While the holidays can keep everyone busy, staying on top of taxes is crucial. Barry Bigelow from Great Waters Financial joined Good Morning Northland to share tips on how you can stay prepared.

Bigelow emphasizes the importance of developing a tax strategy well before Tax Day, “Tax preparation is kind of like Christmas shopping. There is a season for it. Tax planning is a year-round thing, more like budgeting, where you have to pay attention to things at different points in the year to make sure you’re not getting taken advantage of or that you are taking advantage of the rules for yourself each year”.

He also highlights three key factors to consider when evaluating tax strategies:

1. Assess your savings
2. Harvest investment loans
3. Strategize charitable giving

Bigelow also discusses tax strategies for those approaching or in retirement, “The money we save this year is going to be money that we can spend on our holiday gifts next year. And so, for retirees considering something called the Roth Conversion, which is moving money from a pretax IRA or 401K account to a post-tax IRA or 401K account, paying the taxes on that money now looking into the future”.

Finally, Bigelow emphasizes that even though it’s still December, Tax Day will arrive sooner than we think—so it’s important to start planning ahead!