<prompt> Human: A lot of personal finance advice is straightforward applications of math: Keep expenses less than income. Pay off highest interest rate debts first. Compound growth is your friend.Then there are obvious legal requirements and benefits: Use tax-preferred retirement HSA accounts. Keep insurance in force. Know how self-employment taxes work. This post is about less-obvious but still interesting-to-redditors ways to use loopholes benefits in existing US laws to your advantage. Theres an endless number of these, but some come into play frequently enough that it makes sense to raise awareness about them. Edit: our friends in other countries, especially the UK and Canada, are welcome to lobby for local versions in their associated personal finance subs, see links in the sidebar. I dont know those laws...Here are some that you may not already know about:Tax planning:- If you earn less than 30K single 60k jointly, you can use the Savers Credit to get a tax credit for a portion of your IRA or 401k contributions, even for Roth contributions. Edit: full-time students are not eligible.- You pay no taxes at all on long-term capital gains if your taxable income including those gains is less than the top of the 15 tax bracket. That could be 95,000 gross income for a married couple filing jointly. This is better than a Roth in that you can do this at any age.- Sales of a personal residence often have no capital gains tax as well. Various rules apply. - If you rent a room in your house, part of all of your housing expenses including insurance and utilities can be itemized Schedule E expense deductions against your rental income but you need to declare the rental income. - Take advantage of adjustments like student loan interest, tuition, moving costs, etc., that dont require itemization if you are eligible. Retirement:- Employer contributions to your 401k dont count against the 18k limit. - If you change you mind about making an IRA contribution, e.g. your income becomes too high for it to be allowable, you can simply remove the money before the tax filing deadline without penalty.- For redditors with more life experience, you can increase your contributions to a 401k and IRA at age 50, and your HSA contributions at age 55.- Self-employed people have lots of options for retirement accounts. This can apply even if you have employment retirement savings.- Edit: Think you make too much to contribute to Roth IRA? Think again! The ever-popular Backdoor Roth IRA may work for you. But no, I am not adding the Mega-Backdoor Roth. There are some places even I wont go.Health insurance:- If you change jobs and dont have insurance coverage for a time, you have 60 days to elect continuing COBRA coverage. This works retroactively you can decide to take COBRA at day 59 and be covered for the previous 59 days. Edit: yes, we get that COBRA is expensive. But its free if you wait to elect it and dont need it, but youre still covered because you can elect it retroactively. Any other health insurance youd have to pay for but probably still not use.- You wont pay a penalty for lack of health insurance if you have a single brief coverage gap which is defined as less than three months. I.e. May 1 to July 28 is OK. May 1 to July 31 is not.  <response>: Anybody got similar tips for the UK? 