The Power Of Zero Show

Investors need to understand the latest coronavirus stimulus bill that was just passed. Investors can now take out up to $100,000 from their 401(k) or IRA prior to age 59 and a half without any penalty. The bill has also increased the loan size you can take out from your 401(k) to $100,000. Another big piece of news investors should be aware of is that required minimum distributions are going to b...

The coronavirus downturn in the market is actually the perfect time to do a Roth Conversion because of the double sale that's going on. The first sale involves the next six years where we get to enjoy the lowest tax rates we are likely to see in our lifetimes. The second sale is due to the 35% drop in the stock market, your assets are now at much lower values and that means the tax on a potential...

A common question that David gets fairly frequently is whether or not the LIRP can be a substitute for the bond portion of a portfolio. A lot of people are funding their LIRP's out of stock market portfolios that are growing at an average rate of 8%. If that's the case and they take money out of that portfolio to get a 4% return in their LIRP, doesn't that neutralize the tax benefit that justifies...

The two single greatest threats to your retirement are tax rate risk and longevity risk. The Power of Zero paradigm is the unified approach to mitigating both of these risks. As of March 9, 2020, the stock market is down 19% from its peak in February which has erased a lot of the returns from 2019. The infections of the Coronavirus are doubling approximately every six days. Around mid-May that dou...

It's easy to forget how bad the fiscal situation of the United States actually is unless we are being constantly bombarded by experts telling us the truth of the matter. A recent article details a coming report from the Comptroller General. Come March 12, the Government Accountability Office is going to put out an assessment of the fiscal health of the federal government and unsustainability is th...

If you're between the ages of 50 and 65, there is a good chance that you have at least one parent or in-law that is going through a long-term care event. This may lead you to wonder how you are going to deal with your own long-term care events in the future. The government may be picking up the tab, but people in Medicaid-funded long-term care facilities tend not to live as long as at other facili...

99.5% of all annuities are not in the right bucket. There are many reasons to use an annuity: they can be safe and productive, they safeguard against market risk while participating in the upward movement, and many people use them for a guaranteed stream of income. The alternative to annuities for creating a stream of income is the stock market but that approach comes with a set of rules including...

Historically, people who had large IRA's, and who didn't want their beneficiaries to squander their inheritance all in one year, could use a trust to make sure the funds were released over the course of their lifetime. However, due to the recently passed Secure Act, that beneficiary will be forced to spend down that money over ten years or less. The good news is that there is a way to control the...

The 4% Rule originated with a man named William Bengen in 1994. He looked back and noticed that people were withdrawing from their portfolios at a very haphazard rate. Prior to 2005, a common way people used to determine how much they could withdraw was to look at the average return of the market at the time. When asked, 40% of retirees said that they could withdraw 10% annually from their portfol...

David gets the same question nearly every single week. Someone invariably asks about how if they do a Roth conversion, won't they have less money working for them in the tax-free bucket and need more time to catch up compared to had they just left the money in the tax-deferred bucket? If the government came up to you and offered to loan you some money and wouldn't tell you what the interest rate w...

David prefers to be a clear-eyed realist and face things head on, mincing words about the fiscal situation of the United States would be a disservice to everyone. One of the big things that people have asked about after the previous episode is whether shifting all their money to tax-free will do anything for them. If the situation is so bad, what's to stop the government from taking these programs...

The new year brings important changes to the IRS tax code along with various thresholds that we have to know about when it comes to Power of Zero planning. We have to be keenly aware of these thresholds because they can end up being landmines if we're not doing things correctly. The new income threshold for the Roth IRA is $124,000 to $139,000 for a single person and $196,000 to $206,000 for a mar...

For a grim depiction, check out this article The Mathematical Certainty of U.S. Government Default by Ptolemy3 about the future of the US government's debt situation. The US government reached the tipping point at least fifteen years ago where the only way out will be default. People who calculate debt for the US federal always do it incorrectly. The proper way to do it is to figure out the net pr...

The SECURE Act was passed a couple of weeks ago and we now know what it's implications are. The big thing that everyone is talking about is that it eliminates the lifetime stretch provision for non-spouse beneficiaries of IRA's, 201(k)'s, and Roth IRA's. Now, if you're leaving your IRA to a non-spouse beneficiary like a child, they will have to realize it as income over the following ten years. If...

One of the most common questions that David gets is regarding what happens to the Medicare Part B premium if someone engages in a Power of Zero tax strategy. Are there unexpected consequences of shifting money from tax-deferred to tax-free? When you do a Roth conversion, it doesn't count towards the income thresholds that determine whether you can do a traditional Roth IRA, but it does have an imp...

Once you get past December 31 of 2019 you will only have six years left to reposition dollars from tax-deferred to tax-free before tax rates go up for good. Every year that goes by your timeline gets shorter. The question that David gets all the time is what is going to happen once 2026 hits and will the Power of Zero paradigm still exist? The Power of Zero was written in 2013 and plenty of people...

The last weeks of December are critical in terms of taking advantage of your last opportunities to do Roth conversions for the 2019 tax year. Many people think you can go all the way until December 31 but that's not always going to be the case. Some companies require you to submit a Roth conversion much earlier because they can take some time to process. Missing the Roth conversion deadline can ha...

David gets a number of emails from listeners saying that he's been wrong for years and the central thesis of the Power of Zero paradigm is incorrect. The question is, do the tax cuts of 2016 delegitimize what he and others have been saying? In reality, the problem has only compounded since the tax cuts came into effect. You have to consider whether the US government is prone to making bad financia...

When someone is talking about a risk multiplier, they are essentially talking about longevity risk. The longer you live, the more likely it is for you to experience a subset of risks that could completely derail your retirement plan. There first major risk is the long term care risk. In many ways, you are better off dying than needing long term care, because a long term care event can completely d...

David is generally very reluctant to recommend something that would cause someone to bump from a 12% tax bracket into a 22% tax bracket. We're trying to avoid the tax apocalypse that's coming down the road, and that means thinking about the future. There are some circumstances where it makes sense though. A scenario to compare is between two 65 year olds with similar amounts of money in their thre...

Rule #1: Everyone's situation is different, and there is no cookie cutter approach. You can't pick up the Power of Zero book and have the exact recipe for success. It will need to be tailored to your personal situation. Rule #2: It is unlikely that you will be in a lower tax bracket in retirement. The closer you are to 2029, the less likely you are to be in a lower tax bracket. We know when the ta...

When David is working with a client, his recommendation is to reach the zero percent tax bracket is by having 5 to 7 streams of tax-free income. These can include Roth IRA's, Roth 401(k)'s, and L.I.R.P.'s. David often asks advisors what they think is his favorite. Rarely, will anyone guess the truth is RMD's (Required Minimum Distributions). The holy grail of financial planning is any investment t...

There are three words that don't get mentioned very much, but they should scare the dickens out of you. Those words are Public Pension Liabilities. It's a problem that is largely flying below the radar, but if you live in a state with a lot of public pension liabilities, it could end up like Detroit. Public pensions often end up swallowing up the state budget until there is little left over to pro...

David becomes very uneasy when advisors recommend that their clients take the money in their IRA and convert all of it into an LIRP. The LIRP has a lot of benefits, but it really should be used in conjunction with other streams of tax-free income. The LIRP is powerful only to the extent that it's used in collaboration with, in most cases, four to six other streams of tax-free income. That's when i...

There are two people today that are making waves in the national conversation for what they are saying about the national debt. This first is Ken Fisher. Ken says the debt to GDP ratio has been worse in the past and that we really have nothing to worry about. He also says that we borrowed some of that money from ourselves, so it's really just an accounting issue. The trouble is, that's all untrue....