William Perry

Comments

• Assuming you live in a non community property state and the title to your half century + years owned home was joint with right of survivorship with your wife you may want to consider getting a formal, qualified retrospective home appraisal to document your wife's half interest of the property's fair market value as of the date of your wife's death (which became 1/2 of your home's tax basis at that date). If you expect a large taxable gain upon sale such a qualified appraisal may help avoid protracted arguments about your home's changed tax basis with state and federal taxing authorities that you will report for the year when you sell your home. You may want to note in your planning that as you did not sell the home in 2025 the $500K MFJ IRC 121 maximum exclusion of sale of your residence changed to the lower single $250K maximum exclusion in 2026. A third thing to consider in your tax planning is that when you sell if you do have a large taxable gain that as a person on Medicare parts B & D that gain may trigger additional IRMAA premiums in the second year after the gain occurs. I have considered establishing a revocable living trust (RLT) to transfer our home's title to but it currently seems likely that we or the surviving spouse will sell our home during life. If we change our planning and we agree that the survivor will live in our home through the end of life then a transfer to a RLT during life where our heirs (our children) should get a DOD step-up to the full 100% FMV and completely avoid any taxable gain on our home sale. We will make our final decision about a RLT in the next few years. I hope my thoughts help. Best, Bill

  Post: Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 7

  Link to comment from September 4, 2026

• If a future NUA has limited value to you then if you are concerned about the concentration from owning a high percentage of XOM I would hope you have the option to diversify within your 401(k). Before retirement I previously had some 1040 tax clients whose 401(k) plans/funds had lower expense ratios than what is available at Vanguard so leaving their funds in their 401(k) made more sense than rolling to a 401(k).

  Post: Blood Money

  Link to comment from September 2, 2026

• I have bought mostly 10-year TIPS, about half at auction, half on the secondary market. I have one more rung to buy in January 2028 to have a full 10 year ladder. Some are currently in traditional IRAs some in Roth's. I consider each year a separate rung. Rolling to me means each time one matures I will buy another as long as my wife or I am alive with the future amount purchased being the original purchase amount + the amount of increase in principal from the inflation adjusted interest increase rounded to the nearest $1K. If we both live another 7 years then all 10 rungs of the ladder should all be in our Roth accounts via in kind conversions. We are capping the maturity at 10 years so our children would be able to hold them to maturity if they so desire when we are both gone. All of our IRA have the other spouse as sole primary beneficiary and our three children are equal ownership contingent beneficiaries. Therefore, outside of the surviving spouse needing to assume the first to die spouse's IRAs, our children should be able to avoid any IRA having to go through the administrative headache of probate on our IRAs. The surviving spouse would have the ability, but not the obligation, to disclaim all or part of the deceased spouses IRAs should that make sense when the first spouse dies. All of the above is of course contingent on future events should the funds be needed sooner or because of unexpected tax law changes that makes our current planning a poor choice to continue. Best, Bill P.

  Post: Traditional or Roth

  Link to comment from September 1, 2026

• AD = Active Duty TX, FL, TN = three states without state income taxes Being on active duty Alaska = another state without a state income tax and also getting yearly income from the Permanent Fund Dividend

  Post: What’s your Domicile?

  Link to comment from September 1, 2026

• Thanks for this article Rick. As you are planning for a possible 2026 Roth conversion I wonder if you are considering funding any of the conversion with a in kind conversion of stocks or bonds? I funded a part of a Roth conversion earlier this year with a TIPS asset I had held for a while in a traditional IRA as the inflation adjusted principal amount was more than the current market value of the TIPS due to a increase in Treasury market real yields. My thinking is that as long as the TIPS are held to maturity in the Roth that we should come out ahead. Our purpose of the TIPS in the Roth is a guaranteed inflation protected income stream for the surviving spouse when either my spouse or I dies. I recall that Jonathan wrote a number of years ago when the market took a big dip that he converted a big chunk of his Vanguard global equity index fund and the logic of how doing so was not market timing as he was basically doing so as a long term tax arbitrage with those assets going to his then future heirs and not being assets that he or his spouse planned to spend during their lifetime.

  Post: Traditional or Roth

  Link to comment from August 31, 2026

• Not sure I follow the intent of your question Nick. Many or most of us own a bit of XOM if we invest in a broad based mutual or EFT's. For XOM (Exxonmobile) the current ownership percentages, approximately, for three common ETF index are VYM (Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index) 2.6%, VOO (VG S&P 500 index) 1.0%, VT ( Vanguard Total World Stock Index ) 0.5%. My understanding is Michael was an employee of XOM and his 401(k) likely has high ownership of his former employer. If so, why he has not diversified within his 401(k) would be an interesting topic to me. § 1.401(a)(35)-1 provides diversification requirements for certain defined contribution plans.

  Post: Blood Money

  Link to comment from August 26, 2026

• Careful Dan, some in the beltway may think your comment is serious.

  Post: Americans and their credit cards

  Link to comment from August 25, 2026

• Would the option of steel taps, if you had purchased them, set off alarms at airport? You may have missed an adventure and the resulting After Action Report (AAR) recap. I just read your AAR about your trip to Vancouver and immediately thought about asking if your trip revealed anything about the current state of American Canadian relations. Your Vancouver AAR includes the line "The server explained that, due to the obvious reason, there were no American spirits on the menu..." tells me all I need to know.

  Post: You Heel!

  Link to comment from August 24, 2026

• In the county I live in there recently has been just two smaller local financial institutions who still redeemed US government paper savings bonds. Both financial institutions (one a bank with a state charter, one a credit union) has limited that service strictly for their own account holders whose banking accounts are with long term customers with active accounts. With all of the changes currently occurring at Treasury Direct my expectation is the number of financial institutions redeeming old paper savings bonds for customers will soon be zero. Over the counter sales of paper savings bonds ended in 2012 and the purchase of paper savings Bonds using overpayment of taxes (which next to no one did) ended in 2025. If you own paper US Bonds you are likely doing your heirs a favor by redeeming them sooner rather than later.

  Post: TreasuryDirect changing login procedure to mandate ID.me later in 2026

  Link to comment from August 24, 2026

• The below UGH lyrics was sung often by the camp staff at Camp Buck Toms when a birthday occurred during summer camp. So Happy Birthday to a Scout leader and thank you for all you have done. Best, Bill Happy Birthday, Ugh. Happy Birthday, Ugh. Ha-a-a-a-appy Birthday, Ugh.

  1. Pain and sorrow in the air,
  2. Death around us everywhere.
  3. But...
  5. One year closer to the grave,
  6. Think of all the food we'll save
  7. But...
  9. Easter Bunny broke his leg,
  10. Bled all over the Easter Eggs,
  11. But...
  13. Santa Claus wrecked his sleigh,
  14. No more presents Christmas day.
  15. But...

  Post: Reaching Two-thirds of a Century!

  Link to comment from August 23, 2026