Taxes for the Self-Employed can be Steep! In addition to regular income tax rates business owners are responsible for an additional "self-employment" tax. Consider that if you are married and earn $200k in 2021, your income puts you in the 24% federal tax bracket. Add self-employment taxes and you're looking at almost 40% of your [...]
This guest post was originally written by Greg Phelps, CFP®, and updated by me (Brad Kingsley, CFP®). This excellent article on leveraging a Health Savings Account for retirement can save you a ton of money in taxes. This is definitely worth reading! A triple-tax-free million-dollar retirement plan? This is by far one of my [...]
Carl Richards wrote the book The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way To Be Smart About Your Money. It's a good read and I'd recommend it. I LOVE the idea of a one-page plan. It forces you to simplify and be concise. It also requires a certain amount of flexibility because, obviously, not every situation [...]
Planning for retirement is important. Fortunately, 60% of working Americans are saving something toward their retirement. Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Do you know what the top concern is once people reach retirement? It's the fear of outliving their income. Yes, they worry about running out of money. That's [...]
Here it is: Early retirement charted out for you. At some point in time, everyone has probably thought it would be nice to retire early and wondered what it would take. Well, I'm going to show you a simple chart that tells you exactly what it requires. Retirement isn't dependent on how much you make [...]
I read a post recently where someone said that even if you max out your 401k plan over your earning years, you wouldn't have enough money to retire. Is that true? I hadn't ever really considered the question before so I wasn't sure. Rather than just take this person's word for it, I did [...]
A million dollars. Sounds like a lot of money doesn't it? You're right - it is! But it's also a quite reasonable goal for many Americans. Let's see how much money you would need to save each month, week, or day - to retire a millionaire. A million dollars First, let me say that a [...]
There is something called the 4% rule that is very helpful with retirement planning and goal estimation. What is the 4% rule? Should you use it in your financial planning? Let's explore the topic a bit further... What is the 4% rule? The 4% rule was developed in the mid-1990s. A study was done looking [...]
Do you know how much money you need for retirement? Most people don't. Without at least an estimated goal you have no idea if you are on track or not. You might not be saving enough - or you might be saving too much! Here's how to estimate your retirement needs for your financial planning. [...]
What is tax loss harvesting? Is it worth considering as part of your investing practices? Read on to learn more... Losses are sometimes part of investing Some investments lose money. That's why everyone should have a diversified portfolio. By definition, diversification means your investments are spread out across multiple stocks, bonds, real estate, or other [...]