Tag: retirement income

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Always defer taxes in retirement?

Tax-deferred accounts avoid annual tax payments during our working years. Workers who defer taxes in accounts like 401(k)s accelerate growth for many years. However, distributions of retirement income from these accounts usually contribute to a retiree’s ordinary income for that year. So, these distributions are taxed much like wages are during our working years. This recent article in the WSJ highlighted that there are reasons to think more strategically about continuing to defer taxes in retirement.

Defer taxes in retirement?
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

“To be sure, the idea of accelerating income violates the first rule of traditional tax planning, which is to defer taxes whenever possible. But there are reasons to rethink this rule now. “

Laura Saunders, 31 January 2025, “When Paying More Tax, Not Less, Is the Smart Play“

We couldn’t agree more! In fact, we made this and other salient points in our award-winning article entitled “Seeking tax alpha in retirement income“. We supported our observations and conclusions through rigorous mathematical modeling of tax laws most relevant to retirees in the U.S.A.

Seeking tax alpha in retirement income

In this post, we highlight this recent news article. We then provide a suggestion on how an individual or financial advisor may improve their retirement income strategy.

Time horizon

A key flaw in deferring taxes is that many retirees need to look at a longer time horizon. Currently, a 65-year-old male retiree can expect to live another 18 years. Similarly, a 65-year-old female retiree can expect to live to 21 years more. So, unless a retiree has some known terminal illness or other significant health issue reducing their life expectancy, tax-efficiency in retirement can take advantage of this time horizon.

Termed “stealth” taxes, tax-deferred account typically force retirees to begin taking requried minimum distributions (RMDs) at age 73. These distributions only grow, as a percent of a tax-deferreed account value, due to a shorter life expectancy for each year a retiree ages. Along with other factors, like the widows-penalty when a surviving spouse files their tax returns as a single, net-investment income tax, and income-related premiums for Medicare, these RMDs can be tax inefficient.

When you may not want to defer taxes

Unfortunatley, there is no single decision that a retiree can make to maximize their tax efficiency. But, for retirees with significant assets in tax-deferred accounts, the algorithms in our article “Seeking Tax Alpha in Retirement Income” are available online. We encourage you or your financial advisor to try our free online calculator. With it, you can see the amount of tax efficiency potentially available by accelerating tax-deferred distributions and avoiding RMDs.

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in tax-efficient investing with ETFs
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Roth Conversions that Payoff

Roth conversions for retirees and individuals nearing retirement often confuse financial planners and individual investors. In this post, we discuss the pros and cons of converting a portion of tax-deferred assets to a Roth IRA. The insights I share here reflect early results from a recently conducted research initiative.

Why Convert to a Roth IRA?

Converting funds from a tax-deferred account, like a 401(k), 403(b), traditional IRA, or rollover IRA, may seem counterintuitive to many. Indeed, in my recent award-winning article on Seeking Tax Alpha in Retirement Income, which will soon appear in the Financial Services Review, I highlighted how many tax professionals, like CPAs, generally advocate deferring taxes for as long as possible. Converting funds to a Roth IRA imposes a current tax liability, contradicting this conventional wisdom. However, the communicative law of multiplication suggests otherwise for funds converted at the end of the year. A positive payoff occurs when the current marginal tax rate is less than the future marginal tax rate. Stated more simply:

Always seek the lowest marginal tax rate, either now, or in the future, when converting, or distributing tax-deferred assets.

Adapted from DiLellio and Ostrov (2017) “Optimal Strategies for Traditional versus Roth IRA/Roth 401(k) Consumption During Retirement”, Decision Sciences Journal. 48(2).

Tax Alpha from Converting to a Roth IRA

In my recent unpublished research results with Ed McQuerrie, we propose to show the benefit of Roth conversions in terms of tax alpha or the additional annual return realized by converting. If a distribution from the Roth IRA then pays the taxes, the figure below shows the tax alpha over a number of holding periods, from five to 40 years. We see that when future tax rates are higher, there is a significant benefit, but that tax alpha diminishes over time. Similarly, if an investor converts their tax-deferred assets and the future tax rates are lower, the negative payoff can be significant initially, but the loss will also diminish over time.

Tax Alpha from Roth Conversions if future marginal tax rates are 50%, 95%, or 150% of the current marginal tax rates
Tax alpha if future marginal tax rates are 50%, 95%, or 150% of the current marginal tax rates

The Challenge to Roth Conversions

The U.S. Congress sets tax rates. So, we can’t know future tax rates with certainty. But, a retiree is able to control the amount of ordinary income generated by distributions from tax-deferred accounts. Also, the results above assume the investor is at least 59 1/2 so they can avoid the tax penalty on early withdrawals to fund the tax liability. In our next post, we will highlight some beneficial results if an investor pays conversion taxes with a non-retirement account.

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in tax-efficient investing with ETFs
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Seeking Tax Alpha in Retirement Income

On October 24th, 2022, the CFP (Certified Financial Planners) board’s Academic Research Colloquium recognized my most recent research (with A. Simon) entitled “Seeking Tax Alpha in Retirement Income” with a best paper award. I wish to thank Charles Schwab for sponsoring my award. In this post, I will highlight some of the key findings from this paper.

Key Findings

In this paper, we found that the Common Rule provides an important heuristic to guide better decisions in generating tax-efficient retirement income. Using it, we divided retirees into the following three categories that appear in the figure below. Then, we define tax alpha as the additional annual investment return necessary for the Common Rule withdrawal strategy to meet the same portfolio longevity or bequest as an optimal strategy.

Using the Common Rule as a heuristic when seeking tax alpha. Source: DiLellio and Simon (2022)
Using the Common Rule as a heuristic when seeking tax efficiency. Source: DiLellio and Simon (2022)

This chart shows that three regions must be considered with separate algorithms to maximize tax efficiency in retirement income. The opportunity for tax efficiency is highest in the middle region, where the retiree and their spouse have sufficient, but not excessive, assets to support their retirement income needs.

Sensitivity Analysis

We also conducted a sensitivity analysis to determine how varying our input values, like asset allocation, may affect outcomes for tax alpha. The chart below shows how the baseline of 0.54% per year changes when inputs are varied.

Sensitivity of Tax Alpha to input variations. Source: DiLellio and Simon (2022)
Sensitivity of tax alpha to input variations. Source: DiLellio and Simon (2022)

The chart above confirms that higher future taxes and bond interest taxed as ordinary income leads to higher alphas. Also, and somewhat surprisingly, the rate of return of stocks and bonds didn’t change outcomes very much.

What’s your tax alpha?

We invite you to see your tax alpha using our online calculator. Just change the inputs to match your specific situation, hit the “Find Optimal Withdrawals” button at the bottom of the page, then scroll down when the calculations are complete to see your personalized result.

Click here to see your tax alpha

We hope you find this research helpful in planning for your future retirement income needs!

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in tax-efficient investing with ETFs
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Mitigating the effect of the Widow’s Penalty

During our webinar earlier this year, we highlighted one of the retirement income challenges called “The Widow’s Penalty”. This situation occurs when the surviving spouse is filing taxes as a single, instead of married filing jointly. In this post, we elaborate on the effect of this penalty on a fictitious couple we call John and Jane and show that tax-efficient retirement income can help mitigate its effect.

Case Study for John and Jane and the widow’s penalty

The bulleted list here summarizes John and Jane’s situation at the start of their retirement.

  • John and Jane retired this year in a community property state.   
  • John is 65 and has a life expectancy of 80.  Jane is 62 and has a life expectancy of 82. 
  • Their after-tax retirement income needs are $150,000 per year, reduced to $140,000 per year for the surviving spouse. (Today’s dollars)
  • Both have RMDs starting at age 72. 
  • Their heir’s marginal income tax rate is 25%.
  • John and Jane both have retirement assets tax-deferred ($800k, $100k) and tax-exempt accounts ($400k, $50k). John owns a taxable account valued at $1M with a cost basis of $300k in stocks and $272k in bonds.
  • Their asset allocation is 60%/40% stock/bonds in all accounts, and they increase bond allocation by 1% each year. 
  • John and Jane have annual pension income starting at age 65 of $18,500 each, and social security income starting at age 67 of $11,000 each.

As we showed in our previous post, if Jane is the surviving spouse, she can realize an additional 0.55% of investment return by drawing down from a mix of taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-exempt accounts. But, can this benefit still be realized if Jane lives longer?

Tax efficiency for a longer-living surviving spouse

In the example above, Jane lived for five years as a widow so needed to file her taxes as a single. Re-running our retirement income calculator and increasing Jane’s retirement horizon yields the following results.

Widow's penalty and opportunity for tax-efficient retirement income
Widow’s penalty and opportunity for tax-efficient retirement income

So, these results show that Jane can still increase the inheritance for her heirs if she lives up to 15 years as a widow. If she lives 25 years as a widow, she will exhaust all of her savings but will be able to increase her portfolio longevity by 3.5 years. Either of these situations is possible by not following the common rule for retirement account drawdowns but instead using optimal account drawdown decisions.

Want to see how the widow’s penalty may affect your retirement plan? We invite you to try out our calculator to see how your heir’s inheritance or your portfolio longevity may improve!

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in tax-efficient investing with ETFs
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Introducing Our New Pre-Retirement Savings Forecast Tool

We just finished the development of a new savings forecast tool to help you in planning your retirement future. In today’s post, we will highlight this tool.

Our pre-retirement savings forecast tool can help you predict your future savings.
Our pre-retirement savings forecast tool can help you predict your future savings.

Forecast your savings

To determine your savings forecast, our online tool asks for a number of different inputs across the following categories.

  • Information about yourself, such as your current age, retirement and taxable account values, and future planned contributions.
  • Information about your spouse or domestic partner, such as their age, their retirement account values, and their future planned contributions.
  • Your savings horizon, in years, your current and future asset allocation, and your marginal tax rates.
  • Future rates for stock returns, bond returns, inflation and dividends.
  • Simulation inputs, such as number of trials, asset volatility, correlation and type of simulation used.

Like in our retirement income calculator, simple menus walk you through each of these inputs, along with tips on what these inputs mean. When you are done, simply press the “Forecast Retirement Savings” button to see an automated report. The tool adjusts all values down for inflation so are in today’s “buying power”. Also, for those considering drawing down a taxable account assets prior to retirement, negative contributions may also be used to see what taxable account balance (if any) remains at the end of this planning horizon. Advocates of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) may find this feature especially useful.

Forecast results

Our savings forecast tool provides two perspectives on retirement savings. The first perspective is what to expect or a so-called “best guess” based on a deterministic forecast. An example of a 10 year forecasted account values appears in the picture below for a current 52-year old and their 50 year-old spouse. You can then enter these account values and cost basis information into our retirement income calculator.

Our pre-retirement savings forecast tool can help you predict your future expected savings.
Expected values for account values after saving for 10 years, Retiree and Spouse

The second perspective is a probability distribution of future outcomes due to market uncertainty. Using 1,000 trials in a bootstrapped simulation with data from 1989-2021 for stocks, bonds and inflation, you can determine median (or 50th percentile) account values at the end of the planning horizon, along with visualizing the account values each year. Our software also supports geometric Brownian motion simulation, which can allow you to manually modify market returns and volatility, rather than sampling from historical values.

Our pre-retirement savings forecast tool can help you predict your median future savings.
Account values after saving for 10 years using bootstrapped simulation, Retiree and Spouse

The final images produced by this tool are a distribution of outcomes for account values at the end of the savings horizon. To provide savers with specific results, we also include a table with pessimistic, median and optimistic account values.

Our pre-retirement savings forecast tool can help you predict your future savings distribution.
Distribution of account values after saving for 10 years, Retiree

We hope you find this new tool helpful in planning for your retirement. Please drop us a message to let us know what you think!

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in tax-efficient investing with ETFs
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Survey results from recent webinar

We wish to thank all the investors and financial planners who recently attended our webinar. The webinar was hosted by the Financial Experts Network on March 1, 2022, and entitled Seeking Tax Alpha in Retirement Income. If you missed the webinar, you are welcome to watch it again with the link below.

Financial Experts Webinar hosted me as a presenter on March 1, 2022

This webinar contained several useful additional resources. For example, you can download the presentation and my latest whitepaper. Also, you can access the detailed reports presented for Case Study #1  and Case Study #2.

Survey Results

We also wish to thank the many respondents to our survey at the end of the webinar. We had quite a mix of individual investors and financial services professionals respond, as shown in the pie chart below.

Survey results for the type of user of our retirement income software

Prioritization of new features and capabilities

In the survey, we also asked about prioritizing new features and capabilities in our optimal retirement income calculator. So, here are the results, in rank order. Then, for any that were “close”, we assigned them with the same rank, to properly account for sampling error.

RankFeature
1Roth Conversions
2IRMAA (Income-related Medicare Adjustment Amount)
2State Taxes (as applicable)
3 Reverse Mortgage
3NIIT (Net Investment Income Tax)
4Tabular format for later year income, taxes, and account balances.
4Rental Income
4Saving additional profile data for multiple retirees and spouses
5Saving reports to the cloud
5Estate Taxes
The rank order of most preferred new feature to our retirement income calculator

So, based on these survey results, Roth conversions were the clear leader on features sought-after. So, this will be the next feature we shall focus on in our retirement income calculator. To this end, we will be collaborating with Dr. Edward McQuarrie, Emeritus Professor at Santa Clara University. His latest research in this area is entitled “When and for Whom are Roth Conversions Most Beneficial? A New Set of Guidelines, Cautions and Caveats” and is available on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). You can also read his work quoted at MarketWatch.

While the benefits from a Roth conversion are often small and slow to arrive, a Roth conversion will almost always pay off if given enough time, i.e., for life spans that extend past 90 and so long as annual distributions from converted amounts are not taken.

Dr. Edward McQuarrie, Emeritus Professor at Santa Clara Univeristy

New calculators coming soon!

We are also pleased to announce that there will soon be another free calculator to aid in retirement planning. The next calculator will focus on savings values prior to starting retirement and includes the use of a bootstrapping simulation, as mentioned in our post earlier in 2022. Stay tuned for the release of the new tool shortly!

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in tax-efficient investing with ETFs
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Tax-efficient retirement and upcoming webinar

Greetings ETFMathGuy subscribers! In this post, I will introduce you to our updated interactive calculator for tax-efficient retirement planning.

tax-efficient investing with the Optimal Retirement Income Calculator by ETFMathGuy
Optimal Retirement Income Calculator by ETFMathGuy
Note:  This post has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal or accounting advice. You should consult your own tax, legal and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction.

Tax-Efficient Retirement

We moved the retirement income calculator location on our site. Updated for 2022 tax law, it provides insights into the following questions:

  • How long will my portfolio support my annual after-tax retirement income needed to support discretionary and non-discretionary expenses?
  • How much will my heir or favorite charitable organization receive?
  • What will my future tax liabilities look like?

We still assume a mixture of tax-efficient investing in stock and bond ETFs, like IVV and AGG. Specifically, we assumed ETF stock investments generate qualified dividends and ETF bond investments generate dividends taxed as ordinary income. Of course, these assumption are only relevant to taxable account assets held by a retiree. Retiree’s may incur income taxes when they withdraw assets from tax-deferred accounts, like 401(k)s and rollover IRAs funded with pre-tax dollars. Tax-exempt accounts (like Roth IRAs) are generally not subject to any tax if withdrawn after age 59 1/2. The image below summarizes how we modeled different retirement income sources and how they contribute to after-tax income.

Modeling Retirement Taxes in Our Retirement Income Calculator

What’s new?

We now offer the ability to expedite calculations by storing profile data, such as month and day of birth to determine your first Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) age, and state of residence for community property tax calculations. You can also find a “subscribe” button below your profile data. So, if after running the retirement calculator and viewing results from the Common Rule, you must subscribe if you are interested in seeing the details on the Modified Common Rule or Optimal Rule. For example, if you run the retirement income calculator with its default values, you will see the following information about your plan. But, only paid subscribers will be able to view future optimal drawdown decisions and other supporting information.

Default Retirement Income Calculator Results and Improvements Based on a Optimal Rule

Please note: You will need to register with us here for free and then confirm your email address with our new system. We have not transferred any previously provided email addresses, instead using them solely for distribution of this periodic commentary. We also plan for many additional upgrades and new calculators this year, as we discussed in our last post, or as you can see on our new home page.

Upcoming Webinar for Individual Investors and Financial Advisors

I will be presenting an in-depth review of this new online software, including details on how it is based on my latest research on tax-efficient investing, on Tuesday, March 1st at 9 am Pacific Time, 12:00 noon Eastern Time. Individual investors can register here, and financial advisors can register here. If you are unable to make the presentation, you are welcome to download my presentation here.

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in tax-efficient investing with ETFs
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Upgrades to our Optimal Retirement Income Calculator

As promised, our free optimal retirement income calculator continues to improve based on your feedback. Thank you to everyone who has provided suggestions by contacting us! In this post, we highlight some of the most recent enhancements to this free online resource.

A Glide Path?

The term “Glide Path” is used to refer to shifting from one asset to another. Previously, our optimal retirement income calculator kept a retiree and their spouse’s asset allocation fixed. For example, our calculator previously maintained a fixed allocation (e.g. 60% stock and 40% bond) each year by drawing down accounts appropriately. Unfortunately, such an assumption is not entirely realistic. Instead, many retirees may wish to slowly reduce their “riskiness” in stocks and increase their “safety” of bonds during retirement.

A typical retirement glide path reduces portfolio risk each year. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
A typical retirement glide path reduces portfolio risk each year. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

One percent is a typical glide path, meaning that a retiree who is 60 years old starting with an asset allocation of 60/40 (stocks/bonds) will shift their asset allocation to 59/41 at 61 years old, 58/42 at 62 years old, and so forth.

Our optimal retirement income calculator now includes a glide path to transition from stocks to bonds during retirement.
Our optimal retirement income calculator now includes a glide path to transition from stocks to bonds during retirement.

Other updates to our optimal retirement income calculator

We also updated a number of the default values used to better reflect “typical” retiree demographics, as well as expected macroeconomics and capital market conditions. The list below summarizes these default changes.

  1. Retiree and spouse default ages changed to 65 and 62. This difference of three years is consistent with the average difference in retiree and spousal ages.
  2. The long-term rate of return of stocks and bonds set to 7.2% and 4%, based on the lifetime annualized returns for our stock and bond ETFs IVV and AGG.
  3. We set the retiree’s fraction of cost basis for stocks/bonds assuming a 10-year gain at their long-term rates. So, the cost basis for stocks stayed at 50%. But, the cost basis for bonds increased to 68%, since over 10 years, bond capital gains and reinvestment of dividends would yield a higher cost basis.
  4. Inflation rate set to 2.1%, based on an AR(1) stochastic process model and annual CPI (consumer price index) data from 1992-2020.

We hope you find these updates helpful as you plan for your financial future! Please stay tuned as there are still several suggestions we are still working on that will appear in the coming months.

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
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Step-up in cost basis on inherited ETFs may soon change

The new proposal called the “American Families Plan” could end the step-up in cost basis for inherited assets. But, what does this mean for ETF investors? In this post, we discuss some of the key details of this proposed plan. This post is also a reminder to our premium subscribers that the May portfolios are now available.

How have inherited ETFs been taxed up to now?

ETFs owned by retirees typically reside in one of three different kinds of accounts. The Secure Act changed the rules for assets in retirement accounts, like IRAs. I published an article about the reduced benefit of the stretch provision in IRAs recently. In summary, non-spouse beneficiaries must now draw down their IRA assets within 10 years. Previously, beneficiaries could limit their withdrawals to Required Minimum Distributions.

However, the American Families Plan proposes new rules on ETFs inherited from a retiree’s taxable account. Currently, an heir enjoys a full step-up in cost basis on inherited ETFs residing in a taxable account, meaning the heir could immediately sell the ETF and not owe any capital gains tax. For example, suppose a retiree purchased $100,000 of SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (ticker: SPY) on April 30, 2001, and reinvested all dividends for the next 20 years. On April 30, 2021, the investment would be worth approximately $484,000, not including any taxes due on the dividends generated by holding this ETF.

Growth of a $100,000 investment in the SPDR S*P 500 Index ETF (ticker SPY). Source: www.etfreplay.com
20 years of growth of a $100,000 investment in the SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (ticker SPY). Source: www.etfreplay.com

Selling appreciated ETFs under this new plan

If the retiree sells this ETF investment prior this his or her death, capital gains would be owed on it up to 20% of the $384,000 gain, or $76,800. However, if the retiree passes away, an heir could sell it immediately and not pay any capital gains taxes. The heir received a step-up in cost basis. The new basis is assigned to the day the retiree passed away. However, under the new plan, this step–up is removed, and replaced by a $1,000,000 exemption. So, in the previous example, the heir would not owe any additional taxes. However, as larger sums of ETFs assets are bequeathed, an heir may owe taxes up to the 39.6% rate. And, there is still the estate tax that may apply if the retiree has more than $11.7 million of assets at death for 2021.

Will this plan pass congress?

No one knows yet what will eventually be passed by congress, so it is likely too early to start making any changes to a retiree’s estate. Time will tell how this may or may not impact your ETF assets passed to your heirs.

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
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Future tax uncertainty

The economic stimulus signed this past week by President Biden has many investors wondering if taxes may change in the future. So here, we discuss the possibility of future tax uncertainty. We also show you how to assess this uncertainty in your retirement income plan using an upgrade to our optimal retirement calculator.

$1.9T of economic stimulus

On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed the $1.9T stimulus package. There are many elements to this aid package, including how it will be paid. However, the level of debt held by the U.S. government continues to grow relative to total economic output, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). One simple solution to reducing this debt burden is to increase individual and/or corporate taxes. And, in 2026, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expires. So, what plans should an individual investor be making today if tax rates change significantly in the coming years?

Our optimal retirement income calculator now models tax uncertainty

Since we don’t know what the U.S. Congress will decide in 2026, nor what a future president may sign into law, future tax uncertainty is important for retirement planning. To this end, we recently upgraded our optimal retirement calculator to include this future uncertainty.

Now, under section “Other tax-related information“, you will see two inputs to model this uncertainty. First, there is new input for a percent increase or decrease of future income and capital gains tax rates after the TCJA expires. The 2nd entry is the year this higher or lower rate will occur. The default input values assume that the TCJA will be extended throughout your retirement horizon.

Future tax uncertainty inputs for optimal retirement income planning. Source: app.etfmathguy.com
Future tax uncertainty inputs for optimal retirement income planning. Source: app.etfmathguy.com

A simple example of rising tax rates on a retirement income plan

So, what happens if tax rates increase by 20% in 2026? A retiree using the Common Rule strategy can expect their bequest to shrink by about $92,000, from $1.227M to $1.135M. However, the Optimal Rule only expects to shrink the inheritance by about $36,000, from $1.638M to 1.602M.

What can we conclude from this? First, and most obviously, higher tax rates will reduce an heir’s inheritance. But, more importantly, optimal drawdown strategies become even more important when tax rates rise, since there is more of an opportunity for tax efficiencies.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Mr. Phil DeMuth at Conservative Wealth Management LLC for suggesting upgrading our calculator to include future tax uncertainty. Additionally, we wish to thank Mr. Noah Beecher at Cipolla Financial & Insurance Services for noting a discrepancy in our calculator’s pension income, which has now been corrected. For the many others who have sent us suggestions on other improvements to our online calculator, please stand by. More enhancements will be appearing in the coming months. Thank you for your suggestions and your patience!

ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.
ETFMathGuy is a subscription-based education service for investors interested in using commission-free ETFs in efficient portfolios.