These pre-tax contributions will reduce your taxable income and your earnings will grow tax deferred or tax-free if you are using a Roth IRA.
An HSA works with a qualifying high-deductible health plan. Money goes in tax-free, grows tax-free and comes out tax-free when used for qualified medical expenses. Unused funds can be carried over, and the account is yours to keep even if you change jobs, health care plans or retire.
Mutual funds typically generate higher capital gains due to fund managers’ trading activities. Also, some funds pay out a lot of taxable dividends. So funds with low turnover or pay fewer dividends are considered tax-efficient, as are index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as they have less turnover than mutual funds, while capital gains on ETFs are only taxed when you sell them.
The interest from municipal bonds is generally exempt from federal income tax, and often from state and local income taxes, too
Tax-loss harvesting is a method where you sell investments that are down (in your taxable accounts), and then offset realized investment gains with those losses.