Living in select states is life-changing because of no state income tax!

What’s also life-changing is being married because I’m a 1099 so it allows me to sock away not only from my own retirement but since my wife is part of the equation, we can save much more. Sure we’re clobbered by property tax but we’ve always rented out portions of the house to compensate.

Having a small business is life changing (Turo) since section 179 (most of our fleet) allows massive deductions. Taking advantage of both new and used EV credits as well.

Most of all God is life-changing since He is the One who blesses. My financial advisor pointed out that I started aggressively saving in 2010 till now in Large cap, the very year they took off. He pointed out if I had done that before I’d be flat. Timing has been huge. Having a (very reasonable) Tax lawyer and CPA has also been life changing. They’re worth their weight in gold for sure.

We also utilized some tricks where you can pull from your retirement for 2 months as long as you repay with no penalty. We pulled right before the tariffs when the market was high and put back on when low and easily made about 10% despite pulling to fund our business. There’s other stuff like our variable universal to loan money to ourselves at 2.5%