taxes – The Stocky Fox

Paying off your mortgage now a good thing?

April 15, 2019May 6, 2019 Stocky 3 Comments

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Today we celebrate Tax Day. Celebrate isn’t quite the best word, but let’s paint a happy face on this.

There a million things we can talk about with regard to taxes and personal finance, but let’s focus on one of the big changes that hit in 2018 that fundamentally affects a MAJOR financial decision we make—the mortgage on your house.

The major tax overhaul that passed at the end of 2017 is probably the biggest in my adult life. It puts a few tried-and-true nuggets of tax wisdom on their head, particularly how “itemized deductions” are treated, including your mortgage. Let’s dive in and see how that changes things.

Quick primer on how taxes were

Remember, I’m not an accountant, so this is my best understanding of how things were and are.

Before, you as a tax payer had to decide to take the standard deduction or itemize your deductions. You can only do one or the other, so the general idea is to do whichever is “greater”.

Standard Deduction	2017	2018
Single	$6,350	$12,000
Married	$12,700	$24,000

When you take the standard deduction, as the name implies, you just get to reduce your taxable income by a standard amount. In 2017, if you were a married couple, that amount was $12,700.

The alternative is to itemize your deductions. Things can certainly get complicated, but for most people your itemized deductions are your state income taxes, and if you own your own home your property taxes and the interest on your mortgage. If those three items were more than $12,700 then it made sense to itemize your deductions.

In 2017, for the Fox family, our state taxes were about $10,000, property taxes about $6,000, and interest on our mortgage about $9,000. All that adds up to about $25,000. So, it made a lot of sense for us to itemize our deductions. We got to reduce our taxable income by $25k instead of $13k. That probably saved us about $4,000 in taxes. Not bad.

Quick primer on what changed for 2018

There were a ton of changes in the new tax law (I think the actual document was well over 1000 pages—Yikes!!!). But let’s hit the highlights.

The same logic holds where as a taxpayer, you should pick whichever is greater, itemizing your deductions or taking the standard deduction. But that’s where some major changes occurred.

First, you can see that the standard deductions nearly doubled. That alone makes the number of taxpayers who would take the standard deduction much higher than before.

Looking at our situation from 2017, we had $25,000 in standard deductions while the standard deduction is $24,000. Back in 2017 it was a no-brainer, but in 2018 it became nearly a wash. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The second major change is that there is a limit of how much you can deduct on your itemized deductions for state and property taxes. In 2017 there was no limit, so in our situation we were able to deduct $16,000 ($10k for state taxes and $6k for property taxes).

Now the limit is $10,000. That’s a major game changer. Using our 2017 numbers instead of deducting $16,000 for state and property taxes, we hit the limit of $10,000. Add the $9,000 for mortgage interest and we can only deduct $19,000. That is much less than the $24,000 standard deduction, so with the new tax laws, we will take the standard deduction.

Basically, for it to make sense for you to itemize your deductions, you need to have over $14,000 of interest expense on your mortgage. Just using round numbers, if your interest rate is 4% (and if it’s higher than that, you should refinance ?), that means you’d have a $350,000 mortgage. Anything less than that, and you’re better off taking the standard deduction.

How this affects your mortgage

Let’s bring this full circle, back to the headline of this post—How does all this affect your mortgage?

Remember that we have talked extensively about debt. I told you how we could have gone mortgage-free but decided not to, how we took a car loan when we didn’t need to and that was a good thing, and in general the approach we use for debt.

If you boil it all down, basically you should take on debt if the interest rate is really low. However, the tax change “increases” your mortgage rate because it’s not going to make sense to be able to deduct the interest.

Before if you had a 4% mortgage, after you deduct the interest on that mortgage from your taxes, it might seem more like a 2.5% to 3% rate. Obviously, that’s a big difference. Maybe your internal calculations look at a loan at 4% as high enough to pay off fast, but not one at 2.5%. Makes sense.

However, now most of us can’t deduct that mortgage interest.

Mortgage rates are rising

For the past several years, we have been enjoying historically low interest rates which have translated to historically low mortgage rates. However, that has been changing. A few years back a 30-year mortgage might have been at 3.5% while now it is at 5%.

If you combine that impact with the tax deductibility, you have a major impact. Before you had a low rate that was tax deductible. Let’s say it was a 3.5% rate that “felt” like 2.5% after you deducted the interest on your taxes.

Now if you get a mortgage that rate will be 5%. That’s an enormous change, big enough to fundamentally shift the decision of whether or not you should pay off your mortgage faster.

Remember, that paying off a loan is basically making an “risk-free” investment, similar to a bond. Before, paying off your mortgage would give you a 2.5% guaranteed return. That’s not great. For the Fox family, we looked at that as too low. We’d rather take on more risk and invest that money in the stock market.

Now with the changes, being able to get a 5% guaranteed return changes our decision. We wouldn’t do it at 2.5% but we would at 5%. This becomes real because now Foxy Lady and I will start using extra cash we have to pay off our mortgage faster.

This is a huge game changer that impacts millions of Americans. It changed a central decision we had to make for personal finance. Maybe it will change that for you too.

Championship—Asset allocation v. Tax optimization

March 22, 2018March 22, 2018 Stocky Leave a comment

This is what we’ve all been waiting for. After two weeks of amazing investing tournament challenge action (just indulge me, will you?), in this post we will crown the champion of investing strategies. Here we have Asset allocation taking on Tax optimization. In the Final Four, Asset allocation pounded Index mutual funds with higher returns early on and limiting risk as you approach retirement. Tax optimization made it two thrillers in a row, beating Savings rate on the strength of major tax savings with a little bit of work and education, but not a lot of monetary sacrifice. As always, see the disclaimer.

bracket-game 6

Obviously both these strategies have tremendous upside, otherwise they wouldn’t be here. So how do you pick between them? It’s no easy task, but for you, my loyal readers, I’m ready to take it on. Let’s see who cuts down the nets.

Reasons for picking Asset allocation:

In some ways Asset allocation seems really easy, since all you’re doing is figuring out what percentage of your portfolio goes into stocks, bonds, and cash. 90% Stocks, 10% bonds, and 0% cash; there, I’m done. That didn’t seem so hard. Obviously it’s more complicated than that. We already know that Asset allocation is critically important throughout your investing time horizon. When you’re younger you probably want to be mostly in stocks (even now the Fox family is 99% in stocks). As you approach and ultimately enter retirement you want to be more in bonds, but stocks still probably need to be a significant part of your portfolio.

About 10 or so years ago, the mutual fund companies came out with a really cool innovation called target-date funds. The basic idea is that these handle your Asset allocation for you. Imagine today you’re 35 and you want to retire when you’re 60, in 2040. You could invest in a fund like Vanguard’s Target Retirement 2040, and it will automatically shift your Asset allocation from mostly stocks today (currently it’s about 90% stocks, 10% bonds) to gradually less stocks and more bonds as you get closer to retirement. It’s been a wonderful innovation that has proven extremely popular among investors.

So there you go. Problem solved, right? Well, not so fast. I actually don’t think these really solve the Asset allocation problem because they figure everyone retiring in 2040 is in the same situation, but that’s definitely not the case. Let’s say you and your twin retire in 2040, but you will get $1000 from Social Security while she’ll get $3000. What if she had her house paid off completely while you have always rented? What if you worked for a company with a 401k and she worked for a company with a pension?

All those scenarios are very real for investors, and require more individualization than knowing you want to retire in 2040 can give. For all those, conventional wisdom would say that your twin should take on more risk (French for “invest in more stocks”) than you because she has other “assets” that are generating more cash. Reasonable people can debate that last point, but clearly the idea is that Asset allocation is much more complex than just picking a year and being done with it.

So where does that leave us? I am a firm believer in investing DIY, and Asset allocation is no different. But I think this is one of the areas where the degree of difficulty is much higher just because you’re balancing a couple opposing forces and there’s never a clearly “right answer”. You want to be in stocks but not too much in stocks, and then that changes over time. Oh yeah, and the stakes are super-high. Getting it “right” whatever that means could give you an extra few percentage points in return and it could also save your nestegg from catastrophic failure if another 2008 rolls around. When I work on the Fox’s nestegg, this is probably where I spend the most time.

Reasons for picking Tax optimization:

As we’ve said ad nauseam, Tax optimization is important and can lead to enormous savings. What makes taxes so difficult is that the tax code is constantly changing and the stakes are super-duper high (the stakes for Asset allocation were only “super high”).

Every year there are hundreds of changes to the tax code which keeps accountants employed and programs like Turbo Tax (the Fox family uses Turbo Tax) flying off the shelves. With the new tax reform bill that just passed, there were major changes to your taxes like the deductibility of mortgage interest and local taxes. Those changes have massive implications on choices of where to live–both at the level of which state to live in but also whether to buy or rent. These were huge and made the news. What about the others that do hit the media’s radar and you never hear about?

There’s always talk about more changes, perhaps profound ones like a wealth tax. You have to keep up. Also, it can get really confusing. I think I’m fairly knowledgeable on these matters but I am still befuddled by the Alternative Minimum Tax, and I know I screw up the foreign interest paid on my international mutual funds. This stuff definitely isn’t easy.

Also, look at the stakes. If you screw up on your taxes, theoretically you could go to prison. If it’s an honest mistake I don’t think the Internal Revenue Service will push it that far, but horizontal stripes are definitely in play as Wesley Snipes can attest. What is more likely is the IRS will hit you with a fine composed of a penalty plus interest. Oh, by the way, that interest rate is about 6%; that’s not “Pay-day Loan” high, but it’s still pretty freaking high these days. That certainly can make someone cautious about how far to push Tax optimization, even when they’re clearly in the right.

However, there is a silver lining. If you want professional help, there are thousands of Certified Public Accountants who are there to help you out. For under a few hundred dollars most people can probably have their taxes done by a CPA who can make sure that you stay on the IRS’s good side. Unfortunately, when it comes to developing creative Tax optimization strategies, my experience says there’s a huge range in quality that you’ll get from CPAs. Several years back I had a horrible experience with H&R Block and thought they were border-line incompetent. No way would I trust them to advise me on the finer points of maximizing the tax advantages of investing. But there are amazing CPAs out there right now (like David Silkman who did our small business’s taxes when we lived in California) who I do think can really help. But this is a real caveat emptor situation. Maybe Angie’s List might help.

Who wins it all?

It all comes down to this. In the end, I have Asset allocation pulling it out 76-70. Obviously both investing strategies are amazingly important and getting them right can have an exponential impact on your portfolio. For me I gave the nod to Asset allocation over Tax optimization for a couple of reasons:

First, if I met a total train wreck of an investor (he was just stuffing cash in his mattress) and I could only give him one piece of advice, I think it would be to get that money invested in some combination of stocks and bonds. Tax optimization strategies like an IRA or 401k are nice, but first things first.

Second, I think the big rocks for Tax optimization seem to me better understood and more accessible than for Asset allocation. Most investors probably know that investing in your 401k or an IRA is a good idea, and probably most could tell you why (at least be able to say “it helps with taxes”). I think that’s different for Asset allocation where you have a lot of investors who are totally off on what is probably appropriate for their situation (age, income, other assets, etc.).

Third, there’s no real “right” answer for Asset allocation. I could have a lively debate with my dear friends/loyal readers who work in the financial industry like Jessamyn and Mike, where we argued whether the Fox family should be more in stocks or more in bonds. But there’s no right answer (other than if stocks go up a year from now, then you know you should have been more in stocks). It depends on so many variables as well as risk tolerance which are super-hard to quantify. With Tax optimization you can get closer to a right answer—either the tax code allows you to do that or not. Of course, you typically sacrifice ease of access to your money for tax benefits, so that does add a complication.

Finally, I think it’s easier and cheaper to get expert advice on Tax optimization. As I mentioned, a good CPA can probably really help guide you on Tax optimization. Sure, the quality of CPAs is pretty wide, but good ones are out there, and probably they’ll charge you something with in the three-digit range. With Asset allocation if you want professional help you typically need a financial adviser. Unfortunately, and this is just my opinion, it’s a little more Wild West for financial advisers than CPAs. A really good financial adviser is probably worth her weight in gold (140 pound of gold is worth about $2.6 million, so maybe they aren’t worth quite that much), but the range of quality is staggering; there are some real shysters out there. Also, they’ll probably charge you in the four- or five-digits range.

So there you go. Put that all together and I think Asset allocation comes out on top 78-71, finishing the sentence, “if you only do one thing in investing make sure you get Asset allocation right.”

bracket-end

I hope you have enjoyed reading all these posts on investing as much as I have enjoyed writing them. While Asset allocation “won” remember that all eight of these are important and should be definitely be considered as you think about bulking up your portfolio.

Final Four—Savings rate v. Tax optimization

March 20, 2018March 20, 2018 Stocky Leave a comment

Welcome to the second game of the Final Four of my investing strategies tournament. Here we have Savings rate taking on Tax optimization. In the first round, Savings rate beat Mortgage just on the sheer power that saving more money can have on the ultimate size of your nestegg. Tax optimization squeaked by Starting early due to the enormous value created with minimal sacrifice by setting up the accounts to minimize your taxes. As always, give the disclaimer a peek. With that out of the way, let’s see who wins.

bracket-game 5

Reasons for picking Savings rate:

Savings rate is a simple but overwhelming force, maybe like Patrick Ewing when he dominated the Final Fours during his years at Georgetown (I don’t mean to call Ewing’s game simple, but you’ll see what I mean). Ewing just owned the basket—any shot you put up he blocked, if you did get the shot up he got the rebound, when he got the ball you weren’t stopping him. It all revolved around Ewing, and his dominance on the inside covered up for his shortcomings (outside shot, passing) as well as those of his teammates.

In the investing world, the sun really rises and sets with Savings rate. Without any savings, you can’t invest so it really doesn’t matter what you do with things like Index mutual funds, Asset allocation, or Free money.

Also, unlike any other investing strategy, Savings rate can make up for any other mistakes you make along the way. It’s a lot like Ewing protecting the rim on defense; if your guy beat you, you could be pretty confident that Ewing would bail you out by blocking his shot. You could completely screw up Asset allocation and stuff all your money in a mattress—just crank up your Savings rateand there’s no problem. Don’t participate in your 401k and walk away from the Free Money—save a little more and you’re okay. You get my point.

Let’s use the same example of Mr Grizzly starting out at age 22, making $50,000 which will eventually rise to $100,000, and who wants to be a millionaire by the time he’s 60. Let’s say he does everything right, plus he has a horseshoe growing out of his rear end, and over his investing career he averages a 10% return; he would only need to save about 3% of his income. That’s probably a breeze. Now, instead he has an average investing track record with returns of about 6%, he would need to save about 9% of his income. So Savings rate was able to make up for his lack for tremendous luck. Keep going down that path and let’s say he put all is portfolio in a local bank earning 1% interest, which I think we would all agree is a pretty terrible investing strategy, and he still becomes a millionaire so long as he saves about 24%.

Return	Savings rate
10%	3%
6%	9%
2%	20%
1%	24%
0%	29%

So you can see that Savings rate can make up for all manner of investing sin. Pretty much any other investing strategy has its limits to how far it can take you before you exhaust its benefits. But of course there are no free lunches. Increasing your Savings rate comes at a much higher cost than other investing strategies, namely all that money you’re saving means you can’t spend it on other things. So when Mr Grizzly needs to crank up his Savings rate, that money has to come from somewhere—he passes up on that salmon fishing trip, or buying Mrs Grizzly some artisan honey from the farmer’s market, or getting some detangling shampoo for his coat. We can debate whether those purchases are worth the money, but to Mr Grizzly they are (cut to Lady Fox nodding and pulling out a Pottery Barn catalog). Sure, you can start by cutting away the layer of winter fat, but the higher you make your Savings rate the more you start cutting into muscle and eventually into bone. That, my friends, is the rub with Savings rate.

Reasons for picking Tax optimization:

Taxes are to investing what water damage is to a house—unwelcome, can really ruin stuff if not attended to, and it gets into everything. The tentacles of taxes traverse tremendous territory to touch your total transactions (I challenged myself to see how many “t-words” I could use in a sentence). Seriously, taxes pretty much affect everything in investing.

There are the obvious big rocks, some of which we’ve already discussed, like a 401k and an IRA; using those accounts to defer taxes can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Medium-sized rocks like 529s and tax-deductible interest on your mortgage can save you tens of thousands in taxes over a shorter time span. Then there are tons of small rocks which can certainly add up—flex spending accounts and dependent care spending can save you thousands. Add all that up and that’s a lot of clams (if you didn’t read yesterday’s post, I am trying to use as many slang phrases for money as I can).

And then you can get into the really obscure Tax optimization strategies. “Loss harvesting” is when you sell investments at a loss so you don’t have to pay taxes on your winners. “Dividend location” looks to put your high-dividend investments in tax deferred accounts like a 401k, so you don’t have to pay taxes on the dividends during your high-income/high-tax rate years. There are millions of these little loopholes and strategies that allow you to pay less taxes. A major part of the accounting industry is based on this fact.

Just to illustrate the point, I’ll share a story from Medtronic. If you’re a high-compensation employee (I do not qualify, so I can’t take part in this) you can participate in the Capital Accumulation Program (CAP) which allows you to defer a portion or all of your bonus into a tax-advantaged account—think of it like an extra 401k without the match. This is a veritable tax goldmine, and sadly very few of the people I talk to take advantage of this. Let’s assume Mr Executive makes $300,000 per year, with $100,000 of that being his bonus; and assume that he’s working hard to build his nestegg, so after maxing out his 401k he saves $50,000 in his brokerage account. That’s probably pretty close to the people I’m describing.

What Mr Executive could do but probably doesn’t is defer his entire bonus. He’s already saving $50,000 per year and since he’s in a pretty high tax bracket, that’s probably pretty close to what his take-home would be on that $100,000 bonus. However, by deferring his bonus he avoids paying the 40% on taxes now and only pays 5% in taxes when he pulls the money out in retirement. If you do the math, that’s a potential savings of $35,000 ($100,000 x (40% – 5%)) on top of what he’s already saving. When I ask executives why they don’t do CAP they tend to say they never thought of it or they didn’t understand it. When I show them the math says they’re leaving at least $35,000 on the table, their eyes bug out and they need to sit down.

That’s just one example of the power of Tax optimization that is out there that goes largely unutilized, even by really successful people, even by those who have tax advisers helping them out. And there are thousands of other examples like that out there. That’s $35,000!!! That’s a lot of money, even if you are pulling in $300k.

My point with this and the others is that in the US (and probably every other country) the tax code is super convoluted. Add to that that when you’re making more and more money, you pay more and more in taxes, so the stakes start to get pretty high. That’s a perfect recipe for hidden 1% coupons; some of them are easy to find, some a little hard, and some require serious digging—but they’re there.

Who goes on to the championship game?

Just like in the Elite Eight, I think Tax optimization pulls out a squeaker over Savings rate, 71-68. While Saving rate has unlimited potential, it comes at a real cost of foregoing purchases today. Tax optimization isn’t necessarily unlimited. There are only so many wrinkles and loopholes you can take advantage of, but there are an awful lot of them and I bet you’d run out of time and energy before you’d run out of tax strategies.

bracket-game 6

But what tips the scale is that most of the Tax optimization gambits are free. You’re already going to save for your retirement so why not do it with a 401k and not pay taxes on it right now? You’re already going to save for your kids’ educations so why not use a 529 and not pay taxes on the appreciation? You’re definitely going to need to pay for childcare so why not use a Flex spending account and do it tax free? You and the family are going to get sick so why not use a Flex spending account for that, too? None of those cost any more than you would have paid already, but you’re cutting Uncle Sam out of his 40% (legally, of course).

Thursday we will see who wins it all, Asset allocation or Tax optimization.

First Round: Starting early versus Tax optimization

March 15, 2018March 20, 2018 Stocky 1 Comment

We’ve made it to the last contest of the first round, and this one is a doozy. Yesterday we saw Savings rate take down Mortgage. Today we have a true Kentucky versus Duke-style clash; this is a match of the real bluebloods of the investing world. As always, check out the disclaimer. Let’s go to the game.

bracket-game 3

Reasons for picking Starting early:

Starting early is one of the sage pieces of wisdom everyone gives, and for good reason. The earlier you start investing, the more time you give the incredible power of compounding. In this way, Starting early is very similar to Savings rate which we saw won the last game. Because of the compounding the numbers seem to act “funny” (not funny “ha ha,” but funny as in not a way you would expect unless you are an expert in exponential algebra).

So let’s say Mr Grizzly just got his engineering degree at age 22 and wants to retire with $1 million on his 60^th birthday. Similar to the previous examples his starting salary is $50,000 and it gradually increases to $100,000, and he can get a 6% return on his investments.

If he starts saving at age 22, he will need to save about 9% of his salary to get to the $1 million mark by 60. However, let’s say he can’t start right away, and instead he starts saving at age 30; now to become a millionaire by age 60 he needs to save about 13% of his income. Wow!!! By delaying a measly 8 years early on, he has to increase his savings rate about half again what it was. If he puts it off until he’s 40, he needs to save 25%–that’s doubled his savings rate compared to starting at 30!!! And if he delays starting until he’s 50, it will require he save about 67% to become a millionaire by the time he’s 60.

Starting age	Savings rate to become millionaire by age 60
22	9%
30	13%
40	25%
50	67%

Clearly the earlier you start, the easier it is. 9% of your income isn’t trivial, but it certainly seems manageable. On the other end of the spectrum, it seems just plain unrealistic to be able to save 67% of your income; even 25% would be a tall order for most. So everyone can agree it’s better to start earlier rather than later. Done deal.

But the problem with these types of analyses is saving more comes at a cost. That $4500 you saved at age 22 (9% of your $50,000 starting salary) meant you couldn’t spend that. Perhaps that’s not so bad if you were wasting it on clubbing and mani-pedis, but who am I to judge? But maybe clubbing and mani-pedis are what makes life worth living. Broadening that out, nearly all of us are making less early in our careers, so how realistic is it for us to be saving right away?

Also, early on you actually have higher expenses like repaying student debt, buying furniture for your new place, buying a work wardrobe, and just kind of experiencing life. That’s not to say that people can’t be disciplined about those things, but there’s got to be a balance. I personally started saving about 30% when I first started working and I think maybe I should have traveled a little bit more and enjoyed that time of my life (I was living right outside of New York City after all).

Nonetheless, Saving early is a tremendously powerful force if you can afford to do it. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Fox family is at a comfortable place right now in large part due to the fact that I started squirreling money away so early.

Reasons for picking Tax optimization:

Taxes are a tremendously important part of investing. It is a dominant force like Shaquille O’Neal on those LSU teams from the early 1990s. Taxes impact every facet of investing—whether you’re young or old, no matter the type of account you have (401k, IRA, brokerage, Mortgage).

Shaq in college

Obviously taxes take a chunk out of nearly every financial transaction you do. What makes Tax optimization so important is that during your earning years, that chunk can be in the 30-50% range, obviously depending on a number of factors like your income and the state you live in. However, in retirement when you’re income is lower, that tax rate might fall to 10% or even less (of course, as my good friends Rich and Mike pointed out, no one knows what future tax rates will be—I am just assuming that tax brackets remain the same as they are today). Many of the Tax optimization strategies to some degree involve finding ways to not pay taxes at the higher rate when you’re working, but rather pay when you’re retired and your rate is lower.

Just how big of a deal can taxes be? Let’s look back at that example from The tax man cometh. Mr and Mrs Grizzly are ready to save $1000 per month, either in a taxable account like a brokerage account or a tax deferred account like a 401k. Using a regular brokerage account after 30 years (let’s assume a 2% dividend and a 5% stock increase) they have about $815k—certainly nothing to sneeze at. However, had they invested the exact same amounts in the exact same stocks but instead in a tax deferred account, they would have had $1.12 million. That’s almost $300k more, just for Tax optimization!!!

2015-02-16 deferred taxes graphic (qd)

The only difference is when they paid taxes on the money and at what rate. In a taxable account they were paying taxes on the $12,000 each year at their high-income tax rate (34%) and they were paying taxes on qualified dividends (thanks Rich) at a pretty high rate too. In the tax deferred scenario, they were paying taxes on the money after they were retired which I estimated at about 2% because at that time their income is only what they are spending.

That’s just one example, and there are tons just like that where Tax Optimization can really add up to tons of money. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, but this gets pretty darn close. When you put your money in a tax deferred account, it gets more difficult to access if you need it right away, but that seems a pretty small price to pay compared to the massive benefits of tax deferral.

Who wins?

This clash of the titans was super close. In the end I have Tax optimization winning on a Christian Laettner-esque (sorry to all my Kentucky friends) miracle shot to push it to the Final Four.

To me I think this comes down between something that is not very complex but involved sacrifice (Starting early) and something that is fairly complex to pull off but doesn’t involve a lot of sacrifice (Tax optimization). Ultimately, when Starting early you’re taking money that could have been spent on something else and started investing it. So long as you weren’t planning on setting the money on fire, that will involve a sacrifice. Conversely if you do Tax optimization you really aren’t foregoing anything, except a little bit of liquidity. All it is is being smart with taxes and setting up the right accounts.

There are a lot of pretty easy Tax optimization maneuvers like 401k, IRAs, etc., that only take a few hours to figure out and then you’re set for decades. So you’re getting those huge benefits without a lot of effort. But Starting early is requiring a fairly significant sacrifice in your early years that could cause quite a sting. Put all that together and I have Tax optimization coming out on top 83-82. I have to confess though, I think Starting early would have beaten a few of these other strategies if it had lucked out a little bit in the draw.

Well, that was a wild first round. I hope you enjoyed this and we’ll see you tomorrow for the first match of the Final Four, Asset allocation versus Index mutual funds.

The tax man cometh

October 23, 2017October 23, 2017 Stocky Leave a comment

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” –Benjamin Franklin

I love this woodcut from the 1600s. I imagine the artist drew it so the skeleton’s hand is asking for the guy’s life, but it kind of looks like he has his hand out asking for money like he’s collecting taxes. Either way, if you’re death or the tax man, you probably aren’t too popular.

Obviously taxes are important when you’re thinking about investments and your retirement. Uncle Sam (for all you foreign readers, what is the name of the personified tax collector in your country?) is definitely going to take his share of your earnings and investments. Given the progressive nature of most countries’ tax codes, as your nest-egg gets larger and larger, they take a bigger percentage, so that raises the stakes.

The government has built the tax code to offer huge tax breaks to people saving for retirement, particularly allowing people to defer taxes from their earning years to their retirement years. That’s really all that accounts like 401k’s and IRAs are doing, taking money you earn when your income is high and allowing you to pay taxes on it when your income is low. It may not seem like a big deal at first but suffice it to say, optimally managing your tax situation can be the difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars. As always, it’s important to remember that I’m not a tax expert; also I’ll be making assumptions on future stock returns which in no way guarantee that is what will actually happen in real life.

Working tax rate versus retirement tax rate

US tax rates go up pretty quickly the more money you make. So when you’re in your prime earning years, that is when your tax rate is going to be the highest. Take my old neighbors Mr and Mrs Grizzly as an example. They both work and have a combined income of $150,000. Throw in a couple assumptions like they have two cubs, a mortgage, and live in the great state of California, and they are paying a total of about $41,000 in taxes, about 27% (there’s a great website that I used for these estimates). Look a little deeper and their marginal tax rate is 43%; that means if they earned one more dollar they would pay $0.43 in taxes, and conversely if they lowered their income by one dollar they would save $0.43 in taxes. Wow!!! That’s a lot in taxes.

Now let’s fast forward and think of Mr and Mrs Grizzly in retirement. Their house is paid off and they don’t have to save for their cubs’ educations, so what they need to support their retirement lifestyle is $80,000 (believe me, I will have many future posts dedicated to estimating how much someone needs per year in retirement, but for now let’s just take the $80k on faith). Each year they tap into their savings and the $80,000 breaks down into three buckets: $20,000 is interest and dividends; $30,000 is long-term capital gains on the profits from their investments over the years; and $30,000 is the basis, the original money they invested which doesn’t get taxed. Run your tax calculator again and they’re paying a measly $1,200 in taxes!!! Read that again; it’s not a misprint. That’s only 2% compared to the 27% they were paying while they were working. And their marginal tax rate is 4% in retirement instead of 43% while they were working.

That, my friends, is some powerful stuff!!! Now, how do Mr and Mrs Grizzly translate that into cash money?

The value of deferring taxes

During their working years, Mr and Mrs Grizzly set up their budget to save $1000 per month. Because they are avid readers of the Stocky Fox, they know they should save that through their 401k’s (in this unfortunate example, let’s assume their cheapskate company doesn’t offer any matching). In a year they will have saved $12,000 but since 401k’s are tax deferred they don’t pay taxes on that money, saving themselves $5160 in taxes (remember, their marginal tax rate is 43%). Nearly $5200!!! That’s some serious honey comb. They do that each year and after 30 years (let’s assume a 2% dividend and a 5% stock increase), and they have a nice little honey pot of $1.12 million for retirement. They’ll withdraw their $80,000 per year and pay the lower tax rate on it, and life is good.

The Grizzleys are sitting pretty, but what would happen if didn’t use their 401k to defer taxes and instead invested their money in a normal brokerage account? Each year, they’d pay the $5200 in taxes but then they would also have to pay taxes on the dividends. If you assume the same investments as we did above, 2% dividends and 5% stock increase, after 30 years they would have $815k. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but that’s about $300k less than what they had with their 401k. Those numbers seem crazy, but that’s the power of tax deferral.

So the lesson is that using tax deferred accounts offers a really powerful way to accelerate the growth of your nest-egg by cutting out the tax man (in a totally legal way, of course).

To Roth or not to Roth

August 30, 2017May 6, 2019 Stocky Leave a comment

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As you enter the world of investing, one of the first decisions you need to make it whether to open a Traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. Of course, I’m taking for granted that you’re using an IRA to save money, because we know that being smart with taxes is one of the most important things you can do. As you read this, remember that I’m not a tax expert, but here is how I look at this issue.

These IRA cousins are both tax advantaged, but they go about it in different ways. With a Traditional IRA, you are allowed deduct your contribution from your taxes that year; however you pay taxes on the money when you withdraw it in retirement. Conversely, with a Roth IRA you contribute with after-tax dollars but then when you withdraw the money in retirement it’s tax free.

So basically with Traditional and Roth IRAs, you’re making a choice between paying taxes now or later. If you lived in a world where your tax rate didn’t change over time, there would be no financial implications in the choice between the two IRA types. The math would work out the exact same. However, we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where your tax rate goes up the more money you make. In this world, we want to pay taxes when our tax rate is at its lowest. So where does that leave us?

I did some quick estimates of what someone’s marginal tax rate would be in a high tax state (California—where the Foxes used to live) and a low tax state like Florida. I did this at three different income levels: $50,000 (when you’re just starting out), $100,000 (after you’ve been working for a while), and $20,000 (when you’re in retirement—remember you’ll spend more than that but only $20k will be taxed as income).

MARGINAL TAX RATES	High-tax state	Low-tax state
$50,000 (early working career)	33%	25%
$100,000 (later working career)	37%	28%
$20,000 (retirement)	17%	15%

Wow!!! Look at that. We all knew that we would have the highest tax rate when our income peaked. But did we really expect that we’d be paying double the tax rate when we were starting out compared to when we were retired? That’s a huge difference.

Now, remember that the major difference between a Traditional IRA and a Roth is when you pay your taxes. For a Traditional IRA, you’re getting a deduction while you’re working so that $5000 you contribute in your early years gives you a $1667 tax deduction ($5000 x 33% tax rate), and a $1850 deduction ($5000 x 37% tax rate) in your middle years. Of course you’ll have to pay taxes on that money when you retire, which would be about $850 ($5000 x 17%). Compare that to a Roth IRA where you’re paying taxes on that $5000 during your early years ($1667) and your middle years ($1850) in order to avoid paying taxes in retirement ($850).

In a world where we want to maximize our portfolio by minimizing our taxes (legally, of course), the answer seems clear—GO WITH A TRADITIONAL IRA. The back of the envelop math says that going with a Traditional IRA will save you about $1000 per year that you contribute. Remember that $1000 per year over a working career of 40 years, adds up to about $150,000. Those are pretty high stakes for what seems like a pretty innocuous choice.

So why do so many people instead go with a Roth IRA? Why did Stocky Fox himself open up a Roth IRA instead of a Traditional IRA?

Don’t understand rules: A major culprit is that many investors don’t understand the tax rules all that well. Because of that they don’t have a strong opinion on which type of IRA to pick so they go with the one that others tell them is better (which leads to the next reason).
Roth IRAs are marketed better: For some reason it seems that Roth IRAs are marketed better than Traditional IRAs. I don’t know if it’s because “Roth” sounds like an actual name and that draws investors, or what. But my experience tells me that the average investor would pick a Roth just because that “feels right”.
Uncertain tax future: As my loyal readers Mike and Rich have pointed out in the past, the future tax rates are uncertain. Today we know that a current tax rates make a Traditional IRA a better option, but what if those tax rates change in the future? It could definitely impact the decision, but who really knows what will happen? If I could predict the future I would own my own Caribbean island.
Get the pain done with: As a kid I used to eat cupcakes upside down; start with the cake and finish with the best part, the frosting. Some use my cupcake strategy to get the “hard part” over and done with; they choose a Roth IRA because they get the taxes out of the way and then it’s smooth sailing. This is following your heart instead of your head which may not make sense financially but we all do it.
Bad advice: You’ve heard me rail about investment advisers who maybe aren’t all that good. A lot of people might take advice on which IRA to choose from someone who really hasn’t done the analysis, so they say “yeah, go with the Roth. Just as good as any.”

I’m sure there are many more reasons but that’s my list. At the end of the day I think Traditional IRAs are the best choice for most people just because with them, when you do finally pay taxes in retirement you’re probably paying at a lower rate than any time during your working career. And that choice can be of the six-digit variety. Yikes!!!

Of course, you there are special circumstances where maybe a Roth IRA works better. Maybe you’re a kid with really low income (less than $10,000 like from a summer job), but those are probably more the exception.

Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Making college pay off

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017 Stocky 2 Comments

On Monday we asked the insane question: “Is college a waste of money?” We came up with an insane answer: “A person would do much better financially saving that tuition money and not going to college.”

Such a bold conclusion deserves some intense scrutiny. Let’s look at this more closely and see what the key drivers are.

Base case

Recall from the last post that Smarty goes to private school ($280,000 total). Fasty works at a job making $36,000 per year straight out of high school and Smarty spends four years in college then makes $60,000 per year once she’s out of school.

Results—FASTY comes out ahead by $2.7 million (11% better than her sister). This is where we were yesterday. Now let’s start looking at our assumptions.

Scholarships

Of course, this is a big one. Scholarships effectively bring down the cost of college, potentially to zero if you get a full-ride scholarship. The larger scholarship Smarty gets, the more the race tilts in her favor.

Public college

Public college is a much more affordable option, at $100,000 instead of $280,000. Except at the very top (Harvard, Stanford, Chicago) there’s no reason to believe that Smarty couldn’t get as good an education at a public school like University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill compared to an average private school like Wake Forest.

Results—This has a huge impact. SMARTY comes out ahead by $680,000 (4%) if she goes to a public school. It’s not an overwhelming advantage, but the decision between public and private school makes a huge difference.

Wage growth

We assumed that Fasty would make $36,000 her whole career and Smarty would make $60,000 her whole career. Those are the average incomes for people, but in real life people’s wages start lower and grow higher. There’s a lot of debate and controversy here about wage growth and if it goes to everyone or just those at the very top (here is a link that a grad school friend posted).

If you look at more detailed data, it shows that those with college degrees have wage growth 33% higher than those without degrees. To account for this, let’s assume Fasty starts out at $22,000 and Smarty starts out at $33,000. Then let’s assume that Fasty’s wages grow 2.0% each year while Smarty’s grow at 2.7%.

Results—This actually has a pretty low impact. FASTY comes out ahead. If you assume public college Fasty is $233k (2%) ahead which is pretty much a tie. If you assume private college then Fasty is ahead $4.8 million (39%).

College major

Let’s cut to the chase. This is where the real action happens. What you study at college has the biggest impact on what you earn. Starting salaries for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) majors are 30-50% higher than those for liberal arts and teaching majors.

Also, the income growth is much higher. STEM majors can expect their wages to grow about 50% faster than teaching and liberal arts majors. In fact, teaching majors have wages that grow SLOWER than those people without a college degree. So if Smarty went into teaching, she would make more than Fasty at first, but Fasty’s income would pass Smarty’s eventually.

Results—This actually has a profound impact, even when you assume public college. With a STEM degree, SMARTY will come out $3.0 million (19%) ahead. You can play with the numbers, but it’s really hard to find a realistic set of assumptions where Smarty doesn’t win with a STEM degree, with the possible exception of private college. This is true for medical and business degrees as well, just not to the same degree (degree-degree, did you see what I just did there ??).

As good as things look for a STEM degree they look that dismal for a liberal arts, career-focused (journalism, public policy, recreation, industrial arts, agriculture, etc.), social sciences, or teaching degree. FASTY will easily come out ahead to the tune of $3.2 million (33%) if Smarty gets a liberal arts or teaching degree. This assume public college; if we assumed private college, that would be drastically worse for Smarty.

Master’s degree

By attending college Smarty will give herself an option that Fasty just won’t have: the ability to get a master’s degree. This is the route I took, going to college and then after working a few years getting my MBA. In a way, this is really more of the same, and links very closely to the “College major” discussion.

Getting a graduate degree doubles down on your college decision. If you pick a major which puts you ahead, typically getting a master’s degree in that same area will puts you further ahead. Conversely, if you pick a major that puts you behind, getting a master’s degree will put you even further behind.

Results—If Smarty gets a STEM degree she’ll come out ahead. If she gets her master’s, instead of being about $3.0 million ahead she’d be about $3.6 million ahead. That’s a bit of upside but not too much. Conversely, if she gets a liberal arts degree and then a master’s on top of that she’d go from being $3.2 million behind to $6.0 million behind. Yikes!!!

Taxes

Taxes always suck, but they are going to hurt Smarty a lot more then they’ll hurt Fasty. Smarty got her degree and got a higher paying job, and that means she’ll be paying a much higher tax rate than Fasty. Fasty makes less money and that helps in two ways. First, she pays a lower tax rate. Second, because her income is low she doesn’t pay taxes on her investment income.

As Smarty makes more money which is really her whole strategy by going to college, that will help her win the race against her twin, but that will also mean she’ll pay higher taxes and that has a moderating effect.

Results—The very best outcome for Smarty was a STEM degree from a public college, and then her master’s. That resulted in her coming out ahead by about $3.6 million. If you add taxes to that, she only comes out ahead about $1 million. That’s still a lot, but taxes are making something that was a total sure thing a bit more suspect.

Of course, if you consider taxes on all the less favorable scenarios for Smarty (private college, liberal arts degree, etc.) it takes a bad situation and makes it even worse.

Smart non-college kids

We’ve been making an assumption that I think is actually flawed, and has the potential to tip the scales in Fasty’s favor pretty drastically. Remember, we assumed that Fasty and Smarty are identical in every way—equally smart and equally hard working.

In our society, smart and hard-working high school graduates typically go to college. That’s just what they do because they’ve been told a million times that is what they should do. It’s a bit of a circular argument.

When we look at the data for high-school graduates with no college, those are people who never went on to college. Maybe they were late bloomers, maybe not ambitious, maybe just plain not smart. Based on my argument above, very few (although some for sure) had the option to go to college and passed it by.

I say all this because what would happen if Fasty is smart enough and hard working enough to go to college but chooses not to? There’s every reason to believe that she would do much better in her career and make much more money that the “average” high school degree person we’ve been talking about.

Imagine she gets an entry-level job at a factory. She is punctual, hard-working, figures out better ways to do things; all those things would have helped her in college but now she is applying that to her non-college job. That will set her apart from many of the other high-school graduates who didn’t have those qualities and abilities, probably one of the main reasons why they didn’t go to college. Eventually her talents will be recognized and she’ll get more opportunities at higher wages. Maybe it won’t be as fast as if she earned her degree, but it doesn’t have to be. Remember, she also has $280,000 in her bank account.

Results—If Fasty’s salary is higher or can grow faster than the average for a high-school grad, then the calculations drastically shift towards Fasty. Remember that Fasty won the race most of the time. It was when Smarty got a STEM degree that things changed, and that’s because Smarty had a higher salary and faster income growth. However, if Fasty’s hard work got her even a little bit higher salary and faster salary growth, she would close the gap.

Other considerations

College dropouts—This is the real killer. How many kids start college but don’t finish. They end up with the job prospects of Fasty but without the head start.

Fifth-year seniors—Increasingly college kids aren’t finishing their degree in four years. That is a double whammy because it delays them making money for another year and they have to pay an extra year of tuition.

Living at home—There are a lot of ways to get the benefits of college without the full-blown college experience. Living at home (and eating Mom’s cooking) is one that drastically cuts down the cost of attendance.

We’ve come along way. After Monday’s post I was pretty pessimistic on college. I don’t know if this post made that better or worse.

Definitely we learned that private college makes it near impossible to come out ahead financially. More importantly, what you study makes or breaks the decision; STEM and healthcare and business will probably put you ahead while liberal arts and teaching and social sciences will doom you. There’s other stuff too, but I think those are the two most important.

Come back on Monday when I tell you what Foxy Lady and I are planning on doing with ‘Lil Fox and Mini Fox.

Saying “I Do” impacts what Uncle Sam says he’ll take

December 31, 2015January 25, 2016 Stocky 1 Comment

Foxy Lady and I have been thinking about getting a divorce. We don’t want to leave each other or be with someone else. We still love each other, probably more now having been through 6 years of marriage and having brought two amazing cubs into the world, than when we were first married. And let’s be honest: there’s no way I could do any better. Foxy Lady is foxy, is an amazing mom, has a high-powered career, let’s me stay at home with the cubs. She probably could do better, but don’t tell her that.

So we still want to remain fox and vixen, but just not in the official “married” sense. What gives? Since it’s a topic of this website, it probably has something to do with personal finance. By being married we pay about $15,000 more in taxes than if we were living in sin as two single foxes. Let me explain:

The federal tax code (and that of many states) is extremely complex and curiously set up. It is meant to be progressive (wealthier people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes), but in an attempt to achieve that goal, lawmakers have created a bit of a cluster that has some seriously screwed up features. The “marriage penalty” is one of those.

Paying more if you’re married

Let’s look at two nearly identical couples: Mr and Mrs Leopard who are married, and Mr Tiger and Ms Lion who have been living together but never tied the knot. Mr and Mrs Leopard each have good jobs and each make $100,000. Similarly, Mr Tiger and Ms Lion each have good jobs and each make $100,000.

Mr and Mrs Leopard file jointly and owe taxes of $43,000 on their $200,000 income. However, Mr Tiger and Ms Lion together owe taxes of $39,000 on their $200,000 income. What the hell?!?!?! Mr and Mrs Leopard are seriously pissed. Mr Tiger and Ms Lion just paid for their annual family vacation Disneyworld. Or better yet, they can use that money to fund an IRA and in 30 years they’ll have an extra $320,000, thanks solely to the fact that they never said “I do.”

That seems like a pretty big deal. Being married or not has a 10% impact on the amount of taxes you pay. How is that possible? This is fundamentally an issue of figuring out who the IRS thinks is rich, remembering that we have a progressive tax code.

The IRS looks at two people with a combined income of $200,000 as being richer than one person making $100,000. Maybe that makes sense. The couple is probably pooling expenses like housing and the bills that go along with that. A single person is bearing those housing expenses on her own. That, in a nut shell, leads to the IRS taxing the $200,000 couple more than the $100,000 individual.

That’s all well and good until you have situations like Mr Tiger and Ms Lion. The rationale that the expenses for two single people go out the window because they are really acting like they are married, sharing their living expenses just like Mr and Mrs Leopard. When you choose filing status you can pick “Single” or “Married” but you can’t pick “Single but pretty much act like we’re Married.” That’s the loophole.

Paying more if you’re Single

The opposite effect also occurs. Imagine Ms Ocelot and her boyfriend Mr Panther. Ms Ocelot has a high powered career where she’s making $200,000. Mr Panther is a freeloader who watches TV and plays video games all day and occasionally writes on his blog which doesn’t generate any money.

Ms Ocelot pays $50,000 in taxes on her $200,000 income. But if she made an honest man out of Mr Panther, their tax bill would fall to the same $43,000 that the Panthers pay.

That $7000 annual difference is just the same effect as above, but in reverse. The IRS views a single person making $200,000 as being richer than a couple making that same amount. Again, it kind of makes sense; that income is only supporting one person in the “single” example but two people in the “couple” example.

What it all means

“Stocky, what is the point you are trying to make? Surely, you aren’t suggesting deciding on marrying someone based on the tax code.” I kind of am. Are you married because the state of Illinois or the US government says you are? Not really. You’re married because you love your partner, you want to take on life together with that person, you are committed to her until the end of your days. That’s how it is for me.

If the government said there was a clerical error and our marriage certificate was never filed so I wasn’t actually married to Foxy Lady, I wouldn’t love her any less. I wouldn’t be less committed to her and the two cubs we’ve brought into this world together. Actually, I have a few friends, and maybe you do too, who are as committed to each other as any married couple, but they aren’t married in law.

But since the federal government says Foxy Lady and I are married, legally we MUST file as “Married” and that ultimately leads to us paying about $15,000 more in taxes than if we acted in the EXACT same way but just never signed that piece of paper six years ago. And that’s serious money. $15,000 in our case or $4000 in Mr and Mrs Leopard’s case or $7000 in Ms Ocelot’s case really adds up. Over a life time, that could be a million dollars.

Marital advice from Stocky

So does Stocky endorses people who make similar incomes to not get married and couples where one person makes a lot more money to get married? It seems severe, but why not? This is one savings strategy that could pretty much fully fund your retirement.

Of course there’s the big caveat that you need to be in a very strong relationship. One so strong that legally being “married” or “single” doesn’t impact the real-life state of your relationship. If yours is at that level then seriously consider taking the free money the IRS is making available.

Yet, when I give that advice to people, recommending that they get divorced (but remain totally committed like they were married), they look at me like I’m crazy. How could I even suggest touching the most sacred of unions for a few bucks. Totally get it. And to date, no one has followed my advice on this, so there you go. But if your marriage is such that it can survive the US government saying your single, there could be some serious dollars in it for you.

You’ve ready my crazy theory on how to reduce your taxes. What do you think?

The power of a single percentage

February 23, 2015August 25, 2015 Stocky 6 Comments

“How can something so small be so impressive?” –Belinda Heggen

1% doesn’t seem like a lot. It’s the extra sales tax my city adds, hoping I don’t notice it. It’s the maximum amount of gross stuff food companies can put in packaged food without having to tell us (I don’t know it that’s true or not). But in investing 1%, while so easy to overlook, can make a huge difference. Here we’re going to find out how we can get that 1% to help us.

Let’s go back to my neighbors, Mr and Mrs Grizzly. Each year they will save $10,000, investing it in a stock index mutual fund with an expected annual return of 6%. After 30 years, they expect to have $790,581 saved (good time for the disclaimer that I am not predicting future stock performance, just giving an example), a tidy little sum to help see them through their golden years.

However, Mrs Grizzly starts playing with her spreadsheet and changes the annual return from 6% to 7% just to see what happens. She’s astounded to see that the $790,581 that she gets with a 6% return balloons to $944,608 if she assumes a 7% return; that increase in the annual return of 1% led to an increase in her nest egg of 19%. Tempting fate she sees what happens with an 8% return: $1,132,832. She’s a millionaire now. Cranking the return up to 9% made her nest egg $1,363,075; just increasing her return 3% nearly doubles how much she and Mr Grizzly will have to retire on. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the power of compound interest!!!

The point here is that a seemingly small 1% change in your investment return can make a huge difference over time. By tailoring your investment strategies to collect as many “1% coupons” as possible, you can substantially increase, even double, the value of your nest egg.

So how do we get those higher returns? Most people will default to higher stock returns: “It’s a no-brainer. Instead of investing in the stocks and mutual funds that return 6%, let’s invest in the ones that return 7%.” Unfortunately, after reading A Random Walk Down Wall Street we know this isn’t so easy. For any given level of risk, our investment return is probably going to be what it will be.

Now that changing the actual investment return is out, what are our options? Fortunately there are a lot of other things that affect our total return beyond just what our investments give us. We’ll dive into each one of these with its own blog post, but a few to think about at a high level are:

Mutual fund management fees: Each year mutual funds charge between 0.05% all the way up to 1.50% or more for management fees. Going from high-cost mutual funds to low-cost funds can easily get us a 1% coupon.
Financial planner fees: There are a lot of people out there who are more than willing to tell you how to invest your money for a small fee. Except that fee doesn’t tend to be all that small: about 1-2% of your total assets. Do-it-yourself investing can absolutely give you that 1% coupon, and the results you produce will probably be similar to those your investment adviser would.
Being smart with taxes: You know Uncle Sam is going to take his cut. However, you can delay when he takes his share with IRAs, 401k’s, etc. This allows you to keep the money longer, and it allows to you be taxed on the money later in your life when you will probably be in a lower tax bracket. Being smart with your taxes can easily get you a 1% coupon.
Take the “free money” offered to you: Many of us work for companies that match 401k contributions. Except they only give you the extra money if you invest in your 401k. So at least putting in up the minimum amount of get the match can absolutely give you one or two 1% coupons.
Proper asset allocation: We all know that some of your investments should be in higher return, riskier investments like stocks and some should be in lower return, less risky investments like bonds. Properly assessing your portfolio to know how much you already have in less risky investments (especially things like pensions, Social Security, your home equity, etc.), can allow you to safely put more money in investments like stocks. Over the long term, this could easily increase your return each year and get you a 1% coupon.
Fully investing: So many people I talk to have $10,000 or $20,000 or $50,000 in their checking account that they’re “just waiting to figure out what to do with it.” These are certainly Champagne problems, but they are also fertile ground to find 1% coupons. Just taking that money and putting it in a bond fund instead of a checking or money market account could easily give that extra 1% or more; investing in a stock fund will provide even greater returns over the long run.

Those are just a few examples of how you can squeeze an extra 1% or more from your investment returns. You’ll notice that none of those strategies include “outsmart Wall Street and pick the stocks that are going to do the best.” I’m not that smart; I wish I was because then the Fox family would own its own island in the Caribbean next to Johnny Depp’s island. These are all really simple strategies that anyone can do, and each of which takes less than a couple hours to set up, and can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars over your investing lifetime. The Fox family has benefited by these little strategies probably to the tune of 4-5% extra return each year over what seems typical among your average American investor, and that has equated to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So here’s the bottom line: As you read this blog, we’ll constantly be finding “extra 1% coupons” that you can redeem to increase your overall investment returns. As Mrs Grizzly showed, even one of those can add $150k to your nest egg. If you can gather two or three or even more, you can double your nest egg.

The tax man cometh

February 16, 2015August 16, 2017 Stocky 2 Comments

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” –Benjamin Franklin

Working tax rate versus retirement tax rate

US tax rates go up pretty quickly the more money you make. So when you’re in your prime earning years, that is when your tax rate is going to be the highest. Take my neighbors Mr and Mrs Grizzly as an example. They both work and have a combined income of $150,000. Throw in a couple assumptions like they have two cubs, a mortgage, and live in the great state of California, and they are paying a total of about $41,000 in taxes, about 27% (there’s a great website that I used for these estimates). Look a little deeper and their marginal tax rate is 43%; that means if they earned one more dollar they would pay $0.43 in taxes, and conversely if they lowered their income by one dollar they would save $0.43 in taxes. Wow!!! That’s a lot in taxes.

That, my friends, is some powerful stuff!!! Now, how do Mr and Mrs Grizzly translate that into cash money?

The value of deferring taxes

The Grizzleys are sitting pretty, but what would happen if didn’t use their 401k to defer taxes and instead invested their money in a normal brokerage account? Each year, they’d pay the $5200 in taxes but then they would also have to pay taxes on the dividends of their investments at about a 33% marginal tax rate (special thanks to my ChicagoBooth classmate, Rich, for correcting me on this). If you assume the same investments as we did above, 2% dividends and 5% stock increase, after 30 years they would have $815k. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but that’s about $300k less than what they had with their 401k. Those numbers seem crazy, but that’s the power of tax deferral.

So the lesson is that using tax deferred accounts offers a really powerful way to accelerate the growth of your nest-egg by cutting out the tax man (in a totally legal way, of course).