The Power of Zero: How to Get to the 0% Tax Bracket and Transform Your Retirement

My wife picked this up at an investment advisor’s office. He was giving away to his clients. She asked me to read it.

The basic message is this: taxes are very, very low right now. Historically low.

So: pay your taxes now. Don’t invest in tax-deferred accounts, because you’ll just have to pay taxes later, and taxes will be higher then. He makes this case by drifting into politics and explaining how the government has spent too much money, etc. etc.

Again, pay taxes now. Invest your after-tax, so you you can take it out tax-free later. This is “the power of zero.”

He goes into some depth about specific investment vehicles, and some of this got complex. I didn’t follow it all (I’m not great with money).

As an aside, this is an investment/financial book, clearly. but the message was quite interesting from a political standpoint.

When discussing why tax rates were going to rise in the future, this reads like a conservative manifesto. The government spends too much! It’s time to pay the piper! Etc.

But the central message is this: taxes are at an all-time low. This flies in the face of seemingly every current conservative argument about taxes.

But, good book for the narrow point it makes. The details are tedious, but if you understand the core argument, I feel like it would be helpful for you.