Summit Investment Advisors

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Summit Investment Advisors Summit Investment Advisors is a full service financial and investment advisory firm. Securities offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC.

Our financial consultants provide strategic investment management and professional advice for individuals, families, and businesses. www.finra.org and www.sipc.org Investment Advice offered through Summit Investment Advisory Services, a registered investment advisor and separate entity from LPL Financial. Third party posts found on this profile do not reflect the views of LPL Financial and have not been reviewed by LPL Financial as to accuracy or completeness. For a list of states in which I am/we are registered to do business, please visit www.summitinvest.com.

Leaving a job means deciding what to do with the old 401(k). We recommend considering 4 options - and it’s important to ...
10/26/2026

Leaving a job means deciding what to do with the old 401(k). We recommend considering 4 options - and it’s important to understand that the tax consequences vary a lot between them.

1. Leave it where it is. Makes sense if the plan has low-cost or hard-to-find investments, but old accounts tend to get ignored.
2. Move it to your new employer's plan. You consolidate while keeping qualified-plan creditor protections and loan access, assuming the new plan accepts transfers.
3. Roll it into a traditional IRA. You may get more investment choices, though creditor protection may be weaker and plan loans go away.
4. Cash it out. The balance is taxed as ordinary income, there may be a 10% penalty if you're under 59½, and your employer generally withholds 20% up front. In a hypothetical example, $10,000 growing tax-deferred at 8% a year becomes roughly $100,000 over 30 years. That's what you give up.

You don't have to decide the week you leave. If you want to see how each option hits your tax return, let’s connect and we can take a look together.
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This information is not a substitute for individualized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified tax professional to discuss your specific situation.

10/21/2026

A trust controls only what's titled in its name. Signing the document is the first step, and the follow-through work is what makes it function.

Brian Carlson sees this regularly. Clients come in with a trust created a few years earlier and assume it's handling everything. When asked what the trust owns, they're not sure. Bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and real estate that were never transferred in, along with beneficiary designations that were never updated to reflect the trust, can all end up outside it when it counts.

A complimentary introductory conversation with our team is a good starting point if you'd like to review how your current plan fits together. Visit summitinvest.com for more information.



This information is not a substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult a qualified tax professional to discuss your specific situation.th a qualified tax advisor

10/13/2026

Beneficiary designations carry more legal weight than a will or a trust. A retirement account or life insurance policy passes to whoever is listed on the form on file, full stop.

We tell clients that keeping those designations current is the lowest-effort, highest-impact thing they can do for their estate plan. It costs nothing to update. A colleague shared a case where a gentleman, well into his second marriage of twenty-plus years, had updated his will, his trust, and every account he knew about. An old 401(k) from early in his career had never made it onto the list. His first wife was still named on the form, and the account passed to her when he died.

Review the beneficiary designations on every retirement account and life insurance policy you hold. Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel.



The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

This information is not intended to be a substitute for individualized tax advice. We suggest that you discuss your specific tax situation with a qualified tax advisor.

10/09/2026

Every December, a planning window closes.

Roth conversions, capital gains decisions, and charitable gifts all count toward the tax year they happen in. After December 31, whatever room you had in this year's lower brackets is gone.

Earlier this year I recorded a Summit Talk on how income taxes actually work. We walk through the basic federal formula, standard vs. itemized deductions, and why your marginal bracket matters so much. (If you have last year's return handy, line 15 is a good place to start.)

The part I'd point you to is the case study at the end:

A couple retiring at 60 used the years before their pensions and Social Security began to convert part of their 401(k) to a Roth in the 12% bracket. They also sold company stock and kept the long-term gain in the 0% capital gains bracket.

✅ If you're a year or two from retirement, or already in those gap years, this is a good time of year to look at where you stand.

The video is linked in the comments, and I’m happy to answer any questions there too.
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This information is not a substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult a qualified tax professional to discuss your specific situation.

10/07/2026

The clients who come in with the thickest estate planning folders sometimes have the biggest gaps. Clients with a signed will, a trust document, and a tidy binder can still leave their family with unexpected taxes, probate issues, or assets going to the wrong person.

Three mistakes show up in our practice more than any others, so watch this video to make sure you’re not making them.

If you haven't reviewed your estate plan after a major life change, or if you're not sure what your trust actually owns, that's a good place to start.

09/30/2026

For our clients, tax planning season starts now, while there's still time to do something about the number.

Once the calendar turns to January, most of the moves that could have changed your 2026 tax bill are gone. Harvesting a loss, adjusting a withdrawal, timing a Roth conversion, funding a donor advised fund, all of it needs to happen before December 31.

We spend October and November running projections with clients so we know where they land before the year closes instead of finding out in April. Small adjustments made now, spread across a few months, tend to work better than one large move squeezed in during the last week of December.

If it's been a while since anyone looked at your full tax picture for the year, this is a good time to get it on the calendar.
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This information is not a substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult a qualified tax professional to discuss your specific situation.

09/25/2026

October through December is when many of my Roth conversion conversations happen, and the timing is deliberate.

By the fourth quarter, you have a clear picture of the year's actual income. Bonuses have been paid, RSUs have vested, and any major withdrawals are already on the books. This tells you exactly how much room is left in your current tax bracket before the next one starts.

Converting into the remaining space lets you move money into a Roth account at a rate you already know, rather than guessing in March after the year is locked in.

Waiting until tax season removes the option entirely. Once December 31 passes, the conversion window closes for good.

If a conversion has been on your radar, now is the time to start running the numbers instead of waiting until the holidays are behind us.
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This information is not a substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult a qualified tax professional to discuss your specific situation.

09/24/2026

Albert Einstein worked with his own tax preparer back in the 1940s and still called the income tax the hardest thing in the world to understand. At the time, the federal tax code ran about 16,500 pages. By 2025, estimates put that number above 75,000, and anyone who has tried to read through it themselves knows what he meant.

A study from Lincoln Financial Group found that taxes represent one of the largest expenses people face during retirement.

Most people only do backward tax planning, waiting until tax season to add up the prior year and see what they owe or get back. By then, nothing is left to change.

Forward tax planning happens before the year ends, while there is still time to shape the outcome. Pre-tax contributions, Roth conversions, and several other strategies all depend on decisions made now rather than in April.

I walk clients through this every fall, because the moves that matter most usually have a deadline attached to them.
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This information is not a substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult a qualified tax professional to discuss your specific situation.

09/23/2026

A headline breaks, markets move, and suddenly it feels like you need to do something. The pull toward action is one of the harder challenges investors face, and why acting on it often works against long-term returns.

Brian Carlson, CFP®, filmed a quick video walking through two recent examples of sharp selloffs and how quickly each one recovered.

A well-built financial plan is designed for periods like these. During volatile stretches, the grounding question is whether anything has fundamentally changed about your goals, your timeline, or your overall plan.

For most people, the answer is no, and staying disciplined is what separates long-term investors from short-term reactors.
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This information is not a substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult a qualified tax professional to discuss your specific situation.

The mega-backdoor Roth gets talked about constantly online, and I regularly meet MedTech employees who assume their 401k...
09/21/2026

The mega-backdoor Roth gets talked about constantly online, and I regularly meet MedTech employees who assume their 401k plan includes it automatically.

The strategy depends on a specific plan feature, the ability to make after-tax contributions beyond the normal limit and then convert them to Roth inside the plan. A lot of large employer plans, including several in MedTech, don't offer it.

Without that feature, following generic advice built around it leads people to expect a savings strategy their plan was never built to support.

The good news is most of these plans still offer a strong savings order of their own, often layering a base match with an additional year-end contribution that adds up to more than employees expect.

Before assuming a strategy applies to you, take a look at your plan document or your provider's website. I check that detail for every MedTech client before building a savings strategy around it, and it can change the plan completely.
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Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Address

3065 Centre Pointe Drive, Ste 2
Roseville, MN
55113

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

(651) 490-2939

Website

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