The Way Stuff Works

AMT versus the TCJA

Last week the House GOP finally unveiled the draft legislation of their long-awaited tax reform proposal: the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA). There will be much arguing and many compromises before this draft makes its way into law, but we have some real meat to dig into here after […]

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Daniel and William Baldwin, and FSAs

In my last post I talked about the various accounts we make use of that allowed us to stash away $95,750 tax advantaged dollars in 2017. We discussed 401ks, Roth IRAs (of the baby backdoor and megabackdoor varieties) and HSAs. There are two more tax advantaged accounts that we make […]

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The ESPP Bible – Part 3

In the first two parts of this series we have seen both the best of ESPPs (an ROI and risk profile that you would be hard pressed to beat), and the worst (the dark underbelly of ESPP taxation). In part 3 of the ESPP Bible we are going to cover […]

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The ESPP Bible – Part 2

In part 1 of the ESPP Bible we learned why ESPPs are such stellar investments, and why you should fall over yourself in your hurry to sign up for the plan should you be lucky enough to have access to one. Today, we will examine the dark underbelly of ESPPs […]

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The ESPP Bible – Part 1

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of the monthly updates that I publish that a goodly chunk of BITA household income comes in the form of company stock grants from our employers. Mr. BITA’s company gives him Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), my company also gives me RSUs […]

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You Want to Move Where?

“What will you do about healthcare in early retirement?” “I’ll just move to a country that has it all figured out.” “Are you sure your nest egg is large enough?” “Yep. I’m going to move to a country with a much lower cost of living and live like a king […]

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Pretirement: A Review

Ever wished that your purse contained a countdown clock to the date you will be financially independent? Ever asked yourself whether making the effort to save an additional $20/month is really worth it? Ever tried to convince a recalcitrant spouse that buying avocado toast twice a week really is going […]

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Are Your RSUs Messing With Your Taxes?

The BITA household is a simple place as far as taxes are concerned. We are a pair of W-2 employees. We generate no income outside of our jobs. We own one house and we live in it. We receive some interest from our bank accounts, and some dividends from our […]

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Long Term Capital Gains, Roth Conversions and Harvesting Gains

In my previous post we covered how long term capital gains are calculated, and I made available an excel sheet that allows you to play with the numbers. In today’s post we are going to pick up where we left off and explore the following topics: How Roth conversions affect […]

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Understanding Taxation of Long Term Capital Gains

In early retirement we plan to live off of our investments. This means that our primary sources of income are going to be long term capital gains and, to a lesser extent, dividends. It therefore behooves us to understand precisely how taxation of long term capital gains works in the […]

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