are the only funds that she's ever taken from her IRA.

When I retired (my wife, who's older than me, had already retired about seven years earlier to take care of her mother), in addition to our Social Security checks, I had also earned three defined benefit pensions (something that today's young people will never know anything about). Now one of these pensions was from where I first worked after graduating from engineering school, and it wasn't worth all that much, it was only going to pay something less than $150/month, so I took it as a lump sum when I turned 65 and just put it in the bank. Another pension I had to start taking when I turned 65, again, most of that money was banked. The third and largest pension I was allowed to defer while the cash value continued to collect interest. I didn't start taking it until I retired, which was when I was 68. That's also when I started my Social Security. BTW, both of my mountly pensions are fully vested so my wife will get 100% survivors benefit (although her being older, that might not be as big an issue as it would be with most couples).

Anyway, what we worked out with our wealth manager was that between our two Social Security checks, my two monthly pensions, plus a monthly draw from my IRA, we've managed to not change our life style. We're basically living on the same 'take-home' that I was getting just before I retired. Now that was just over nine years ago and my wife's IRA is now worth at least half again as much as when they rolled over her 401k (she's 79 and has had to take out those RMD's ever since she was 73) and mine is almost 85% of what it was when I rolled over my 401k and I've been taking out well over what the annual RMD would have been each year. So all in all, I think we're doing okay.

OCU