← White Coat Investor Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
This is the White Coat Investor podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.
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B
This is White Coat Investor podcast number 446, Managing Taxes in Retirement with Sean Mulaney. Today's episode is brought to us by SoFi, the folks who help you get your money right. Paying off student debt quickly and getting your finances back on track isn't easy, but that's where SoFi can help. They have exclusive low rates designed to help medical residents refinance student loans that could end up saving you thousands of dollars, helping you get out of student debt sooner. SoFi also offers the ability to lower your payments to just $100 a month while you're still in residency. If you're already out of residency, SoFi's got you covered there too. For more information, go to sofi.com whitecoatinvestor SoFi student loans are originated by SoFi Bank NA member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 all right, those of you watching on YouTube, you see me in uniform today. I am wearing a military uniform that I think this is only the second time I've put on in the last 15 years since I walked out of the Air Force. I had to go to my daughter's Veterans Day event today. They sang a bunch of patriotic songs and recognized the veterans in the audience. You know, and most years I go to that in relatively well to do neighborhood in Utah there are very few other people that stand up. I've lived places like Virginia and Alaska where there are far more military members than where I live now. And often I'm the only one standing or it's me and some 95 year old guy standing across the way and that's it. So she asked me to wear my hat today and I said I can do one better and I put it on the full uniform. Then we had a WCI staff meeting right afterwards. So I left it on and now we're recording a podcast and I've still got it on, so that's why I'm wearing it. It's Veterans Day as we record this. Thank you to those of you who are serving out there. You know, sometimes the sacrifice is not somebody shooting at you, it's having a deployment hanging over your head that could drop at any minute and all the other sacrifices that we make while we're in their service. So thank you to those of you who have served, who are serving and particularly, you know, as docs out there. You know, a lot of you as docs are literally getting paid a quarter as much as you could make in the private practice world while you were serving in the military. It's a real sacrifice. Thank you for being willing to serve on this Veteran's Day. Okay, now I know when you're listening to this is not Veterans Day, but that's when we're recording. Our quote of the day today comes from John Maxwell who said, a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way. I love it. It's a beautiful quote and one we should all strive to do as leaders in our organizations and in our families and, you know, lead by example. I can't believe how closely my kids watch what I do and compare it to what I say. It's pretty amazing. Hey, I want to let you know about something that is going to be winding up here at the end of the year. And if you've been waiting for the right time to add a rental property to your portfolio, this might be the time. Every year around this time, savvy investors watch the builders.
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C
Why?
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B
Because experienced builders want to clear inventory before year end. That means price reductions, better terms and incentives. You don't see the rest of the year. Right now, Southern Impression Homes is offering exactly that. They're making strategic price reductions on new construction, single family homes and duplexes in strong Florida rental markets like Jacksonville, Palm coast and Southwest Florida. These are build to rent properties designed for long term cash flow and many have already been leased to qualified tenants. This isn't a fund. This is direct ownership. It's your home, your deed, your cash flow, your control. You decide when to finance, when to sell and how to run the asset. Don't wait on this if you're interested. All properties need to be closed by year end in order to receive the discounted pricing and financing incentives, including low financing with free property management. To learn more, reach out to the Southern Impressions homes team@whitecoatinvestor.com Sihomes all right, we got a great interview today. We have got Sean Mullaney here. Let me get him on. You're going to enjoy this. Our guest today on the White Coat Investor podcast is Sean Mulaney, cpa. Sean's an advice only financial planner, the president of Mulaney Financial and Tax Inc. And he provides advice only financial planning for a flat fee. He's also a co author with Cody Garrett of the book Tax Planning to and through Early Retirement if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see me holding up the book right now. Sean also writes a blog, fitaxguy.com he's received an award I never received called the Plutus Award. I think I might have been in the running one year for it, but because of the intersection of tax planning and financial independence, he got recognized with one of those. Sean, welcome to the podcast.
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C
Jim, thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.
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B
Yeah, so I actually, I think for the first time just met you this last Bogleheads conference. Right. Have we ever met before that day?
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C
We may have met briefly. I think we met briefly at a previous Bogleheads conference. Other than that. Yeah, for the first time in real. In person.
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B
Yeah. Sean and I were both speaking at the conference and it was a really fun experience to sit through his talk because he divided retirement into stages that I hadn't seen anybody else do before, which I thought was a pretty clever idea, and really kind of divided them into four, five or six stages to think about with regard to your financial issues that you face in retirement, particularly with respect to taxes. And Sean, why don't we start with a nice in depth discussion about these stages. Tell us how you define when one ends and when the next one begins and what the stages are. Why don't we start with that?
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C
Yeah. So for married people, I generally look at five phases of retirement and it's mostly based on the planning considerations of those five phases. So first phase is retirement through the 65th birthday year. So that's phase one. Phase two, I refer to as the golden years. That's generally the 66th through 69th birthday years, so about four years. Phase three is age 70 through the year through the end of the delay of RMDs. So this could be five years for those born in 1960 and later essentially ages 70 through 74. Then we have this onset of RMD. So RMDs to the first death is the fourth phase and then the widowhood is the fifth phase. So that's. We were, we were in RMDs first spouse dies and now we're in the so called widow's tax trap. We could talk about that more. So for married folks, I view it as five phases. If you're single, just collapse phases four and five together. So RMDs begin, that's your fourth phase and that's it. And I think as we talk through the four, those five phases, we'll see that the planning considerations in each are different and really sort of drives the planning in each of those five phases.
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B
Do you think it's worth splitting that first one, you know, into kind of early retirement versus, you know, standard retirement? Because there are a few unique issues. If you're retiring before the age 55 rule or the age 59 and a half rule takes effect, is that worth considering that separately from the years from 59 and a half to 65?
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C
Jim, you make a great point. 59 and a half is a big marker, and it's based on the Internal Revenue Code. There is the 10%. The code calls it an additional tax. Colloquially, we all refer to it as a penalty. There is this big, you know, all right, if you're going to be under 59 and a half and you're going to take from these traditional retirement accounts, you're generally going to be subject to a early withdrawal penalty. The book has an entire chapter on that penalty. What we generally find is there's so many good planning alternatives that get around that penalty that it's not that much of a gateway in terms of being able to retire. So generally speaking, we wouldn't, in the book and sort of our perspective in terms of planning, we wouldn't say, oh, that 59 and a half before and after is this major thing. Yes, it's a consideration, and yes, you could split it between, all right, pre 59 and a half, post 59 and a half. But in today's environment, the planning options are so good, whether it's just spending down the taxable accounts first, whether it's a 72T payment plan, which isn't that bad, it's gotten a lot better over the past four years. So I wouldn't necessarily break it down, but it's a very valid consideration, Jim. And one could reasonably say, okay, before 59 and a half, it's going to be, you know, the plan is A, B And C, after 59 and a half to 65, it becomes D, E and F. That absolutely is a possibility.
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B
And you're right, there are a gazillion loopholes to that 10% penalty for early withdrawal from IRAs, one of which is just leaving it in the 401k until you're 59 and a half. Because once you separate from the employer, if you're 55, no penalty, you know, you can take it out of that IRA, the 72T or the SEPP, you know, substantially equal periodic payment plan. Essentially, early retirement is an exception to the 59 and a half rule. But for lots of docs, lots of our audience, I'm Our audience is probably 75% docs and 25% other high income professionals or, you know, business owners. They've usually got something else. If they're, you know, saved well enough to be able to retire that early. They've got a 457 plan which doesn't have a 59 and a half rule. They've got a taxable account. They've got something they can tap before, you know, age 55 or 59 and a half. So I think you're right. I think it's dramatically overblown for most people that they can mostly ignore it if there's good enough saver to be able to retire by those early ages in your 50s. But it is a consideration for lots of people. And I'm surprised how many people actually delay their retirement until they're eligible to do that. It might be almost as many people as delay it until they feel like they can't retire until there's Social Security that they can take.
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C
Yeah, and I think there was a big change that happened in 2022 on these SEPP, the 72T payments that a lot of folks have missed. It used to be that you had to use a prevailing market interest rate, generally speaking, to do a 72T payment plan and that left you at risk. If your 401k or IRA wasn't big enough, you couldn't generate enough of a 72t payment Tuesday, essentially fund your retirement. IRS came out in early 2022 and said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to say you can always use 5%. And that has a very nifty effect of saying if you're in your 50s, you can generally access at least 6%. And most early retirees are not going to want to access as much as 6%. So that very much paved the way for a lot of early retirees to be able to rely on 72t. And you're right. If you have a governmental 457b excellent alternative rule of 55 in 401k plans can be an excellent alternative. And then my favorite is the taxable accounts. If you've got those big taxable accounts, we could talk about them more. But essentially you're recovering basis that reduces your taxable income and you're probably going to have a lot of that income hit the 0% long term capital gains bracket. So there's so many good paths before 59 and a half. In the book we talk about assets become income very efficiently in the United States.
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B
Amen. To that. Isn't that the truth?
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C
Yeah, that is particularly true for our early retirees in the vast majority of cases.
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B
Yeah, for sure. That's an excellent perspective and something to keep in mind. A lot of people just feel like they gotta build this income producing portfolio and money is so fungible. The other thing you can do, if you got a substantial taxable account, even if you're not in the 0% bracket, if you've been tax loss harvesting along the way, you might have hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax losses that you can use to offset all those gains for a number of years in the early years of retirement. Okay, so let's talk about this period. Basically from whenever you retire until really you become Medicare eligible. I mean, that's the event at 65. What are the considerations there? I mean, we gotta be thinking about subsidies for, you know, the Affordable Care act type plans. We gotta be thinking about Roth conversions. What else do you think about planning wise in that first period?
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C
Well, as a general theme, I like to say let's keep our ordinary income low. That's gonna help with whatever sort of planning we're doing. So for example, we could think about, hey, we may wanna have bond holdings in our retirement. That's a very common investment objective. We, well, where might we want to hold those bonds? Maybe in our traditional retirement accounts, not in our taxable accounts. So that ordinary income, 3, 4 or 5% yield doesn't hit our tax return every year. And that can open us up for some good planning. You mentioned premium tax credit. That's a big one for a lot of folks these days where we're going to be early retired. We don't have employer provided insurance in retirement, by the way. That still exists? That absolutely still exists. But most Americans do not have access to former employer medical insurance in retirement. So the ACA, after maybe 18 months of COBRA, or maybe not even after COBRA becomes the natural alternative. Those have very high rack rates. You look at the premiums, they look scary, but they can become a lot less scary with the premium tax credit. That thing could be worth thousands of dollars every year in the early part of retirement. And the way we generally optimize for that is keeping our income. And that's where taxable accounts are great because we spend 100,000 from our taxable accounts. So we sell 100,000 of ABC Mutual fund. Well, what's our taxable income? It's not 100,000, it's a 100,000 less our basis, which could be 30,000, 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 and so our taxable income to the, you know, the adjusted gross income to the IRS for this premium tax credit looks a lot lower than our living expenses. So that's a big one. Now, we could think about Roth conversions. Now, Roth conversions are a very legitimate tactic in retirement. But are they necessary? For most Americans, they're not going to be necessary. They may be beneficial. And I think too often in personal finance we conflate beneficial or potentially beneficial with necessary. And I do think we need to be a little careful. If we're going to be on a premium tax credit, we're going to be on an ACA plan and we're going to be able to get our income low enough to qualify for a premium tax credit. Or why blow that with a Roth conversion when we have plenty of years after we turn 65 to manage for that? And there are other tactics that might be available. We might want to just do our Roth conversions during the golden years. So I think, you know, in these years, if we're going to be on a premium, an ACA medical insurance plan, I think we're going to want to try to optimize for that premium tax credit. Now, there are going to be some people who can't. And at that point, you might want to reassess the Roth conversion. I think it might make more sense, might be more beneficial. So those are some of the planning considerations during that first part of retirement. And generally speaking, whatever we can do to keep our ordinary income low, especially our uncontrolled ordinary income, that's probably going to be beneficial.
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B
Yeah, we're going to get to Roth conversions in depth today. So let's move on to the next stage. Though you call them the golden years. You've now qualified for Medicare. Maybe you haven't taken Social Security yet. If you're delaying that till 70, there's no RMDs due. You're hopefully still in pretty good health. These are classic, you know, go, go years during retirement. Why do you call them the golden years and how are they golden? Financial.
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C
So the world is our oyster when it comes to tax planning in our golden years. So these are the years you just went off the list. Right. We don't have to manage for a premium tax credit. We're not worried about RMDs. They're not required. And we don't have to take Social Security. And, and oh, by the way, if we delay claiming Social Security, this is very personal. But generally speaking, we get some benefits from that. We get less volatility in our 70s and 80s because we've increased our annual Social Security check in our 70s and 80s. So that's good. We get a longevity benefit and we keep that tax return clean of uncontrolled ordinary income that Social Security, up to 85% of it, can be taxed and can diminish our tax planning opportunities. So in these golden years, I sort of view it two ways. One way is we get to our golden years and we still have a bunch of taxable accounts left to spend. Excellent. Great outcome. So we just live off these taxable accounts. They generate capital gains, long term qualified dividend income. Great. Well, that leaves the high standard deduction plus the new senior deduction as this gateway, this window through which to do Roth conversions. In the book, we call that a tailored taxable Roth conversion where we measure for two things. We keep our taxable income below the 0% long term capital gains rate. 20, 26, that's 98,900 for a married filing joint couple, by the way. So that's a very interesting number. And then we do the Roth conversions up to the level to keep our ordinary income. So that's everything but the cap gains and the qualified dividends below the available deductions. Think about our item or itemizer standard deductions plus the senior deduction. That number could be something like 47,500, even potentially higher for itemizing. So we could do Roth conversions in that window, live off the taxable accounts, and we trip some cap gain income. But we keep that in the 0% bracket, hopefully, and we could do Roth conversions up to the top of those available deductions. Those could go off at 0% federally. So we might be living an affluent Life and get 40,000 of Roth conversions done in a year in those golden years and pay no federal income tax. That is a very possible outcome if we're living off taxable accounts. Well, you say, well, wait a minute. There are going to be some Americans who get to the age 66 and have exhausted the taxable accounts in the first part of the early retirement. Okay, no problem. Just start living off our traditional IRAs. We don't have to worry about that 59 and a half, 10% penalty thing. All right? We're just living off our traditional retirement accounts. Isn't this terrible? That thing's infested with taxes. Well, wait a minute. What about that senior deduction? What about the standard deduction or maybe even itemized deductions? In the book, we do an analysis of a married couple living off 140,000 of traditional IRA distributions, which most financial planners will say is the worst possible outcome ever. And we find their effective rate is incredibly low. We find that almost a third of their distributions that they're living off of go off at a 0% rate. Think about that for a second, right? You can live off six figures of an Iraq. It allegedly infested with taxes and about 30, 31% of it goes off tax free. I refer to that as the quote unquote hidden Roth IRA. So that's a Roth IRA that lives inside a traditional IRA because it's a retirement account distribution that is 0% federal tax. I thought that was a Roth IRA. Well, no, it's not a Roth IRA. It comes from a traditional IRA, but it's a hidden Roth IRA that lurks inside your traditional IRA. So you have these two different paths. Live off taxable accounts. Great. Do some Roth conversions. They may go off tax free or okay, no, we exhausted those taxable accounts, then we enrolled in Medicare, and now we just live off the traditional ira. And we find that that's actually relatively lightly taxed even into six figures, which is very powerful for retirees.
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B
A couple of topics I want to chat a little more about during this phase. The first one is what you say works very well for most retirees. Right. And even most pretty financially successful retirees. It's not necessarily the case for someone who built a $5 million IRA and a $5 million taxable account. Right. When you start getting into those sorts of levels of wealth, it gets a little tough to get down into the 0% bracket, you know, and you're thinking about doing Roth conversions, you're thinking about huge Roth conversions, you know, doing a million dollar Roth conversion, not a $40,000 Roth conversion. How would your advice for this stage for somebody that's a particularly well to do retiree change.
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C
So, yes, if we're talking eight figures, which is a very narrow slice of the pie when we think about the American retiree, but it certainly is out there, then the advice does tend to shift and change a little bit. I still love living off those taxable accounts first for a number of reasons. Heck, creditor protection could be a reason to do that. Although everybody should be thinking about personal liability umbrella insurance. But that's a different conversation. That person might very well want to do more Roth conversions for a couple of reasons. 1,5 million very high traditional Iraq, that could keep growing. And so if that keeps growing, then the widow could be in, you know, could even get to 35%. Although you still got to run the numbers because you got to remember these tax brackets all do index for inflation. And that's a person who by the way, if they want to be relatively conservative with their portfolio allocation and they got to do them, I'm not going to give them investment advice on the White Coat Investor podcast, but they might want to have a 5 million traditional IRA that's almost all bonds or largely bonds, and that would be a way to keep those future RMDs lighter. They also want to think about the kids. People who have $10 million in retirement often tend to have wealthier or higher income kids. And their Roth conversion could make a lot more sense if we're, we're so that's a couple that has met their sufficiency. They've got $10 million. Great. They have a lot more Runway to be thinking about their kids financial futures. I would argue most American, most retired Americans don't have the wealth to be all that concerned about their kids speculative tax liabilities. But your $10 million couple, they absolutely do. And if they want to prioritize, hey, you know what? We're going to do 24 cents on the dollar, maybe even 32 cents on the dollar Roth conversions because the kid is Fortune 500 executive and will pay 35 cents on the dollar, 37 cents on the dollar, fine, go for it. And have some intergenerational tax savings. I'm all for that. So that couple definitely needs to think more about it. I still like that couple spending down the taxable accounts first though, because that tends to be a way of reducing the taxes on those taxable accounts in most cases and deferring as long as possible on the traditional accounts with maybe combining some Roth conversions prior to RMD age.
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B
The other topic I think we ought to hit in this stage is irmaa, right? And the way I think about irmaa, I think about as soon as the ACA credit issue goes away, you got to start dealing with irmaa. You want to talk a little bit about irmaa, whether it's a bigger deal or a smaller deal than the ACA credit and how that fits into the stage.
- [23:58]
C
So I tend to think IRMAA is a smaller deal than the premium tax credit. One, the premium tax credit hits sooner. Two, it hits larger premium tax credit could be thousands of dollars. IRMAA can be thousands of dollars, but it also tends to be thousands of dollars that are less important. So what I mean by that is IRMAA can be a touchdown the IRS scores later in life, but it tends to be a Garbage time. Touchdown. It tends to occur to those who very much can bear it versus, you know, if we lose a $9,000 premium tax credit because of a Roth conversion, well, that's, that can be harmful versus, you know, maybe we have 3,000, 4,000, 6,000 of IRMAA later in life. IRMAA also tends to boil down to about a 1 to 3% surcharge when we actually boil it down. And so it rarely has that much impact on lived exp experience, meaning it tends to be a nuisance tax. It tends to hit the widow a lot more than the married couple. If I'm looking at 20, 25 brackets for IRMAA, IRMAA does not hit until your adjusted gross income is about $212,000. For a lot of very affluent retired married couples, it's going to be a lot. It's going to be hard to hit that $212,000 of taxable income in retirement. Some will. And then, all right, you pay a little. IRMAA, where IRMAA bites a lot more is 106,000. That's a 2025 threshold for a single person. So IRMAA is a lot more likely to bite in our widowhood than it is during our married years. But that said, if we're showing 106,000 or more, we tend to be a pretty financially successful widow. So I think where IRMAA tends to be more relevant is very marginal decisions. So if we're thinking about a Roth conversion and we're just, you know, we're, we should pull out, if we're 63 or older, pull out the IRMAA brackets and you say, oh, you know what, this roth conversion of $10,000 would just pump me into the next IRMAA bracket. IRMAA is not a smooth percentage function. It's a step function from fifth grade math. So you can have a Roth conversion that's a dollar too much and can trip you into a new IRMAA bracket. But I would argue that most retirees should prioritize premium tax credit over irmaa because the one year impact can be a lot more on the premium tax credit. And I also like reducing early retirement expenses because to the, you know, look, I'm not one who spends a lot of time up at night worried about secrets or return risk. But to the extent you think that is a valid planning consideration and certainly has validity, no doubt, I would rather, you know, it gunned my head. I would rather have some IRMAA surcharges later in retirement than lose out on thousands of dollars of premium tax credits earlier in retirement.
- [26:49]
B
Yeah. Or to improve your sequence of returns risk. Okay, maybe we should have explained this at the beginning in case that whole discussion just went over people's heads. IRMAA is income related monthly adjustment amount. Okay. What it is, it's like an extra tax or a surcharge on your Medicare payments. A lot of you may not even realize Medicare isn't free. But particularly if you have a high taxable income in retirement, it's particularly not free. You got to pay this extra surcharge known as irmaa. So some people try to plan their taxable income during retirement so it is lower so they don't pay as much in this IRMAA surcharge for their Medicare. Okay, let's move on to the next phase. The next phase you've defined as 70 until people start taking RMDs. For most people my age or younger, that's 70, 75. So we're talking the first half of your 70s. This might still be go go years if you're a healthy retiree. It might be moving into the slow go years if maybe you're not so healthy. But presumably starts with you taking your Social Security at age 70 until the time you got to first start taking RMDs. Now I find it interesting when I look at the statistics, despite the fact that just about every personal finance expert, guru, whatever out there thinks at least for the high earner, wait until 70 to take your Social Security is a pretty darn good idea. The actual statistics say only about 10% of people wait until 70. Can you give us a little bit of your thoughts on when to take Social Security? Maybe why so few people wait until 70?
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C
So I tend to really like delay, delay, delay. Why? Because it keeps our income tax return clean in our 60s to help with some golden age planning. And I look and I say, well, wait a minute, let's say you had $1 million in a taxable brokerage, you're 67, you're thinking about claiming, because that's my full retirement age. I say, well, wait a minute, you got $1 million. How much are you spending? Right? You have $1 million. You could fund your lifestyle at 67, 68, 69, 70, okay. And you spend that down and by, by delaying, you build up your future annual payments, you know, and that has longevity benefits. It also means we spend down volatile assets in our 60s in our portfolio to build up a relatively non volatile asset, our annual Social Security claiming or benefits, you know, annually from Social Security So I really like this idea of delaying Social Security, especially for the higher earning spouse in a married couple to age 70. Now Jim, you asked a really good question though. Why don't more people delay to age 70? And I think some of it comes back to where Americans stand now. Ubs, right Big bank, they have a global wealth report every year. Look, I'm not back validating this thing, but I think directionally it's probably correct. They claim that median adult wealth in the United States in the year 2024 was just a hair shy of $125,000. That's median. So 50% below, 50% above. So even above what? That's 200,000 or 300,000. So sadly many Americans, for all this stress we hear in the personal finance commentary about irmaa and boy, taxes are going to get you in retirement isn't the real problem when we think about the population sufficiency. And I get that, that is that 125 figure is not age adjusted. So presumably retirees are going to have higher amounts of financial wealth or wealth in general. But still, look, if you need your Social Security, claim it. And by the way, if you really need your Social Security at 62, 63, the odds are you're not going to have much tax, much in the way of tax problems at all. You may not even pay any federal income tax if you're in a situation where you're not working anymore. And financially you need to rely on your Social Security check. So I think though for the affluent it just makes so much sense. If we have these other financial assets, why are we diminishing the annual Social Security check? Now some people will say break even and that, and that has some validity. But if you live longer then break even might have been to wait to 70. And oh, by the way, why are you taking an asset that you don't need that creates this leaky, inefficient ordinary income in our mid to late 60s when we can spend down taxable accounts and really have some good results there. So I'm a big fan. Generally speaking, I'm not here to say this is a silver bullet issue. Reasonable people can differ on this. But the more I look at tax planning and the more I look at lowering volatility in our 70s and 80s, I tend to like delaying Social Security.
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B
All right, what other issues should people be thinking about in their early 70s? I mean obviously QCDs kick in there somewhere, but what else?
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C
Yes, at age 70 and a half, qualified charitable distributions kick in. And if you're charitably inclined, this is the way to go. So find the older spouse, or if it's a single person, just the single person, and start making your charitable contributions from the traditional IRA. Oddly, it's not available from 401s or 457s, other qualified plans. It's available for traditional IRAs at 70 and a half. If you're charitably inclined, make those contributions from your own traditional IRA or your own inherited IRA. If you're the beneficiary at 70 and a half for yourself, you can start doing QCDs from an inherited traditional IRA as well. And that is a way of synthetically marrying the high standard deduction. Right. We live in an era of a very high standard deduction plus the senior deduction, you can marry those two with essentially a synthetic deduction for charitable contributions. Very, very, very powerful planning. So that's one big consideration. The other consideration is Roth conversions. And to my mind, now Roth conversions become more challenging in this phase. Why? Because that Social Security, we can't delay it any further. So that's now filling up our standard deduction 10% bracket, maybe even into the 12% bracket. And so now if we're going to do Roth conversions, they're going to start attracting more tax. Not that we can't do them, but I will say it becomes a lot less desirable. Well, what about, you know, we've been assuming you're living, say on taxable accounts. Well, what if in your mid, you know, your early to mid-70s, you're just living on your traditional IRA? Okay, great. I question why we would be doing Roth conversions then. Because your living expenses at that point are mitigating and reducing those future RMDs. So I'm not so sure you need a second tactic to mitigate future RMDs, which is a lot of what we're trying to get at with these Roth conversions. Look, if you could do a Roth conversion tax free, you don't even have to worry about the RMDs, just do it. If it's federal tax free, which in our golden years many Americans can do. But if we're in our 70s and we can't do a tax free Roth conversion, but we're already living off these traditional IRAs, why are we in such a hurry to add more taxable income? Right. We're already paying tax on Social Security on traditional IRA distributions. And by living off these traditional IRAs in our 70s, we're already reducing, to the extent one thinks RMDs are a problem. Okay? Fine. But you're already getting at that problem by just living your life and paying for NFL Sunday ticket and, you know, upgrading to business class or economy comfort or whatever. And your airfare. Great. You know, you're reducing your, the potential that these RMDs might be harmful from a tax perspective.
- [34:32]
B
Okay, what else in the, in that time period, 70 to 75. Anything else? I mean, obviously, if you're going to give to charity in retirement, the very best way is via qcd. There's no doubt about that. And you're running out of probably, you know, once you start taking Social Security, you're mostly past the Roth conversion years at this point. Are you just trying to, you know, use your money to buy as much happiness as you can?
- [34:56]
C
Yeah. So, yeah, I think we've got the three big tactics covered, Social Security, QCDs, and Roth conversions. But I'll sort of add two additional thoughts here. One is you make a great point around happiness, right. We. I have this little colloquial saying, right? Nobody goes to the tropics for the first time in their 80s. So I'm not saying everybody needs to go to the tropics, but essentially, why are we scrimping and saving to have $10 million at age 85? Guess what? You're probably not going to be able to use most of it. So I think prioritizing a little spending at the first part or the earlier parts of retirement is not necessarily a bad thing. And then the second thing to think about is, yes, we're now at a phase. Unless we're our $15 million couple, our $10 million couple, it's just a little more difficult to be as aggressive from a tax position. Right. We could do these QCDs, we could think about Roth conversions, but they're probably not going to be so great. And the Social Security is now coming in, so we don't have as good of a window to be doing this tax planning. But I'll also say the approach I tend to favor is take our deductions during our high earning years, be very moderate and very conservative and modest with our Roth conversions in the early part of retirement. But then that does leave us open to potentially higher taxes in the later part of retirement. But I would argue that if you're facing higher taxes in the later part of retirement, it almost certainly comes with a great coincident effect, which is very high financial success for those who are only moderately financially successful. They tend to have very low taxes in the later part of retirement. So if we're going to face additional you know, essentially we could think about our lives and shifting tax burden within our lives. It tends to be that the later part of our lives tend to be a good time to have tax burden because either we're only moderately successful or less and then we don't pay that much in tax, or we're very successful and we pay. We have some inefficiencies in our tax perspective, but we also have high financial success, a great outcome, or we're in long term care, and oftentimes 92.5% of our expenses are deductible under the medical deduction rule. So that's a good time to actually use an IRA pay for long term care. And we probably can deduct most of that anyway.
- [37:21]
B
Yeah, good perspective. All right, let's move into the next phase. This one begins when you start taking RMDs. Might be age 73 for some people. For most of us, it's probably going to be 75. If you're not anywhere close to retirement yet until the first spouse dies. Tell us about that time period and what people ought to be thinking about and planning for.
- [37:40]
C
Yep, and I think there's a lot of fear about that time period, but I want to orient the listener a little bit in a little history. So if you were listening to a personal finance podcast way back in early 2017, so eight, nine years ago, you were going to hear RMDs are a bad thing. Well, I think you have to update and reassess your thinking on occasion. And we have to ask ourselves, has the RMD landscape changed at all in the last decade? Okay. Well, I would argue it has changed in three big ways. The first one is the delay in the onset of RMDs. There have been two different tax law changes, Secure act and Secure 2.0. That said, all right, you don't start these RMDs at age 70 and a half. No, no, no. In today's environment, if you're born in 1960 or later, you start them at age 75. That means four or five RMDs were scrapped. And oh, by the way, by definition, they were the four. Four or five RMDs that were the most likely to occur. So that's a big change and it makes RMDs a lot less scary. Second thing that happened that got very little commentary is the IRS changed the table starting in 2022. The RMD table that uses life expectancy to determine how much you're supposed to take out. The life expectancy went up, which had the Effect of, roughly speaking, you know, each RMD got reduced by about 7%, give or take. And, and that's a big change to the RMD rules. And then the third one is the new lower tax rates and the higher standard deduction. The higher standard deduction first came in late 2017, just got permanently extended in 2025. That's a big change because a higher standard deduction is a tax cut on the highest tax rmd. It drags everything down through the brackets. So it's really doing is it's reducing the amount of the RMD subject to the highest bracket. And oh, by the way, all those brackets got cut first temporarily in 2017 and now permanently. So I think there's a lot of misperception and outdated thinking when it comes to just how harmful these RMDs are. Now in this time, there is not as much good planning that can be done other than the QCDs keep doing those because those, by the way, count against the RMD. So if your RMD is $70,000 this year, but you want to give 1,000 bucks a month to your church, well, your taxable RMD. If you do a QCD, the $12,000 goes from the IRA to the church, and then all you have to do is take 58,000 more from your traditional IRA. That's the end of it. So that's very powerful because we just cut out the highest tax part of that RMD. The 12,000 is not taxed. Very good for the charitably inclined. Now some people want to do Roth conversions when they're taking rmbs. I question that because you're already reducing that traditional retirement account. By the way, this year's RMD is a little self correcting because it helps reduce next year's RMD because it's less balanced to be computed into next year's rmd. But Roth conversions, if you want to do a Roth conversion when you're subject to an rmd, you got to be aware of two sort of. There are two rules. They sort of make sense, but there are traps for the unwary. First rule is the first dollar to come out of a retirement account is deemed to be the rmd. Second rule is an RMD cannot be Roth converted. Right. I don't write the rules. It sort of makes sense, by the way, but I don't write the rules. I just talk about the rules. So what that means is if you want to do a Roth conversion and you're subject to an rmd, you got to clear the RMD first. Could Be an actual distribution or distributions, or it could be a QCD or QCDs or any combination thereof. Once the RMD has been fully cleared, then and only then should you do your Roth conversion. If it's not like with the backdoor Roth ira. During the working years, a lot of folks get up on New Year's Day and they're not interested in the Rose Bowl. No, they're interested in going on their brokerage account. Put the 7000, 7500, whatever the new number is for 2026. We don't actually have that yet as of this recording. But they put their, you know, they put their money in the traditional IRA on New Year's Day. Perfectly fine to do that for the backdoor Roth ira, even though you haven't earned a penny yet. Just the way the rules work. But if you're subject to an rmd, don't get up on New Year's Day and do a Roth conversion, because now you've just Roth converted an rmd, you've created a quote, unquote, excess contribution to a Roth IRA, subject to a 6% penalty, unless you do some remedial action. Not the end of the world. But why even open that door? So I think in these years, the taxation tends not to be as bad as people worry about because of the very high standard deduction, the new senior deduction, the better tax brackets, you know, and, you know, you have that QCD tool that's still available that I think can still be very helpful.
- [42:28]
B
All right, it's time to talk about the widow tax trap, which is the primary planning consideration. When we move into this fifth of your phases, when you move into widowhood, the first death of one of the two spouses. Obviously, sometimes it's widowerhood, but more commonly widowhood, because women, women tend to marry younger than men marry and women tend to live longer. You put those two together and it's almost always widowhood, sometimes quite a lengthy period, too. So let's talk about the planning in the widowhood phase.
- [42:57]
C
Yes, and so, Jim, you're absolutely right that taxes tend to go up when we're a widow or widower, because now we're, you know, after the year of death, we're going to be on the single brackets, and our income does not usually go down by half. We lose the lower Social Security check if we're claiming we still have all those retirement accounts. No, if it's a younger widow, then the factor might get a little more generous, but we're still going to have relatively high income and the worst brackets. But what tends to happen is the bite is not as dangerous as the bark might indicate. Meaning we still do okay from a tax perspective. Now, yes, our taxes tend to go up, up and we tend to. What I found is the IRS tends to now score some garbage time touchdowns. I did an analysis recently where I said, well, what if we have an 81 year old widower or widow, sorry, 81 year old widow with 3.68 million in a traditional IRA. Just how bad is it? And I find that that widow at 81 years old has about 10,000 or so of the RMD taxed in the 32% bracket. And you say, boy, that doesn't sound so good. But you got to remember two different things. One is the arc of their tax planning life. Say they got married at 30 and they deduct into 401 s at 24% or more and then they get to retirement, they're married, the RMDs come out at 12% and 22%. They still win that. Some of those RMDs they win 12 cents on the dollar. That's pretty good when you're going against the IRS. And now we get her as an 81 year old widow. And yes, she has about 189,000 I believe of an RMD of which 10,000 is subject to a tax rate above 24%. That's an inefficiency. That's not much of a trap. I know we sometimes use that term, but it's really the widow's tax inefficiency, not a trap. And oh by the way, my widow with a 3.68 million traditional IRA, she has after tax cash flow of by my estimate about $200,000. Okay, so we sort of lost the forest for the trees. Yes, she is paying higher taxes, but she's got 200,000 of after tax cash flow using a traditional 401k. Seemed to really work out for her. She has this tax inefficiency most Americans would gladly sign up for for she's doing great in her retirement. $200,000 of after tax cash flow. Now I will say that widow is going to have irmaa. So in two years. The way that IRMAA works is it's a two year delay. So they say what's my Medicare premiums this year including this IRMAA to determine that they look at your tax return from two years ago because they know that's probably going to be filed at this point. So they've got your AGI from two years ago, they apply it against this, you know, these brackets. And my estimation is that widow in about two years going to pay $6,000 in IRMAA. Well remember she had 200,000 of after tax cash flow. She can easily afford it. Now, you know, in theory she could have done some more Roth conversions, but all right, so she's got these minor tax inefficiencies that those Roth conversions could have helped with. And again, if she's worth $10 million. Different conversation. But if she's more the mass affluent, the widow's tax trap is really a few minor tax inefficiencies where the IRS score some garbage time touchdowns against her, you know, and then now obviously at this point she would only be doing Roth conversions if it's for the next generation, it's not going to be for her. And the QCD remains a powerful planning tool even in her case. In my little analysis with the 3.68 million traditional IRA, I just assume 1000 cash contribution, not a QCD to charity, and that's it. But she could do a lot better with the QCD planning. If she did a thousand a month, she would eliminate that 30, 32% tax inefficiency entirely and all our RMDs would go at 24% or less. Meaning she and her husband, even in the widow's tax wrap, would still be winning. Just shows you how powerful that QCD planning can be later in one's life. But she doesn't even have to do it and she's still doing pretty well.
- [47:14]
B
Yeah, you know, it's interesting out there. You would think RMDs are the devil. If you read, you know, the vast majority of books or articles or blogs out there, there's just this huge fear of RMDs. Apparently it's not a problem for us to have a higher taxable income during our earnings years. That's not a bad thing. We get excited when we get a raise, we get excited when we get a bonus. But heaven forbid you have some huge RMD because you did such an awesome job saving for retirement. Now it's a terrible thing to have all this income. Why is there such a fear of RMDs in particular where no one seems to hate having a high income, you know, prior to retirement?
- [47:56]
C
Well, some of it, Jim, is motivation drives reason. So if I'm an advisor, I by the way, am an advisor. But put me to the side for a second. If I'm an advisor and I'm motivated by what relevance. And so if I'm Putting out a message, hey, you know, these RMDs aren't all that bad. Maybe you want to do some mitigation tactics. Asset location, QCDs, modest Roth conversions, you know, okay, that message doesn't exactly, you know, shout from the heavens and is less likely to grab attention and relevance.
- [48:28]
B
Right.
- [48:28]
C
So there's a lot of motivation around relevance. And if we're saying, hey, you could have this huge rmd, the other thing I find people focus on is the amount of the rmd. And I say that's irrelevant. I don't care if that's a billion dollar RMD or a 20 RMD. I care about the taxes we pay and their impact. Meaning, you know, in my little widow example, she's 81 years old. Yeah. She pays about 45,000 or 46,000 in total federal income tax for the year. Well, okay, that's no big deal. It's not all that relevant to her because her after tax cash flow is still $200,000. And if we even just break it down on a spreadsheet, she's got these minor tax inefficiencies. Not that we're supposed to be winning the spreadsheet. We're really supposed to be planning for lived experience, not a spreadsheet. Different conversation. But yeah, I think there's, there is this issue around, you know, RMDs. It's so bad to be taxed later in retirement because that helps advisors gain relevance. But when we break it down, it tends not to be all that bad. And like I was saying earlier, a lot of advisors are still singing from the 2017 song sheet. Well, have you thought about these changes to the tax rules for RMDs? Those changes keep getting us, you know, get, keep moving us to an environment where RMDs are lighter and lighter and lighter and lighter taxed. And that's part of the reason I'm not all that worried about future tax law changes. You know, that's a whole other conversation. But part of it is they've cut taxes so much that even if they start increasing taxes on RMVs, it's not going to be all that bad because they've cut them so much over the last few years.
- [50:04]
B
It's the Roth lobby. There's a Roth lobby out there.
- [50:07]
C
Yes.
- [50:07]
B
And let me give listeners an example. You live this example. So you know this. We just got back from the Bogleheads conference a few weeks before we recorded this, and Ed Slott came to speak at the Bogleheads conference. He spoke before you. And Ed is a Big fan of Roth contributions, of Roth conversions, and he's a very dynamic, powerful speaker, gives a great talk, had the audience riveted, right. And did not say anything inaccurate whatsoever. But the tone was that Roth is good, tax deferred is bad. You know, that was the tone. That was the takeaway that anybody who wasn't really keen in on all the details of what he said would probably walk away from that talk with is I should do more Roth conversions. And then your talk came a little later in the conference and I thought it was really good to have both talks there because the vibe people took away from your talk was just the opposite. That tax deferred has some pretty awesome benefits too, and that you gotta balance these things out. That Roth isn't always the right answer. So help a listener decide, you know, when is it not better to do a Roth conversion? When is it not better to do a Roth contribution? How should they be thinking about this? How can they take an appropriately balanced approach?
- [51:31]
C
Well, let's start with our accumulation years. I struggle to say we should be doing taxable Roth conversions or Roth 401k contributions at work during our accumulation years, particularly our higher accumulation years. Now maybe we do a sabbatical for a year. We do grad school or med school or something like that. I call that an income disruption year. Absolutely. At that point, pull out a spreadsheet. Think about a Roth conversion. You might be able to do it against like the lifetime learning credit if you're in grad school. Absolutely. Could do a tax free Roth conversion. Could be a really good opportunity. But outside of that, you know, in the book we say pay tax when you pay less tax. And it turns out that when you go to work for a W2 income, you tend to pay more tax because you're trying to generate more taxable income. We sort of lost that in this discussion. You know, we have these inchoate fears of taxes and retirement, but we don't step back and say, well, wait a minute, when am I going to pay more taxes? When I get up. So at 9am I'm somewhere trying to generate taxable income. Or later in life when I get up and I do some gardening and the honey do list and those sorts of things where I'm not trying to generate taxable income. Turns out we tend to pay more taxes when we're working. So why is that such a good time to pay tax, which is essentially a Roth 401 contribution or a taxable Roth conversion? So that's one thing to think about. Two is this issue I brought up about the differences in the tax landscape from 2017 to 2026. And a lot of advisors have not put this all together that, wait a minute, the tax laws have changed. I need to change my approach. So that's another one. And then the third thing is the inchoate fear that the inchoate nature of this. Right. I don't, you know, if I'm trying to say, hey, this is scary in retirement, well, what do I do? I say IRMAA. I say RMDs, I say widow's tax trap. I say tax law changes, but I don't have any numbers. But it's just this sort of inchoate fear that, you know, part of the reason we're all here is because our ancestors had some fear instinct to some degree, right? They didn't just randomly go off cliffs or randomly walk into the lion's den. They had some fear instinct. And sometimes, maybe some of this rhetoric appeals to that which is something we have innately. And we say, oh, well, don't do, you know, don't go near, you know, high traditional IRAs in retirement. But then when we start bringing in the quantitative analysis, we find, wait a minute. You know, these retirees tend to be lightly taxed. It's just the way it is. And, oh, by the way, that's beneficial to a very important group of people, the politicians. The, you know, retirees tend to vote at higher rates, and the politicians just don't have much incentive to tax them very highly. But a lot of commentators, I mean, this is one of the things I've seen commentators for the last decade have been saying, taxes are going up on retirees, taxes are going up on retirees. But yet time after time after time, taxes tend to go down on retirees. We saw that in a big way in 2025 with the one big beautiful bill, right? You like it? You don't like it? Well, up the standard deduction, lowered the marginal tax brackets and the new senior deduction. It was big time for retirees. The retirees were a big winner in the 2025 one big beautiful Bill Act. So, yeah, I just think that it's time to reassess the desirability of large Roth conversions. I'm not saying we can never do Roth conversions or they couldn't have some benefits, but to say that they're needed for most Americans, I think is going a step too far.
- [55:03]
B
Let's change subject a little bit and let's talk about a strategy that is often referred to as buy Borrow and die, where essentially a retiree, particularly a late retiree, rather than realizing a bunch of capital gains and paying taxes on those, instead opts to borrow against their assets, whether that's their home, whether that's an investment property, whether that's their taxable portfolio, whatever that asset might be, and pay interest instead of capital gains taxes, leaving the asset to their heirs to benefit from the step up in basis of death. When is it appropriate to consider this? Is there an interest rate threshold? Is there a health and life expectancy threshold? When might one consider this tactic instead?
- [55:49]
C
Jim, I think we should step back. What is buy, borrow and die? It's essentially a tactic to reduce the taxes on capital gains and other income generated inside taxable accounts. Okay, well, just how bad are the taxes on taxable accounts? In our book, Cody and I have an example of a married couple, 66 years old, they live on sales of mutual funds and fully taxable. And we say they have 85,000 of long term capital gains. We don't give how much they're living on. It might be stuff that went to the moon, so they're only living on 100,000, but it could be stuff that, you know, maybe only had modest growth. So they could be living on, you know, 200,000, you know, who knows? Exactly. Okay, but they're living on six figures and they report 85,000 of long term capital gains, all taxable. Right. Then we add a 40,700 Roth conversion. So their AGI is 140. I believe it's something like $141,700 in retirement with a 40,700 Roth conversion. 85,000 long term capital gains. How much federal income tax did they pay? The answer is zero. So that's illustrative that the taxes on these long term capital gains and even some qualified dividends and little non qualified dividends, a little interest in that example might not be all that impactful. So why am I calling up the bank to borrow against my assets and pay interest expense, by the way, to avoid federal income taxes. That's basically what you're doing. You're saying, I don't want to sell this stuff because it'll trip income taxes. Well, for many affluent retirees, it won't trip federal income taxes. The way our system is structured today, the 0% long term capital gains bracket is so impactful that these strategies, you know, it could even be index universal life. That's another play where we're saying, oh, you invest in a quote unquote tax free account. Well, okay, but your mutual funds might be tax free. The way the 0% long term capital gains bracket works, many even affluent retirees might not face that much taxes. So you asked about a threshold. I would say wealth is a threshold, not interest rates. If they get rid of the 0% long term capital gains bracket, which I don't think they're going to do anytime soon, and other countries have a version of that, by the way, the way, and the US Is not all that remarkable in that regard. You need to be very wealthy to be consider in my opinion. Right. Just my opinion. Right. One guy's opinion, not advice for you, your situation. But my opinion is if you're looking to avoid the taxes on taxable accounts, particularly in early retirement, but even later in retirement, you're going to need to be very, very wealthy. Because you got to remember, anytime you do one of those strategies, you start on the negative. You start with, you know, it's like starting the football season 04 because you're paying them maybe fees and certainly interest. So you're starting with a losing record. Your tax alpha there, your tax savings has to be so good that it's got to overcome those fees and the interest to even make it worth it. Plus your hassle and plus the complexity that that might add to your life. But we live in an environment where retirees often can pay very little in tax. You know, we question the book tax gain harvesting a little bit. It's, you know, if you're sitting on tech company stock and you need to diversify, great, do some tax gain harvesting for it all day. Maybe even if you're incurring 15% long term cap gains on that. Great. You know, we want to get to a better investment perspective, but there's going to be a lot of retirees. Why are you doing tax gain harvesting on diversified holdings when you may never pay tax on that anyway? You may just spend it down, spend the early part of your retirement only in the 0% long term cap gains bracket. And got to remember too, it's 98,920 26. But then you've got to add to that number the standard deduction and maybe the senior deduction as well. So I just, in today's environment, these strategies that say, well, you could be tax free, it's like, well, wait a minute, as a retiree, not as a W2, not as a doc working in, as a hospital, you're going to pay some taxes. Hate to break it to you, but as a retiree, boy, oh boy, you may not be paying all that much in taxes on these, quote unquote taxable accounts.
- [60:07]
B
All right, the book is Tax Planning to and Through Early Retirement. Who should buy this book and who shouldn't buy this book? Sean, who's this written for?
- [60:16]
C
So I like to joke, we wrote a niche book for everyone. So it's anybody who is considering an early retirement, which we define as any time prior to the first of the month you turn age 65, which happens be to. To be the day you enroll Medicare. So it's, it's got a lot of good stuff for accumulators. Where we really focus, though, is on the drawdown, because that's the area that, in our opinion, it's not gotten enough quantitative analysis and sort of, you know, peeling back the onion, giving you real actionable education and tips around what drawdown could look like, should look like, are our favorite approaches. So for anyone who is in a early retirement or even in a conventional retirement thinking about their drawdown strategy, it's for them as well. I will say this if you know, I recently got an email from a member of the public with some praise and some constructive criticism of the book, and I appreciated that. But the correspondent was in their 80s and I was like, boy, you know, that's not really who we wrote this book for. I would say it's for those thinking about accumulation even early. By the way, you could benefit, I think, from the insights we share in the book. So accumulators and those in the beginning to mid part of a retirement, particularly in early retirement, but even in a more conventional retirement scenario as well, and especially those with questions on drawdown, because drawdown, you know, drawdown does not lend itself as easily to the Instagram reel or the TikTok reel or whatever it is. Drawdown requires a little more nuance, a little more discussion. And so having a book that's over 300 pages is a big better forum, I think, for Drawdown than some of the other personal finance content that is out there.
- [61:58]
B
Very nice. All right, well, our time is short, but you've got access to, I don't know, 30, 40,000 white coat investors listening to this podcast. What have we not talked about with regards to tax planning, financial planning, retirement that you think they ought to hear?
- [62:14]
C
That is a great question, Jim. I think fear. So we've talked about fear in a roundabout way, but I worry that too much. And by the way, this is not the White Coat Investor podcast. You are a notable exception to what I am about to say. I worry that in American Personal finance. Too much of our content boils down to five words. You are rich, start worrying. Okay. Fortunately, the White Coat Investor is a notable exception. Right. The White Coat Investor podcast does not boil down to you are rich, start worrying. But I think that's a helpful lens. The next time you hear you read an article about personal finance, ask yourself, does this article boil down to you are rich, start worrying. And if it does, I think you need to question that article and the insights and the conclusions in that article. Just a thought for the folks. I think there's too much fear. I mean, this book definitely addresses that. But beyond even just, you know, drawdown strategies and taxes and retirement, too often personal finance content is fear driven. And I think we need to step back from that.
- [63:23]
B
All right, well, thank you. Sean Mullaney, cpa. Thank you for speaking at the conference. Speakers don't get paid at that conference. For those who aren't aware, thank you for writing the book and thanks for what you do and for coming on this podcast. Share some of your insights with our audience.
- [63:38]
C
Jim, it was an honor and a privilege. I very much appreciate your time and this conversation.
- [63:44]
B
Okay. I hope that was helpful. I wanted to bring Sean on, not only because he's an expert on this topic, but he's very good at boiling it down and explaining it. And so I was thrilled to listen to his talk at the conference. I was thrilled to have him on the podcast today. I think you got a sense for what I took away from his talk at the conference. This division of the retirement years into five or six periods and what to think about during each of those periods. And so I hope you can apply some of that not only in your planning before retirement, but particularly in the early years of retirement and do the right things at the right times and maybe not from a culture of fear and worry about RMDs and the tax man coming to take everything you've worked so hard for. Don't forget about that. SI Homes production by promotion by the end of the year. If you want to start your real estate investing journey and you want to invest directly or you just want to add to your portfolio, go to whitecoatinvestor.com Sihomes As I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast as well, SOFI could help medical residents like you save thousands of dollars with exclusive rates and flexible terms for refinancing your student loans. Visit sofi.comwhitecodeinvestor See all the promotions and offers they've got waiting for you one more time. That's sofi.com whitecoatinvestor Sofi student loans are originated by Sofi Bank, NA member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 okay, thank you, those of you leaving us. Podcast reviews. I know it sounds weird when you listen to podcasts and all the podcasters ask you to do this, but the reason why is the algorithms. They help people find the podcast. If you get good reviews, they actually help spread the message of financial literacy and discipline to people who may not yet be White Coat investors, but should be white coat investors. A recent one came in that said thank you. I'm so grateful for all this podcast has taught me. I've been listening since I was in residency about five years ago and the impact WCI and Dr. Daly have made on my personal and financial life has been profound. Thank you for all you've done for my family and I. Five stars. Thank you for that review. It was really nice thing to say, but most importantly, you're going to help the next generation to find the same great stuff that you found here. All right, that's it for the podcast. A little longer than most of ours, but I think it was worth it. We really got into the details, got into the weeds a little bit today, but it was really useful content. I think maybe even worth listening to twice. Keep your head up, your shoulders back. You've got this. All of us here in the White Coat Investor community are here to help. We'll see you next time on the White Coat Investor Podcast.
- [66:23]
A
The hosts of the White Coat Investor are not licensed accountants, attorneys, or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.