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.
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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. 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…)
