Money mistakes you didn't know you're making

In Norway you can use American Express, Diner's Club and other credit cards, though the two I mentioned aren't always accepted due to higher fees. The Norwegian airline also has a credit card that's pretty popular and offers cashback or bonus points or whatever and there's something called Trumf which offers cashback at certain stores for debit cards.

Regarding tax I just go to the tax authority's website and declare my expected income, assets, debt etc and my employer gets a "tax card" from them which they use to pay taxes for me. At the end of the year the tax authority does a final calculation, sends me an overview and either returns some money or sends a bill for what I owe. I can overestimate my income if I want to avoid that bill, then the tax return is like a bonus but I personally prefer to operate with a healthy emergency fund so that a $3000 tax bill doesn't really bother me. Usually it's like +-$1000 at the end of the year.

One more: /r/CreditCards on Reddit is an awesome resource for finding excellent credit card deals. Banks offer amazing sign-ups deals in the hopes that you'll carry a big balance in perpetuity. Taking the bait and paying off your card every month is basically free money!

Don't get sucked into churning, though. It's high risk for very low reward.

>you could have a large tax bill when you file your taxes the following year. And if it’s too large, the IRS will even impose a penalty

It is actually called an "addition to tax", not a penalty, and in fact it is merely an interest charge, just like if you don't pay the full balance on your credit card each billing period (for tax, the "billing periods" are the (roughly) quarterly dates when estimated payments are due). If you can make more money elsewhere than the interest charge by the IRS (currently 7%) you are better off not making the payments during the year.

>Health Savings Accounts are the rare unicorn of triple tax advantage: money isn’t taxed (1) going in, (2) while it’s growing in the account, or (3) when it’s taken out.

I see this a lot and it is completely ridiculous. (1) and (3) are the same thing when it comes to your contributions-- there is no scenario where you would ever pay tax on money when you contribute it and also when you take it out. It is only a double tax advantage, not triple. (And the money only comes out tax free if you use it for a limited set of expenses namely health care).

Having a single bullet point about using a trust is insufficient, as it is quite complicated to receive a trust. There are other options for managing estate planning that will work well for ordinary families (those with less than ~$28 million in total assets).

The marketing around trusts is a classic information asymmetry. Law firms selling the service of setting up a trust know it’s not simple for heirs, but that is essentially repeat business for them. Many heirs will need to hire a lawyer to help retitle and transfer assets in the trust, and dissolve the trust if they want to personally control the assets.

And people buying the service of setting up a trust will, by definition, never know how it ends up. (Maybe unless they themselves have received a trust.)

A trust is a powerful tool for protecting wealth across generations. It’s not easier than basic inheritance.

Edit to add: the easiest way to avoid probate is to designate beneficiaries on all your financial accounts. These supersede will instructions and avoid probate. You can do the same thing on vehicle titles, at least in some states.

Real estate is more complicated so the easiest thing on your heirs is to not own any real estate at the time of your death. :-) Or if you have real estate you would like to pass on, that specifically is a good use case for a living trust (with only the real estate inside it).

I wonder about this, because people make stupid decisions about things like vehicles.

Eg. If people prioritized this advice and didn’t buy vehicles they couldn’t afford, would America be better off?