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Recently we discussed how utilizing “cash back” credit cards is an useful tool in any travel hacker’s tool belt. Today, we’ll go over another way to maximize the return on your online purchases with just a couple of extra clicks.
2020 was an interesting year in many ways including all things taxes… I mean, we paid $0 in income tax (again) on ~$143k income.
This was in part because dividends and blog revenue were lower due to COVID-19, which is a bummer. But it is also because we welcomed another child tax credit into the family, which is nice. Plus, he’s kinda cute.
But that’s not all… for all of you tax aficionados, this year’s tax return offers some good examples of both short and long term tax minimization, including use of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, the Child Tax Credit (with phase out), capital gain harvesting, Roth conversions, the Foreign Tax Credit (on International equities), and more.
But after ~7 years of the stock market trending upward and the conscious decision to spend more, in early 2019 we took some money off the table (sold stocks / bought bonds.) When literally everything went to hell due to COVID-19, we sold most of those bonds to buy stock and increase our cash cushion.
Now, this is what our portfolio looks like in 2021.
Advertiser Disclosure: This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CardRatings.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
We’ve beat the drum of transferable currencies and how powerful credit card welcome bonuses can be. Maybe you were even enticed by the recent highest-ever Welcome Bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (80,000 points after $4,000 spend in 3 months, a $1,000+ value. $95 annual fee.) Now it’s time to put that hard work to use by making a redemption using those points, and what better destination than Hawaii? (more…)
