Year-End Tax Planning, Unclaimed Property, Hot Seat

Year-End Tax Planning

Unclaimed Property: Do You Have Free Money?

There are tens of billions of dollars of unclaimed money sitting with state treasury departments that actually belongs to us citizens, but we haven’t yet claimed it.

I found this great article from Forbes with a state-by-state listing of “Unclaimed Property Websites by State” so just click on your state on the map near the top of the article and check if there’s money that’s rightfully yours that you just haven’t claimed!

 I posted something similar in the newsletter a few years back and our community found tens of thousands of dollars that was just sitting there waiting to be claimed!

If you’ve never done this (or if it has been a few years), take 3 minutes and check your current state and anywhere else you may have lived previously.

Your 'Hot Seat' Answers

The ‘Hot Seat’ is an all-time favorite podcast segment with the ChooseFI Community and in thinking about the future of the show for 2024 and beyond, I want to really feature more of you.

I’m going to publish an episode with your answers to the hot seat questions, so if you ever wanted a crack at the Hot Seat, now’s your chance!  Click this link and leave up to a 5-minute voicemail with you answers to the following questions:

• What’s a podcast, blog or book that you’ve enjoyed recently?
• An inflection point in your life that was especially memorable or meaningful?
• Your favorite life hack?
• Your biggest financial mistake?
• The advice you would give your younger self?
• What purchase have you made in the last ~12 months that added the most value to your life?

ChooseFI Community Taking Action This Week

• Jake said, “Not entirely certain if this is just a 1% improvement, but I wanted to express my gratitude for the guidance of ChooseFI over the past few years. What could have been a disaster has transformed into a potential opportunity. Like many others, I recently faced a layoff. While we're not quite FI yet, we've saved enough to carefully evaluate our options. So, we've chosen to use this extra time to focus on a passion camping gear project and bring it to life through Kickstarter. We've just received approval to launch. Wish us luck!
• Whitney said, “I opened a 529 for my daughter when she was born and have been funding it modestly. I learned from someone else's 1% better in this very newsletter that some states offer programs for college fund matching. I never thought we would be eligible for such a program but since AGI rather than gross income is used and we have a high savings rate, I was instantly approved to annually match $500 in contributions for the next 5 years!
• Alex said, “My 1% better this week was sitting down with my wife to talk about or finance goals. She recently got a raise, so we talked about where we wanted that additional money to go each month. Also, her employer recently changed their 403B match. If she contributes 10%, her company will match 6.5%. What a great match! We decided to just relocate some of my 401K contributions to her 403B. Currently, I am contributing 12% and only need to be contributing 5% to get the full 4% match. In the end, we will be contributing the same amount to pre-tax retirement buckets as we were before, but now we are getting much more of a match.
• Anand said, “My 1% win is I've been able to sustainably spread the knowledge of FIRE to my family and friends through a new YouTube channel called Easy Peasy Millionaire that I created. Thanks to the education from Choose FI, my wife has reached FIRE and I am close to my FIRE number - this has generated a lot of questions from our family and friends on how to set up their finances. Initially, I started doing 1:1 sessions with them, but that quickly became unsustainable. I realized I was saying the same thing at every single session and therefore I figured I should create videos that folks can watch and then come to me when they have questions. It was especially rewarding when my wife's cousin said that he just set up all his retirement accounts and is now invested in index funds thanks to my YT videos.
• Doug said, “1% Better: I finally moved us to Mint Mobile!! I thought it would be hard to transfer numbers from ATT, like the old days, but it was shockingly easy. So, the bill went from $110 to $30 per month.
• Jordan said, “Back in January, you had Dominick Quartuccio on and discussed bold moves. The next day or so, I pulled out a journal at work and wrote down a few for this year. One of my goals was to save/invest $100k. My wife and I are not quite there yet, and I don't think we will quite reach the full goal, but I'm hopeful that by years end it will be attainable. One of the great things about the FI journey is even if you don't succeed 100%, merely reaching for the goal brings many benefits. The second bold move was to run and finish a 100 mile foot race. Not winning any races anytime soon, but I was able to run/hike and complete a 100 mile race in July. I recently signed up for another. Much like the FI journey, endurance events are about slowly and steadily moving forward toward the end goal. Of course, the journey is not always smooth; there are painful times; there are joyful times; there are times when you want to call it quits. But only by continuing on, often through the support of others, do we reach the finish line, whatever that may be for each.

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