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Death and Taxes
“Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.” — Albert Einstein
In the video game Civilization this quote is voiced when a player wins the Economics technology. Although the game attributes this quote to Einstein, there is no proof that he actually said it. I think that this game does this because as one of the fathers of modern atomics, him saying this makes it seem more powerful than simply counting coin.
Yesterday, we Zoomed with our financial advisor to discuss tax planning. With our own approaching decrepitude, we had some questions about taxes. The majority of our savings are in taxed deferred accounts. This is an investment vehicle that was designed to generate retirement savings and pay for the Reagan tax cuts, but when you meet retirement age there is a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) that must be taken and then paid taxes on. We are at the cusp of that age. For all of our adult lives, we have been good little savers, but now it is time to spend that money, or at least pull it out of our tax deferred accounts and pay taxes on that withdrawal. Our motive for calling this meeting was to minimize our tax pain in this process.
Eric, our financial advisor had called in Jerome, an out-of-town expert to help advise us. Good thing, because unlike Jerome, whose animated image appeared after we logged into the meeting, Eric was represented by an avatar. Turns out Eric had suffered a softball injury and had his jaw wired shut, and he did not want us to see his current condition. That’s OK, Jerome was more than capable of handling the meeting. Our first question and the one that end up dominating the meeting was, does a Roth conversion make sense for us?
Let’s cut to the chase. The short answer is no, because we are now too old. When you do a Roth conversion there is a loss, but you hope to make up for that loss over time. Our problem is that at our ages, we do not have enough time left. We would need another thirty years, which if we had our fathers’ longevity then we could do it, but if we ended up with our mother’s, we would lose money. So, we will be keeping the horse that we rode in on and not converting our tax deferred investments. Long story short there are two things that are unavoidable in life, death and taxes and we’ll be facing one or the other eventually.
Bird’s Eye Mermaid
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After the Rain
It rained pretty much all day yesterday and this morning we awoke to fog, but this afternoon the sun came out. There was no wind, so I could not stop moving while walking the beach. 🦟 Consequently, I was the first one down the beach and then back again. We saw the eagle when we stopped to talk with Judd. Anne got engaged in conversation, while I tried to get closer to the bird. Eventually, I got too close for the eagle’s comfort, and it took off. It eventually passed over the gulls pictured in the background and flushed them too. There were seiches everywhere.
Returning to the cabin, I soon spied the fawn looking in through the windows. No sign of mama today, but she and the youngster have toured our cabin before. I am rather pleased with the pic.
Swing Lo Sweet Chariot…
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Rainy-Laundry Day Post
When the going gets tough, the tough do laundry. We have to do something, because it’s not a beach day. Last night, I wanted to watch the Knicks game, but only the part where the orange dumpling got booed. We missed that part and ended up watching another New York story, the Disney movie Miracle. I got my happy ending, cried, and all the red hat baddies went to the gulag. USA! After last night’s NYC basketball extravaganza, I found the following online:
You are only a real New Yorker if you grew up in the city sewers with your Italian-named brothers and were raised by a mutant Japanese rat and martial arts trained.
I messaged this to Dan, our Real New Yorker, who responded, “There’s so much ‘What makes you a Real New Yorker’ discourse because of that J Lo interview.” He followed it up with, my favorite version is still: “You have to find a spot, a bar, a restaurant, a cafĂ©. Fall in love with that spot. Then it needs to close, you’re heartbroken and sad. A new place opens in the same location.  At first, you’re upset about it. It just reminds you of the place you lost.  Begrudgingly you decide to try it, eventually find you kinda like it. Finally, you love it. It becomes your new spot. And then it closes. And that is when you’re a real New Yorker.”
I later found the J Lo interview, part of Kareem Rahma’s Subway Takes series, where J Lo contends that you have to be born in NYC to be a Real New Yorker. Rahma even argues that much like Dan has that he was told that if you live in the city for ten years then you can call yourself a Real New Yorker, but J Lo was adamant. What does Native New Yorker Britt think?