It’s often misunderstood how the states and feds tax us. A misconception is that once someone hits a certain income, all of their hard-earned money gets taxed at a higher rate. This is not the case.

2024 — The markets, a Trump election victory, and whatever happened in your freelance industry. What did it all mean for our i401k portfolio and the goal of chill-retirement?

Forget the outdated retirement stereotype of working until you drop, then shuffling off with a gold watch. As a solopreneur or freelancer, you can design something better: working less while your investments pick up the slack. The question is: how big does that investment portfolio need to be?

The Three-Fund Portfolio — Freelancers, it’s pretty much the only investment we need in the stock market. U.S. Stocks, International Stocks, plus Bonds

More in our series of ‘More for us, less for you IRS!’

Below is a list of the various tax-advantaged accounts we can have as freelancers. Learn the ways of the force, I mean accounts. As freelancers, investing is our ultimate side hustle.

The stock market is often widely misunderstood due to the hype in the media reporting on short-term market moves. That and the jibba-jabba of your next door neighbor or some guy in a bar. It’s the long term that matters. We need to ignore the noise.

The Beneficiary Ownership Information Report.

UPDATE: As of March 26th, 2025 the whole thing got thrown out. Now only foreign companies have to fill it out.

i401k investors — IRS Form 5500-EZ could cost you a $150,000 fine. EVERY YEAR.

Vanguard exits managing i401k accounts - but we still love their ETFs and funds. Let’s chat about what i401k provider to use.

The HSA (Health Savings Account. Make your out-of-pocket medical expenses a sweet tax deduction. The money is always yours; it’s not ‘use it or lose it.’

2023 goes down as a classic example of how no one can predict the economy or the stock market. The Wall Street Journal’s headline was, “What Did Wall Street Get Right About Markets This Year? Not Much”

The Empower Financial Dashboard: the magic crystal ball for freelancers that shows you your whole financial and investment life. And, it's free.

This is called stock picking. Investors try to pick winning companies like Apple and Telsa or some unknown startup. Here is the problem, no one who stock picks will ever beat a three-fund portfolio long term!

The thing that trips investors up is their emotional response. The market isn’t the problem, our brains that evolved on the savannah are.

So it looks like a new generation of investors are catching on to our way of thinking accord to CNBC. Get rich slow.