You may spend decades contributing to various retirement accounts. But for some accounts, such as a traditional IRA and 401(k), you must start withdrawing funds at a certain point.What should you know about this requirement?To begin with, the rules governing these withdrawals — technically called required minimum distributions, or RMDs — have changed recently. For many years, individuals had to begin taking their RMDs (which are based on the account balance and the IRS’ life expectancy factor) when they turned 70½.The original SECURE Act of 2019 raised this age to 72, and SECURE 2.0, passed in 2022, raised it again,