5 Ways to Increase Your After-Tax Spendable Income - and Legacy
Over dinner with friends a few nights back, they expressed concern about how the recent tax law changes increased their federal income taxes. New rules limit the amount of property and state income taxes that can be deducted -- and they live in a high-tax state. Other than moving, there's not a lot they can do -- or so they thought.
Like most taxpayers, I am a fan of legally minimizing your income taxes. But I think -- if you are retired or about to retire -- you should concentrate less on minimizing taxes and more about increasing after-tax spendable income and your financial legacy to heirs. Sounds like a non-sequitur, but it isn't.
As an example, you could invest your entire savings in high-quality intermediate-term municipal bonds and pay no taxes on interest earnings. But you would earn something like 2.5% (or $25,000 on $1 million in
