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- [00:00]
Cody Garrett
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Joel
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Joel
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- [02:12]
Joel
Welcome to how to Money. I'm Joel and today we're talking about cutting taxes and retiring sooner with Cody Garrett. Okay, so Benjamin Franklin knew how to deliver a line, one of the best ones ever. He said, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes. But the other certain thing about taxes is that we all have the ability to change our tax rates by the actions we Take. So my guest today, Cody Garrett, he has thoroughly internalized that reality. He is an advice only CFP at Measure Twice Financial who specializes in helping folks make a comprehensive financial plan. And that includes the role taxes play in your ability to meet your goals. So his new book helps folks plan intentionally around a giant expense we all face. The name of that book is Tax Planning to and Through Early Retirement. So, Cody, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
- [03:21]
Cody Garrett
Thank you so much, Joel. It's always an honor.
- [03:23]
Joel
Yeah. Glad to have you here. First question I gotta ask you, what do you like to splurge on? I like craft beer. Matt, my sometimes co host, most of the time co host Matt, loves craft beer, too. We spend wildly sometimes on craft beer. What does that splurge for you?
- [03:36]
Cody Garrett
Oh, gosh. If someone gave me, you know, somebody gave me money that I had to spend, I'm not allowed to save, invest, or give it away, I would say it would be. I'm really focused right now on, like, physical and mental health. I know it's a. It's definitely a trend right now, but something I'm really considering is having a mentor in every part of my life. So that's my physical health, mental health, spiritual practice, and also, you know, relationships. So, you know, right now I go to a therapist every week. I'm really big into, like, breaking down the stigma around mental health. So I believe, like, you know, everybody can benefit from therapy, counseling. So really thinking about my next splurge would be hiring an accountability partner for exercise for the physical health. I've got the mental health part, you know, quote unquote covered. But I'm thinking about really splurging on. I already have the garage gym. I did the thing where I bought all the stuff on Amazon and so forth, so I've got the garage gym. But it's hard. It's hard to keep myself accountable. So I want somebody who kind of gives me a program, but also, like, helps me follow through along the way. So that will be my future splurge, along with my previous splurge of actually buying all the. All the heavy metal stuff in my garage.
- [04:37]
Joel
Well, I love that you're. I think sometimes in the world of personal finance, especially the further along you get into it, the more you nerd out, you can go down the rabbit hole too far and maybe not be willing to part with money to increase your joy and success in other areas of life. So I love that you're willing to splurge on that stuff. Maybe what's been the most impactful dollars that you've spent so far in that endeavor.
- [05:00]
Cody Garrett
In that endeavor. I guess we'll find out because I haven't quite lifted as many weights. I will say this is kind of ironic that the best money we ever spent as a married couple. I've been married for almost 10 years. This year with my wife Marissa, the best money that we, quote, unquote, spent was her being a homemaker, being a stay at home wife. And a lot of people kind of think like, oh, well, you know, it doesn't make sense to, you know, stay at home until you have kids. But I would say that in our family, again, my wife, from the very beginning, she said, hey, like my, like my dream in life is to be a stay at home spouse, like, to take care of our home, to take care of you, take care of future kids if we have them or adopt them. We're actually in the adoption process right now. So ironically, the best money we spent was actually her not making money outside of the home because again, we have home cooked meals all the time. We have, again, I can eat pretty much every meal with my wife if I wanted to. So we eat dinner every day together. We have a very simple life that we. Our annual spending is about $60,000 a year. Again, we save and invest a lot on the path to 5 by 40. But with that said, yeah, we decide not to make more money so that we can spend more time together.
- [06:08]
Joel
I think it's beautiful and I think that's the situation. I think more people are finding themselves in as they realize, well, there's a limit to the joy that more money can bring me. There's other things I want to prioritize in my life, whether that is being at home, whether you have kids or not more often or not working on Fridays, working part time in order to live. Like, I was talking to a friend who is a nurse practitioner and he works two days a week and he still gets benefits and he gets to be at home more. And so it requires more intentionality, more frugal living. But I'm seeing more people make those intentional life choices and I think that's a beautiful thing. Let's talk about your book. Your book is. It's really aimed at early retirees. I'm curious, are you pitching to the fire crowd, the financial independence, retire early. Are you talking to people who are in their mid to late 50s and they see retirement on the cusp? Like, who are you really trying to help with this book?
- [07:02]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, it's really funny when we first started talking about the book. So, Sean Mulaney, cpa. I'm Cody Garrett, you know, cfp. So we kind of combine our financial planning and tax planning expertise. But what's funny is both of us actually serve as financial advisors. You know, I'm not, by the way, like, this is not an advertisement for my firm not accepting new clients, et cetera. But we kind of came into this saying, hey, like, there's the fire community, right? Like, the financial independence community. We're real committed to choose FI and some of those common platforms around fi. We first were thinking, okay, like, the fire community really finally needs a book that doesn't just talk about what we think we should do or like, hey, here's some possible tactics. We really wanted to put it in a book with talking about both accumulation, so on the path to retirement and through early retirement. And what's funny, we first started thinking early retirement is kind of focused on, like, the fire financial independence, retire early community. But what we realized, and our bibliography is like, many, many pages long in terms of the research we did. But we found out there's a study, you know, well respected study that says 70% of Americans report retiring before age 65.
- [08:10]
Joel
That does sound shocking to me. Like, we hear about the retirement crisis. You're saying, like, three quarters of people essentially retire before that full 70 retirement age.
- [08:20]
Cody Garrett
That's right. And I would say, too, that even if you don't plan to retire early, you should probably plan for it. Because, as you know, there's a lot of involuntary retirements happening. There's a lot of again now. And certainly industries have their ups and downs of, like, layoffs and ageism and things. Like, you know, somebody's in their mid-50s and they lose that job they've had for 30 years. Like, what do they do now?
- [08:41]
Joel
Yeah.
- [08:41]
Cody Garrett
So, you know, we encourage, you know, again, you know, you definitely want to live for today and tomorrow. But I would say that early retirement, just like the kind of the work from home type of thing. It's becoming more of a really thoughtful, intentional practice of, hey, by the way, I call it fire financial independence, recreational employment. I don't actually plan to, like, you know, you know, retire, go lay in a hammock for five hours a day. Like, I plan to become financially independent, work optional, so that I can work because I want to, not because I have to. And also, if I'm able to work without needing money, that actually gives me permission to really lean into my value of generosity. So how can I give more to others without expecting Something in return when I'm financially independent, hopefully by 40 or so. Again, not that I have to get there, but if we're five by 40, that means to the rest of my life, the rest of our life, we get to lean into our core values and we don't really, you know, there's, there's just less, you know, fewer boundaries between us and really doing what we think is best with our time, energy and financial resources.
- [09:41]
Joel
I'm curious to know how big the stakes are when we're talking about saving money on taxes because I think, I think most people don't really understand, Cody, how much they pay in taxes. Right. Largely because it's taken out of their paycheck and they're not really paying attention. Self employed people have more of a visceral pulse on because those, you know, quarterly estimated tax payments, they have a better idea of what they're paying in taxes. But I do think a lot of people, they think my tax bill's probably not that high and I get that sweet tax refund in April every year. So the stakes, I mean, they can't be that large. Right?
- [10:15]
Cody Garrett
Well, it's really interesting. I think before you embrace the financial independence community and financial education out there, you might just not know that taxes are paid out. There's this kind of joke about, I think it might have been like a Seinfeld episode, like, who's this FICA person taking all my money that, you know, when you're working as an employee, it's fascinating that you brought that up that when you're working as a W2 employee, like most of your listeners, most likely whenever, you know, those taxes are automatically withheld by their employer, you know, whether you get a bonus, like there might be supplemental income, like a bonus where they're, you know, they're automatically withholding 22% on that, which may or may or may not be the accurate withholding for what you need. But it's fascinating how, when it's automatically taken out. And Joel, I'll ask you, when's the last time you actually received like a pay stub? So like you got a check and then there's a stub attached to it that you ripped off.
- [11:03]
Joel
Oh, I guess it's been four and a half years now, probably.
- [11:06]
Cody Garrett
Right. So it's fascinating.
- [11:07]
Joel
It might even be longer than that. It was probably just digital at that point. You're right. It probably wasn't even a physical thing.
- [11:12]
Cody Garrett
That's right. So at this point, the only way you'll know that you're paying Taxes and how much is by logging into your portal and potentially saying how much am I paying in taxes? You know, how is that labeled on the pay statement on oh, federal, state, fica. What's FICA is Social Security, Medicare, there's a Social Security wage base. And you're like, I have no idea how this works. And then hopefully the goal is for a lot of taxpayers is I hope that I, you know, I file my tax return and hopefully I get a few thousand dollars back and hopefully I can use that money to again probably for the average, the average American is saying like, oh, like that'll help me pay off some consumer debt. Right? Yeah, things like that. So I think the first level of intentionality is like first understanding that you are paying taxes. But then it's funny, there's this binary shift of like no awareness whatsoever about taxes. And then once you become aware, I think the financial media, there's so much fear based marketing around taxes. Again, if you think about it too, you kind of think like, oh, you know, what's the end in mind? Like what is the actual goal of this media? Right. And usually fear is used to sell products and services. So I would say you either don't know anything about taxes and once you start learning about taxes, you're typically learning from somebody who's trying to convince you that you're going to get crushed in taxes. The government's going to take everything. There's no way you can retire with the way tax rates are going to be now in the future. So we're kind of this middle ground of saying, hey, like we definitely want to make you aware and educated about the federal income tax system but we want to back it up with real math. For example, the book includes over 120 step by step calculation examples of exactly how income is taxed on the way in, on the way out, including all those forms of income from, you know, W, the W2, the self employed, the real estate, Social Security, the pensions and really understanding, hey, when we put all that together, there's actually a pretty simple step by step formula of how, you know, understanding how income is or is not taxed. And one thing you've mentioned, you mentioned Benjamin Franklin earlier. I would say, you know, to the financial media out there, that's just all about fear and you know, you're going to get crushed in taxes. Nobody can retire anymore. I would tell them like Benjamin Franklin to go fly a kite.
- [13:14]
Joel
So you mentioned that a lot of people are actually retired by 65, the majority of Americans now and but essentially when you look at the average retirement account balance of people in their 50s and 60s, it's not terribly heartening. I'm guessing some of these people are retiring with less than they'd ideally like. What percentage of folks fall into that camp and is that. Yeah. Do you see that as a meaningful problem for a lot of Americans just not having enough money saved up by the time they are quitting, whether it's through their own volition or from their employer letting them go?
- [13:46]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, I think there's a few elements here. One is you see what we call defined benefit pension plans. A lot of people, you know, decades before most people listening, your parents most likely had a pension, private or public pension. Pensions slowly got, they're still around, right? There's still pensions, teachers, things like that. But you'll notice that, you know, pensions have been slowly going away while they're introduced. What are called defined contribution plans, Those are the 401ks a lot of you might have access to a 403B, 457B. And so it's really on the taxpayer now, right. To really be in control of their own retirement success. Which again, what's hard is they implement these changes but the education like lags behind, sometimes decades behind. So now we're finally getting to a point where there's more education around how 401ks work. But I also say one great thing in the 401k qualified plan space is a lot of 401ks are actually doing auto enrollment. So as soon as you start your job, you're automatically enrolled. And let's say Maybe like a 4 to 5% depends on your employer, but maybe 4 to 5% that your elective contribution as an employee. But secondly, the auto enrollment investment option is now becoming target date retirement funds. Whereas in the past again your employer did not want to give investment advice to the employees.
- [15:02]
Joel
Right.
- [15:02]
Cody Garrett
So they would have you start contributing and it was up to you to choose how to invest. I would say at least for like the last like 5 to 10 years this has been shifting where instead of your automatically automatic enrollment investment being cash, that stable value fund.
- [15:15]
Joel
Yeah.
- [15:15]
Cody Garrett
It's now people are investing in these balanced, you know, maybe a 20 or 30 year old maybe investing in like a 90% stock portfolio. Right. It's going to get, you know, more conservative over time if you stick to that target date. But I would say that the, you know that the workers retiring right now at 65, they're kind of like that mixed bag of maybe having a small pension, but maybe being under saved and invested themselves. So I really think that that also comes into play with the Social Security. Many people who are retiring before 65, if they're in between 60 to 65, they're probably claiming Social Security early, you know, which, which is hurting them from a, you know, future potential increase on Social Security benefits. But, you know, if that's your only form of income, you're definitely going to claim early.
- [15:54]
Joel
I think there was an article in, I want to say, the New York Times recently about how the biggest asset most Americans have is actually Social Security. I think it's the overall amount that they're going to receive in Social Security. And I would love to see more people have more assets in other places and Social Security not be their biggest one. That's a big part of the goal of this show. I'm curious to. A lot of people think about taxes as the enemy. It's like it is this visceral fight to keep as much money of their own as possible. I didn't get that vibe from reading your book. And you say actually in the book at one point that when it comes to retirement planning, the tax code is more likely to be your friend than foe. Can you elaborate on that? And how do you think, what sort of relationship should people have to the taxes they're paying?
- [16:43]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, so I would say a lot of people think that, you know, liking or disliking taxes is a political thing that, like, oh, you, you know, if you don't like taxes, you must be on this side of the political spectrum, etc. But what's funny, working as a financial planner, every conservative, you know, every Republican client I work with assumes I'm a, assumes I'm a Republican, and every Democrat client assumes I'm a Democrat because we lean into tax planning as a way to be, just be smart with, intentional about our, our planning. So with that said about the political spectrum being mixed, it's kind of funny that effectively, over the last 10 years, both parties have made taxes way more favorable, specifically for retirees.
- [17:21]
Joel
Yeah.
- [17:22]
Cody Garrett
And I think, I know Sean Mulaney has the actual data on this, but, you know, over 55% of voters in the last election were over 50 years old. Right. So the voting bloc, like the ones who are really, you know, the, the politicians running right are actually incentivized to if they are going to raise taxes, retirees are probably the last people they're going to, you know, the last cohort that they're going to raise them on.
- [17:43]
Joel
And that rang true right in this last Major bill that was passed because who got one of the best tax breaks in there? It was, it was older Americans.
- [17:50]
Cody Garrett
Yeah. So, I mean, great example. I mean, we have, you know, we could talk about that, you know, all the changes of the, the, the one big beautiful bill or the one big ugly bill, depending on how you feel about it. But I will say, I mean, yeah, the permanent extensions of those lower tax brackets and the higher standard deductions, they actually increase the standard deduction by $750 per taxpayer. What you mentioned the senior deduction specifically for people 65 and up.
- [18:12]
Joel
Yeah.
- [18:13]
Cody Garrett
Like, that's up to $12,000 of ordinary income. That's tax free. That means, by the way, this is kind of fun for a married couple 65 and older this year, you know, with income, let's say their income falls, you know, within 150,000 or less of modified adjusted gross income that, you know, they could be getting with their standard deduction of 31,500, plus their additional standard deduction per taxpayer over 65 of 1600 each, plus the senior deduction of 12,000, which is 6,000 for each taxpayer. Like, you're looking at like almost $50,000 of ordinary income in retirement being completely tax free federally.
- [18:48]
Joel
Wow.
- [18:48]
Cody Garrett
So it's very rare for me to see a retiree, especially an early retiree, who's effective, also called the average tax rate, your tax, your tax liability divided into your total income. It's very rare for me to see that go over 10% federally, which.
- [19:02]
Joel
Okay. And I want to dial in on those specifics in a little bit because that matters, especially when we're thinking about what we take advantage of, the accounts we contribute to now for, for most of our listeners in their higher earning years. Right. They're, they're in these, most of our listeners in their 30s, 40s or early 40s. And they're like, yeah, it feels like the right thing, maybe like to put more in the Roth 401K, but maybe it's not. So I want to get specifics on that in a little bit. But just from a general perspective, the tax code incentivizes certain behaviors and it disincentivizes others. How should those incentives drive our behavior? For instance, like ordinary income versus investment gains, Those are taxed differently. And so how should we think then as investors when realizing that those incentives exist?
- [19:51]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, that's such a great question, Joel. So think about the incentives in and out. So, first of all, you know, the government, the irs, incentivizes us to take advantage of tax deferral so instead of, you know, being taxed on the income today, let's contribute to those traditional 401ks, 403bs, 457b, your Alphabet soup of accounts. Also HSA, Health Savings Accounts, FSAs, if you're on that side of the table with the flexible, flexible spending accounts. But they're incentivizing you to not pay tax while you're working, which is most likely when you're going to pay the most tax. So they're incentivizing deferral of that. And specifically you kind of think, well, why would they incentivize us to pay less taxes? Because guess what, for example, when you retire your traditional IRA, which might have been a rollover from that traditional 401k, we view it as an asset on the balance sheet. But the IRS views that account simply as income that hasn't been taxed yet. So you are incentivized to defer that income, but also incentivized to take that money out when you're actually with the initial plan of when you're going to spend that. So they incentivize you to defer money into retirement accounts so that you'll actually live off that money in retirement.
- [21:00]
Joel
I'm curious. So you're speaking also to people who want to retire early, people who want to reach financial independence. And so when you're talking about the person in their 50s and 60s with the average retirement account balance of $105,000 or whatever it is, you are actually speaking so much of the time to people who might have, and we likely have at least seven figures in some of those accounts that will grow even more in the coming decades. So does that change things? Because at some point that becomes a potential tax taking time bomb that massive. It's a beautiful thing to have, but it could create a tax nightmare down the road.
- [21:34]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, it's funny. So for the person who's behind, like catching up to fi, you know, their incentive actually by deferring, they're actually being able to save more money, right? So when you defer that not only reduces your taxes, but what do you do with that? Tax savings is really important, right? So if I reduce, you know, if I contribute $10,000 to an account and save 22% or like what am I doing with the money I just saved? Am I investing it into maybe increasing my 401k contributions? Am I putting that money into taxable brokerage account or Roth ira? So for the, the lower earner, again, those incentives are actually helping them and Then the higher earnings, the higher earners, and like you said, the ones who are building up these significant, you know, seven figure, you know, traditional retirement accounts. Thankfully, again, the tax laws, including these new changes, are actually giving you incredible years of opportunity. Just quickly, I'll step back that people think traditional 401K versus Roth 401K. Right. Should I pay taxes now or later? But what's hard is even in that thought, a lot of people think that it's Roth now or never. They think if I don't contribute to Roth, I'll never get the advantages of Roth, which is tax free growth. Everybody likes the idea of tax free growth. So when they contribute to a traditional 401k, they're like, I said no to Roth. Like, I must be so silly because all these people are telling me to go Roth and I didn't go Roth.
- [22:53]
Joel
It's like that one time that a hot person asked you out when you were in school and you said no and you're like, I'll never have that chance again. But it's not true. You can go back and ask them if you made the wrong. If you made a mistake, you can go back and ask them.
- [23:03]
Cody Garrett
Absolutely. So, yeah, by the way, that same example happened with me where I met my wife earlier when I was not mature enough to date her and was like, oh man, I didn't date her. And then we actually ended up getting married 10 years later. So again, maybe a fun example.
- [23:15]
Joel
Yeah.
- [23:15]
Cody Garrett
But also, you know, it's really not Roth now or never. It's Roth now, later or never. And for most people I serve, there's an incredible opportunity in early retirement. There's phase one, which is really retiring early, all the way to 65, when you're really caring about the cost of health insurance, maybe through the marketplace, but 65 through 69, we call these the golden years. And these are the years where you don't have to worry about income affecting your cost of health insurance. Right. In terms of there's no marketplace insurance, you're probably on Medicare, but there's actually like multiple years and even sometimes a whole decade of opportunity to take that traditional money. You Deferred maybe at 22, 24, 32, 35, 37%, and then convert it to Roth at those lower effective tax rates at, you know, 5, 10, 15%.
- [24:02]
Joel
So you're basically saying, take the bird in the hand, which is the significant tax savings. Now if you're in your higher income income years and then down the road you can make that decision to turn that money into Roth at a much lower income tax rate.
- [24:15]
Cody Garrett
Exactly. So that's exactly what's incentivized by these tax laws. And second, you mentioned there's also an incentive to invest, you know, ordinary income versus long term capital gains income. Right. So the difference between having income from a job, maybe, you know, net real estate income, net self employment versus in a taxable brokerage account, when you invest in stocks. Right. When you invest in securities, when you. If you own them for longer than one year and sell, the gain is taxed at a lower tax rate than the ordinary income. Right. So there's like kind of the two ways to think about tax calculation, and that's another incentive. So the government wants to incentivize us as savers and investors to invest in companies. You know, they probably definitely want us to invest in US Companies, but overall, just in equity that, you know, we want. They want not just, you know, employees when they earn their income, also to invest in the growth of gdp, not just by working, but like investing in other companies. So they've incentivized us to grow again, to like, you know, we're all in this party together, we're given a tax break specifically so that we can set ourselves up for a future retirement that the government doesn't have to subsidize as much. But also they're incentivizing us to invest in companies so that we all grow. You know, all. You know, all boats rise with the tide.
- [25:25]
Joel
Yeah. Okay, we've got more to get to Cody. A lot of details that we gotta hammer out here. When we're talking about tax planning for early retirees, I'm assuming there's a lot of listeners out there who are curious to get into some of that. And also just maybe it'll pique their interest even saying, I didn't even think about retiring early or how planning properly with taxes could facilitate that for me. We'll get into some of that stuff with Cody right after this.
- [25:56]
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- [26:59]
Joel
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- [27:37]
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- [28:45]
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- [29:08]
Joel
Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Use code how to money@monimal money.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monimal money.com with code how to money all right, we're back. Still talking with Cody Garrett talking about cutting taxes so that you can retire sooner. And Cody, this we talked about just how people have, a lot of people have very little knowledge of what they're paying in taxes. They just have very little relationship. Whereas if we had to proactively make a tax payment, we would probably feel a different way about taxation in general and what we're paying in taxes in particular. We might pay more attention to it. But a lot of people too are thinking about taxes on a year by year basis. Right. And how does that approach limit our ability to minimize our overall tax burden? Because, yeah, if the goal is literally just to pay as, as little in taxes in 2025 as possible, we're going to potentially make a different decision than if we're thinking about the big picture.
- [30:05]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, it's such a great point. So there's a difference between tax preparation and tax planning. So tax preparation is all focused on kind of what happened last year and this year. Tax planning is ultimately about reducing your lifetime tax liability. And by the way, you think lifetime, it might not just be your lifetime, but also maybe extending into your heirs. Right. So we, you know, you might be aware of retirement accounts. If I passed away and my, my kids in the future were to inherit my retirement accounts, they'd probably have 10 years to unwind those. Right. 10 years to take that money out again. The IRS doesn't want these deferred forever and ever.
- [30:39]
Joel
At some point they want their cut.
- [30:40]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, exactly. And again, some people use the fear of like, you know, the IRS has their hand in your pocket, etc. But I would just say that tax planning is, there's kind of two, two parts to this. One is you'll pay tax when you pay less tax. That's a, that's an annual decision of saying, hey, will I pay less tax on this money today or in the future? That can kind of get you kind of rounded in the tax preparation part. But the tax planning is saying, how can I reduce my lifetime tax liability? By using various strategies and tactics, you know, again, in accumulation on the path to retirement and also in distribution drawdown on the path to retirement.
- [31:16]
Joel
So we kind of talked about this just a little bit, but tax rate arbitrage, is that what we're. Is that essentially kind of the term that you're using when we're talking about paying the most tax when it makes sense and avoiding paying tax in those later years where you have more tax planning ability?
- [31:33]
Cody Garrett
Yes, that's absolutely it. So tax rate arbitrage effectively means that I'm going to defer income when it would have been taxed at a higher tax rate than when I'll distribute or convert that money later on. So one example, as let's say a high earner, they're 54 right now. They're going to retire at 55. Go them very early retirement. That's great. Let's say that they're in the 32% tax bracket. When they contribute to their traditional 401k, those contributions are excluded or deducted from income at the 32% federal marginal tax bracket.
- [32:05]
Joel
Substantial savings.
- [32:06]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, absolutely. Like a third of that money. Again, they have all this money now on top of that, the extra tax, the tax savings for making that contribution, that doesn't just disappear. Their net pay increases Right. When they choose traditional versus Roth there. But the arbitrage really comes in that they retire at 54. After that, that big income year at 55. What are their income sources? Let's say their only source of income is taking money. They're saying, hey, I'm going to take money out of taxable accounts first. So I'm going to take, I'm going to live off of my checking savings and taxable brokerage accounts, you know, by maybe I have to sell some stock that's appreciated. But again, it's taxed at those lower tax rates they might have. Let's say they actually distribute. They need $200,000 to live in retirement at 55. Right. They might get 100,000 of that. Right. From just their checking and savings account with no taxes. Then they'll get the other hundred thousand by, you know, $100,000 of income by maybe having realized capital gain of, you know, $25,000. So they've only have income of 25,000 right now. It's actually taxed at zero because there's a long term capital gains tax rate of 0% on income that low. But now the arbitrage comes in, wait a minute, I put that 401k contribution in at 32%, I save 32%. Maybe I can convert, move some of that traditional 401k money over to a Roth IRA, you know, very carefully, step by step. But by converting it and paying taxes on it, I'm going to intentionally choose to, let's say, convert, you know, 100,000, $200,000 of that money over and again, I'm filling up the standard deduction, the 10%, the 12% bracket. Like I might not even pay even 22% on that conversion.
- [33:44]
Joel
Any of those dollars.
- [33:45]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, on any of those dollars.
- [33:47]
Joel
Yeah.
- [33:47]
Cody Garrett
Where I excluded it from income at 32. So in the book we call this, you know, you beat the irs. But yeah, tax rate arbitrage is a big part of that decision on, you know, paying tax. When you pay less tax, it's important.
- [33:58]
Joel
To talk about the intentionality and the specifics of that. Right. Because I think some people think, okay, wait, I hit 65, I'm in the zero. I'm not, I'm not actually making money anymore. Let me make this lump sum Roth conversion with all of my traditional IRA dollars or traditional 401k dollars. But depending on how big that sum is, that could be a big, a big tax bomb. You're giving yourself two if you do it all at once. Whereas making a plan to do it over many consecutive years would be like, how do you think about those Roth conversions, when to make them and how much to make?
- [34:30]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, I think, I think Roth conversions are a very helpful, helpful tactic in retirement especially. But a lot of people hear about Roth conversions and they get really excited about them and they kind of, you know, they get a little too excited. They go, hey, I'm just going to do all of it all at once. And like you said, let's say somebody has a million dollar traditional IRA, age 65, they just retired, they have no other forms of income to make this simple. That's a lot of money. A million dollars. It's a lot of typing on my calculator. So that million dollars, let's say this is a retired couple, you know, married couple, 65. They have the standard deduction this year in 2025 of 31,500. They each get a standard deduction additionally of 1600 each. Right. So their taxable income is 965,300. And it's always dangerous to do calculations on a podcast. I think this will work out. So they're actually going to be into the marginal 37% tax rate, kind of like the last dollars of that conversion. But let's see how much taxes they owe on that. Right. So, you know, I'm going to do my quick calculation here. So on that Roth conversion of a million dollars, federally, they're going to pay $281,000 in taxes. Wow. So talk about ripping the band aid off and paying. They had a 28% effective tax rate, by the way, by doing it all at once. That's not good. Yeah, so they can do better. So let's say, for example, instead of doing a million, they're going to do 250,000. So they're going to do a fourth of it, but over the next four years. So 250,000 per year. So we talked earlier, by the way, that if they did it all at once, it's a 28% effective tax rate on a million dollars. Let's say we did 250,000 instead, but for four years. So 250,000 minus their significant standard deduction, minus their additional standard deduction. Right. So right here I have. Their taxable income is now at 215,300. So now that actually puts them, by the way, in the 24% marginal tax rate. So the highest dollars taxed at the 24%. But now I'm going to do my little handy dandy tax calculation, and they're paying federal income tax of $37,000 on that, that Roth conversion of $250,000.
- [36:38]
Joel
Okay, so multiply that times four. Right?
- [36:40]
Cody Garrett
Right. And their effective rate annually for four years is 14.9%.
- [36:46]
Joel
So basically cut in half.
- [36:47]
Cody Garrett
So, yeah, they basically cut their tax liability in half just by having some patience and intentionality and spreading that out from a 60, 65, 66, 67, 68. Right. Yeah. And what's, what's really powerful about that is they also, by doing those conversions, it didn't change how much they're paying for health care. Right. Again, we can talk about, you know, IRMAA and the Medicare surcharges and how much those might cost them. By the way, it's only going to be up to 3% nuisance tax versus their income. So it's not really going to be changing their lived experience. But you can see right there, just one example, not advice for you, but one example of, hey, just being patient. And thoughtful and intentional with Roth conversions over time. By the way, their RMDs, the required minimum distributions, aren't going to start until their mid-70s, so they might not even do all of it between 65, 60, you know, 69.
- [37:36]
Joel
Because that, that can has been kicked down the road perpetually over in recent legislation. So, yeah, that's starting later and later. Whereas that was hanging over people's heads at an earlier, earlier retirement age that's been pushed back. What would you say to someone? Because we're talking largely about, you know, tax planning for early retirees. And I think for people who are listening right now, they're like, okay, yeah, maybe those traditional accounts make more sense for the time being. I can always Roth later. I don't have to Roth so hard right now because it might be costing me more in tax than I need to pay. But what about someone who's like starting late and they are, let's say they're 45 and that feels. Yeah, but the, I think the average American starts saving for retirement at what, like the age of 40? Basically, that's like when the light clicks on for most people. So it's, it's late, but it's not that late. We've got a lot of go getters who listen, who listen to the show, but they hear this sort of retire early talk and they're like, oh, it must be nice. But I don't know if that's for me. I don't know if I could possibly, possibly, you know, hit that, hit that, retire by 55 now when I've just gotten started. What tips? What would you suggest to people who feel like they're starting late?
- [38:38]
Cody Garrett
So if you're starting late, what we talked about earlier, we call these the compelling three, by the way. So Sean and I in the book the compelling three are making traditional retirement account contributions at work, making Roth IRA contributions at home, maybe even what's called the backdoor Roth ira, then taxable brokerage accounts if you have enough income left after all that.
- [38:57]
Joel
Why, by the way, quick question. Why do you go Roth IRA instead of traditional IRA given kind of your pension to save on tax? Because I feel the same way. I like the Roth, but then I'm like, oh, I'm curious to hear Cody's take on why he's pro Roth ira.
- [39:10]
Cody Garrett
Yeah, it's a great question. So when you're at higher tax rates, higher income levels again, by the way, there are no income thresholds for making traditional 401k contributions to work. So when you're contributing it through a qualified plan, whether you're in the, even if you're in the 37% tax bracket, you can deduct exclude that contribution through work. But Roth IRA contributions directly actually have income thresholds. So most of the people who are maxing out their 401k their income is probably too high to make a direct Roth IRA contribution. But also even a lower threshold to deduct a traditional IRA contribution when you're covered by a workplace plan at work, it's a very low income threshold. So even if you wanted to deduct a traditional IRA contribution, many people, especially late in their careers, cannot do that.
- [39:55]
Joel
Okay, let's talk about tax code changes. We just experienced a really big tax code change. The one big beautiful bill or whatever it's called. There's like fluid stuff happening, right? Like it feels like, how do you plan when the ground is always subtly shifting under your feet?
- [40:12]
Cody Garrett
Well, I'm going to go to kind of cognitive behavioral therapy of, you know, don't believe everything you think I would say that fear, I call anxiety. The fear, the fear of future uncertainty. We actually end the book, by the way. Looking at my table of contents here, we actually have a chapter called Planning for uncertainty, chapter 20. So our take is really make decisions this year based on what's currently known and within our control. So what do we know right now? Our income sources, right, we can control, we can have some control over our income sources, have some control of how much we save, invest, spend, give. But the uncertain parts, the parts that are out of our control. If you think about these columns, like what's within my control, tax planning wise, what's outside of my control, I think a lot of the fear is that uncertainty on the right side of the column, which is there's even uncertainty baked.
- [41:00]
Joel
In, by the way, right? Where some things are literally just going to sunset in a few years. Like, yeah, we're going to try this thing for a few years and then we'll see what the politicians cook up, right. You know, a couple years from now. And so I think that's another kind of like mind boggling thing for a lot of people is it's not just that it's changing and that different political parties have different goals, but it's that even in the literal legislation it's like, yeah, we'll do this through 2029 and then we'll figure something else out, right?
- [41:24]
Cody Garrett
And what's funny about the last 10 years is we realize that nothing's more permanent than a temporary tax cut. For retirees, apparently. Yeah. Yeah. So, and we talk about that word permanently. Right. Permanent means until somebody changes it, which we've seen. Like somebody can and will change things.
- [41:39]
Joel
Right.
- [41:39]
Cody Garrett
But I would say with all that said, you know, that that chapter on planning for uncertainty, it's, yes, realizing what's in and out of our control, but also saying what has happened historically. You know, again, both, you know, either political party, maybe even future political parties you don't know about yet. By the way, there are also a lot of other ways to increase tax without focusing on retirees. I would actually guess that there's going to be more taxes on workers than there will be retirees. Because, by the way, who needs more money? Right. Kind of like, you know, who's more scared about money? A lot of it. By the way, even the retiree with $6 million, you know, in their portfolio is scared to death that they're going to run out of money.
- [42:19]
Joel
Sure.
- [42:20]
Cody Garrett
Is that really the, is that really the cohort of people that we want to increase taxes on? The ones who are already fearful and they're scared about, you know, they're scared of Social Security going away. They're very conservative in their assumptions of, like, Social Security isn't just the gravy on the mashed potatoes. They think it's the main entree and it's somebody's taking away my meal that I've paid for along these years.
- [42:39]
Joel
Yeah. The political viability of going after that group of people, it just doesn't make much sense. It's not a winner given who votes and the impact that it'll have. And the people being super upset in the streets about taking away Social Security benefits. You mentioned Social Security. So I feel like I have to ask you about this, especially given kind of the news about the Social Security trust fund running out. And I know when you look at the polls, people in their 30s and 40s tend to think, yeah, I'll be surprised if I see much of that. Right. And that's another, I think, politically unpopular thing, is to shore up or touch Social Security. But also getting rid of it is politically unpopular. So how do you think about the role, how people who are hoping to retire early, planning to retire early, should think about how Social Security plays into that?
- [43:28]
Cody Garrett
I love this question so much. So most people I talk to who are in their 30s, 40s, you know, at least 10 plus years out from Social Security. So again, 52 or younger, they're thinking, I'm not going to include Social Security in any of my analysis because it probably won't be there by the time I get there. And even avoiding the political part, again, what can we control? Right? We can control some like some actual math. We can, we can actually control the assumptions we put into our calculations. So I actually have a video on this that I could share with you if you want to share things in the show notes. But I actually have a calculation showing, hey, when you look at your Social Security statement, if you look at page one, it'll show you what your anticipated retirement benefits will be at 62, 67, full retirement age and age 70. But those estimates assume you earn what you did last year all the way until the year you claim those benefits.
- [44:19]
Joel
So you might, if you're assuming that, then you might be assuming something is too rot.
- [44:22]
Cody Garrett
Exactly. You're assuming something too rosy. And on the flip side, I also wouldn't say I'm going to assume no Social Security because like you said, if Social Security goes completely away, like you won't really be worried about your stock market investments. We're going to be chasing dogs on the street with sticks at that point. Yeah. So I would say it's really important to use some Social Security calculators, including SSA has their own helpful calculators where you can say I'm going to type in my historical earnings record, but I'm going to assume that this point forward I'm not going to earn any more money. So you're making the assumption that if I retired today and never worked another day in my life, what would my anticipated Social Security retirement benefit be at age 62, 67.
- [45:04]
Joel
So coming up with a more realistic or pessimistic at least sort of.
- [45:08]
Cody Garrett
And what's fun about that, I actually think it's more on the pessimistic side, but it's still much better. Like if, you know me in my mid-30s, if I put that calculation in right now, it's telling me I'm going to receive Most likely about $3,000 a month in today's dollars. So inflation adjusted. So you know, some people, if I, my Social Security statement will tell me that I'm going to get 50,000 a year. And you know, some people say I'm not getting it. So $0 per year. I like this kind of like Goldilocks, just right of saying, yeah, I'm going to assume no more earnings and see what it says. And it says about 36,000 a year, which is I should not be excluding that from my really important long term projections.
- [45:44]
Joel
Probably helpful way to plan. How do you think about when you claim Social Security. So for the early retiree, is this one of those things where you're like, man, punt it till 70 so you get the max drawdown? I know so much of it depends on health, marriage status and when your spouse claims, all that kind of stuff and then what you're going to do with the money, right? So, like, yeah, how do you think about and how do you advise people when they're thinking about tapping Social Security?
- [46:12]
Cody Garrett
So there's a few concepts in terms of Social Security claiming. One is, do you need the money? Right? You talk about the, you know, the late starter, maybe the never starter. Maybe they retire at 67. And they said, hey, should I claim it now or should I wait till 70 and get that 8%, you know, annual increase to that my benefits? If you need the money to maintain your desired lifestyle, like, you know, I would go ahead and claim it. Right? Other than that, there's a few benefits to delaying, you know, I mentioned the 8% annual simple interest increase. But also, you think about tax planning, right? The later you claim Social Security, the more years in early retirement you have with less taxes because Social Security benefits, up to 85% of those will be included in your gross income based on your household income. Again, there's a. There's a fun calculation that of course is in the book. But I'll say that the later you claim, the more benefits you'll receive most likely, especially if you're already sufficient in retirement, your retirement portfolio and other income sources. But you'll also actually pay less tax in the years before you claim those golden years when you're doing those awesome Roth conversions we talked about, like spreading out that Roth conversion over four years. If you had claimed Social Security at that age, guess what? That gives you less room to do those conversions. And those lower, you would have filled up the standard deduction, probably with just Social Security taxation.
- [47:28]
Joel
You might need to either take more years through those Roth conversions because you've got additional income or pushing back on taking Social Security so that you can do it in that truncated timetable.
- [47:37]
Cody Garrett
That's right. So, yeah, again, we have probably like five or six reasons to claim later. And again, we don't benefit individually by you claiming earlier and later, but we see a lot of people. Again, the fear of taxes and the fear of not having Social Security makes people make. Again, it feels rational, but it really is an irrational planning decision to just, you know, say, just jump the gun. I'm getting what I've paid in.
- [47:57]
Joel
What if you don't need the money. But you're like, I think I can do better than that 8% guaranteed return. Like, and I would rather put the onus on me to invest this. Well, what do you think about that?
- [48:09]
Cody Garrett
Sure. Sure. So that's definitely a personal intentional decision that you may or may not make. Thankfully, there are some calculators that show break even analysis of like, if you claim it this, if you claim at this age and you invest that money at this, you know, this annual rate, then this is how long you'd have to live to like outlive that strategy. So thankfully, again, there are some tools that will kind of tell you, you know, quantitatively if that's actually a good decision. Assuming, let's say you're going to outperform the 8% with maybe starting a business. Right. You know, starting or again, I guess the best way to outlive retirement is to start a new business in retirement and be successful with it.
- [48:42]
Joel
That's a good point. Yeah. Okay, we got, I got a few more questions for you, Cody, including what about running out of money and the 4% rule. It feels like it's not really a rule anymore. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on. Yeah. How much you can take out of your retirement accounts each and every year as an early retiree. We'll, we'll talk about that right after this. My, how time flies. 2025. It's going to be gone before we know it. But before it's gone, there's a lot of life to live, right. Including a lot of kid activities, the holiday get togethers and a whole lot more. All this activity though, it can cause us to put off tasks on our to do list. But juggling a million plans shouldn't mean your future doesn't make your to do list. Trust and Will turns estate planning from a when I have time task into a quick, straightforward process, ensuring you're protecting your family's future today. Go to trustandwill.com howtomoney to get 20% off their simple, secure and expert backed estate planning services. That's right.
- [49:42]
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Joel
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- [52:10]
Joel
Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Use code how to money@monimalmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monimalmoney.com with code how to money. All right, we're back. Still talking with Cody Garrett and talking about retiring early. And a big part of what makes that easier to do is keeping more of your money, paying less in taxes, and just being thoughtful, really, about how you go about tax planning. And so, Cody, I'm curious to hear your thought. There is that you mentioned the retiree with $6 million and how they're still worried about running out of money. Even if that worry, even. Even if that retiree lives on so much less than they need, that worry still exists. That remains for a lot of people. Early retirees have many more years to fund oftentimes. So what do you say to people who are worried about running out of money early in retirement? Like, did I save enough? Do I need to keep working in order to amass a bigger. A bigger amount? And then how do you make me give. Help people have some peace of mind when it comes to knowing that they can pull the trigger on work.
- [53:19]
Cody Garrett
Yeah. So I think going to that column of what can we control? I think it's really important for everybody to create, of course, you know, a net worth statement, that balance sheet of what do I owe? You know, what do I, what do I own, minus what do I owe my assets, liabilities. But also, I think that sometimes we skip this idea of saying, when I retire, what will my forms of income be? Again, you're no longer working for an income, and you say, which sources will I receive? Will it be maybe Social Security, by the way, maybe an inheritance? You probably don't want to rely on inheritance. But that is a big part of. It's funny talking with people who say, I finally have enough to retire. I retire, and then a week later, they inherit $3 million from their parents, and they're like, oh, well, I guess I could have retired early had I known this inheritance.
- [54:08]
Joel
I probably should have, like, thought about that ahead of time. Maybe don't count your chickens where they hatch, but at least think through what might be hatching.
- [54:14]
Cody Garrett
So I think there's this, you know, the 4% rule. This has been really big lately, especially Bill Bangin just released a new book that talks about even a higher withdrawal rate, possibly a safe withdrawal rate. I really think that the 4% rule, by the way, that's saying, you know, really multiply, you know, if you want to, again, very generally here, multiply your annual spending by 25. Right. That kind of becomes like what you need, quote, unquote, in your portfolio. I think that's a directional rule of thumb of saying, hey, if I'm getting close to that point. I should probably be doing some deeper analysis. I don't think it means, oh, I'm going to wait till, you know, my, my portfolio can provide 4%, you know, inflation adjusted, you know, following the, the white paper. That was never intended to actually be a retirement distribution strategy. So just keep in mind it's an academic study, not a real way to draw down. Secondly, once you've done that analysis, you'll also realize, wait a minute, if I retire, let's say early at 55, and I start pulling 4% from my portfolio, and then I claim Social Security at 70, right. Fifteen years later, do I adjust that withdrawal from my portfolio? Now that over half of my income, potentially, you know, over half of my spending is coming from Social Security, right. So how do I, how do I look at variable sources of income and expenses over time? And that's where using more, I wouldn't say complex, but, you know, just more thoughtful tools are out there. Like, I don't have any affiliation, but like Bolden, for example, used to be called New Retirement. There's, there's a few others out there, you know, prolona, for people who are more spreadsheet oriented, you can at least make some more directional, like thoughtful, you know, variable projections, including things like Social Security, pensions, future income sources. But once you retire, let's say. So, Joel, what part of the country do you live in?
- [56:02]
Joel
I'm in the Southeast. I'm in Atlanta.
- [56:04]
Cody Garrett
So let's say that you take a flight from Atlanta to Montana, right? My, my Norwegian brother, we're going to Montana from Atlanta. That sounds like a book right there, a TV show going Montana from Atlanta. So let's say we're flying from Atlanta to Montana and we just took off. And then we look at our sensors and it says, hey, if you just took off from Atlanta and you said there's a 5% chance you're going to hit a mountain, how much adjustment do you need to make right now to that, that, you know, your flight plan.
- [56:32]
Joel
I mean, you're in the air, right? I guess I'd have to go talk to the pilot. I'm not the one flying this thing, Cody. So what do I, I don't know. What do I do?
- [56:39]
Cody Garrett
Well, I guess, I guess that means you hire an advisor in retirement, right? So you have your co pilot. But so I say what's funny is, let's say if you made actually Even like a 1% change in your trajectory, you might actually like fly to a completely different state, right? You can see here that small changes over multiple decades make a big difference, not just an accumulation. When you're looking at compound interest and the excitement of money compounding, especially after saving for 10 plus years. But if you have a 30, 40, 50 year retirement, even just a slight adjustment can get you back up to whatever that probability of success is. And I would say you might hear this from other people, that if you, if you're using those advanced softwares and it says you have a 99% chance, you know what they call a probability of success? That means a 99% chance running through these calculations mechanically of not running out of money by the time you die, which you're probably assuming like age 95, you have very conservative assumptions. But here's the issue. If I have a 99% probability of success, quote, unquote, let's invert that sentence, that also means I have a 99% chance of underspending and under giving while.
- [57:45]
Joel
I'm alive, which is another risk that very rarely gets talked about.
- [57:49]
Cody Garrett
Absolutely. So, you know, again, it's one of those things where imagine that once you landed that plane, you have to throw out all the gas. Yeah, right. You don't get what's left in the gas tank. You don't get to use that for flying in the future because guess what, you're dead as a Kyle. Yeah.
- [58:01]
Joel
So you want to plan appropriately.
- [58:02]
Cody Garrett
So again, you want to say, hey, how do we utilize this, you know, my gas, my portfolio in a way that I don't know exactly what I'm going to land or exactly where I'm going to land, but I don't want to run out. I don't want to actually have more gas than I started with when I, when I get there. So again with the, you know, kind of ignoring that analogy extended here that, you know, moving into retirement, just remember that you have a lot of strengths, you have the strength to adjust, be flexible, that if you see the market crash by 30%, most likely you can say, hey, well, I'm still going to go out to eat, but I'm not going to get dessert with the, you know, dessert with the meal or I'm still going to go on that trip, but I'm going to fly, you know, business class instead of first class, or I'm going to take that air, I'm going to go to the Airbnb, but I'm going to be a few blocks away from the beach rather than being right on the beach. So there are just slight adjustments you can make that won't Again, just use the 4% rule of thumb directionally. But, like, as soon as you understand the direction, get out of that rule and start living life with more flexibility and understanding that you can adjust as time moves along.
- [59:06]
Joel
All right, Cody, this has been, man, such an enlightening discussion, and it makes me want to pay even more attention to those specifics as I'm, you know, in my early 40s, trying to think about what I'm going to pay, what and when I'm going to pay my taxes. But, yeah, where can our listeners find more about you and about your new book?
- [59:26]
Cody Garrett
Sure. So if you want to, if you're interested in reading the book, it's 38 chapters. Pretty much everything Sean Mulaney, CPA and I know about tax planning is in that book. 350 pages of pure magic, we think, for our audience. So if you want to go to measure twice money.com book, if you want to learn more about kind of how I do financial planning, again, I'm not accepting clients, but something that I've done that I think is pretty cool is if you go to the Measure Twice Money YouTube channel, you can actually watch real client meetings. So you can watch me serving real financial planning clients, including those examples we talk about with, hey, I'm about to retire with 6 million and I'm scared about running out of money. If you want to hear and see those conversations, real people, real numbers, real conversations, that's all on YouTube for you to watch for free.
- [60:10]
Joel
Very cool. All right, we'll link to it in the show notes. Cody, thanks for joining me today.
- [60:13]
Cody Garrett
Absolutely. Thanks so much, my Norwegian brother.
- [60:16]
Joel
All right. You got to appreciate somebody who can make taxes exciting, interesting, and fun. I feel like Cody did that. And boy, that's so necessary in today's day and age because I think about the, like Ben Stein, Ben Stein's character in Ferris Bueller's Day off, and just how most of the time for the average individual, when someone is talking about taxes, it kind of sounds like that super droney voice or the Charlie Brown mom character. Right. And so we just kind of tune out and stop paying attention. But the stakes are massive when it comes to when we pay taxes, how we decide to pay taxes. And there are all sorts of levers at our disposal, which Cody made incredibly evident in this conversation and even more evident in the book that they are just about to release, of how powerful it can be when we take a little more ownership, when we're a little more thoughtful, when we're a little more proactive. About our tax planning and the specific accounts we choose, when we choose to do Roth conversions, all that kind of stuff. So I think one of the big takeaways I had was when he was basically saying, hey, there's a difference between tax planning and tax preparation. And you might find someone who is willing to file your taxes. Is that what you need? Or do you need somebody who is of this Cody Garrett stream of thought and says, no, no, no, no, it's not just about saving you as much money in this particular year. I want to think more about your taxes from a holistic perspective. And you knowing the information and the questions to ask is going to be half the battle. So I think hopefully this conversation gave you enough information, enough ammo to talk to your tax person, right, about some of these ways of thinking about taxes and potentially even being willing to switch what kind of accounts you're contributing to. Maybe you're like, I was doing the Roth 401k, but I don't know. Cody makes a really good, really compelling case for the traditional 401k and that I can always turn that into Roth dollars down the road. There's all sorts of things I think to reconsider when after listening to this episode, I love too how Cody talks about, talked about the flexibility that you can have in retirement and just how it feels like when we're talking making these projections about withdrawal rates and stuff like that. Often it feels like it's the static thing. Well, I guess I'm going to draw down 4% of my portfolio no matter what. And he was like, I don't know, like, if the stock market's having a tough time, you could reduce your withdrawals for a year. You can change your lifestyle a little bit in order to. And then guess what, when the getting's good, stock market is at record highs, has been crushing and your balance has exceeded what, you know what, what you had assumed it would be, you can draw down more and take that sweet extra vacation that you hadn't planned on. So flexibility, I think, is going to be a key tool in the arsenal of anybody who desires to retire early and also be smart when it comes to their taxes. So again, the name of Cody's book is Tax Planning to and Through Early Retirement. So he wants to help you think about what you're doing now as you're leading up to that. If early retirement is on your mind and what you need to do in those years of being retired. And it's wonky in a good way, I will say. And there is a lot of supporting evidence and a lot of examples. So it is. It's a fascinating read. Even though I'm talking about a book on taxes. It is. It's really well done, but that's going to do it for this episode. You can find links to Cody's YouTube channel and to that book up on our website and@howtomoney.com but until next time, best friend out degree advanced the world's number one antiperspirant provides up to 72 hours of protection against sweat and odor that comes with life. Degree is the wake up workout. Antiperspirant the dashing, darting, carpool, honking, get the kids off to school Antiperspirant the work from home and do the laundry grocery shop on your lunch hour. Never take a break. Antiperspirant.
- [64:36]
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- [64:46]
Frances Frey or Anne Morris
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- [65:45]
Cody Garrett
Hi, I'm Frances Frey. And I'm Anne Morris, and we are the hosts of a new TED podcast called Fixable. We've helped leaders at some of the world's most competitive companies solve all kinds of problems. On our show, we'll pull back the curtain and give you the type of honest, unfiltered advice we usually reserve for top executives. Maybe you have a co worker with boundary issues, or you want to know how to inspire and motivate your team. No problem is too big or too small. Give us a call and we'll help you solve the problems you're stuck on. Find Fixable Wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [66:19]
Frances Frey or Anne Morris
This is an iHeart podcast.