Mike MilliganFounder and CEO, 1.oak Financial · Founder and CEO, 1.oak Financial

Retirement Tax Trap: How The IRS Becomes Your Silent Partner

23 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:00

In this segment, Mike Milligan explains the importance of diversifying retirement assets across three tax buckets—taxable, tax‑deferred, and tax‑free—to provide flexibility in retirement. He notes that while diversification is commonly discussed for asset classes, many investors heavily concentrate their savings in tax‑deferred accounts (often 80‑85% of total retirement assets), leaving only a small share in taxable (≈15%) and tax‑free (≈4‑5%) accounts. Milligan argues that this imbalance creates a hidden tax risk—effectively a “tax trap”—and calls for listeners to build a more balanced, tax‑diversified retirement portfolio.

Chapters

Having assets across taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free buckets give retirement— give retirees flexibility. We always talk about this term diversification in terms of stocks and bonds, or stocks and bonds and annuities. And most people know you don't put all of your eggs in one basket, because if the basket falls, then you get a bunch of broken eggs. Unfortunately, what's happened is when I look at the tax diversification between taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free. You often see numbers like 80% or 85% in tax-deferred, a smaller amount like 15% in taxable, and maybe like 4% to 5% in tax-free. And folks, we got to make retirement better for our listeners. And one of the ways we make it better is we create a better tax-deferred portfolio.