Cumulative burden of taxes

[406dn]

That’s a horrible situation and such is life all our are viables are so different. We decided keeping the career was best long term. If that was to happen to me she would be fine with my line of work my insurance has me worth more dead than alive.

For the entirety of my career at the refinery, I too, was worth more dead than alive. I teased my wife that it kept me on the straight and narrow. It is a great circumstance, if a company's benefits put you into that situation.

My wife was a stay at home mom, when our children were too young for school. Having me work a bunch of overtime was the most efficient way for us to make extra money.

 

[The_Jim]

One good life insurance policy is probably the easiest answer for that kind of scenario. I carry enough so that during the years my kids are minors my wife can pay off all of our debt, the kid's college, and multiple years of my current salary before having to worry about money. I think when my kids were very little I carried at least enough to get her totally out of debt with a couple years of my salary on top. That policy cost me like $400/year and worth every penny for the peace of mind.

You must not be in a high risk career at $400/year for a good policy.

My wife is a stay at home mom and we took out a large policy for her too because I would not be able to make the same income I am making now doing all the things she does at home.

 

[Exhausted]

You must not be in a high risk career at $400/year for a good policy.

My wife is a stay at home mom and we took out a large policy for her too because I would not be able to make the same income I am making now doing all the things she does at home.

Desk job, young, and healthy. Good is subjective. The first policy was $500K and more than enough at the time. I’ve added more now that my salary is higher and we have different debts and more kids. It is more expensive now. But if you have young kids, and you are relatively young yourself, life insurance only makes sense and is not going to be too unreasonable.

 

[Bonasababy]

Just one of my "should have" lessons for younger folks. We had very cheap term insurance through my employer. Rates rose slightly with age. Once you got in you could get a bit more each year with no medicals or approvals needed. I was some years late when I realized the rates had risen high enough in our mid 50's that I could find cheaper long term term insurance cheaper than what we were paying. Of course my employer who is usually good with financial advice on such things never encourages folks to start shopping as they get older.

We found several major players to be cheaper than what i was getting through my employer in the long run. Ended up with Thrivent who we like for other reasons as well.

On the tax end--found out from our accountant that the new provision for SS gives me a 6K deduction for the entire year, even though I don't turn 65 until this fall. But that is also adding to the national debt. State law changes eased SS taxation too.

 

[Pucky Freak]

Thanks y’all for paying taxes. I pay 0 (4 kids, 1 income).

I started preparing my own returns at 15 and I’m 42 now. This year for the first time I bounced everything tax strategy off a chatbot and carved out an additional 20k over a number of years, mostly credits.

Claude $20 plan would likely been better. I used Gemini, 2 threads with the same prompts, then make them cross-examine one another. With the “gems” feature you can set explicit parameters for the responses (no affirmations, always objective, state uncertainties, include counterpoints and minority views, etc.). You can make it mine and synthesize data instead of its default sloppy solution “best guesses”.