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What’s the Safest Thing to Buy During a Bear Market? | Portfolio Rescue


Chapters

0:0 Intro
4:24 What to Buy in a Bear Market
9:47 Investing vs Paying Off 401(k) Loan
13:53 Capital Loss Deductions
18:2 Robo Advisors vs Target Date Funds
23:30 Converting to Roth in a Downturn

Transcript

Welcome back to Portfolio Rescue. Remember, if you have a question for us, askthecompoundshow@gmail.com. Questions have been heating up, Duncan. I want to get into that in a minute, but first, our sponsor today. Portfolio Rescue is brought to you by Innovator ETFs. Now, there's a lot of uncertainty today. At least, it feels that way.

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Because, again, we see a wide range of outcomes in bear markets, where you could have these huge snapback rallies, or you could have further pain ahead. We don't know. Again, if you want to learn more, go to InnovatorETFs.com. Duncan, we went through a little bit of a lull there in questions.

Now, they're coming in hot. A little bit of a lull. It was bad. Yeah. We put out the bad signal when people came through. It's interesting to see the tone shift. Credit to our audience. We have people who are very smart, and they're not panicking, they're not freaking out.

But, the tone is certainly different than it was in the past. Because, in the past, it was, "Listen, I have these huge gains. I don't want to lose them. But, if I get another 10X from here, I don't want to kick myself if I don't take part in that.

So, what do I do? Or, should I invest in this one specific area? Because this is the area that's doing the best." Now, it goes to, "What about my losses? How do I handle these huge losses? What do I do with them? How do I make my money back?" This difference between bull markets and bear markets is interesting for me.

So, I went through, and I put some things of the difference between bull markets and bear markets. So, bear with me here. I'm going to start going from bull to bear. Bull markets, you have the fear of missing out. Bear markets, you have the fear of being beaten. Bull markets is, "Everything I buy is going up.

I'm a genius." Bear markets is, "Everything is going down. I'm an idiot." Bull markets, you say, "See, fundamentals went out." Bear markets, you say, "No, no, no. Technicals and sentiment. That's the real winner right here." In a bull market, you say, "Geez, I wish I had more money in stocks.

Why didn't I take more risk?" Bear markets, you say, "Man, I wish I had cash, give me more optionality." Bull markets, buy and hold always wins. It always wins. In bear markets, buy and hold is dead. Bull markets, Warren Buffett is always washed up. Bear markets, "Wait, is Buffett buying here?" It's all these things.

Bull markets, "I'll be greedy. We know those are fearful, I promise." And then, bear markets, "I lied. I'm fearful, and others are fearful." Bull markets are, "Buy the dip." Bear markets are, "Sell the rip." You have all this stuff. Bull markets, "Why didn't I invest earlier in my life?

I should have put more in." Bear markets are, "I'll never invest again." Bull markets, "Diversification is for losers." Bear markets, "Geez, why was I so concentrated?" All these things. You feel, and bull markets are, "Markets will never fall again." Bear markets are, "Markets will never rise again." It's all this stuff.

It's this dichotomy, and it just switches back and forth between the human emotions, and that's kind of how it works. It's unfortunate the markets are tugging at our heartstrings with this kind of stuff, but this is kind of the way it works, right? Unfortunately. Yeah. And the one that I'd never heard before for people my age in the market is, "I'm out of money." It's like buying the dip, people buying the dip, buying the dip, and then it's out.

It keeps going down, and you're out of money. That's a bad thing. That's one of the biggest pros of just having a dollar-cost averaging strategy, where you take a little bit of every paycheck. It would be nice to have this cash hoard that you could put to work, and I'm going to wait for the fat pitch, and I'm going to swing at it.

But most people probably can't do that or won't do that, so just putting your money in on a regular basis from your paycheck is probably the best way to go anyway, and it's the easiest one, and frankly, it's the simplest strategy, too. Alright, we've got some good questions today.

Let's do it. Okay. Up first, we have a question from Australia, actually, which is pretty cool. I don't think it's a first, but we don't give those a whole lot. I believe it's Michael in Australia. They write, "As a long-term investor in my late 20s, the general advice seems to be that I should buy in this environment because it's cheap, and in the long-term, it should return the most.

However, at the same time, we consistently talk about the fact that the majority of stocks won't return to bear highs. Isn't it possible that I could buy the wrong stocks and miss out on the returns I'm supposed to see in the long run because the stocks never return to their previous levels?" Those Aussies are pretty smart.

This is a very astute observation. And as someone in their 20s, it's hard to consider yourself a long-term investor yet, because you still have a much longer time to go, but I hope you stick with that. And yes, if you're a young person, you should get on your hands and knees and pray for bear markets.

This is a good thing. You're buying at lower prices, lower valuations, higher dividend yields. It doesn't feel like that because you see your portfolio value sinking, but if you're a young person and you have years or decades ahead of you, yes, you should be hoping for this. This is a good thing.

Now, this observation about stocks versus the stock market is a good one, because I have a lot of faith that the stock market is going to come back from mean reversion. If the stock market doesn't come back, then we have probably bigger problems on our hands. But I can be sure that a lot of stocks themselves won't come back.

This is from a McKinsey report from a few years ago. "In 1958, a company could expect to stay in the S&P 500 for about 61 years. Today, it's more like 18 years." And I'm guessing that number is just going to continue to go down. "Of the Fortune 500 companies in 1955, only 61 were still on the list in 2014." That's a 12% survival rate.

The other 88% went bankrupt, merged, or basically just fell from the list because of underperformance. It's hard for a company to -- I've looked at the top 10 stocks every five years, going back to 1980. And there's some in 1980 that you just never heard of before, like Atlantic Richfield and some of these oil companies that have either gotten taken over or merged that you've just never heard of before.

John threw up the first chart of GE here. GE was the biggest stock in the S&P 500 in 1995, 2000, and 2005. This company peaked in 1999 or 2000. It hasn't come close to getting back there since. I remember I had a buddy after 2008 say, "I'm going to buy this stock.

It's down so much, because it has to come back." It hasn't quite worked out. I think the stock is down 85%, and dividends have been cut along the way. Cisco Systems. Cisco was the biggest stock by market capitalization on the planet in 1999 and 2000. Still well below those levels.

Probably 50% down from 1999-2000 levels. How about a more recent example? Bed, Bath & Beyond. Peaked in 2013. It's down 94% ever since. That's like a lot of 20% coupons. Right, Duncan? Citigroup. Top five biggest stock in the S&P 500 in 2000 and 2005. Peaked in '99, 2000. Almost made it back by 2006.

It's now a shell of its former self. How about Bank of America? Made it back to its 2006 highs, but still well below those levels. AT&T is another big name. Peaked in 2000. Still well below those levels. Some of these stocks have paid out dividends, so you've probably done okay, paid to wait.

These are huge brand name stocks that have never come back in decade-long periods. It can happen. How about a success story? Microsoft. Easily one of the most successful companies of all time. Peaked in 2000. Took 16 years to reach that level, following the dot-com bubble bursting. It can take a long, long time, even the success story.

So, you can be waiting a long time, a lot longer than the stock market itself, if we have a comeback. Let's look at current Russell 3000 levels. So, I looked at, put this into Y charts, all-time high levels, and then their drawdown from there. 30% of stocks in the Russell 3000, this is like 2,800 stocks.

It's called the Russell 3000, but there's not that many stocks anymore. 30% of them are down 70% from all-time highs. And a lot of those all-time highs did not come in 2020 or 2021. They came way before that. 20%, one in five, is down 80% from all-time highs. And then 11% or one in ten is down 90% from all-time highs.

And again, a lot of these all-time highs took place a long time ago. You could see a long time for this to happen. It's not out of the realm of possibility. So, the index itself right now is down 20%. I have faith that a broad index of U.S. stocks is going to come back at some point.

I don't know when. I don't know how much further it could have to fall. I don't know how long it's going to take to break even. But I'm pretty certain that U.S. stocks, a broad basket of them, are going to come back at some point. Again, if it doesn't happen, we have bigger problems.

But, that's just, betting against U.S. corporations is a bet against innovation. It's a bet against human profits. It's a bet against human desire. I just, this desire to get better, I just have no idea which stocks will lead the way. I don't know which ones are glorious buying opportunities right now, and I don't know which ones will never recover from their losses, because it's really hard to tell.

So, you could get much higher rewards if you pick the right stocks right now. But you could also have much higher risk and see much bigger losses, or just never make your money back if you pick the wrong ones. Stocks can and will go out of business. An index fund, I'm pretty sure, is not going to go out of business.

That's the way I look at it. It's much safer to buy an index fund right now if you want to earn your money back. You can see much higher reward if you buy the right stocks. That's the way to look at it. Yeah, I know. That makes sense, yeah.

Diversification for the win. Not to brag, but you know, the first stock I ever bought was, I was in college back in 2008. I bought Microsoft, and I still have it in that account. Seriously? Yeah. That's pretty good. Okay, so you bought it, because it came back a little bit, and then 2008 crashed again.

So, you're probably making some stupid names on it, too. I hope that I literally forgot about the account for years. But, yeah, it's still there. That's the key. See? Not bad. And, you have to live through a lot of those losses along the way, right? Not bad. It's true.

Not to brag. Alright, next question. Okay. Up next, we have, "Hey, Ben and Duncan. I'm 32 years old and have a stable career making $70,000 a year. First of all, I should preface this. They go into a lot of detail that might not be necessary, but I think it's kind of interesting.

I own a six-bedroom home and house hack it. I live in one bedroom but rent out the other five bedrooms. I've owned it for three years and I average $3,500 a month in gross rent. After everything is paid and I set some money aside for CapEx and vacancies, I cash flow $750 a month.

The only debt I have is a stupid 401(k) loan that I took out two summers ago to complete a basement renovation. The balance on the 401(k) loan is $10,000, which is the only debt I have outside of my mortgage. I have a solid emergency fund, contribute 10% to my 401(k), max out a Roth IRA, and have a brokerage account for individual stock and index fund investing.

My question is, should I invest the $12,000 cash I currently have or pay off my 401(k) loan?" First of all, six bedrooms. How much would a six-bedroom place be in New York, Duncan? About $13 million? Probably. Personally, you could not pay me to live with five unknown roommates in a house, but if you're willing to do that, that's not a bad way to build equity and some cash flow.

So, nicely done. I give you credit for that, even though I personally would not be able to do it. I guess I do have three little roommates and my wife, so I'm close. Retirement plan sounds good to me, too. I have my one rule of thumb. I wrote about it in my retirement book.

The only thing I care about, I want people to have for their goal, double-digit savings rate percentage of your income. Double-digit, that's the goal. And this person says they do 10% of their 401(k) plus their Roth IRA. So, I think if you calculate it out, if my math is right here, we're talking like an 18% to 20% savings rate for this person, and that's not even getting into what they put into their taxable account.

So, kudos on the retirement plan. Right? I really like this. This is good. I sign off on that. Listen, the 401(k) loan, we've all made stupid decisions in the past. There's nothing wrong with that. And a 401(k) loan is not the end of the world. We talked about this with Taylor Hollis a couple weeks ago on this show.

401(k) loans, like, the biggest risk is your job safety. If you lose your job, then you don't want to hold that loan and have to get in a situation where you have to pay it off really quickly. But the fact that you have the cash right now, I think this one is fairly easy.

So, you gave us two options. I want to put the money to work in the markets or I want to pay off the 401(k) loan. Why don't we do both? Okay? So, borrowing from your 401(k) enacts an opportunity cost where you're missing out on those gains from what you're borrowing from.

Right? So, you could do some tax stuff on the spreadsheet and probably calculate it down to the last penny. But you have the money and you already have realized you're kicking yourself because it's a mistake and you didn't want to do it, even though, you know, whatever, you made your basement renovations and probably helped out your tenants a little bit.

You pay it off and you're not only paying yourself back the interest on the loan, but now those investments can be put to work again and you're right back in the market. Right? This is one of those, I think, don't overthink it. Don't try to calculate it down to the last penny and what my hurdle rate's going to be.

This is a win-win. You pay off your 401(k) loan and now you get to start growing your retirement savings for that amount again. Do it. You have the money, you have the cash. Pay it off. You're putting money to work back in your tax-deferred retirement account. Let's do it.

Right? That's easy. Yeah. That makes sense to me. All right. And so just to elaborate a little bit, the reason that a 401(k) loan is, in general, a bad idea is, what did you mean by if you lose your job, you have to pay it off right away or something?

If you lose your job, you have to pay it off right away, yeah, because you're not part of that work, your retirement plan anymore. So you technically have to pay it off right away. So there's some risks there, especially if, you know, the economy is slowing down and, you know, it depends on how safe your job is.

But, yeah. By the way, that person with a six-bedroom house had to be in the Midwest, right? This is a flyover state person. Yeah. I mean, yeah. When I read that, I had to do a double-take. And I was thinking the same thing as you. Like, man, you don't even have a majority in your own house then, right?

They can, like, you know, vote you out, essentially, on decisions in the house, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah. Hopefully it's not a Dow because that person's out of luck. All right. Let's do the next one. Okay. Up next, we have a question from William, who writes, and this is one I think a lot of people can probably relate to in the world, over the last year.

I'm a millennial who got lucky in 2021 and realized large gains that I paid taxes on back in April. I used leverage, and it bit me in 2022. I'm down $200,000 a year today, and I have $50,000 left. It doesn't seem reasonable for me to take a $3,000 capital loss deduction in a year, so I feel like I need to continue to bet until I make it back.

What are your thoughts? This is giving me flashbacks to my FanDuel account, before I basically ran it down to zero. You know, I kept trying to make it back. Well, talking about betting until you make it back, that's my first problem with this question, is that I don't want people to look at the stock market investing as betting, right?

There's a difference between speculating and investing. And I think if you look at it from a speculation standpoint, you're probably not going to come out ahead. Because if you look at that high number, your high watermark in 2021 or whenever it was, and you say, "I'm going to get back to that, and I'm going to do whatever I can," just because you want to get back to that level and you decide, "I'm going to take a lot of risk to get there," doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen, right?

These returns aren't promised to you just because you want or need them. So, I think maybe take a step back first and reassess your plan, because using leverage sounds great. There's all these academic studies that say, "Young people probably should use leverage for their retirement because they have so much human capital and time ahead of them in savings." But, I don't know, 0.5% of the population could maybe handle that as a strategy.

So, that's what I want to talk about first. But for the tax side of things, we'll bring in an expert here. Bill Sweet. Probably our most recurring guest here. Bill, I just want to say, I quoted you to my wife this week. Wow. Okay? So, we recently had talked about, we sold an investment property.

You helped me figure out what the capital gains taxes were going to be on that. I shared that amount with my wife. She was taken aback by the fact that we were going to have to hand over such a large amount to Uncle Sam. What do you always say about paying capital gains taxes?

It means you won, right? Isn't that what you tell people? It stinks, but it means you won. Yeah. People hate paying taxes more than they like making money. That's my general observation here. I guess first off, really strong name from William. Really the best name if you sit down and think about it.

Get out of here with these Liamson bills. That's very strong. His question was, is the $3,000 capital gains limit against ordinary income reasonable? I mean, no, it doesn't seem reasonable. Just like me, that's a relic of the 1970s. That's been set since 1978. Ben experienced inflation when he sold his property and had to write that tax check, which that was the subject of many tears last week.

But the price of gasoline was 65 cents in 1978, and that hasn't been adjusted. Adjusted for inflation would be $16,000 today. But what I want to highlight, Ben, is exactly the point that you made. William is letting a tax benefit, a minor one at that, drive his decision to potentially invest for the short term in a way that I would agree, he phrased as gambling.

But secondly, with leverage, which only exacerbates the ups and the downs, which he just experienced. He's down $200,000 here to date. I don't think it makes any sense. You cannot control the $3,000 capital gains limit. Any amounts that you don't use in 2022 will be carried forward indefinitely. God bless you.

I hope you have some capital gains at some point in the future. I would focus on what you can control here. Don't let the tax tail wax the tax dog. Be like Ben. Love paying taxes, just like you like making money. Lewis: The other thing is, let's say he looked out and had some -- let's say in another world, he's the one who sold the investment property.

I'm not trying to rub it in his face or that I did this. So, let's say he had some gains. If he takes these losses, he could use them to offset some of that gain, if he had gains elsewhere. He could use some of those losses to net out, correct?

Brokamp: Yep. And there's that Midwest bias, just looking down on us, on us humble people who can't time the market. But yes, you're exactly right. I couldn't have phrased it better. Exactly. Lewis: All right. Let's do another one, Duncan. O'Reilly: Okay. By the way, Bill, people like your backyard setup there.

Brokamp: Ah! It's hotter than a blowtorch out here. You see the sun baking down on me? I refuse to drive into New York City until $5 gasoline is a thing of the past. So, let's get working on that. Lewis: Okay. Up next, we have a question from Jack. "I'm hoping you can explain the difference between a robo-advisor and automated monthly purchases of something like a target date fund.

I'm 30 years old, and the sample portfolios for robo-advisors don't seem very different than the holdings of a target date fund. I see tax-loss harvesting and automated rebalancing listed as benefits of a robo, but doesn't the target date fund also rebalance? And if I'm selling losing investments to offset capital gains whenever I realize them in the future, doesn't that handle the tax-loss harvesting?" Brokamp, this is a good question.

Lewis: Yeah, it is. I'm a noted target date fund guy. Brokamp: Yeah, I figured you lit up when you heard this. Lewis: Well, you said your first purchase was a Microsoft shares. My first purchase ever was a target date fund. I think a 20 to 55 fund. My dad helped me set up my first IRA out of school.

I think setting up target date funds as a default option for corporate retirement plans was one of the best innovations we've seen in retirement for the past two to three decades. The fact that people are easily able to do it with one fund in a simple diversified manner and not have to make those choices themselves, I think it's huge.

Now, there is a little more customization you can get in a robo-advisor. As a shameless plug here, if you use our Liftoff service, we use Betterment, but we also have advisors you can talk to, so that's a little bolt-on there. You can actually talk to someone, and maybe that's a little help.

But, Bill, what are the pros and cons from a tax perspective of having this one-stop retirement fund in a target date fund versus having 8 to 10 funds in a robo-advisor? Lewis: Yeah, I really like this question. It's in the weeds. It's nuanced. It's kind of nasty. I like to get down here and talk about this stuff.

The first thing, a target date fund, you get low cost, broad exposure. You can choose a fund to match your timeline. For Ben, that's 2055. If I'm retiring next year, it might be 2023, 2025. That's great. That's awesome. A robo-advisor allows you, in contrast, to custom. You get the same low cost, broad exposure.

You're probably going to pay a little bit more in fees, but you can customize a strategy to match your timeline. The key difference from a tax standpoint, which is why you guys call me here, that's why I keep coming on this show, is what happens when you have gains or losses.

When there's a gain or loss in a target date fund, the fund realizes that gain or loss, with an exception I'm going to talk about in a second. When that happens in a robo-advisor account, that gain or loss gets realized on you, on your personal balance sheet. For a 401k, there's no difference.

Everything just gets deferred. Let's just focus on non-qualified accounts. The key difference is the tax effects you get. You get in the present with a robo. For a target date fund, you get to push them out in the future. The other key thing, in addition to this internal/external difference between where the gains get realized or losses, is that a target date fund does need to distribute gains, but they usually do it at the end of the year.

Ben, Duncan, have you seen those notorious capital gains distributions that happen towards the end of the year? Vanguard has a lot of them last year, really nasty due to some things that they did internally in the company, some decisions they made. With a robo-advisor, that's all happening in the current year.

With a TDF, it's happening once a year when you see that gain. That's the key difference. You don't have a lot of control over what happens with that target date fund. It's much more about when the other investors in that fund decide to move or get out. That's what nuked a lot of Vanguard investors last year.

Lewis: Then, obviously, with a robo-advisor, some of that tax-loss harvesting can hopefully offset some of those gains if you have some, and dividends and that sort of thing, right? Rubin: Precisely. Yeah. I think they accomplish the same thing, but the path that they take is a little bit different.

If you have other active trading activity, the tax-loss harvesting feature of robo-advisor is very, very attractive. I would look at that if you have some other activity going on elsewhere in your portfolio. But if you're looking for simple, set it, forget it, the fee difference is real and meaningful.

A target date fund offers a lot of great solutions. But I think for a non-qualified account, if all we're looking at is taxes, I would look at the robo assuming everything else is equal. Then, Ben, I'm a company man just like you. With Liftoff, you get to talk to an advisor at least once a year.

I think there's an advantage there that you're probably not going to get choosing a TDF. This is how you know we're in a bear market. We're debating target date funds and robo-advisors. No one cares about this stuff in a bull market. In a bear market, "Oh, I'm going to lean on my target date fund a little bit," right?

Yeah. One other thing I was going to add that I thought was cool with robo-accounts, I have a Liftoff for Aubrey that I've looked at. Duncan, a company man. I love it. Yeah, exactly. It shows you, you link all your other outside accounts and stuff. Just the organization like that can be nice for some people, just being able to see all of your accounts and have everything linked together in one place is kind of a nice thing.

They have a better user experience, for sure. I'd say a place like Spiderman or Wealthhunt. That's kind of a nice thing about it. One other question on that, Bill, that is important, to make sure that you're not doing something that messes up your tax-loss harvesting, right? You want to make sure it's all kind of integrated so you're not selling something in one account and buying in another account and ruining your tax advantage.

That's exactly it, Duncan. The better robo-platforms, they allow you to do that. If you happen to have a stock, let's say Duncan's got his big Microsoft gains he's walking around town with in New York City this week, what you wouldn't want to do is sell Microsoft at a loss somewhere else, right?

Because that loss is going to get stopped on a gain somewhere else. That coordination is very, very important. I would agree with that premise, Duncan, that the technology that you're going to get from a typical robo-advisor is going to be better. If you live your life on your phone, that's a great thing to look at.

Last but not least, we have a question from Matt. "I'm 35 years old and married with two kids. We have a decent amount saved in pre-tax 401ks, approximately $400,000 between my wife's account and mine. We file MFS due to student loans. I'm in the 24% tax bracket and my wife is in the 32% bracket.

What are your thoughts on converting these to Roths during this market downturn?" Also, what is MFS? I actually know what this means. Married Filing Separately, right, Bill? True. Yep. We've got another academic for you, Duncan. I got in a giant fight with my wife this weekend. That's the first step to divorce when you put that on your tax form, actually.

An attorney calls you a week later. So before we get into this Roth conversion, which I know you're a big Roth guy, what are the best reasons for filing this way in the first place? Because I've always heard getting married, the whole thing about it is having tax breaks and filing together.

What would be the reason for filing separately when you're married? Yeah, I think he gets at it. There's something weird going on here that I do want to comment on at the end. He's getting at the tax differential. If he's at 32, his wife's at 24, potentially they could pay a lower overall income tax with the two separate returns versus adding them together on the joint side, where I'm guessing -- Oh, maybe doing a weighted average or something?

Yep, more of your income is going to be subject to the higher rate. That's one big reason. Another reason might be healthcare, health insurance. Another reason, which somewhat times is common, is if one spouse has a debt or something like that. Let's say somebody's chasing them on a credit line.

You wouldn't want to file a joint return. A joint return can never be separate. Once you file jointly, if me and Duncan get married, which has been discussed in the past, and we file a joint return, we cannot undo that in the future. Meanwhile, two married filing separate returns can be combined if there's reasons to do so.

Credit is the other common reason. Okay. Yeah, I'd never heard that before. I know you're a big Roth guy. Is it true that -- I never realized this -- the Senator who the Roth IRA is named after is Senator William Roth? Is that your namesake? Very, very strong name.

I'm afraid not. No, I'm named after my dad. Also, William the Conqueror, 1066. Very strong gentleman. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. Alright, so does the fact that the market's in a downturn make more or less sense to do a Roth conversion, or should that never come into play?

No. I mean, what's the back tattoo, Ben? What's the back tattoo right here? The very first show I was on, I think it was the very first Portfolio Rescue, you were like, "Take your shirt off. The people have to see the tattoo." Roth for life. It's a Roth IRA conversion.

Yeah, the listeners got it spot on. Everything's on sale this year. If you do a Roth conversion, you're going to pay 20% less in income tax than you would have if you'd done it in December of 2021, depending on your allocation. There's no reason if you're a long-term investor not to do that.

If you have the cash to pay it, not from the IRA or 401(k) itself, the money's got to come from somewhere else for it to make sense. But absolutely, because then when the market rebounds, and it will this year, next year, five years, 10 years from now, when the market continues to compound at 7%, 8% a year as it has forever, you will get the benefit of that tax free.

So I think it's a great opportunity. Yeah, that makes sense. You're paying less in taxes because the market is down. Yep, exactly. Can we go back to the MFS thing really quickly? Because there is something funky going on here. At that tax rate, given the amount of kids, like the child tax credit last year was like $3,600 for a child under five.

And when you file marriage filing separate, you're not allowed to claim that credit. At that tax range, if they were at the 37% bracket, they wouldn't qualify for that. I would take a look at that, listener. I might email you after this show to be like, "Hey, let's take a look at this, bro." Because one of the things you might be missing out- So they should be filing together.

Yeah, on like $10,000 of tax credits that weren't available. So you might be winning the tax bracket game. But if you're losing out on $3,600 of tax credits per kid, that seems like a big, big problem. But I might talk with your tax professional. There might be other things going on.

I mean, that's the one reason I had three kids, so we can get all those tax breaks. Yeah, that's it. Because they're not expensive otherwise. I think that's why most people have kids, right? Yeah, $5 gasoline isn't what's pushed me outside. It's the romper room going on downstairs because it's July, and they're both running roughshod all over the house, breaking all of my stuff.

Alright, turn on a sprinkler, they'll be fine. I love my kids. Alright. If you have a question for us, askthecompoundshow@gmail.com. Remember, if you're listening to the podcast form, leave us a review. Watching on YouTube, if you're not a subscriber, click the subscribe button. It'll make Duncan's day. Compound merch, idontshop.com.

What else? I want to thank Bill for coming on, as always, answering those tax questions. He's my personal tax consultant, so I just wanted to share him with the world. I think our most common guest, right? I think he's been on now like five shows or something. Let's keep it that way.

Yeah, it's like Steve Martin and Tom Hanks on SNL. He's our Steve Martin. I'll take my jacket any time you guys want to send it. Let's do it. Alright, again, send us an email. Askthecompoundshow@gmail.com, and we will see you next time. Thanks, everyone.