Research suggests that taking a loss on an investment is an emotional pain that investors try hard to avoid. It is why we hold a losing position in the hope that it will at least get back to breakeven, so we can sell it without losing money.

There's another way to go here, since you can use realized losses to offset profits from your winning investments. And that's exactly what I'm doing with 3M (NYSE: MMM). Here are the tax-friendly moves I'm making.

The basic story here is that I'm harvesting tax losses so I can take advantage of the benefits offered by Roth retirement accounts. But there are some important nuances that come into play.

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Source Fool.com