In my post, What They Don’t Tell You About About Retiring Overseas, I wrote about how my wife and I are avid travelers. With one of our kids now seemingly living in Europe on a semi-permanent basis it makes a great deal of sense for us to consider buying a home somewhere in Europe to…
Category: Tax Strategy
I Owe Uncle Sam $15,000
With April upon us the tax deadline is looming and I decided to sit down this past weekend to work on our taxes. My go to tool is TurboTax and I have a love/hate relationship with this software but that’s a story for another day. After going through dozens of documents and forms the software…
What They Don’t Tell You About Retiring Overseas
My wife and I have been thinking about retiring overseas. We both have traveled to at least 30 or more countries over the years and we are always thrilled when we meet new people and learn from others. Our favorite things to do is immerse ourselves in the local culture and we usually start that…
How I’m Investing My Buckets of Money: Tax FREE Bucket
This is part 3 of my buckets of money and how I plan on investing the funds in them. Although the funds are already invested, it’s become clear that I need to re-think how I’m investing funds in each account. Tax FREE Bucket My third bucket is the “tax FREE” bucket. This is a bucket…
How I’m Investing My Buckets of Money: Tax Deferred Bucket
Part 1 here was all about investing my Taxable bucket. This is part 2 of my buckets of money and how I plan on investing the funds in them. My Tax Deferred Bucket, although the funds are already invested, it’s become clear that I need to re-think how I’m investing funds in this account. Tax…
How I’m Investing My Buckets of Money: Taxable Bucket
I have separated my money into three buckets as I wrote about here and after some research, I’m coming close to determining the best way to invest the money in these buckets. Keep in mind that the money in all of these buckets is already invested but after doing some serious planning for retirement, I’ve…
Do You Have An I-Bond Time Bomb?
One of the blogs I love to read is www.tipswatch.com by David Enna. The blog covers, as you might imagine by the name, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and a recent post had me thinking about my own bond portfolio. The crux of the matter is if you’ve been buying bonds for a long time and…
Retirement Planning: Step 5 – Putting It All Together
Let’s review my five retirement planning steps in case you missed any…click on the Steps to go to the appropriate Step. Step 1 – Total all retirement accounts. Step 2 – Estimate how much social security might provide. Step 3 – Estimate what the IRS standard deduction might be during my retirement years. Step 4 – Estimate…
Retirement Planning: Step 4 – IRS Tax Brackets
It’s 2:00 a.m. on a cold February morning, do you know which tax bracket you’re in right now? If you don’t, you’re in luck because I put this table together from the IRS that shows the tax brackets for 2023. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that tax brackets are…
Retirement Planning: Step 3 – IRS Standard Deduction
Do you know what the IRS standard deduction is and how it fits into retirement planning? First the definition of the standard deduction from the IRS: The standard deduction is a specific dollar amount that reduces the amount of income on which you’re taxed. Your standard deduction consists of the sum of the basic standard…