5 Tax-Efficient Strategies to Include in Your Retirement Plan

  1. Leverage the Roth IRA advantage.
  2. Open a spousal IRA.
  3. Find out if you can benefit from tax-exempt municipal bonds.
  4. Maintain a whole life insurance policy as an asset.
  5. Consider tax-efficient options for charitable giving.

There is a relatively narrow window of time to act to potentially reduce your tax burden and although accountants and tax preparers focus on cutting your taxes today, not all can project what taxes might look like in the future.

Very few people have much, if any, money in the ‘tax never’ category. Sharing your most recent income-tax return can more accurately project your long-term tax profile.

Our Thrivent proprietary tool, What-If Tax, can generate side-by-side hypotheticals involving many of the tax-reducing tactics discussed above. Using this and other Thrivent applications, financial professionals can work alongside the client’s tax professional to provide tradeoffs and suggest options. You’ll benefit from seeing upcoming life events from a tax perspective.

Summing up the financial professional’s role in helping you reduce taxes, Hussian says: “What if your friend is growing a vegetable garden and they’re losing two out of 10 of their vegetables to poor soil conditions? If I could show them ways to lower that loss to 10%, I’m giving them something valuable.”

Tax Efficient Strategies-Thrivent