
Asset Geography Pitfalls
Many financial planners will advise that certain asset classes should be held in certain account types, depending on the tax treatment of the asset class in question. For example, often we find planners advocating for fixed income securities to be held within non-taxable accounts like IRAs or Roth IRAs because the interest payments will be shielded from income tax while stocks, particularly non-dividend paying stocks, should be held in taxable brokerage accounts. In theory, this works well, but sometimes real world constraints can present problems with this methodology.