Although the stock market is not ending the year in positive territory, you may still want to fund your retirement accounts. Every retirement account lets you use cash investments inside of your retirement account and you can decide later how you want to invest it. 

For 2008 you can make contributions to the most popular retirement accounts:

Contributions to some accounts must be completed by December 31, 2008 while other accounts can still accept contributions until April 15, 2009. Check with your employer or tax preparer regarding your situation.

Higher way earners may also phase out of some of the contributions or receive reduced tax benefits. 

Retirement contributions can be quite complicated so check with your professionals to make sure you do it correctly.

If you or someone you know turned 70 1/2 last year, they’ll need to take Required Minimum Distributions (RMD). The IRS requires this because they’ll get taxes on the amounts withdrawn and they’ll charge a 50% penalty if you fail to do this.

Last year, a retired man came into my tax office on April 3rd and hadn’t taken his RMD of almost $10,000. That meant that he would have had to pay a $5,000 penalty! Fortunately, we were able to appeal it since he was only a few days past the deadline and the penalty was waived.