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John Koyle, Financial Advisor, 1414 E Center Street, Pocatello, ID (2026)

10/14/2026

Here's a mistake I see constantly: people run their retirement numbers once.

The closer you get to the finish line, the more aggressively you need to test the math. There's a massive difference between a financial projection and a financial stress test.

A projection is standard industry practice. You plug in your balance, assume a steady 7% market return, factor in inflation, pick a retirement date, and the calculator shows you a straight line of success. That future feels incredibly real simply because it has a precise number attached to it.

A stress test is completely different. A stress test is where you go into your plan and deliberately try to break it. What happens to your score if the market only returns 5% for the next decade? What if inflation runs at 4% instead of 2.5% — a reality we lived through very recently? What if you're forced to retire two years earlier than planned because your health or your industry changes? What if you spend $1,000 a month more than you budgeted?

A bad market in your first five years of retirement does permanent compounding damage that the same market ten years later does not.

Most people never model any of it. They look at a sunny projection, feel a false sense of security, and close the browser. You don't know if your plan works until you've tried to break it.

Run your numbers: https://plan.johnkoyle.com?utm_source=facebook
Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163127

10/13/2026

Here's an investment idea most retirees overlook, and they shouldn't: tax-free bonds.

Who doesn't love tax-free income? Municipal bonds pay interest that's exempt from federal tax, and if you buy bonds issued in your own state, that interest is usually exempt from state tax also.

Here's why that matters more than the headline rate suggests. A municipal bond paying 4% isn't competing against a Treasury paying 4%. It's competing against whatever a taxable bond would need to pay to leave you with the same money after tax. That's the tax-equivalent yield. If you're in the 32% bracket, a 4% tax-free bond is worth about 5.9% taxable. Add state tax and the gap widens further.

So the comparison most people make is the wrong one. They look at the coupon, see a smaller number, and assume municipals pay less. For someone in a high bracket in a high-tax state, they frequently pay more.

A few things to understand before you go looking. Municipal interest doesn't count as taxable income, but it counts in the formula that determines how much of your Social Security gets taxed, and it counts toward your Medicare premium surcharge. Tax-free, but not invisible. Credit quality varies enormously — a general obligation bond backed by a state's taxing power is a completely different instrument from a revenue bond backed by one project's cash flow. And they belong in a taxable account. Put a tax-free bond inside an IRA and you've wasted the entire advantage, because everything in an IRA comes out as ordinary income anyway.

The reason I'm paying attention now is simple. Interest rates haven't been at these levels in two decades, and that resets what these bonds pay. Whether it fits depends on your bracket, your state, and what the rest of your portfolio already looks like.

Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163123

10/12/2026

Everyone's telling you to do a Roth conversion. Sometimes it's the wrong move.

A conversion is a bet. You're paying a known tax rate today to avoid paying an unknown tax rate later. Here's when that bet goes against you.

First, when you don't have money outside your retirement accounts to pay the tax. If the tax comes out of the IRA itself, less money lands in the Roth and you've shrunk the account that was supposed to grow. And if you're under 59½, the withheld portion counts as a distribution, so you pay a 10% penalty on top.

Second, when your retirement plan is already tight. If your plan's success probability is mediocre, a conversion takes money off the table right now in exchange for a benefit that shows up maybe two decades later. The break-even is often in your 80s. If the plan is fragile today, you may not get there.

Third, when you expect low returns. The entire advantage of a Roth is tax-free compounding. If your money is going to grow slowly, there's less growth to shelter and you paid the tax anyway. And if the market drops right after you convert, you've paid tax on a balance that no longer exists.

Fourth, when you'll be in a lower bracket later. Convert at 32% to avoid 22% and you've paid extra for the privilege. This catches people who convert during their final working years instead of waiting for the gap between retiring and required minimum distributions.

Fifth, when you're moving to a state with no income tax. Wait until after the move.

Sixth, when you're in poor health. The benefit compounds over time, and a shorter horizon means the break-even may never arrive.

And here's the one nobody explains: non-deductible IRA basis. If you ever contributed to a traditional IRA without taking a deduction, part of your IRA is money you already paid tax on. You'd think you could convert just that part tax-free. You can't. The IRS applies a pro-rata rule across all your IRAs combined — if 10% of your total balance is basis, 10% of any conversion comes out tax-free and 90% is taxable, no matter which account you pull from.

None of this means don't convert. I'm a huge fan of Roth conversions and I can show you the benefits. It means running the math for your situation before you write the check to the IRS.

Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163088

10/11/2026

Are you filing your taxes the right way? Most people never think about it. You got married, so you file jointly. You're single, so you file single.

But your filing status sets your standard deduction, your tax bracket width, and your eligibility for half of the credits in the code. Pick wrong and you pay more for no reason. Here's how to figure out which one you are.

First, married filing jointly. If you're married, this is almost always the answer — a $32,200 standard deduction for 2026, the widest brackets, and you keep access to credits that disappear the moment you file separately. The catch is you're both liable for the whole return, including anything your spouse got wrong.

Second, married filing separately. This is the trap. You lose the student loan interest deduction, most education credits, and the Roth contribution income limit drops to essentially nothing. There are real reasons to use it — an income-driven student loan repayment plan, or protecting yourself from a spouse's tax problems — but it's rarely the cheaper option. Run it both ways before you choose.

Third, head of household. You need three things: unmarried or considered unmarried on December 31st, paying more than half the cost of keeping up your home, and a qualifying person living with you more than half the year. A child, usually. Sometimes a parent, and the parent doesn't have to live with you.

Fourth, qualifying surviving spouse. If your spouse died, you can keep filing with joint brackets and the joint standard deduction for two years after the year of death, as long as you have a dependent child. Most people don't know this exists and file single the year after a funeral.

And here's what almost nobody realizes. If your spouse dies and you don't have a dependent child, you go from joint brackets to single brackets immediately in the following year. Same income, roughly half the bracket width. That's the widow's penalty, and it's one of the biggest tax increases that happens automatically in retirement.

Your status is determined by your situation on December 31st. Not the average of the year. One day.

Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163135

10/10/2026

Are you aware of the Roth conversion strategy that's hated the most by the IRS? It's not the flashy one. It's the boring one — and it costs the IRS a fortune.

First, the options. Some people don't convert at all. Some convert everything at once — most people shouldn't do that. Some convert a set dollar amount every year. Some wait for a down market so they're converting shares while prices are low. Some use the gap years between retirement and Social Security, when income is at its lowest. And some want to pass on as much as possible to their heirs no matter what it costs them in taxes along the way. Those are all real approaches.

The one the IRS hates is paying the least federal income tax over your entire lifetime. Not just this year.

It starts with a map we create for you — the retirement income and tax blueprint. We lay out your spending needs for every year going forward, and then your income for every year going forward: salary, Social Security, pensions, required minimum distributions, all of it. Then we map out where we think the tax price will be in each of those years. Now you can see which years are cheap from a tax perspective and which ones are expensive. And believe me, if you have a large pre-tax balance, the years your RMDs start hitting can get very expensive.

Most people never do this. They look at this year's bracket and stop. They don't see required minimum distributions piling on top of Social Security in their 70s, or a survivor filing single with about half the bracket room after a spouse passes. That goes into the blueprint too.

Once the whole picture is in front of you, we build the full plan up front. Then you execute it one year at a time, filling up the cheaper brackets on purpose. Start at the calculator so I already have your numbers when we talk.

Run your numbers: https://plan.johnkoyle.com?utm_source=facebook
Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163152

10/10/2026

Very few people know about this planning concept. It's called an income bridge.

The most sustainable retirement plans have two things in common: high levels of income and low levels of expenses. That's intuitive. What's even better is when a big share of that income is guaranteed — that way you don't have to feel anxious every time the market drops.

But there's often a gap. It's the space between the day you retire and the day your Social Security and pensions turn on. A lot of people create that gap on purpose, because they're delaying Social Security to let their benefit grow and compound.

That gap is where we build an income bridge. The bridge is predictable income built from a portion of your investments or retirement accounts. We map exactly how much you need each year, the cost-of-living adjustments you'll need, and how that money will grow over time. That gives us a total amount to set aside for the bridge — so you can retire when you want and still let Social Security grow.

If you'd like me to build yours, start at the calculator so I have your numbers before our call.

Run your numbers: https://plan.johnkoyle.com?utm_source=facebook
Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163353

10/09/2026

Here's the most expensive account you own — and the IRS owns a piece of it, and their share grows every year you don't act.

It's your traditional IRA, your 401(k), all the money you deferred taxes on. You never paid the tax, you just delayed it. The IRS is a silent partner in that account. Their share isn't fixed, and they get to set the date you pull it out and the tax rate, later, when you have the least control.

A Roth conversion is how you buy them out at today's tax rates. But most people convert blind — a little here, a little there, with no plan. Optimizing means building a schedule, and a real schedule has to solve for three different horizons.

The first horizon is your own low-tax years: the window after you stop working and before required minimum distributions begin, when your income drops and your rate is temporarily low. That window closes at 73 or 75, because once forced withdrawals start they fill the low brackets on their own and the cheap room disappears.

The second horizon is both of your lifetimes — not just yours, but your spouse's. While you're both alive and filing jointly, you're in the widest brackets you'll ever be in. When one spouse dies, the survivor files single, and the same income gets far less room and a higher bill for the rest of their life. That's the widow's trap, and it arrives at the worst time. Those wide joint brackets are open only while you're both here.

The third horizon is past your lifetime entirely, when your kids inherit that traditional IRA. The law forces them to empty it within 10 years, usually squarely in their peak earning years. The account you never converted becomes a 10-year tax bomb handed to your kids. Convert now, and they inherit a Roth they can drain tax-free.

The wisest retirees don't pick one of these. They map all three at once, because the schedule that's best for your low-tax years can be the wrong one for your spouse, and the one that's best for your spouse may not be best for your kids. I can show you the cost of paying conversion tax from inside the account, any Medicare surcharges the plan triggers, the tax your heirs would owe on what's left, and the break-even age so you know how long before the strategy pays for itself.

Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163139

10/07/2026

People ask me how I'd restructure a portfolio for someone who's about to retire. Here's the framework I'm using right now.

Start with the premise: valuations are stretched, and I think there's a real risk of a significant correction or even a lost decade ahead. That view drives everything that follows — and reasonable advisors disagree with me.

First, meaningful exposure to short-term, high-quality bonds. Treasuries are fine, short maturities. If interest rates keep rising, long bonds get hurt while short ones reprice quickly in your favor.

Second, equal-weight exposure to the S&P 500 rather than cap-weighted. A cap-weighted index fund puts an enormous share of your money in a handful of the largest companies. Equal weight holds the same businesses in the same dollar amounts, which lowers concentration in technology and the AI trade without leaving the index behind. Within equities, I want solid balance sheets, healthy cash flow, and dividends at the core — companies that can fund themselves without borrowing are the ones that survive an environment where borrowing gets expensive.

Let me be clear about technology, because I don't want to be misread. Long run, I love the sector and what's coming out of AI. I've simply taken my foot off the gas for now and want to see some of the leverage unwind before getting more aggressive again.

Third, some international exposure. Federal spending is going to accelerate, and Social Security and Medicare both need restructuring within a few years. That path points toward higher rates and pressure on the dollar, and international holdings benefit from a weaker dollar.

This is deliberately not aggressive. None of this is a recommendation — allocation depends on your timeline, your income needs, and how much volatility you can actually tolerate.

Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163242

10/06/2026

Would you like to know which Roth conversion strategy children and grandchildren love the most? It's the one where we maximize what your heirs inherit, regardless of the tax consequences for you.

It's an option we can select and build out on your plan, and it's often chosen by people who don't want their kids inheriting large pre-tax balances right when they're in their peak earning years and highest tax brackets.

It's not the only option. Some people don't convert to Roth at all. Some convert everything at once. Some convert a set dollar amount every year. Some wait for a down market so they're converting shares while prices are low. And some focus on paying the least federal tax over their entire lifetime.

But here's why the inheritance strategy exists. When most kids inherit a traditional IRA, they have to empty it within 10 years. Every dollar they pull out is taxed as ordinary income, stacked right on top of their own paychecks. A big IRA can push them into some of the highest brackets they'll ever see — especially if they're single, because a single bracket is half as wide as a married one. A Roth works differently. Your kids still have 10 years to empty it, but the money comes out tax-free. They can let it grow the full 10 years and take it all at the end without owing a dime of federal income tax. So you pay the tax now, and they don't pay it later. Ideally you pay it with money from outside the IRA, so the full Roth balance goes to them. For larger estates, those tax dollars also leave your estate, which can be another win.

It starts with a map we create for you — the retirement income and tax blueprint. We lay out your spending needs for each year through retirement, your income for every year going forward, and map them together with where we think tax brackets will be and where your heirs are likely to be when they inherit. Then we build the full conversion plan and execute it one year at a time.

Now the catch. Congress can change brackets or the inheritance rules at any time — the 10-year rule itself was a change. And if a charity is part of your plan, a traditional IRA might be better left to them, since charities don't pay income tax. That's why we revisit your blueprint every single year.

Run your numbers: https://plan.johnkoyle.com?utm_source=facebook
Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

9163166

10/06/2026

Have you ever given money to charity and gotten nothing back on your taxes? That's most retirees.

The standard deduction is over $32,000 for a married couple. So unless your giving is enormous, you never itemize. You write the check, and the IRS treats it like you spent the money on anything else.

What you want instead is a qualified charitable distribution — a QCD. It's a transfer straight from your IRA custodian to the charity, and it works completely differently from writing a check.

First, wait until the year you turn 70½. That's when a QCD becomes available — not 73 or 75, which is a different age related to RMDs. Second, tell your IRA custodian to send the money directly to the charity. It cannot pass through your checking account first; the moment it touches your account, it's taxable income and the whole benefit is gone. Third, if you're already taking required minimum distributions, do the QCD before or as part of that distribution, never after — take the RMD first and it's already taxable no matter what you do with the money later. Fourth, keep the acknowledgement letter from the charity.

What a QCD does is turn a deduction you couldn't use into income that never existed. It doesn't appear on your tax return at all. And that matters because adjusted gross income is the number everything else keys off of: how much of your Social Security gets taxed, whether you cross into the net investment income tax, whether you trip a Medicare surcharge where one dollar over the line fires a full charge for the year. A deduction lowers taxable income and does nothing to your AGI. A QCD lowers your AGI directly.

Two more things. The limit is indexed annually — roughly $108,000 per person — so a married couple with separate IRAs can do double. And it has to go to a qualified public charity, not a donor-advised fund.

Most people never use a QCD because the custodian doesn't bring it up, and the tax preparer sees the return after the year is already closed.

Book a free 60-minute call: https://calendly.com/koylejohn/30min?utm_source=facebook

⚠️ This post is for educational purposes only and is not personalized tax or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional.
9163252

John Koyle, Financial Advisor

10/14/2026

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