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Once you establish a retirement account, such as an IRA or 401(k), you want to maintain your balances and obtain tax-free growth for as long as possible. When unplanned expenses arise, you don’t want to make withdrawals from your retirement accounts unless there are no other viable options.

If you do have to withdraw funds from your retirement plans, you need to know how to do so without incurring penalties.

There are now over 20 exceptions to the 10% penalty. Ed Slott, a retirement plan expert, believes that “early withdrawals from retirement accounts should be discouraged because they reverse the retirement savings process, and early distributions are the most expensive. They are highly inefficient as they can be subject to both income tax and the 10 percent early withdrawal penalty, which combined can erode half of the distribution. It would be better to take the necessary cash from a non-taxable account.”

There are three categories of early withdrawal exceptions: exceptions that apply to both qualified company plans and IRAs; exceptions that apply only to IRAs; and exceptions that apply only to company plans. read more

By MATT O’BRIEN, AP Technology Writer

Microsoft is closing down Skype, the video-calling service it bought for $8.5 billion in 2011, which had helped spark a transformation in how people communicate online.

By MEAD GRUVER

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — President Donald Trump is taking a step toward granting the U.S. mining industry’s biggest wishes by singling out one metal as a focus of his domestic minerals policy: copper.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks rallied on Friday to close out their dreary February on a brighter note.

The S&P 500 jumped 1.6% to trim its loss for the month, enough to make it the worst only since December instead of since April. It had dropped in five of the prior six days after weaker-than-expected reports on the economy and worries about President Donald Trump’s tariffs knocked the index off its all-time high set last week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 601 points, or 1.4%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 1.6%.

Much of the recent damage had focused on the market’s biggest winners of recent years, whose momentum had seemed nearly impossible to stop at times. Stocks that flew in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology slumped sharply, for example. Bitcoin, meanwhile, dropped more than 20% from its record.

Many of those beaten-down areas of the market jumped Friday to recover some of their losses. Nvidia, which has become one of the market’s most influential stocks, rose 4% following its 8.5% tumble Thursday and was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500. Bitcoin bounced back above $84,000 after falling below $79,000 during the morning. read more