Welcome to PSA Thursday. This is a weekly-ish bonus segment of the

Affordable Care Podcast in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life

in the context of 2020. If you are a new listener, here's what you can expect.

These PSA Thursday episodes are nothing like our normal episodes. They have no

intro music, no outro music. They're intentionally kept ad-free. There's no

production value. They're typically much shorter than our normal episodes. They

are hyper-focused on one specific actionable topic that relates to life in 2020.

Today is our Christmas Eve episode, and we're going to be talking about the most

cheerful holiday topic ever. End of Year Tax Planning. Wow, leave it to a

financial podcast to really know how to get into the holiday spirit. So, this

show comes out on Christmas Eve. You've got a week left to make any financial

moves that you need to make before the December 31st tax deadline. Other people

refer to that as New Year's Eve, but over here we refer to that as the tax

deadline. Specifically, tax moves, not tax filing. So, what move should you make

before the deadline hits? Here are a handful of suggestions. Number one, if there

are any retirement accounts that you need to open so that you can make

contributions for the year 2020, make sure that they are opened before December

31st. For example, if you want to open a Trad IRA or a Roth IRA, you can still

make contributions in 2021 up until the tax filing deadline of 2021. You can

still make contributions prior to the tax filing deadline in 2021 that can be

retroactively applied to your contribution limits to calendar year 2020, but the

account must be open before December 31st. So, in 2021, like in January or

...