I am trying to figure out adult financial things like how not to be poor later in life... Why have these things not been thought!? I also never hear anybody talking about it, like we are hiding a big secret?

@maruno be a boomer and destroy all social security for future generations, while benefiting from when it was all still around (of course with a side of complaining about how "those millennials don't know how too bootstrap themselves like I did in my youth")

@maruno ETF savings plan does the trick for me

@uvok Yes, I am trying to use ETFs more and more and build up a bit in 1,5 years but not the tax office comes around and wants it all. :D

But apparently there is black tax magic that can help, but it's not easy to understand or determine what is smart. All I ever heard people talk about was pension with the employer but not every employer gives this or enough...

@deetwenty Well, it certainly is still possible but they never thought how! Now I am hitting my head that I didn't start looking at it earlier. Just battling the insane tax increases somehow.

@maruno it has been thought of but they set it up in such a way that only boomers get to benefit

@maruno you can also thank the boomers (or more exactly those with a boomer mentality which sadly isn't bound by age) for those tax increases

@maruno here at least there is a second method that is more risky and only gen xers get to benefit from it

@charlotte What I am looking at to not pay as much taxes would be locked till legtal retirement age. That does kind of suck, cause I already don't feel like I will make it that long, nor do I really want to...

So will have to look at some hybrid strategy.

@charlotte I do like risk! And I think more people should. What my tiny company pension calls 'offensive' is hardly that at all and starting at some age they are forcing bonds... If you can influence the decisions on how it is invested that can help a lot. When you're young you can handle the risk.

@maruno
I am not a tax advisor, this is not tax advice.
Here's how I do it (Germany).

I have both a distributing ETF, so I nearly fill my Freistellungsauftrag with it. And then a accumulating one. Due to the Vorabpauschale this eats from the FSA as well.
And I have Tagesgeld and Festgeld (about 20%).

Luckily the tax is only 25%, not the "full" tax from my income.

I have a "pension" at my employer as well. It's kinda moot, since the employer only pays the minimum amount required, though.

@uvok I am passing the tax free amount and will have to start paying a hefty percentage over a fictitious yearly 7% of gains I 'should be able to get'. You can complain about that, but then you loose the tax free amount...

What I want to look at is move parts to a pension investment account, anything I put there I can deduct from my income taxes and not pay gains taxes, but I would have to pay income tax when I get it after the legal retirement age. But my current income taxes bracket is 50% and I can lower it to 39% like that.

The downside is not being able to use that at all till 68+... So I will likely do a bit of both, as I feel myself crumbling apart already :')

@deetwenty It is just the system of capitalism gone wrong that attempts to force people to work till 68+...

@maruno not capitalism gone wrong, just capitalism working as intended

@deetwenty Hmm, is it? Theoretically if we had true capitalism and I wouldn't pay absurd amounts of taxes I guess financial independence could already be achievable? Instead we are enslaved to the state.

@maruno do note (free) markets != capitalism, capitalism is just that a few people (aka the capitalists) have control over the means of production (aka access to capital), to those people that the plebs pay high taxes doesn't matter so long as they don't pay any. A strong state can give a counter to this (including keeping markets free from monopolies the real meaning of free market), but if the state gets co-opted by the capitalist they will start dismantling that, so yes this is "true capitalism"

@deetwenty Whatever the name of the system that exploits us it was heavily oversold to me:

1) Go in debt to educate into IT
2) Do 'honest work' by working a high stress high pay job
3) Your brain is now cooked to perfection and your body is crumbling apart and can no longer sustain the work.
4) Live of what you earned and enjoy life?

Step comes a lot earlier than advertised and step 4 is being taken away by our exploitive government....

@maruno you might want to try anarchism then 😜

Though do note that the government is (mostly) eroding our rights in name of "the economy" which means mostly things like GDP (often by advise of mainstream economists), note that GDP (and other such metrics) is already a bad metric and by "Goodhart's law" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law?wprov=sfla1 ) it kinda becomes worthless, the only people who stand to benefit are the capitalists, and guess which politicians get very cosy retirements from these capitalists?

So yeah though the government is partly to blame, it is mostly just a shield so we don't blame the true villains of our hardship ( big corporations and the ultra rich, aka the capitalists)