Robert, Past 70.5, Asks Clark Howard What to Do With RMDs From Three Retirement Accounts
Key takeaways
- Robert, Past 70.5, Asks Clark Howard What to Do With RMDs From Three Retirement Accounts Danielle Liverance Sat, June 27, 2026 at 8:09 PM GMT+7 5 min read.
- I've been covering retirement-income planning for more than 15 years, and the RMD reinvestment question is one of the most common — and most botched — calls I hear on personal finance shows.
- "If you don't want to give it away to family or charity or you don't want to do something fun for yourself and you don't need the money.
Robert, Past 70.5, Asks Clark Howard What to Do With RMDs From Three Retirement Accounts Danielle Liverance Sat, June 27, 2026 at 8:09 PM GMT+7 5 min read. A caller named Robert phoned into The Clark Howard Show with a problem most savers would love to have: the IRS was forcing him to pull money out of retirement accounts, and he didn't need a dime of it to cover his bills. Clark's answer was short, blunt, and mostly right, with one giant blind spot that costs retirees thousands every year.
I've been covering retirement-income planning for more than 15 years, and the RMD reinvestment question is one of the most common — and most botched — calls I hear on personal finance shows. Here is the exchange from the February 7, 2018 broadcast. After Robert explained he was past 70.5, splitting his required minimum distribution across all three accounts, and holding roughly $500,000, Clark told him:
"If you don't want to give it away to family or charity or you don't want to do something fun for yourself and you don't need the money. This is going to sound weird. I would put it into an investment account and I would buy like a total stock market index fund or something like that with it. There would be ultimately a great inheritance asset for somebody to get way down the road."