It’s December and I finally made some decisions around tax planning for 2025. As your income grows higher and higher, tax planning becomes a core part of your long term strategy. W-2 Income I decided to defer about 1/4 of my income for 2025 in the company deferred compensation plan and I will also be…
Category: Tax Strategy
XPAY, IRMAA, Medicare Premiums & AI
Does the title of this post have you confused? Well bear with me as I explain…. XPAY XPAY is a new ETF that does nothing more than give you your money back. If you invest $10,000 in XPAY, at the end of five years you’ll have gotten all your money back because it will give…
The ETFs In My Retirement Buckets
I strongly believe that parts of the U.S. stock market are over valued but that doesn’t mean I stopped investing. I decided to write this post because I’ve been spending time on Reddit investing communities and almost all of the advice is the same when someone asks for investing help: “Just buy VOO!” I think…
ETF: SCHD and 3 for 1 Split
One of my favorite ETFs that sits in my tax deferred bucket is SCHD and on Friday 10/11/2024 it will undergo a 3 for 1 split. In essence, after Friday I will have triple the number of shares although the share value will drop down to 1/3. I actually have been planning on buying more…
Deferring My Compensation In 2025
I have a hard decision to make soon and that’s how much of my salary I will defer into the future. A key problem that comes with a higher income levels is higher and higher taxes. My employer allows me to defer my compensation into the future (at least 5 years) which has a net…
Evaluating Municipal Bonds
I’ve been writing about municipal bonds lately largely because I love the tax free interest these bonds generate and it helps with taxes so I’m writing about munis yet again. This time I am going to write about my decision making process for which bonds to buy. Lately, I am getting a flood of municipal…
Financial Regrets: FSA Account
One of my family’s biggest challenges are taxes. We often keep getting pushed into higher tax brackets and now we hover between 24% and 35% depending many different variables each year. To help drive down some of my W-2 income, I opened an FSA account this year and it has been the worst mistake of…
My 2023 Tax Autopsy
I wrote about my $15,000 tax bill on this post and I’ve been conducting an autopsy on how my money got murdered in the brutal manner that it happened. Preparation Review Documentation: I took a look at all my W-2’s, brokerage accounts, bank accounts,real estate business records, taxation records from various jurisdictions. I confirmed all…
I’m Buying $30,000 in Municipal Bonds (Taxable Bucket)
As a result of my $15,000 tax debacle I had this year for the 2023 tax year, I decided I needed to do something drastic and sensible so I’m buying $30,000 in municipal bonds to generate tax free income. I already bought $10,000 of ETF NEA which is a municipal bond ETF that is currently…
Thailand & Taxes 2024
In my continuing quest to find a potential expat retirement spot, I came across a recent video on YouTube that has some good sources of data on changes to taxes this year in Thailand. The World Wide Income Tax Bandwagon More and more countries are starting to tax income worldwide even though that particular country…