If you're 73 or older, you are required to start taking withdrawals from your tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as traditional IRAs and 401(k)s. These withdrawals are known as required minimum distributions, or RMDs.

Specifically, if you turn 73 during 2025, you're required to take your first RMD by April 1, 2026. However, subsequent RMDs must be taken by Dec. 31 of each year, so it can be smart not to wait until the last minute. If you take your first RMD in early 2026, you'll be required to take another by the end of that year, and withdrawing this much money can have significant tax implications.

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It's generally a smart idea to take your first RMD during the calendar year in which you turn 73.

Image source: Getty Images.

How much do you need to withdraw for your 2025 RMD?

Fortunately, the RMD formula is rather simple, and you only need two pieces of information:

• First, you'll need your retirement account balance at the end of the previous year (so, as of Dec. 31, 2024).
• Second, you'll need the appropriate life expectancy factor for your age, which you can find in IRS-published tables. Most people use the Uniform Lifetime Table, unless your spouse is over 10 years younger than you and is the sole beneficiary of your retirement accounts. (You can find them here.)

To calculate your RMD, simply divide the account balance by the life expectancy factor.

Let's see how this works. We'll say that you had a $1 million balance in your 401(k) at the end of 2024, and that you'll turn 77 years old in 2025. This corresponds to a life expectancy factor of 22.9, according to the Uniform Lifetime Table.

Dividing $1 million by 22.9 gives you a 2025 RMD of $43,668. You can take this out as a lump sum, or incrementally throughout the year.

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Warren Buffett regularly provides investing wisdom through his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, his TV interviews, and through the occasional newspaper editorial. And as you might expect from someone who has an outstanding track record of beating the market during stock market downturns, many of Buffett's quotes are excellent advice to use during corrections like the one we're in now.

5 Great Warren Buffett quotes for a stock market correction

Without further delay, here are some great Warren Buffett quotes to keep in mind when the market gets turbulent.

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1. "Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble."

Historically, stocks go up more than they go down. The average bull market since 1932 lasted nearly five years, while the average bear market lasts just 1.5 years. And the sharpest stock market drops last just days or weeks in many cases – just look at the chart of the initial COVID-19 crash:

^SPX data by YCharts

The massive plunge in the 2-day period after President Trump's reciprocal tariff announcement is another example.

One good strategy is to keep some cash on the sidelines so you can pounce on opportunities like these. It can certainly be scary when they're happening, but how many people wish they had bought more stocks in March 2020, or in 2008 when the financial crisis first started?

2. "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

This is a Buffett quote that applies regardless of whether we're in a stock market correction or not, but it can be especially apparent during turbulent times why Buffett said it. Great businesses with leading market shares, stable cash flow, and excellent leadership tend to hold up better during market downturns. It's also a smart idea to brush up on some value investing principles that can help you separate the wonderful companies from everything else.

This quote also applies when bargain-seeking during downturns. Buying a tried-and-true market leader at 15% below its high can be a smarter move than buying an unprofitable business for a 30% discount.

3. "Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."

If a stock on your radar is down for no other reason than the overall market or sector is weak, or because of some temporary economic factor like higher interest rates, it can be a great time to buy. But if a stock's price is down because something in its business weakened, it can be wise to stay away.

For example, many of the best-performing stocks of the initial artificial intelligence (AI) boom are now trading for less than half of their recent highs. But it isn't for no reason – it's because we're seeing significant softening in demand for data center space and other AI infrastructure.

In other words, not every stock that is trading for a lower price in a downturn is a true bargain.

4. "Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be a more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks."

It's never a good idea to sell a stock just because it went down. But if a decline in a stock's price is accompanied by a change in your investment thesis, it could be a good idea to sell and move on, not to throw more money at it because it looks cheap. An example in the current market environment might be a stock that could be especially vulnerable to China tariffs. Or if a recession comes, a cyclical business that is highly dependent on discretionary spending could be one to take a closer look at.

Of course, not all stocks that fall in these two categories necessarily need to be sold. But the point is that if your investment thesis is busted, it can be a perfectly good reason to move on – regardless of how cheap a stock looks after a decline.

5. "The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd."

When we see our friends making money hand-over-fist in stocks, it's human nature to want to put all our money in as well. And when everyone else is panicking and selling stocks, it's our instinct to sell before things get any worse. It's common knowledge that the central goal of investing is to buy low and sell high, but our emotions try to make us do the exact opposite.

What Buffett is saying here is to trust your own analysis and research, not what your friends, or some market commentator on TV is telling you to do. By purchasing shares of great businesses at fair prices and holding them for as long as they remain great businesses, stock market corrections are your friend as a long-term investor.

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To say that SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI) has shown impressive momentum in the few years since it went public would be an understatement. In the three-year period including 2022, 2023, and 2024, SoFi's membership base nearly tripled, and its bank grew from $0 in deposits (it got its banking charter in early 2022) to nearly $26 billion.

There are plenty of impressive numbers throughout SoFi's results that are important to watch. The growth in its third-party lending platform, as well as the progress made by the Galileo technology platform are two big examples.

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However, there's one unconventional metric that is especially important for SoFi's success, especially when it comes to growing its bottom line.

SoFi's productivity loop

One metric that SoFi reports with its earnings is the ratio of financial services products to loans in its ecosystem. Financial services products include SoFi's bank accounts, investment accounts, and credit cards.

SoFi aims to create what it calls a "financial services productivity loop," and growth in the financial services side of its business is the main way it plans to get there.

Here's how this metric has evolved over time:

Data source: SoFi.

Here's why this is important. SoFi's customer acquisition costs have been high for some time. It regularly offers bonuses of $300 or more for members referring someone for personal loans, for example.

However, a larger proportion of financial services customers means that SoFi has more of a natural marketing funnel to cross-sell loan products to its existing customers. Right now, with high economic uncertainty and elevated interest rates, demand for consumer loans (especially mortgages) is low. But as this changes, a high ratio of financial services customers sets the company up to take advantage of loan opportunities in a more efficient manner.

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Real estate investment trusts, or REITs, aren't well known for their volatility, and as a group, they tend to be more resilient than the typical S&P 500 company during tough times.

We're seeing this during the recent market downturn. The S&P 500 is down by roughly 12% as of this writing, since President Trump's tariff plan was announced, but the real estate sector is down by less than 10%.

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However, one of the most rock-solid companies in the real estate sector has taken quite a beating. Industrial real estate giant Prologis (NYSE: PLD) has fallen by 17% since the tariffs were announced, and although there are certainly some valid concerns, the fact remains that this is a rock-solid REIT with a bright future, currently trading at a discount.

Prologis and tariffs

Prologis is the largest real estate investment trust in the world and specializes in logistics real estate. Think warehouses, distribution centers, and similar properties. In all, the company owns nearly 5,900 properties with a total of 1.3 billion square feet in 20 countries around the world.

As you might expect, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is the largest tenant, and other major Prologis customers include Walmart (NYSE: WMT), UPS (NYSE: UPS), Home Depot (NYSE: HD), and many other major retailers and logistics companies that are household names to most Americans.

To be fair, there are certainly some tariff concerns. Many of Prologis' major tenants import a lot of the products they sell (Amazon is certainly in this category), and there are concerns that demand for logistics properties could temporarily soften. As CEO Hamid Moghadam recently said, "In the interim, tariffs are inflationary and growth-reducing." But long-term, if tariffs lead to more domestic manufacturing, it could be a net benefit for Prologis, as U.S. businesses would need more logistics space. But to be clear, in the short term, tariffs are almost definitely a negative for the business.

Reasons to take a closer look

There are a few good reasons why Prologis could be a steal at the current price. For one thing, the business entered 2025 with strong momentum, with 10% year-over-year growth in funds from operations (FFO -- the real estate version of "earnings") in the fourth quarter and generally strong leasing activity.

Furthermore, industrial property values have declined in recent years because of falling demand and higher interest rates. At first, this might sound like a reason not to buy. But CEO Hamid Moghadam recently said that he sees the market near an "inflection point," and falling interest rates could cause these trends to sharply reverse course. With the latest expectation of four 0.25% Federal Reserve rate cuts in 2025, according to the CME FedWatch tool, there could be a nice tailwind coming.

With e-commerce accounting for 56% of all retail sales growth in the United States last year and expected demand for 250 million to 350 million square feet of new logistics space over the next five years because of e-commerce, there could be a strong environment for several years.

The company is also doing a great job of creating shareholder value through development and expects to spend $5 billion in 2025 alone. With $7.4 billion in liquidity and access to cheaper capital than peers thanks to its excellent balance sheet, the company has the financial flexibility to pursue opportunities as they arise.

Prologis also has a lot of embedded rent growth, as industrial rental rates soared during the pandemic years, and there are a lot of older leases that are yet to reset to the current market rents. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Prologis reported cash rent increases of 40.1% on new and renewal leases, and this elevated rent growth should continue for the next few years.

Last but certainly not least, Prologis has been quietly, but aggressively, getting into the data center real estate space, and sees a massive opportunity to scale.

Lots of upside potential

After the recent decline, Prologis trades for a historically low valuation of just 16 times its 2025 FFO guidance. And at the current price, the stock has a 4.3% dividend yield as well as a fantastic track record of raising its payout. In fact, the FactSet consensus estimates Prologis' net asset value at $125 per share, about 34% above the current stock price.

As mentioned, there are certainly some legitimate tariff concerns for a company whose primary business is leasing an international network of distribution centers. However, this business will be just fine over the long run, and we should have more clarity about how the tariff plans could affect the company's results when it reports earnings on April 16. But even before we see the latest numbers, Prologis has jumped toward the top of my buy list in the stock market downturn.

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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Matt Frankel has positions in Amazon and Prologis. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Home Depot, Prologis, and Walmart. The Motley Fool recommends United Parcel Service and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $90 calls on Prologis. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

There is a lot more to Social Security than the retirement benefits that tens of millions of retired workers receive every month. One extremely important part of the program is known as Social Security spousal benefits.

Spousal benefits can provide much-needed retirement income to married couples where one spouse was the primary earner. This is most common in situations where one spouse was a stay-at-home parent, but they can also apply in cases where one spouse was a high earner and the other worked part-time or earned comparatively little throughout their working life.

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Depending on the specific circumstances, a spousal benefit can be as high as one-half of the higher-earning spouse's full retirement benefit (formally known as their "primary insurance amount"). This means that if your spouse has a primary insurance amount of $2,500 per month based on their own work record, your spousal benefit can be as much as $1,250.

Qualifying for spousal benefits

Although the formula used to calculate Social Security benefits can be a bit complicated, the qualifications are not. This is true for spousal benefits as well. To collect a Social Security spousal benefit, there are three specific criteria that need to be met.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Your spouse collects a retirement benefit

First and foremost, the central requirement of a spousal benefit is that the higher-earning spouse is actively collecting their own Social Security retirement benefit. Even if you've reached your full retirement age (more on that in a bit), you can't collect a spousal benefit until the primary-earning spouse applies for their own benefit.

It's also worth noting that even divorced spouses could potentially qualify for benefits, as long as the marriage lasted for at least 10 years.

2. You are at least 62 or have a child

To collect a spousal benefit, assuming the primary earner is collecting their own benefit, you need to meet one of two requirements:

• You must be age 62 or older
• You have a qualifying child under 16 or who receives Social Security disability benefits

Although you can get a spousal benefit as early as age 62, it will be permanently reduced if you start receiving it before full retirement age. For Social Security purposes, full retirement age is 67 for those born in 1960 or later. If you have reached full retirement age when you start collecting a spousal benefit, it will be equal to your spouse's primary insurance amount, regardless of how old they are when they start Social Security. But if not, your benefit can be reduced by as much as 35%, depending on how early you claim.

However, if you have a qualifying child (defined earlier in this section), the spousal benefit is not reduced for early retirement.

3. You don't qualify for a larger benefit on your own work record

Finally, when you apply for Social Security, the SSA will look at your own work record and see how much you would qualify for individually, if anything. And you'll get your own benefit or a spousal benefit, whichever is higher.

To be perfectly clear, a spousal benefit is paid instead of an individual Social Security retirement benefit, not in addition to it.

A valuable part of many couples' retirement strategy

As of the latest data, 1.86 million spouses of retired workers get a benefit, with an average monthly amount of $932 -- or approximately $11,200 of annual, inflation-protected retirement income.

The bottom line is that Social Security spousal benefits provide much-needed retirement income for married couples, and as long as one spouse qualifies for Social Security benefits with their own work record, qualification for spousal benefits is straightforward.

The $22,924 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook

If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $22,924 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies.

View the "Social Security secrets" »

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Ever since President Donald Trump announced his tariff plan, there's been no shortage of stocks that are trading for a big discount to their previous highs. This includes some of the most rock-solid brands in the world.

I've been gradually taking advantage of opportunities to add to my favorite long-term investments during this turbulent time. Although it's entirely possible for the stock market to remain volatile for a while, it looks like an excellent time to add shares of industry-leading companies like Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), and that's exactly what I did recently.

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An incredible brand that isn't going anywhere

Walt Disney struggled in the post-pandemic years to bring its streaming business to profitability and also may have priced its theme parks and related add-ons a bit too aggressively, without investing nearly enough in improving the customer experience. However, returning CEO Bob Iger has done a great job of setting Disney on the right path, focusing on efficiency and prioritizing investment in the cash-machine theme parks.

In the most recent quarter, Disney's revenue climbed by 5% against a tough comparable with the previous holiday season. Operating income and adjusted earnings per share grew by 31% and 44%, respectively, due to management's focus on efficiency, and the streaming business is now nicely profitable.

After the recent market declines, Disney is trading for its lowest price-to-sales multiple (P/S) since the financial crisis and is nearly 30% below its recent high. While it isn't immune to the tariff concerns (more on that in a bit), this could be a great entry point in this amazing business for long-term investors.

For the current fiscal year, management foresees about $15 billion in operating cash flow and $3 billion in buybacks. If the company's plan to invest $60 billion in its parks over a decade pays off, there could be significant growth in the years to come.

A second chance to get "Back to Starbucks"

Starbucks rallied sharply in August 2024 when Brian Niccol was announced as the coffee brand's new CEO. However, the stock has now fallen by 30% in just over a month and trades for its lowest share price since before Niccol's hiring.

Niccol has made some big moves to set Starbucks on the path to turning around its sluggish growth, a plan he has called "Back to Starbucks." Just to name a few, the company has simplified its menu, focused on dramatically cutting wait times, and taken steps to improve the in-café experience. So far, the results have been promising.

The company's latest earnings surpassed analyst expectations, although comparable sales fell slightly year over year. However -- and this is a very important point -- virtually all key customer-related metrics improved on a sequential (quarter-over-quarter) basis.

In the near term, margins have been pressured by some of the investments Niccol and his team have been making. But there's also a lot the company has done that isn't reflected in the results just yet, and this is still the relatively early stages of the turnaround.

SBUX PS Ratio data by YCharts.

After the recent decline, Starbucks trades for a historically low price-to-sales ratio. If the company's turnaround efforts reinvigorate growth (and margins improve), the current price could be a bargain for long-term investors.

Not immune to tariff risks

To be perfectly clear, both of these stocks are down for good reasons. Both have significant exposure to China, and if the trade war due to the tariffs escalates between the U.S. and China, it could certainly weigh on their results. This is especially true with Starbucks, which has nearly 7,600 stores in China -- about 19% of the company's total.

They are also both cyclical businesses, for the most part, and depend on the ability and willingness of consumers to spend money. If the tariffs trigger inflation and/or a recession, both companies could see consumers pull back on discretionary purchases.

As a long-term investor, I think both of these companies are looking very attractive. I plan to hold both stocks for years (maybe decades). During that period, recessions will come and go. But both are excellent businesses that should be able to steadily grow over the years, and investors who buy at the current depressed prices could do quite well.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

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Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

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Matt Frankel has positions in Starbucks and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Starbucks and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.