Book Club

Posted January 19, 2026, By Cole Ferrier

This Sunday, I’ll be heading down to the basement of the Green Lake Library—a place that smells appropriately of old paper and quiet determination—to join a panel of financial nerds.

The occasion? The ChooseFI Seattle Book Club is dissecting the new "operating manual" for our community: Tax Planning To and Through Early Retirement by Cody Garrett and Sean Mullaney.

I’ll be sharing the "stage" with Kevin Estes (a CFP® who speaks fluently about RSUs) and Christian Klein (a local FIRE community member).

If you’ve been following my "Risk Series" or my rant about The 2026 Subsidy Cliff and the Shadow Tax, you know I view your financial plan as a living operating system. It has inputs, outputs, latency (tax drag), and critical failure points.

We are covering the first 120 pages (roughly 10 chapters) this weekend. It is rare to find a technical manual that bridges the gap between high-level theory and the nitty-gritty "code" of the Internal Revenue Code.

The Panelists: Who is Debugging Your Plan?

One of the reasons I am looking forward to this is the mix of perspectives on the panel. We aren't just three planners nodding at each other; we represent different layers of the "tech stack":

• Kevin Estes: Founder of Scaled Finance. He works deeply with T-Mobile employees and understands the high-voltage lines of equity compensation.

• Christian Klein: A FIRE community member.

• Myself (Cole): I’ll be bringing the engineering mindset—looking for logic traps, system failures, and architectural redundancies.

The "Code Review": My Notes on Part 1

In the Foreword, Brad Barrett calls tax planning "a thoughtful, lifelong puzzle with tremendous upside if approached with just a little strategy and awareness." I completely agree with that, I just hope that the book can live up to that expectation.

I also appreciate that the introduction calls out that Cody and Sean have different takes on things. I can't wait for the "conflict", because that is always the fun part.

Thus far I think the book is a great read and can help lots of people have a better understanding of how the actions they take or don't take end up affecting their taxes. Here are my specific thoughts on the first 10 chapters:

The Basics

Chapter 1 walks the reader through a line-by-line discussion of what the basic 1040 tax return is and how it works. It introduces the differences between types of income and how they stack, as well as addressing the difference between a deduction and a credit—which is confusing for a lot of people.

In Chapter 2, we find the first "Cody's Take": he prefers to automatically reinvest dividends to refill cash needs every six months.

My Take: I think less work when the benefits are a toss-up is better. If someone is actively spending down their cash, and it isn't at their desired high-water mark, why wouldn't you want to just accept the dividends? I know if they are reinvested, they can be sold via specific identification, but most of the people I've met want to do less thinking, not more. If they don't have to re-invest the dividends, they have less cash to raise manually.

The "Conventional Wisdom" Trap

This chapter serves as a deep dive for IRAs. But I want to point out one thing because it is conventional wisdom: the book says that in "many cases" it makes the most sense to make a spouse the primary beneficiary of the IRA.

I really urge readers to ask themselves: If in "many cases" it makes the most sense, what are the cases where it doesn't?

One such situation is for people over the estate tax threshold at the state level. In Washington State, this can occur at much more modest amounts of wealth than the federal estate tax. In states with estate taxes, it is essential not to lose the first-to-die's spouse exemption. If you just follow the default rules, you might accidentally pay an optional tax. (See our article on Washington State vs. Federal Estate Tax). There is some further complexity that the answer might be different if it is an IRA or a Roth IRA. Additionally, does the surviving spouse even need the money? If not, then a trust might not be needed if some assets are given to the next generation.

That being said, I actually agree with the "many cases" advice, just that I think it is really important when people read books and listen to podcasts, they pick up on the words that are used as a hedge.

• Note: I am so glad they included the ability for a non-working spouse to save in an IRA if the other spouse has wages. I have seen too many people's finances where all the money is in the working person's name because they didn't know they could do this. This effectively increases the room in tax advantaged accounts.

"Close Enough" isn't Good Enough

Chapter 7 has a central thesis: "Pay tax when you pay less tax." I completely agree with the thesis. I have no objection there. It points out that because of extra senior deductions, most distributions for seniors will be at a lower rate.

It is explicitly clear that it is "most," not "all." This assumption that "most" is good enough is sort of like saying "close" is good enough. But "close" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I don't like being close.

This "closeness" seems to be ignoring everything that doesn't happen on the 1040 tax return.

The Shadow Taxes: The one thing I think Chapter 8 is completely wrong about is state income taxes—especially for seniors in Washington State.

Wait, I thought Washington doesn't have a state income tax? Technically correct. However, we have both sales tax and property tax. Why do I put property tax in the "income tax" bucket? Because WA has a substantial property tax reduction program for seniors and the disabled.

This acts as a marginal income tax with cliffs. If you ignore this in planning, you might think you are paying 12% federal tax, so you take a few extra thousand dollars out. But you end up losing thousands in property tax reductions.

Doubling down on this, there is WA State Charity Care, where hospital systems forgive medical expenses if you are low income. This is yet another shadow "tax" that gets phased out with income. For a lot of people, there really is never a good opportunity to recognize income at a low rate if they look at all the things they are giving up.

The COBRA Opportunity

The authors argue for focusing on the taxable account in the early years. They point out that if you have a "COBRA" year, you could take everything from a pre-tax account as you aren't trying to maximize for the ACA.

I just want to point out that depending on the amounts of money someone has, sometimes it can make sense in that COBRA year to do substantial Roth conversions. This is a strategic way to make sure that you can stay under any cliffs in the future. Exactly how much? Well, it is really hard to pencil out, and depends on way too many assumptions, which means you will be wrong—the question is just how wrong. The question I ask is "is this directionally the right decision?"

Join Us for the Discussion

I’ll be diving deeper into these topics—and debating whether "close is good enough"—this Sunday.

Event: ChooseFI Seattle Book Club

When: Sunday, Jan 25, 2026 @ 11:30 AM

Where: Seattle Public Library - Green Lake Branch

Recent Podcast: The authors also discussed some topics from the book recently on ChooseFI Episode 581.

Bring your book. Bring your questions. Let’s debug your retirement plan.

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