Year-End Tax Planning
2025 is coming to a close and December 31st will be here before you know it. That means it’s a good time to make sure all your year-end tax items are in order.
Our good friend Sean Mullaney, the FI Tax Guy, put out an updated '2025 Year-End Tax Planning' article with all the deadlines and considerations you need to be aware of for both 12/31 and future deadlines for tax year 2025.
There’s some new info in there this year due to some recent tax updates (Bronze ACA plans are all eligible for HSA contributions starting in 2026 for example), so be sure to take a look at this article to familiarize yourself with the updates.
Everything in the article won’t be applicable to you, but I got great value out of scanning the article to make sure I had everything covered while I still had time to make changes.
Updating Beneficiaries on Your Accounts
Due to some of the changes going on in my life, I just went through and updated all the beneficiaries on my accounts at Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab.
This was something I was worried about being difficult, and my tendency towards procrastination was setting in, but I doubled down and got to work and each of the brokerages made it remarkably easy to update.
Instructions:
At all three brokerages, in the top navigation bar of your account, you’ll click ‘Profile’ (Vanguard calls it ‘Profile & Account Settings).
On that main Profile page on all three there’s a link for ‘Beneficiaries.’ Click that link and you can update them account by account.
I noticed that Vanguard and Fidelity made it really easy to copy over beneficiaries from another account, so if you plan to have the same beneficiaries, it’s really easy to enter once and then copy over.
I suspect Schwab does the same, but I didn’t have multiple accounts there to test.
Why name beneficiaries:
Really simply, it takes only a few minutes and it ensures that your assets are distributed to the people you want after your death.
This is really important.
Book Club Feedback
Reminder:
Ginger and Frank Vasquez are recording a book club episode this week on the book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing” by Bronnie Ware.
They are looking for your feedback, so get your questions, comments and discussion points in over the next few days!
You can reply to this newsletter and I’ll forward it to Ginger and Frank.
Ginger provided some questions and prompts for discussion:
- If you had to guess, what regret are you most at risk of having later in life? What practices or changes can you make now to avoid one of these regrets?
- How did this intersect with money for you? What are your ideas for spending money in ways that will help you avoid regret?
- What did you learn from this book that you wish other people knew?
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Using the advice from episode 202 and 391 with Student Loan Planner, I was able to get started on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. As of today, I am student loan debt free! — Rachel |
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I've been an avid listener of the podcast since I found it in Januaury of 2024. The impact the show's concepts have had on my life is profound, and I'm excited to share some of the wins!
— Steven |
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My husband and I have been working hard to get “Back to Broke” these past five years since he graduated from Dental school with $460,000 of student loans. This last pay period we officially crossed that $0 net worth mark and it feels so good to not be in the negative! The last few years his debt has not been accruing interest so we have focused on investing and then more recently started aggressively paying down his student loans and are now to the point where our invested assets are higher than his debt! Wohooo! The goal is to pay them off in five years while investing at the same time, and finally being in the positive net worth range is mentally so encouraging after so many years in the red! — Savannah |
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My wife and I were recently vacationing in Maine with another couple who we've become good friends with through a local ChooseFI meetup. While walking around a little harbor town we walked past a couple and exchanged polite hellos. After a few more steps we heard a shout, "Hey, Choose FI!" It caused me to look down and remember I was wearing a ChooseFI t-shirt. We stopped, went back, and had a great conversation about how we all reached FI that continued as they joined us on the rest of our walk. We exchanged contact information and I'm sure we will meet again soon. Moral of the story; if you want to make new friends, just wear your ChooseFI t-shirt out in the wild. — Paul |