SwitchWize Research Desk
Money decisions, dollarized.
SwitchWize Research Desk: sharp, sourced explainers on the money decisions that move real dollars. Taxes, retirement, rates, borrowing, and the rules most people get backward.
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The Capital Letters
Buffett, Dimon, and Bezos shareholder letters, translated into everyday money decisions.
Latest from the desk
Your Home Insurance Bill Quietly Outran Inflation. Auto-Renewing Is Costing You Hundreds.
Home insurance has risen far faster than wages or prices since 2021, and the single most expensive habit is the most natural one: letting the policy auto-renew. Hurricane season is the wrong time to discover that, which makes now the right time to act.
The New Car Loan Tax Break Is Not Worth $10,000 to You. Here Is What It Is Actually Worth.
The headline number is $10,000. The number that lands in a typical buyer's pocket is closer to $700, and only if the car clears three rules most people have not read. The cap is not the story. Eligibility is.
Not All Your Overtime Is Tax-Free. The Word That Decides It Is 'FLSA'.
The new overtime deduction is real and worth up to $12,500. But it only covers overtime that federal law requires, which means the extra pay from your union contract, your state rules, or your employer's own policy may not count at all.
The Tip Deduction Rewards the Tips You Reported. The Ones You Did Not Were Never Eligible.
The new deduction can shelter up to $25,000 of tips from federal income tax. But it only counts tips that were reported, in occupations the IRS has put on a list. The cash that never made it onto a pay stub was never going to qualify.
Your Student Loan Plan Is Being Discontinued. Doing Nothing Picks the New One for You.
The OBBBA collapses the old menu of repayment plans. SAVE is gone, and PAYE and ICR are sunsetting. If you take no action by 2028, you are automatically moved into RAP, a plan that charges a percentage of your entire income, whether or not it is your cheapest option.
Take the Free $1,000 for Your Newborn. Think Twice Before You Add a Dollar of Your Own.
The new Trump Account hands eligible babies $1,000 of government seed money. Claiming it is close to a no-brainer. Treating the account as the best home for your own savings is where the decision gets harder, because of how the money is taxed coming out.
Leftover College Money Is Not Trapped. It Can Become Your Kid's First Retirement Account.
Parents agonize over overfunding a 529 because the exit used to mean a penalty. A 2022 law opened a door: unused 529 money can roll into the beneficiary's Roth IRA, tax-free and penalty-free, within limits worth knowing.
The Best Retirement Account in the Tax Code Is Disguised as a Medical Account.
Most people treat their HSA like a checking account for copays. Used that way, it is fine. Used the way the tax code actually allows, it is the only account that is never taxed going in, growing, or coming out.
One Dollar of Income Can Cost a Retired Couple $2,297. It Is Called IRMAA.
Medicare's income surcharge is not a slope, it is a cliff. Cross a threshold by a single dollar and the full surcharge lands, retroactively, on income you earned two years ago. The good news: it is one of the most plannable costs in retirement.
Tax-Loss Harvesting Is a December Ritual. That Is Exactly Why You Should Do It in June.
Everyone waits until year-end to harvest losses, which means everyone competes for the same dips at the same time and forfeits six months of flexibility. The losses sitting in your account right now spend just as well in summer.
The Reason Everyone Gave for Converting to a Roth Just Disappeared. The Real Reason Did Not.
For years the pitch was 'convert before tax rates jump in 2026.' Then the 2025 law made those rates permanent, and the deadline evaporated. The case that remains is quieter, more personal, and worth more money than the one you lost.
A 22% Social Security Cut Is Coming in 2032. The Lever You Control Is Bigger Than the Cut.
The trustees just moved the insolvency date up to late 2032, and the headlines are all about the across-the-board haircut. The decision that moves more of your money is the one almost nobody is talking about: when you claim.
Your Credit Card APR Was Never Waiting for the Fed. Today Confirmed It.
Card rates barely move when the Fed cuts, and the Fed just removed the cut anyway. If you are carrying a balance at the average 24% APR, the relief you were waiting for is not coming. The lever that actually works is still sitting on the table.
The Gap Between What Your Bank Pays and What It Could Pay Just Got Locked In.
The SwitchWize Bank Gap Index measures the distance between the typical bank's deposit rate and the top of the market. Today's Fed decision did not narrow that distance. It removed the last reason to expect it to narrow on its own.
Locking a Five-Year CD Today Means Betting Against the Fed's Own Forecast.
A one-year CD currently pays about as much as a five-year one. That flat curve is the market telling you it does not expect rates to fall. Reading it correctly changes how you lock up cash.
The Fed Just Took Your Rate Cut Off the Table. Here Is What That Does to Your Cash.
The one rate cut the Fed had penciled in for 2026 is gone. The gap between what your bank pays and what it could pay did not just survive today's meeting. It got locked in.
Three Safe Places for Idle Cash Now Pay About the Same. The Tiebreaker Is Not the Yield.
Top high-yield savings, short Treasury bills, and I bonds all cluster near 4% this summer. When the headline rates converge, the real decision moves to taxes, liquidity, and lockups, which is where most savers are not looking.
Paying Off Your Mortgage Got More Tempting Today. Whether You Should Comes Down to One Number.
With the Fed's projected rate cut now erased, the guaranteed return on extra mortgage principal stops competing with a falling cash yield and starts competing with a flat one. The answer still hinges on the rate you are actually paying.