Capital Loss Harvesting

Back in February I mentioned that my family's investments had become more liquid because our prior investment style of "buy wisely and hold" was upset by politics.

As a result, this year we get to try out capital loss harvesting.

We could sell appreciated investments to "balance out" our investment that depreciated.  That was our routine before 2013, to get what liquidity we could tax-free.  But this year it makes more sense to lower our income taxes.

Each tax year, capital loss up to a certain amount ($3,000 this year) can be used to negate ordinary income.  Any extra capital loss can be carried forward indefinitely to use in future years, either to "balance out" capital gains or to offset a portion of ordinary income.

(There are some tricky details.  Capital gain and loss has short-term and long-term flavors with slightly different rules.  My summary is only an overview.)

Hooray for a bigger tax refund in April.

Tangentially, that liquidity blog post also mentioned how we give interest-free loans to friends running local small businesses.  That is type of benevolence mentioned often in scripture, but unlike tithing a numerical amount is never suggested or required.  We currently have about 3% of our savings out in these interest-free loans.  I am still praying for more guidance.