My family’s kitchen will not be profiled on HGTV as a model of organization. We face the practical limitations of 25-year old builder-grade cabinets and constrained space. We also face the reality confronted by many parents of young children. That is, the focus of children emptying a clean dishwasher is on getting it done quickly [...]
A number of years ago, we authored this article explaining why higher income parents may be well served to gift appreciated investments to their children and then have the children use the proceeds to pay for college. The article further explained how taxpayers who faced alternative minimum tax (AMT) received no tax benefit from [...]
From an economic perspective, insurance is useful to protect against low frequency, high severity events. Quite simply, we are well served to insure infrequent events that would be financially devastating like the loss of a home to fire or an untimely death. This ultimately begs the question of why people purchase insurance to protect against [...]
In a country founded on the idea of individual freedom, Americans value the idea of choice. We inherently believe that maximizing individual freedom increases our individual welfare or happiness and that the best way to maximize individual freedom is to maximize choice. A bar with 120 beers on tap is perceived better than a bar [...]
Related Posts: Part II: High Income Earners and the Math of 529 Contributions Is Overfunding 529s Really so Terrible? More than 50,000 visitors in 2021… click here to sign up for our newsletter and never miss a post! (Don’t worry, we will not take up too much space in your inbox. After four fun introductory [...]
We made the case in this earlier post that Section 529 College Savings Plans present a huge tax saving opportunity for high income parents but that most fail to exploit the opportunity. Based on experience and observation, we cited five reasons that parents and grandparents fail to maximize the potential benefits. Two of those reasons [...]
When qualified state tuition programs (QSTPs) were first introduced in 1996 and Section 529 was added to the Internal Revenue Code, the intent of Congress was to create a create a tax-friendly way for families to save for college costs. At that time, the law provided that any earnings in a QSTP would be tax [...]
Related Posts: When ROTH is Wrong: Follow-Up Q & A Opportunity for High Income Earners – the Backdoor Roth Conversion More than 50,000 visitors in 2021… click here to sign up for our newsletter and never miss a post! (Don’t worry, we will not take up too much space in your inbox. After four fun [...]
Following the When Roth is Wrong post, readers responded with various questions and, sometimes, with a different form of the same question. We address several of those questions below since they're good questions and may be helpful for other readers. Q: If we end up leaving the retirement accounts to our children, doesn’t that make [...]
Last week’s Astute Angle post explained some fallacies related to mortgage borrowing and how the free pass treatment of home mortgages as "good debt" leads to poor financial decision-making. In response to that post, I received a few questions related to the "good debt" label of student loans that prompted another debt-centric post. Three of [...]
