Sean Mullaney

Boy, paying taxes then isn't that great because you got two mouths to feed, you have a spouse, you haven't built up all this financial wealth.

And even early retirement, the beginning of retirement isn't the greatest time to pay taxes either because look, you might have 30 or 40 years of retirement you have to fund.

Paying some money to Uncle Sam at that point isn't that great because now that's money that could have been invested for your financial future.

To the extent people worry about sequence of returns risks, not something I worry a whole lot about, but it's not a nothing concern.

Paying taxes up front in the early part of retirement is not a great thing to do.

So if we're going to have, say, Irma in the later years of our retirement because we did traditional retirement accounts a little too much, say, well, you've essentially picked a really good time to pay tax because at that point it can't be as impactful to your financial future.

At that point, these inefficiencies, sometimes I refer to these inefficiencies as garbage time touchdowns, right?

You use these traditional retirement accounts, you won against the IRS when you were working, you then spent down taxable brokerage accounts early in the first part of retirement, you won against the IRS, and then maybe later in life,

you have these inefficiencies that come after decades of defeating the IRS.

Maybe what you've done is you've picked a pretty good time to pay taxes, because at that point, one of two things is true.

If you're paying IRMA, you're financially affluent, you're well above most Americans in terms of financial success.

So you're paying the surcharge or maybe a little incremental tax on the income tax side at a time where you're already wealthier than most of your cohorts in that age group and overall Americans.

So you've done really well and you have a few tax inefficiencies.

That's an outcome most Americans would gladly sign up for.

And these inefficiencies come after decades of defeating the IRS.

I am a lifelong or almost lifelong New York Jets fan, and I've seen plenty of garbage on touchdowns.

There are scores by the other side that ultimately are not determinative of the ultimate outcome.

And that's what we're looking for is financial success.

As much as we're trying to reduce taxes, that's an important priority.

But the ultimate priority is financial success.