🎁 you can harvest investment GAINS too


Good morning Reader,

As I write this, Bitcoin is at $87,923, up almost 44% in six months.

Yet I still own almost no bitcoin. (I have a smidge on Coinbase from who knows where)

I'm not anti-bitcoin. I think it's cool technology albeit a tragic consumer of natural resources. I'm just anti-speculation. I also don't like how rabid bitcoin fans identify so strongly with their investments.​

I don't need it in my life and so I haven't devoted the time and attention to learn it enough.

For those bitcoin aficionados, kudos to you! I've missed more bull runs than I've participated in and I'm OK with that. πŸ˜‚


​(View this email as a webpage)​

πŸ§‘β€πŸŒΎ You can harvest capital gains

Everyone talks about harvesting capital losses but after the market went up up up this year, you may be sitting on some capital gains you'd like to realize.

If you are in a lower tax bracket (perhaps the 0% one), you could employ what's known as capital gains harvesting too.

β€‹πŸ‘‰ What is capital gains harvesting?​

πŸš€ Can Rocket Money Help Your Budget?

When Mint closed down earlier this year, a lot of budgeting tools scrambled to fill the void.

One of them, Rocket Money, looked to fit a specific role in your toolkit - to help you manage, negotiate, and cancel subscriptions.

They offer a lot more than that but the big difference between them and other budgeting tools is their subscription management services.

We did a comprehensive review:

β€‹πŸ‘‰ Is Rocket Money Right For You?​

πŸ—ΊοΈ Why Economists Hate Tariffs

Tariffs have been in the news a lot because Trump wants to bring them back. Most people do not understand how tariffs work (the company importing the goods pays the tariffs, not the producer) and fewer understand the downstream effects (even the positive ones).

This 8-minute Wall Street Journal video does a great job explaining it, with real-life examples from Trump's first term:

β€‹πŸ‘‰ Why Economists Hate Donald Trump's Tariff Plan​

What did you think of today's email?​
βœ… I Loved It! 🟨 It Was Okay ❌ Not My Favorite​

Take care!

Jim

PS. Did you know that the S&P 500 has hit 50 all-time highs in 2024? It broke 5,000 in February and then 6,000 this month. Incredible! Stay invested folks!

​(see our archive of previous emails)​


You signed up for this newsletter via wallethacks.com​

We respect you and your attention. If you no longer wish to get emails from us, you can unsubscribe and we will still be friends.​

If you like sending gifts, we like getting them here - P.O Box 323, Fulton, MD 20759

Hi, I'm Jim Wang and I share my strategies and tactics for managing your money and enjoying more out of life.

I have been writing about money for nearly 20 years and believe that personal finance is one of those subjects that is made complicated because it benefits a select few. Our aim is to help make it easier to understand so that regular folks can use what we teach to take control of their money and build wealth.

Read more from Hi, I'm Jim Wang and I share my strategies and tactics for managing your money and enjoying more out of life.

Good morning Reader! Two days ago, our schools closed early because there was a big storm coming through with threat of tornados. Understandably, they didn't want school buses out there shuttling kids while warnings were in effect. The storm ended up not being nearly as bad and some clamored to Facebook to complain about the forecast... which I found mind-boggling. It's like paying for car insurance and then complaining you never got into an accident. Prepare for the worst, hope for the...

Good morning Reader! The Iran war is now longer and bigger than initially expected and it's going to impact your finances in ways beyond the stock market. For now, the biggest concern beyond the human toll is the price of oil. A barrel of crude flew above $100 earlier in the week, which hasn't happened since July 2022, before falling back down to under $85 yesterday. Energy goes into everything and so the longer the war lasts, the more prices will stay higher because of higher fuel and...

Good morning Reader! Yesterday shows you just how impossible it is to predict the stock market. The Dow fell over a 1200 points (with other indices doing similarly) before recovering to a loss of just 400. Why? The war in Iran. But that started over the weekend, why did investors until Tuesday to have their panic? That's hard to say. But the best guess is that we expected something similar to Venezuela (US swoops in, snatches Maduro, conflict ends) but Iran didn't lie down. Longer conflicts,...