Knowledge Base
Tax strategy, healthcare before Medicare, the post-FIRE identity shift, and the financial decisions that get more complicated after you stop earning.
1054 articles — page 19 of 88
Colorado taxes non-resident capital gains at a flat 4.40% state rate on Colorado-sourced income. That number sounds manageable in isolation. Stack it with the 20% federal long-term rate and the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax, and a single real estate sale can generate a combined marginal rate approa
At the top federal bracket, the combined marginal rate on short-term capital gains hits 40.8%. Long-term gains: 23.8%. On a $500,000 annual gain from a $5M portfolio, that spread is roughly $85,000 in a single year. Tax management at this level is not a marginal optimization. It is material wealth p
Interest rate cycles are the recurring patterns of monetary tightening and easing that central banks use to manage inflation and growth. For most investors, these cycles are background noise. For anyone holding concentrated real estate positions, large fixed-income allocations, or private equity sta
Private banking interest rates are rarely the main event. For clients with $5M or more in investable assets, the deposit rate differential over a Treasury bill is often marginal once you account for taxes, fees, and counterparty concentration risk. The real yield advantage sits on the borrowing side
The Federal Reserve's 2022–2024 tightening cycle delivered 525 basis points of rate hikes across 11 increases, bringing the federal funds target range to 5.25–5.50% by July 2023. That is the highest level since 2001. For anyone managing a portfolio north of $5M, higher for longer interest rates are
Tax lien interest rates by state range from 5% to 36% annually on paper. The operative phrase is "on paper." Before you allocate capital here, you need to understand the gap between statutory maximums and actual after-tax yields, which for a FATFIRE investor in the top federal bracket can be 40% nar
The annual interest rate is the percentage of a principal balance earned or charged over one year. Simple enough. But for anyone managing a portfolio north of $5M, the nominal rate is almost never the number that matters. After-tax yield, real purchasing power, compounding frequency, and credit spre
The interest rate corridor is the structural framework central banks use to keep overnight lending rates from drifting away from their policy targets. It sets a ceiling (the rate at which banks can borrow from the central bank) and a floor (the rate banks earn on reserves parked at the central bank)
Cayman Islands bank account interest rates for standard deposit accounts currently run 2–4% depending on term and balance tier, but that headline number is almost entirely the wrong thing to focus on. US 6-month Treasury bills yield approximately 5.2% as of 2024, carry zero credit risk, and generate
The confusion between IRR and interest rate is not a beginner's mistake. It shows up in how sophisticated investors frame capital allocation decisions, set hurdle rates, and compare deals across asset classes. Get the distinction wrong on a $10M deployment and you may optimize for a metric that flat
The OPM interest rate on your military service deposit has ranged from 13% in the mid-1980s to below 2% in the early 2020s. That spread is not academic. On a $15,000 deposit left unpaid for a decade, the difference between a 2% and a 4.25% compounding rate is roughly $7,500 in additional cost before
Interest rates in the 1980s reached levels that remain unmatched in modern U.S. monetary history. The federal funds rate peaked at 20% in June 1981, 30-year mortgage rates hit 18.6% the same year, and CPI had already touched 14.8% in March 1980. This wasn't a policy accident. It was a deliberate, pa