The Forest of Taxes
If you had to guess how many individual trees make up the Amazon Rainforest, what would your answer be? In totality, 9 countries contain at least a piece of the rainforest. There are an estimated 16,000 different species of trees that make up the Rainforest. The region is also home to an estimated 2,500,000 species of insects alone.
The answer to the original question is an estimated 390 billion individual trees make up the Amazon Rainforest. The Rainforest is so large, it’s easily one of the most identifiable features of the global landscape from Space. The Amazon Rainforest is bigger than the next two largest rainforests on earth…combined. At 2.72 million square miles, the Rainforest is about the same size as the Continental United States.
Needless to say, the Amazon is an impressive spectacle when viewed from afar. The numbers are almost incomprehensible. Let’s, just for a moment, zoom in a bit. Picture just one of those 390 billion trees. It may look just like one of the trees you can see out the back window of your house. Alone, that single tree can’t give you a picture of what the entirety of the forest looks like, even though that one tree may stand sixty or seventy feet high and is impressive on its own.
We here at Secure Retirement Strategies are experts when it comes to planning your retirement income from the most tax-efficient perspective possible. However, when we meet with many of our clients for the first time, they come to our office only looking at the single tree in a massive forest, or in financial terms, what they’re going to pay in taxes this year. They’ve never taken the time to calculate what their tax bill will look like over the entirety of their retirement.
Unless you suffer a severe, long-term illness in retirement, taxes will more than likely be your single biggest retirement expense. If that’s the case, then why do so many people only choose to look at what their tax bill will be this year, and not what it will be over 25 or 30 years of retirement? It’s a staggering number when you add it up, but there are steps that can be taken now to reduce that total cost.
If Congress does not make any changes in the next five years, we know taxes will be returning to what they were in 2017 when the current tax code sunsets in 2026. However, there are several tax changes being negotiated in the halls of Congress today that will only increase your total tax bill in a number of different ways.
Our challenge to you is this: look at your taxes from a macro perspective and take steps now to lower your potential tax bill down the road. You’ve worked hard to build your retirement nest egg, now it’s time to protect it from taxes and keep more of your money. Don’t make the mistake of focusing on one tree and missing the massive scope of the forest around you. We look forward to meeting with you to discuss how you can change your perspective of seeing taxes this year, to seeing the forest of taxes over the entirety of your retirement.
