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Most people don't think about taxes until they're sitting down to file, and by then, most of the best opportunities are gone. The moves that actually lower your tax bill usually have to happen before December 31. Here's what's worth tackling now.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT:  Speaker 1: Most people don't think about taxes until they're sitting down to file, and by then, most of the best opportunities are gone. The moves that actually lower your tax bill usually have to happen before December 31st, maybe even considerably before December 31st. So we're going to talk about that this week here on Plan with the Tax Man. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with Tony Mauro and myself as we talk investing finance and retirement. Tony, a CPA and a CFP, an EA of 30 plus years at Tax Doctor Inc. is certainly going to get geeked up to talk about taxes because I don't have anybody that loves taxes except for a CPA, but then it gets like a love-hate relationship.   But we're going to talk about how to reduce or what to do to think about next year's tax conversation. We've all heard it, many of us do it, a lot of us still don't. Tax planning versus tax prep, waiting until that last, "Oh, it's mid-March, I'm going to get ready for tax season." No, as you get closer to retirement, we should be thinking about stuff sooner. And as I mentioned in the opener, Tony, please don't wait until December 25th or 27th or 30th. That's not going to be helpful either. So we'll get into it. How you doing?   Tony Mauro: It is the midst of tax season or tax planning season-   Speaker 1: That's right. I was going to say-   Tony Mauro: ... in October.   Speaker 1: ... don't jinx yourself.   Tony Mauro: Yeah. Yeah. Well, for us, as we record this, it's tax season for us because we're working on extensions which are due here coming up.   Speaker 1: Oh, okay.   Tony Mauro: So we have a little bit of prep because there are some procrastinators out there just on the prep side. But for most others, now is the time to be thinking and working with your advisor and/or tax pro on any types of moves you can make to reduce next year's bill. Because like Mark said in the beginning, when you're sitting down or dropping off your stuff, that is not the time to tax plan because there's not much left, number one. Number two, most tax pros are in the filing mode and including us, are not going to have time to sit down with you and discuss your tax plan. That has to be done outside of tax season and proactively. I always reiterate that to our clients. And for us, we have gone even more away from it is if you want tax planning, we'll certainly do it. We schedule it. They do pay an extra fee or an investment for that, but they know what they get and they get a written plan every year. But we're going to go over some of this that we discuss when we're talking to clients.   Speaker 1: Okay. Well, let's go through a few options that people may know about or may not be using or just want to learn more. Number one being consider opening a donor advised fund. What is it and what are some things that it could do for you?   Tony Mauro: Yeah. So donor advised funds really are somewhat of, and a lot of people get the terms confused, but really it's almost like a flexible, if you will, charitable savings account. You can deduct now and give money to them over time. You can basically help direct where the money ends up going and they take the advisory role and they take all these funds from all kinds of people and manage the funds themselves and allow you to just much more flexibility in giving, especially if you decide you want to give something and you're going to give over time, but you can deduct a lot of it right now, which is great.   Speaker 1: Okay. So that's donor advised funds and that may be something, again, and with any of this stuff, make sure you're talking with your tax person, your professional, your financial advisor, all that stuff before you just jump into any of these things. But if you want to learn more, Tony and the team are here to help. The other thing might be, well, if you're self-employed, I know you got a lot of clients, Tony and potential people that come in the door all the time, have their own businesses, maybe they need advice or to learn more or to look at like a SEP for their... Even gig work, I guess you maybe could use one of these, side work too.   Tony Mauro: You could use it for anything that you are having to put down self-employment income on that tax return for. It could be, like you mentioned, a SEP, it could be a simple, could be a solo 401k, all of which they vary a little bit by the amounts you can put in them and a few rules, but any of them would work, especially so it knocks off two birds with one stone in my mind. One, it's forcing you to save for retirement, which is great on the financial planning end. Two, you might be able to, well, you will if you choose one of these, be able to take some tax deductions based on how much you put in, which is a great tax planning tool to try to reduce income.   And on a lot of these, since you're self-employed, you don't have to make the decision until you're actually getting a little closer to doing your tax return. So you got a ton of flexibility in them and it's where we start with every self-employed is it's the best deal on the street. You need to set up some sort of retirement plan for yourself, even if you only put 50 bucks a month away. Got to get it started.   Speaker 1: Yeah, got to get it started. Certainly something to think about there. Let's see what else. End of the year were winding down. Check your tax withholdings. If you're still a pre-retiree and you're still working, you probably had some maybe change. Maybe you're at that stage in life where you could put a little bit more away, catch up contributions, ages change, kids off the payroll, you got a little bit more room, big refund. I mean, who knows something, but check those numbers as well.   Tony Mauro: Got to check them all the time. I find a lot of people, even though they have electronic access to their payroll portal, which houses all their pay stubs and everything else, they're not going in and checking that. And I've had, I can't tell you how many people mess up their withholdings and not even notice it until year-end and all of a sudden they're either getting a huge refund or they owe a lot. And both in my mind are signals. And if you understand why this is happening, that's great. If you don't, then you need to fix it. Most people like to err on the side, of course, not having to pay the IRS at tax time, but sometimes, and in my mind and my true opinion is I don't like to let them hold my money. So I don't like big refunds, but I want to make sure that I don't owe a lot at the end either. And that comes with a little bit of planning.   Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to do a little bit. I mean, that's all of it. It's always the strategy. It's always like, well, yeah, you say planning all the time. It's like, well, yeah, because planning's important. You just don't wing it. You don't get in the airplane and just hope the pilots... You hope he's got a plan. You hope he's not just like, "Eh, let's see what happens." If you've got an HSA, plan ahead for next year. HSAs can be a really cool item for people. It's not for everybody, but if you've got one, certainly some things to think about.   Tony Mauro: Definitely some things to think about. It's a great tax planning tool and you want to make sure that you're stuffing as much money in, assuming you like them and can qualify with the right type of healthcare, which is basically you have to have a high deductible plan, but we won't get into all that. But it really is a lot of tax advantages because you can deduct it off of your wages and when you pull money out to use them for healthcare, it's tax-free, which is great. The beauty is you can stuff a lot of money in there and later on you now can roll these into if you have a big balance and you don't need it anymore, you can roll these into some rollover IRAs and use it for retirement. So it really is a great tool and it should be looked at and at least discussed with your advisor.   Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's that triple, it's that Roth on steroids. It's got all those little cool advantages that certainly could be helpful, but again, see if it's the right fit for you or see if there's some ways that you can use that or better optimize that. Also, next one here, Tony, don't forget that if you did turn the ever moving target age for RMDs, again, please do not wait until December to do this because think about it. I mean, December, even though it might be the 31st for a deadline, does anything happen the last 10, 12 days of December? Probably not.   Tony Mauro: Yeah, probably not. A lot of advisors, a lot of fund company employees, everything is pretty slow, tough to get things in action, and I wouldn't risk it. I would just do this before, you don't have to stress out about that. But the RMDs, there aren't a lot of moving targets anymore, and I even have trouble keeping track of them depending on when people were born and things. But the bottom line is the IRS, you will have an IOU to them that says, "Hey, we're going to make you take out a required minimum of this stuff that you put away for all these years because we want our money. We want taxes."   And so they do institute a big penalty on this too, if you miss them. I've only had a couple of clients actually be subject to the penalty. We have been able to get them out of it because it was just a simple error, but you don't want all that hassle. You want to talk with your advisor about, "Do I have them coming up? How much do I need to take out? What's it going to

It's spooky season. And while most people are thinking about haunted houses and horror movies, a lot of pre-retirees have scarier things on their minds: running out of money, or a market crash at exactly the wrong time. Today we're shining a flashlight on five of the biggest financial frights and how to prepare for them.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT:  Marc Killian: It's spooky season, and while most people are thinking about haunted houses or horror movies and candy, a lot of pre-retirees have scarier things on their mind like running out of money or a market downturn at exactly the wrong time. So today we're going to shine a light on five of the biggest financial frights and how to prepare for them. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with Tony and I here on Plan With The Tax Man. He's the tax man, Tony Mauro at Des Moines Professional Alternative Tax Doctor. And of course he helps clients all over the country as well. So if you're checking out this podcast, you got some questions, need some help, reach out to a qualified professional like Tony and his team at yourplanningpros.com. That's yourplanningpros.com. He's been doing this 30 plus years. He's a CPA, CFP and an EA. Got all the acronyms going on there, Tony. How you doing buddy?   Tony Mauro: Yeah. I'm doing good. Rolling into October, one of my favorite times of year. I like Halloween.   Marc Killian: Me too. Yeah, Halloween's... We were going to either do things that go bump in the retirement plan or five financial frights, some sort of little funny little tie into the spooky season, but we decided to go with the five financial frights. And these are pretty standard things, Tony, but certainly something that, again, the point being if it happens at the wrong time, it's never fun. It's never good obviously in many of these, but certainly at the wrong time, like AKA right at retirement's doorstep or maybe even in the first couple of years of retirement. So let's break them down. Let's get into them.   Tony Mauro: Okay.   Marc Killian: All right. Number one, pretty easy to figure this one out. Fright number one, running out of money. Take it away.   Tony Mauro: Well, this is probably our number one thing that we talk about to everybody really, whether they're financial planning clients, tax clients or whatnot, especially this time of year. And we work a lot with our accounting clients. I'm always asking them, "What is your end goal", number one? "And are you going to be able to pay your bills when you're in retirement and live the life you want to live? And really what it starts out with is how much do you have right now? How much will you have when you want to retire? What are your monthly expenses roughly? And is that going to cover it?" And that's where, to me, a financial planner really is one area of great value because that's what you want to be working with them on, not just, "Hey, am I getting the best return that I can?" It's this. It's the number one thing that you're saving for. So I think it's the most important and I think you need to be talking to your advisor about it.   Marc Killian: Yeah. And you start getting into the questions that you want to certainly digest, especially, Tony, right now while we've got a lot of friction going on and that really kind of will walk into the next couple of ones here in a second, but it's like how much can you safely spend each year? What are the expenses? And are you tweaking that year to year? Are you making little adjustments? A lot of times people, especially the last number of years have been doing the DIY thing and they've got a general plan and they're like, "Cool, I'm groovy. I've said it. I'm good to rock." And it's like, "Well, no, there's a lot of changes out there." So we want to be addressing those like for example, fright number two, a market downturn right before we retire. Look, we keep hearing it's going to drop any day now.   It still doesn't, but it doesn't mean that the risk is any less there because historical data is historical data. Now, ever since COVID, Tony, let's be honest, between pumping all the money in, the inflation problems it's created, the bond reversals that's happened, but yet the market continues to plug along. We've got this conflict after coming off the Ukraine thing, which is still going on. There's a lot of data that says the market should not be cruising yet it is. And that makes people think it's got to fall at some point, right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah. And this is an important thing, I think in anybody's portfolio. Everybody always asks us that too, "What do you think the market's going to do?" And we always tell them the same thing is, "If we knew that, we would already be retired."   Marc Killian: I was going to say, if you knew that, you wouldn't be helping others, you'd be sitting on your own island somewhere, right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah. But I think it's important. This goes along the lines of whether a DIY or you're working with somebody is the old theory is you want to start at least preparing your portfolio to get a little more conservative as you get a little older and as you get a little nearer to retirement. So if we do have the unpredicted or predicted market reversal or a period of long term, basically zero to little gains, that you aren't going to be hit too badly with your portfolio decrease in value, let's say. And I mean, that's the biggest thing because none of us have the crystal ball.   You're just trying to hedge your bets a little bit when you get up there into your mid to late 50s because you're still in the accumulation stage, not in the distribution stage yet, but you want to, at least if you continue to invest very aggressively, let's say that you understand what could happen and that's a risk you accept. And for most, at least the people I talk to want to get a little more conservative. Therefore, a lot of times people I'm talking to in their 50s, they want a return, but they're no longer asking the question, "Well, where can I get the best return?" They want to throttle it back a bit and say, "Hey, look, I want a decent return better than I can get in a savings account, but I am not willing to put up that much risk when I've only got five, seven years left to return."   Marc Killian: Well, that's a healthy place to be because it's hard because again, a lot of us see it continuing to rock and we're like, "I want to get on some of that." And we all do it. So if you can put yourself in that position where you're able to say that, you're certainly in a good, healthy place. I mean, year to date, Tony, right? So year to date at the time we're talking, the market's up 13 and a half percent. Given all the stuff that's happened, we're here in a fourth quarter and it's still up 13 and a half percent. So it could finish out the year again strongly as prior years have done.   So it's tough. It's tough to kind of... It's not the 20% of the last couple of years. It could be, we don't know, right before the year ends out. But either way, if five or six drives your plan plenty, fine when you're close to retirement on being in the market, getting a return, things of that nature, keeping up with inflation. If 5, 6, 7, 8% drives the plan, but it reduces the risk in case something does go south, then that's not a bad thing to think about.   Tony Mauro: It's not a bad thing. And that's where your advisor should be helping you and we remind our clients as well because we have a plan with them because it is, like you say, people will come in at their quarterly meetings and say, "Gosh, the market's doing so well. Maybe we should..."   Marc Killian: Maybe we think a little more.   Tony Mauro: Yeah. And I have to remind them, "Well, that's really not our plan. If we want to change the plan, that's fine. But we have to weigh that with the risk and potential tax efficiency and things like that." So again, just another great talking point to be talking to your advisor about.   Marc Killian: And that's a huge value add working with professionals because again, you do have somebody across the table and I love how you just said that. You're like, "Well, that's not the plan and it's probably not the best idea, but if you want to talk about doing the other thing, we can." You're not the money police, but it is your job to say, "Okay, here's pros and cons of what happens if we do A, here's what happens if we do B," that kind of thing. So I think that's a great, healthy way of looking at it too. So good stuff. All right. Fright number three, certainly a big fright. Rising healthcare costs, not going anywhere, ridiculous. I think I just saw some knuckleheads arguing here recently about how long it takes to get in to see a doctor here in the U.S. right now versus other places.   And it's still really short to get into a doctor versus other places, yet the cost is really crazy. So I get these arguments, but it is what it is. And especially if you're getting right at that retirement doorstep, Tony, maybe the employer coverage is going away, make sure that you're planning for that, right?   Tony Mauro: Got to plan for that. I think with most people that being W-2'd most or all of their working careers, they have just been in a healthcare kind of mindset of set it and forget it. "I pay my premium out of my check, my employer picks up some, I know my coverages. I don't really have to navigate much other than going to the doctor," and that kind of thing. But when you get to retirement, there's all kinds of new things to navigate because when you leave that employer, now you've got to deal with, of course, Medicare.   We're talking big government now and there's premiums there, there is deductibles, there are different out-of-pocket costs along with you need a lot of supplements and a lot of w

Being named the executor of someone's will can feel like an honor. It can also feel like a lot of pressure. It's more than handing out inheritances. It's paperwork, accounts, taxes, property, creditors, and sometimes family dynamics, stretched out over months or even years. A lot of clients end up in this role without ever planning to, and we're often the first call they make. Let's talk through how we help.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT:    Speaker 1: Being named the executor of someone's will can feel like an honor, and it can also feel like a lot of pressure. It's more than just handing out inheritances. It's paperwork, accounts, taxes, property, creditors, and sometimes unpleasant family dynamics. So this week on Plan with the Tax Man, let's talk about the honor and the headache of being an executor.   Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with Tony and myself here as we talk about investing, finance, and retirement. And Tony, as I teed up in the teaser there, it's some things that maybe you don't know about being an executor, some of the headache sides of things. It's a nice honor that someone, your parent typically maybe names one of the children, for example, to do this. But it does come with pressure and some things that can catch you off guard. So I thought it'd be good today to highlight some of this stuff.   Tony Mauro: I think it's a great topic, because it's relevant in my world because I have several clients going through it now, a couple of family members, and then one that is a friend of a client. They're both clients. One passed away and the friend is named executor, so he's in a whole new role dealing with family that is not his family.   Speaker 1: Okay.   Tony Mauro: It's a whole dynamic.   Speaker 1: Whole dynamic. I do want to note here, Tony, that this episode is not about giving legal advice, you are not an estate attorney, but rather the role that advisors that you and your team play, and questions that you often get or hear when a client has become an executor. So we're going at it from that standpoint.   Tony Mauro: Yeah. I think that that's good, because we work closely with the estate attorneys, and they're the ones directing the legal side. We try to help out the executor, as we'll go through here-   Speaker 1: Sure.   Tony Mauro: ... on everything else.   Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I just want to make sure we clarified that for folks listening.   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: When a client finds out they have been named executor, Tony, what does that first conversation with them sound like from your end, or what are some bullet points here that folks might want to think about or need to know?   Tony Mauro: Well, some of the things that we tell them right up front is, I ask them point-blank, "How much do you know, if anything, about being an executor?" Most don't know anything because most are surprised that they are, even sometimes kids. And so they really don't have any idea what's involved with it, even if it's a very simple, straightforward estate. It could go anything from very simple, all the way up to very complex. But I try to tell them, "This is going to be a time period. It's not going to happen in 30 days. Depending on how complex it is, it could be months to several years. There's going to be documents needed. There's probate. There's taxes." I try to lay all that out on a timeline so that I can get them thinking... "Don't get yourself overwhelmed. We'll help you. The estate attorneys will help you. You've just got to take one step at a time. Sometimes you hit roadblocks and you've got to move on." So that's the first thing we tell them.   The other thing is if they've already got an estate tax attorney working on it, which they usually do.   Speaker 1: Right.   Tony Mauro: If not, we'll refer them. But we try to point out to them things... Because they get confused on what passes by will and what passes by what I call contract or outside of the will, in other words, goes directly to beneficiaries, and try to just have a conversation with them about that. That at least gets them going.   Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. And I imagine that a lot of times, Tony, as you've already alluded to with some different clients going through it, if a client's parent, which is usually the case, or family member has told them that they will be the executor someday, how do you prepare them for that now? Obviously, being told ahead of time does give you a little time to prepare, I would assume.   Tony Mauro: Yes. It gives you some time. And really, we try to have the conversations about mostly of, okay, trying to get your parents or whoever you're the executor for to give you access, or at least let you know where documents are, what kind of accounts they have, what kind of assets they have, who the professionals they're working with right now are, just in case. If you can get that while they're still alive, along with helping the executor with some of the things that I just talked about, which they probably don't know, and just being ready to raise your hand and say, "Okay. I don't know this. Who do I ask when the time comes?" I think that basically is what we try to tell them.   We'll always try to be there for them. I tell them that. I tell them, "Let the attorneys do their thing. I'm not an attorney. But we will help you and we will work with them with you." They're usually more than willing to help, because they tend to not like anything tax and anything outside of really what they're good at.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Tony Mauro: They being the attorneys.   Speaker 1: Yeah. And helping a client think through those pieces, again, they're coming to you for financial advice typically anyway, so now it's like, "Hey, I've got this extra wrinkle here. Is that something you can help me with?" That's just a nice little added value-add that comes with that component-   Tony Mauro: Yes.   Speaker 1: ... I guess, that legacy planning component, right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: So once a client is actually now fully in that role, what do you guys do? You've touched on some of that already. But helping them get through it without, I guess, maybe that overwhelmed feeling, or even that rushed feeling if they found out maybe a bit late and it's like, "Hey, Tony, I just got named this. What do I do?" Right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: "Where do I start?"   Tony Mauro: Yeah. Where do you start? We go through the timeline with them. We have some templates that we show them, and we'll start putting the timeline for their situation through the template so they've got it and they can follow it, which is kind of nice. Then we will start helping them start to gather the financial pieces that are going to help the attorneys as far as that goes. Plus, we might need it for a final income tax return and we might need it for an estate tax return, not the kind where you pay taxes.   But a lot of us executors don't know that when someone dies, the attorneys will open up a legal entity called the estate, and assets get transferred into that estate before they get distributed, and if they're in there long enough and they earn some money, if they're investments, they have to file a tax return. The estate's an entity. And so letting them know what's coming there, and then what the attorney's going to be needing from them, and really then just being a point of contact and working through the timeline and having regular check-ins, kind of like you do with a financial plan, of where are we at in the process on all this, and just monitoring it until the whole thing closes out.   Speaker 1: So Tony, you guys really do act as a steady point of contact then through this process. Is that fair?   Tony Mauro: Yeah. I mean, that's what we do. And like I say, with the timelines that we put in front of them, they have access to on their portal, and then some regular check-ins at different times. Obviously, I just had a call today with the guy I was talking about earlier, his story is a little bit unique, because him and the deceased were both clients of mine, both financial clients, both accounting clients and tax clients. The deceased was worth, and he was a young guy when he died here at the end of last year, about 15 million. And so my buddy, who was named the executor, he's working through a fairly complex estate. And on top of that, he's got some dynamics, because as the executor, the deceased left some very pointed instructions, "Don't maybe agree with what the family has in mind," so there's a lot of butting heads already going on.   And just a general statement, I've seen it so many times, it's amazing what happens when people die and siblings or relatives are squabbling about money. It's crazy. It tears families apart, which is why I would say, and I know every attorney would agree, you need to have a will in your financial plan, because you don't want to have... I mean, this guy had an ironclad will, so even though they don't agree with some things, that's what's in the will and that's the legal document, you know?   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Tony Mauro: But it sometimes puts the executor in a tough spot, because in this case, the executor is also charged with the deceased had two sisters that he's left some money to, but he wanted it in a trust, and they can only take out income, not the principal. And of course, they are fighting that, they don't want that, but they really can't do anything about it.   Speaker 1: Yeah. I was going to say, let's maybe clarify that too, right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: So sometimes, I think when people get named executor, it doesn't mean you can just... You don't get to wholesale do what you want. You're not in charge of this whole

Every October, hundreds of hot air balloons rise over Albuquerque for the largest balloon festival in the world. No two pilots fly the exact same path, and none of them can control the wind. Turns out, that's not a bad way to think about a financial plan either.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT:    Speaker 1: Every October, hundreds of hot air balloons rise above Albuquerque for the largest balloon festival in the world. No two pilots fly the exact same path and none of them can control the wind. Turns out that's not a bad way to think about your financial strategy either. Let's have some fun this week here on Plan with the Tax Man with you can't steer the wind, but you can steer your financial plan. Hey everybody, welcome into the podcast. This is Plan with the Tax Man with Tony Mauro and myself here to talk investing finance and retirement and going where the wind blows, so to speak. Tony is our conversation piece this week. How you doing, my friend?   Tony Mauro: I've been fantastic. Kind of wrapping up the summer. Just got done with the fair here. And of course, as we're recording this, kids are back at school.   Speaker 1: Okay. Okay.   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: Hot as Haiti still at the time we're taping this, at least in my neck of the woods.   Tony Mauro: Me too. Very hot here.   Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little toasty. I didn't know that little fun fact there that the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta draws hundreds of balloons and it's considered one of the most photographed events on earth. It's like a really big deal. I didn't realize that.   Tony Mauro: It is a big deal. Well, and I picked this topic because we have a big balloon fest here. It's actually in a small town just south of us about 12 miles. It's called Indianola Balloon Fest. It has about 100, 150 balloon pilots. They get a lot of people.   Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Okay.   Tony Mauro: And the other thing is that I really respect balloon pilots because I'm a GA pilot myself, not of balloons, of airplanes. But these guys and gals are way better than us because-   Speaker 1: Gotcha.   Tony Mauro: ... they don't have thrust. They can't turn. It's all about the wind. And so they're really good.   Speaker 1: That's awesome. That's very cool. Well, good. Well, this will fun. We'll talk about this, tie this to your other passion.   Tony Mauro: Yeah, that's right.   Speaker 1: ... the retirement thing. So speaking of the wind, even at different altitudes, it does not hold still. Been doing a little bit of research here. It can be calm at 500 feet and wicked and blowing completely different direction at 2000 feet. So it's impossible to control and accurately predict, certainly. Jet stream's going to do its thing. What are the things financially speaking we could tie into this that similarly we cannot control? I mean, obviously the big ticket is the market.   Tony Mauro: That's right. The big ticket's the market. And just like the balloon pilots especially, obviously they can't control the wind, but if you've ever been to a balloon fest, most of the time they can't take off unless it's really calm on the ground. But however, just like us pilots, as soon as they get up in the air, the wind is way different and they try to find what's best for them as we do too. But it's similar in the financial lives really because there's so many things that are out of our control, the market volatility being one, what's going on politically, interest rates, oil prices. I mean, you name it, tax law changes, all kinds of things. You bring it down into your own world and it's unexpected expenses. It might be an untimely health scare, which I have a friend that's having that right now.   All kinds of things. And so the timing of those really adds to that, which is something we have to plan for and talk with your advisors about and let them know what your plans are. And they're going to tell you the same thing. Some of the stuff you can't control, you've got to just change your plan to work within it.   Speaker 1: Well, and going to that point, since they can't fight it, they change altitude, right?   Tony Mauro: That's right.   Speaker 1: They go up or above, excuse me, up and above or below to find a current that's flowing and working for them better for what they're trying to accomplish. And clearly that's a nice little reasoning piece of logic to think about with our own finance. You're not abandoning what you're trying to do, you're just maybe trying to get some headwind.   Tony Mauro: Yeah, trying to just get a little direction on where you're going, just like they are. Because as I said, they can't steer. All they can do is the way they steer is find the way the wind's blowing. And if that's the way they want to go, that's where they got to get to. And it's no different than our financial plans because all of this stuff and this noise that's going on on the side, we've got to adjust our plan, keep it flexible, change it, monitor it. Hopefully you're doing with your advisor on that so that you're not just letting your emotions run wild with some of the stuff that's going on here and in the world.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and I think that's obviously easy enough for us to do is let things run with us, which is why again, having a professional in your corner, a strategy and a plan kind of helps you recenter sometimes when you get a little blown off course. We'll stay with this analogy when you get blown off course. So Tony, from down on the ground, you can only see what's basically right in front of us, next street. I mean our sight line. Our sight line is reduced when we're on the ground. Anybody who's ever gone up any kind of height knows that. From altitude, everything looks a bit more connected. That's why we love looking at the horizon, how it just seems to fade off into forever. So why do we tend to ask money questions one at a time at that ground level, so to speak, instead of looking at it from that higher elevated path?   Tony Mauro: That's a good question because we get that a lot. We get a lot of people asking just these one questions at a time. I just had a meeting yesterday with a gentleman, he's a tax client. He had a few questions about his retirement, but I tried to get him to see the bigger picture because what he wanted to know was the quintessential question is, "Am I going to run out of money when I retire?" But most people want to know, they're in the accumulation stage, "Should I be doing more? Should I pay off this debt? How long should I work?" All those types of questions. But they tend to come at us one at a time because I think they only seem to think about what's right in front of them and urgent right then. And I try to get them to kind of look at the whole picture of, "Okay, that's one of the questions in all of this, we'll answer that, but let's look at how it fits into everything and your overall financial picture." Because I think that's the best way to go with it.   Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, each question feels more urgent on its own, which is exactly why they maybe rarely get answers so well when we're looking at them from down at ground level. Every time there's a hiccup, it's dead in front of you. So it's the only thing you seem to be focused on versus... And this I think plays into taxation a lot, Tony, which obviously you're doing both pieces of this, you're doing the CPA side as well as the CFP side. This is where that higher elevation question really starts to pay off because you're not just looking at the immediate impact, you're looking at the future impact.   Tony Mauro: You are.   Speaker 1: Or we should be.   Tony Mauro: We should be. Yeah. But I tell a lot of people that I can't really answer this question by itself because it opens up so many other questions. Just like when you go to your regular doctor and you say you've got a sore throat, they're asking you all kinds of questions because they can't really prescribe anything or help you until they really know your entire situation. So it's no different than that in finances as well. I try to hold a meeting with somebody because somebody will send me a question through their portal to say it's a tax client and they think it's a 5-minute answer when really it's, well, there's a lot of what ifs. This is a 45-minute discussion. We better have a meeting.   Speaker 1: Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. Well, so Tony, thinking about this and kind of closing this down a bit here, the balloon pilot isn't just flying the balloon. Most of the times, now maybe in this particular event or whatever, but a lot of times you go on one of these rides, they're narrating, right? The flight for the passenger. Yeah. They're doing some cool stuff there. They're educating you on whatever. For those who don't, same kind of thing as like a pilot pilot. You don't know what you're looking at per se. They're pointing out interesting locations. They're teaching you how the thing works. All that stuff. And I mean, come on, that's like a perfect metaphor for what you do. It's not just that you're building the plan, you're also narrating things.   Tony Mauro: We're narrating things. The technical side is building the plan. And then the narrative really is one, explaining the plan in some terms that they can understand rather than just a lot of technical jargon because they don't need to master that technical side. That's what they're paying us to do.   Speaker 1: They need a navigator, if you will.   Tony Mauro: Yeah, they need a navigator. And a lot of times for us, just like the pilot, is you want to point out to them in their financial lives what's worth paying attention to and what's maybe not. In other words, I always tell them, "Rate of return is important, but not the most

More people in their 60s and 70s are staying on the job than ever before, and it's not always about the money. Let's dig into the real reasons retirees keep showing up to work.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT:    Speaker 1: More and more people are retiring in their 60s and 70s and staying on the job than ever before 'cause it's not always about the money. So this week on the podcast, let's dig into some of the reasons people keep showing up to work, even in retirement.   Hey, everybody. Welcome into the podcast. This is Plan With The Tax Man with Tony Mauro from Des Moines Professional Alternative Tax Doctor Inc. Serving you all around obviously the Des Moines area and the Iowa area, but all over the country. Tony's got clients, he helps all over the place. So if you got some questions, need some help, and you're checking out this podcast, and you'd like to get a little more info or just chat about some things, he's a CPA, and a CFP, and an EA with 30-plus years in the industry and a great resource for you to tap into at yourplanningpros.com. That is yourplanningpros.com. And Tony, how you doing my friend? You doing all right?   Tony Mauro: I'm doing good. Yeah. Summer is in full force here, and enjoying it as much as I can.   Speaker 1: Nice. Yeah. So you're obviously still plugging away. I'm still plugging away. Now we're not at that age yet. We're in our mid-50s, but I'm sure you're seeing this with a lot of your clients as well, people that are into retirement, they've maybe got their strategy or they're playing with you guys, but are still working. And it could be for reasons other than the money, but I want to talk about both sets of those today, right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: So let's dive into the first one, and we'll just start with social connections, for example. So this is not money-related. This just might be simply, "I like the people I work with, and it gets me out of the house, and it gets me some human interaction," especially, unfortunately, if you are a retiree who maybe has lost your spouse. Maybe this is a great reason to keep moving, and going to work, and doing things.   Tony Mauro: And I see a lot of clients that want this because... And I fall into this category myself, I think, is when I go to retire, I want a little social, like you say, connectivity. And with a lot of people, what I find with them is because they've been working for so long, they miss that. And they come back and tell me six months to a year into retirement that, "There's only so much golf I can do. There's only so much putts at around the house that I can do."   Speaker 1: Did you really just say that?   Tony Mauro: Yeah. And I would agree with that to an extent, and a lot of them like to go back to work. Generally, they'll go back and get something that they're not really concerned as much, especially if they don't need the money, about what it pays, other than they don't want generally tons of responsibility, or being able to set their own hours, or work part-time. But a lot of them for the social connection, they really enjoy it. And so I'm always good with that if they're asking me what do I think. And I think it can contribute to a longer life, frankly, especially like you said, if a spouse is gone.   Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of people certainly continue to want to work just for that social connection alone, and that's totally fine. And I think the takeaway here, Tony, is going to be work optional, right? There's-   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: ... reasons why you go to work because in retirement, and it's because it's an option, because you're choosing to versus not, because you're not choosing to, or you have to go for the money reason. And I'm going to skip around on the list. We'll get to the money one here in just a minute, but I want to do another one from the home standpoint. And that's just changes in the home. So not that there's much of a silver lining to think about with COVID, but certainly during that time period, a lot of people got a dry run of what it would look like to get into retirement with their loved one being at home together 24/7. And so maybe that was a little bit of a wake-up call. And I know, Tony, I've got advisors all over the country I talk to, like yourself. And all of you guys and gals have stories where one spouse or the other looks at the advisor and says, "Get them out of the house. They're driving you nuts."   Tony Mauro: That's right. Yeah. "I want to kill them."   Speaker 1: Right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: So that could be a big thing to think about too, "I want to keep that sanctity of the home, so one of us is going to keep going to work because it gives us the social connections, but it also gives us a relief from the spouse."   Tony Mauro: Yeah. And I think this one I will struggle with because for a lot of people, you've been going to work for so long that it's hard to change your routine.   Speaker 1: Indeed.   Tony Mauro: And then you find out that you've been going to work, your spouse been going to work for so long, and you see each other at night on the weekends. Yeah, that 24/7 thing drives a lot of spouses on both sides crazy. And I think it's something that you have to at least take into account, especially if you're young enough and don't need the money to get out and make that happen.   Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think routines change, right? There's just various different things that just cause that uneasiness. And again, maybe it's not work, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's book clubs, or volunteering, or whatever the case might be. But I think that could be a reason people just go, "Well, you know what? I'll just go back to work because it gives me some social time with other folks. It gets me away from the spouse for a little while so we're not at each other all the time. And I make a little extra money because it helps with some of the money woes." Right? And so-   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: ... that'll walk us into the money woes conversation, Tony, because some studies have shown that nearly half of retirement age folks who are still working do so out of financial necessity or financial stress. And I think this is where you've got to have that strategy and plan in place, because if you absolutely have to work for the money, no shame, it is what it is. But if you're stressed about it when you don't need to be, that's kind of silly. Find out. Go to work because you want to, not 'cause you have to.   Tony Mauro: By far, yeah. This is the biggest conversation to have with your advisor. And we do it a lot with people before they retire on... What it comes down to is a couple things. You get to that 65, 67, and say you just haven't followed good advice, and you miss the mark, and it's a little late to save. You've got to go to work because you have to. And like I say, there's nothing wrong with that. You have to do it, depending on what kind of lifestyle you want. And that's one thing. But the other thing is a lot of people tend to just go to work because they... And they really don't have to. And again, if they want to just because they don't have to, that's great. But they continue working because they're worried about running out of money when, really, they do have a good plan, and they won't run out of money.   So make a decision based on that. I think that's where the advisor, beforehand, needs to talk to them. I just had a conversation with a client, he's only 43, making some good money, but he has not done much for retirement. He just refuses to do it. And I had the conversation with him, and I told him, "Look, I'm going to pull your social security statements for you and your wife's balance from her 401(k). I'm going to extrapolate that out. So if you continue down this path, here's where you're going to be at about 67." And he was floored because he says, "That's not the money I'm making now. I won't have any money." I said, "Exactly. So you've got money worries, so you've got to start now." Not too late for him, but you need to have these conversations, especially when you're, I think, in your 40s and 50s, with your advisor, 'cause that's the whole reason you're paying us, is to say, "Am I going to be okay at retirement or not?" And I can make these easy decisions, I think.   Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think this is where the final piece of this, Tony, is if you're doubting your strategy or your plan, or you don't even have one, clearly, then this is where you got to get one, 'cause even after years of working towards the goal of retirement... And a lot of people, Tony, when they come in for those initial consultations, they're in better shape than they realize, but they still think, "I'm going to have to work. I'm never going to be able to retire." So if you've got any doubt at all, this is why it's so important to just go get a strategy. Go out and talk with one, two, three different advisors, find the one that you like, have those consultations, those reviews, see who you resonate with, do your homework, check and see if they're properly licensed and all that good stuff, and get started, because that'll help you alleviate... Then the other things we talked about today come back into play just because you want to.   Tony Mauro: That's right. And most people, I think, want peace of mind when they get to that retirement... I know I do. My big peace of mind thing right now is, "Am I going to be able to go somewhere warm for all four months of the winter when I retire?" And I've done my calculations, and I think I'm going to be in really good shape for that. And so again, peace of mind, "Okay, I can do that." But if you're at all in doubt of your plan, or if you don't have a plan, now's the time to start working. It's never

There's an entire television network dedicated to doing things yourself — home renovation, landscaping, interior design, all of it. And the DIY mentality is genuinely admirable. But when it comes to retirement planning, the stakes of a bad install are a little higher than a crooked backsplash. Let's talk about what DIY planning actually looks like in practice.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT:    Speaker 1: We've created an entire television network dedicated to doing things yourself. Everywhere you turn, it's DIY, this and that, home renovation, landscaping, interior design, all of it. And the DIY mentality is genuinely admirable. But when it comes to retirement planning, the stakes of a bad install are a little higher than just a messed up backsplash in your kitchen. So let's talk about that this week, the DIY movement in retirement planning and what that looks like actually in practice.   Hey everybody, welcome into the podcast. This is Plan With The Tax Man with Tony Mauro. And we're going DIY this week, Tony, little pitfalls of doing things yourself. Everybody does it to a certain degree in many walks of life. You and I both have done a lot of DIY things ourselves, but certainly when it comes to the financials, this is maybe room to pause and think about this.   Technology, Tony, has changed. It's super easy to do a lot more things. Absolutely. I'll agree with that. I'm sure you will too. But the complication of preservation and distribution, AKA retirement, is vastly different than accumulation. So let's talk about that this week a little bit.   How are you doing, my friend?   Tony Mauro: I'm doing good. [inaudible 00:01:36].   Speaker 1: Do you agree with my statement there?   Tony Mauro: I agree with your statement. Yeah. And I love this topic for a lot of reasons because I think as we... Well, in the world we live in, especially with the AI advancements and whatnot, it's just getting worse and worse. Everybody wants to do everything themselves. And I think a lot of times, and I'm one of them too-   Speaker 1: Sure.   Tony Mauro: ... I used to love doing home renovations because I enjoyed it. But now that I'm a little older and I try to preach this to my son and whoever will listen, is you need to outsource everything that you're not good at or you don't enjoy because that's going to free you up to do what you do enjoy and/or make money. And we do it at our business here. I mean, I don't touch the IT. I don't touch the phones. Now, could I, and try all that? Yeah, sure.   Speaker 1: Sure.   Tony Mauro: It clutters up my life too much. And I want to give it to the guys that are good at it. And so yeah, I agree with your statement wholeheartedly.   Speaker 1: And it's one of those things where we certainly know in this world it's been more and more difficult, especially post-COVID, to get people to show up and maybe do quality jobs in different aspects of things.   Tony Mauro: Sure. Yeah.   Speaker 1: And so everybody feels like, "I'm just going to take on this." What's the old saying? If you want it done, right, do it yourself?   Tony Mauro: Right. Do it yourself.   Speaker 1: And that could be true. But I mean, my brother and I are fairly handy and we built some things around my property, Tony, but when it came time for a complete overhaul of the back deck and building a roof on it and all this kind of other stuff, I just did not feel comfortable in our skillset, so I farmed it out. Did it cost me more? Yeah, probably. But then again, maybe not because how many times might I had to double back and fix something that I didn't do right the first time because I don't have the skillset or the longevity of doing these things.   So financially speaking, I think that same thing happens. There's so many tools out there now. And growing the money... I mean, Tony, check this out. So you might know this off the top of your head, but if you don't, don't look it up. Just give me a quick educated guess. At the time we're recording right now, how much do you think the S&P 500 is up the last five years?   Tony Mauro: Cumulative?   Speaker 1: Yeah. Cumulative. Give me an idea. What do you think? Five years.   Tony Mauro: Five years, I'm going to say 45%.   Speaker 1: Okay. How blown away are you that it's 75?   Tony Mauro: That doesn't blow me away.   Speaker 1: Okay.   Tony Mauro: I was thinking a little higher, but no, it doesn't blow me away.   Speaker 1: Okay. 75. Crazy, right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Speaker 1: Five years cumulatively, the S&P 500 is up 75%. The Dow up 50 over that same period. So it's easy for people to go, "Oh man, you can be an idiot and throw a dart at something and do well." But when it comes time for the... As we get closer to financial or retirement, excuse me, distribution, there's a lot more at stake. And I think this is where people start to find themselves at a crossroads. And do you find that? Do you have people coming in that are like, "I've been doing it myself, Tony, but there's a lot I don't know and I'm getting a little nervous. I want to make sure I don't screw this up because this is my forever money"?   Tony Mauro: They do. And that's how a lot of people come to us. And if they've been doing things themselves, we certainly don't tear apart what they're doing, but we just try to ask a lot of questions and make sure that not only... Because a lot of people come in, "Well, I've been doing this myself and I've been averaging 10% a year or I've been beating the S&P 500."   Speaker 1: Sure.   Tony Mauro: And I say, "Well, okay. We really have you... Let's see, but that's good." And then the first question as I ask is, "What do you have for an emergency fund?" And they have a strange look on their face. And we start talking about that. I said, "Well, what about you... Tell me about your assets and things. And then we'll get to the part of, well, what do you have for life insurance?" And so some of that stuff they don't think about. All they're thinking about, "I throw my dart at the board. I'm investing in this. It's growing. I should be okay." And that may be the case, but there's more to a comprehensive, keyword, financial plan.   Speaker 1: And you may be doing well, right. So think about my analogy a second ago about what the numbers have done. So let's say you had a million bucks [inaudible 00:05:37] on the S&P 500, you're up half a million dollars over five years. And you're thinking, "Man, I got this thing figured out." Great. Okay. So now you got a 1.5 million sitting in this account, you're getting close to retirement and you got to start pulling this money out. And now you don't realize the things that you're triggering. So your income strategy is going to affect some other things. It's going to affect your Medicaid or your Medicare, excuse me. So you're going to get those issues. You got to start dealing with the IRMAA situation. That catches people off guard. The taxation of the whole thing, Tony, is what catches a lot of people off guard. That's where a lot of people are going, "Okay, this is why I definitely need help. How can I be more efficient here?" And with you being a CPA and a CFP, you're thinking about the tax situation, but as well as the future planning.   Tony Mauro: That's right. And some of those triggers you're talking about are exactly what I think a lot of people miss really with a good advisor. With us, we're looking always at, we know you want to get the most money, especially around retirement.   Speaker 1: Sure.   Tony Mauro: We got to do it tax efficiently because we don't want to give the feds any more than you have to. So let's think about it. And let's take everything into account, Social Security and everything else you might have coming in, to make sure that that's the case, that we're always on track with that. And don't miss that by too much because it's just ineffective. And at the end of the day, you bleed money and you don't even know it.   Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I can see somebody coming in DIY or they've done well. Let's just go with a million bucks, Tony, because it's easy. They've got a million dollars in their portfolio. And they come in and they're like, "Hey, I heard Ramsey talking about taking 8%. I've done the math. I'm going to pull 80 grand out a year, blah, blah, blah. I should be good to go, right?" You know what I mean? And it's like, that's a quick back of the napkin thing. It's like, "Well, all right, the 4% rule is half of that. The guy who created the 4% rules moved it to 4.7."   But for easy math, Tony, you could sit there and go, "Well, does 40,000, if we go with the 4% rule, does it get it done? Does it drive the plan?" Because Ramsey's thing is, "Well, if the market averages 10% year over year at minimum, why not take 8%?" But of course, the downside of that, Tony, is that to make that happen, you're 100% invested in the market. And I think again, as we age, we're not really comfortable taking that amount of risk.   Tony Mauro: No, no. And I think that's one of the flaws that a lot of DIYers end up with is they'll come in with some... We use that example.   Speaker 1: Rule of thumb. Yeah.   Tony Mauro: Just that rule of thumb, yeah. And when we sit down and start putting some numbers to that and their situation, most of the time... And I like Dave Ramsey's stuff about getting out of debt, staying out of debt, saving and whatnot. I don't agree with the 8% year-over-year. I think that's too aggressive based on things that happen not only in the market, because he's assuming it earns 10% every year. We know it does not, even though lately it's been way up. But what if you go through a stint right when you retire that it goes up 10% one year? And then we have a situation like from '04 th

Whether you're visiting one of the 63 national parks this summer or just hitting a local trail, a lot of the best practices for a great hike apply just as well to your retirement plan. Let's “walk” through a few. Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT:  Marc: This week on Plan with the Tax Man, maybe you're visiting one of our national parks this summer or just out hitting the local trail. And if you are, we have some best practices for a great hike that apply just as well to your retirement plan. So let's walk through a few of these with Tony Mauro. Hey everybody. Welcome into the podcast. This is Plan with the Tax Man, with my friend Tony Mauro. How you doing buddy? Tony Mauro: I'm doing good. Marc: Yeah? Tony Mauro: Midst of summer. Marc: Yeah. Tony Mauro: It's all good. Marc: I'm telling you what, it's been crazy, incredible hot. Look folks, little FYI out there. If your AC unit fails you during the really hot months, be very, very careful because apparently mold can build in the ducts quickly when the humidity is high and the AC's not working, go figure, even though the AC's not working because the water and condensation that sits in there while waiting to get it repaired apparently turns to mold. So a little FYI because it's expensive to fix it. Tony Mauro: Yeah. Marc: And that might be a retirement expense, Tony, that you just didn't see coming, right? Tony Mauro: You didn't see coming. You better have to depend on the emergency fund. Marc: Exactly. Right. So we're always trying to provide useful nuggets of information on this podcast. But we're going to have some fun this week. Tony, I know you like to travel. I know you like to go a lot of places. Do you visit the national parks? Do you do some of that stuff? Tony Mauro: The reason that I want to talk about this, because I was just out in a couple of them last week. Marc: Oh. Tony Mauro: I had to go out to South Dakota for a wedding, and so we stopped at the Badlands National Park. Marc: Nice. Tony Mauro: And it wasn't really a park, but Mount Rushmore. But I have been to other national parks out. I've been of course to Yellowstone and a couple of others. A lot of them I still want to see, and they're very interesting. I will say- Marc: You have been at Yellowstone or not? I though you had. Tony Mauro: I have been to Yellowstone. Marc: Oh okay. Tony Mauro: Yeah. Marc: Yeah. Okay. Tony Mauro: I still have a few on my list. Zion and Bryce And some of those, but I do like to hike. I'm an amateur. Marc: Yeah. I want to go to Denali. That'd be cool. Tony Mauro: Yeah, Denali. Marc: Yeah. Or McKinley, whatever it used to be called, either way. So look, do you know how many national parks we have, by the way? There's a lot. Tony Mauro: I don't. Marc: There's a lot. 63. Tony Mauro: Is that how many? 63 national parks. Marc: Yeah. 63 national parks. Some are really big, obviously, and some are really small. I think Hawaii's got a couple. I think California's got like six, but yeah. So there's different sizes and stuff out there. So anyway, a lot of people like to visit these things as a summer thing with the kids or grandkids maybe. So we'll talk a little bit about some analogies. I'll let you spin some financial wisdom to my setup for the park conversation. So we'll start with a map. Don't leave home without a map. I know we got these cell phones and that we're attached to them now, Tony, but you might not get signal in some of these bigger parks. And if you think about it, a lot of the gates when you go into some of these national parks, the first thing a ranger does is tell you a couple things and they hand you a map. Tony Mauro: That's what they did to me. Yeah. Marc: Exactly. And that's the same thing. It's to help keep you oriented. Same thing with a financial strategy. It's to help to keep you oriented and focused. Tony Mauro: It is. I mean, the financial plan, if you have a formal one, I mean, that's your backbone. That's the map itself. And just like when I was... We did a little hike in the Badlands on our own and they gave us a map to make sure we stayed on the trails and stayed on... I equate that to just like in the financial planning world, stay on track and make sure that you're following your map as best you can. So out there in the Badlands, if you get off the trails, a lot of bad things can happen quickly. Marc: Yeah. Tony Mauro: In the financial world, it's going to be a slow burn if you get off track, but over time you get off track too much, and what's going to happen is you get to the end and you are not going to be where you though you were going to be. Marc: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Tony Mauro: And so with this plan, as it changes and whatnot, it's not like a static map that you'd be holding in your hand with hiking. Marc: Sure. But if you get a little off course, it might help you get back on. Or even those reviews serves as almost like a check-in spot. Maybe you're going on a really long trail through the parks and it's like, "Hey, we're going to stop at this little whatever this thing is." And there's a map there because maybe they've made some changes or who knows? Tony Mauro: Yeah. In our annual reviews, I mean normally the plan changes a little bit every year, if nothing else, just with a little bit of goal modifications and things like that. And then of course, maybe even rebalancing. Marc: Well, life's going to throw something at you. Tony Mauro: Life's going to throw something at you. I was just telling you before this call, life threw something at one of our clients. They've got parents going into, one's got dementia and had got to go in a nursing home with no plan. And boom, all of a sudden life changes quickly. Marc: Yep. Tony Mauro: All the better to have a map and to be following it. Marc: For sure. For sure. Well, and unfortunately, Tony, one of the problems that we run into often when we go to these lovely, beautiful national parks because our country is full of amazing locations, is unfortunately there's other people. And people don't do the best job of always picking up after themselves. So when you go to just about every national park, there's signs everywhere. "Please do not leave your garbage. Please do not do the..." Like at Yellowstone, we were just talking about that. At the sulfur pools, "Don't throw cans in the sulfur pools," things like that. Just crazy stuff that you think, hello, common sense. We should not do this. Ultimately, the message is don't leave a mess behind. And financially, same kind of thing. I mean, when we're no longer here, are we leaving a mess for our family? Tony Mauro: Yeah. And that's what I was just on the call with is that this family's mother and father are going to leave them a mess, and they didn't plan for it. And you don't want to leave your loved ones when you're gone. I'm already talking. I'm working through it myself with my wife at our life list. Something happens to one of us, we don't want to leave a mess for our son. And that means knowing where everything's at and how to close things out and what's going to go where. It's hard enough for loved ones when you're gone dealing with all the emotions. You don't want to leave them with a financial mess. And that goes from everything from no will to outdated wills, no beneficiaries on certain things, keeping all your stuff secret. I think you need to be more transparent with your heirs to make sure that you don't leave them with this and let them know what the plans are. You don't have to share every detail of every cent that you have, but I think you should leave something for them to help them when the inevitable happens. And then you're not going to be blindsided. Marc: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and sometimes there's a lot of little things too. Unfortunately, big situations like the one you're currently dealing with there, but there's the little things people can do to not leave a mess. I mean, even something as simple as your TODs or PODs on some of your different accounts. A lot of times people don't even think about that. They got a bank account, maybe they got 50, 60, 70 grand sitting there and they forgot to put transfer on death to their spouse or whatever. So just a mess. Just make it easy when we pass on, because we're all going to pass on. Try to make it as easy as possible and leave no mess behind. The scenic route. A lot of times we go to these national parks, we love to do the scenic route. Lots of things can get in the way. It's fun to do the scenic route, but sometimes you're just tired. You want to take the quickest route too. And I think when you're thinking about retirement, sometimes it's easy, Tony, to be like, oh man, what's the fastest way to get me some more income or take advantage of this crazy market run that we've been on or whatever. So the scenic route could be the way to go. Sometimes the faster way is the way to go. It just depends. Tony Mauro: It does depend. And it depends on going back to the first thing we talked about is your map and really what's going on. What we see mostly is clients wanting the fastest way. And you hit it on the head is what's the fastest way I can get to X amount because they think that's... And what they end up doing is, without a good plan, they could end up taking a lot of risk. They could end up really shooting themselves in the foot a little bit because there's all kinds of things out there. Anything from the volatility in the markets, what's going on in the world politically. And then of course dumbing it down a little bit, just not dumbing it down, but shrinking it down to what's going on in their personal lives. You're going to have things that pop up at you that scenic route may be the better route. Our jobs as advisors is trying to mesh the scenic route with the fastest route and get the best of both of the

Over the past year, one retirement video on YouTube pulled in 3.7 million views. The title: "Sell These 5 Things Before You Retire." We thought it was worth a conversation — not to tear it apart, but to react honestly. Do we agree? How often do we actually see this play out with real clients? Let's get into it. Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  Marc: Over the past year, one retirement video on YouTube pulled in 3.7 million views, the title, Sell These Five Things Before You Retire. We thought we would talk about those five things this week here on the podcast and break it down a little bit with Tony here on Plan With the Tax Man.   Welcome into the podcast, folks. Thanks for hanging out with Tony Mauro and myself, as we talk investing finance and retirement. And yeah, the top video of 2025 for retirement was 3.7 million views, Tony, and it's Sell These Five Things Before You Retire. So, we'll keep that in mind as we're breaking these down. I want to get your take on each of these, and does it make sense to you? Do you see that often? Just let us in on your insights as a planner who's been doing this for many years. So, this should be fun. How you doing, my friend?   Tony Mauro: Yeah, I've been doing good, been doing good. This is a good topic because I think we as planners get asked these things a lot. This was a really good video. And I did view it, I agree with most of it.   Marc: Yeah, I do too, yeah.   Tony Mauro: We'll break it down a little bit and have some fun.   Marc: Yeah. Well, let's start with the biggie. The oversized house. I think this is a huge question for obviously many, many people. Obviously, it resonated with lots of folks because yeah, I mean, it could maybe free up some significant money. Now, however, depending on what you want to do, housing prices are still pretty high. So, but I do agree overall with this concept. If it's this big place that the two of you don't need anymore, well, that's something to consider.   Tony Mauro: It is, and all of these topics really I would preface with saying it begs the question to at least discuss with your planner, because they're selling... In the video they're saying, "Okay, yeah, do this, this, and this." I don't agree with it all the time, but at least you're asking the question. But the theory here is, is obviously if you've got a big house, only two of you in it, no mortgage, maybe don't want to take care of it anymore, have had it a long time. Could sell the house, take the tax-free gain most of the time, and then either downsize and possibly have more money in your pocket to do something else with.   Now, where I disagree with this a little bit is because housing is the way it is, it seems like a lot of times when people go to sell property, at least in the Midwest, down the coast, maybe if you can make a lot of money that's a different story. But they find out, well, I make two or 300,000 on it, and then I go to find something even though it's smaller and I got to invest all of my proceeds plus the gain because things are up from when I bought, and they don't really get as far as they thought they would. But the theory is good because if you're, like in my own case, I have a fairly large yard and I talk with my wife right now. I was like, "As we age, do we really want to take care of this?" And we own the house already and it's too big just for the two of us, but I don't know. I don't know if I want to leave. So, it's a good question to talk about with your advisor, for sure.   Marc: Yeah. I mean, and it could, to your point, I mean, obviously add some significant capital to a retirement plan depending on, again, what you were going to do. Are you going to just maybe rent? Were you going to get a condo or a townhouse? But those have gotten really pricey lately too. So, it's a worthwhile exercise for sure to see what it could-   Tony Mauro: That's right.   Marc: ... do to your overall retirement plan.    Number two on that list, Tony, was supporting or financially supporting the adult children, sell this item. I absolutely agree with this one, me personally. But I mean, and it's hard for parents to go against the instinct of helping, but you can't finance retirement, Tony.   Tony Mauro: You can't, and I agree with you and with this point too. It is hard, I go through it with my own kids. Now I have a grandchild, and that's although I'm going to do whatever I want with her, but... And there's books been written about it about the... And I think it was from The Millionaire Next Door, I think it was from the book, but somebody was saying that that's economic triage. And then what happens is if you start supporting them, then they expect it. And like you said, they're going to have to go out and build their own [inaudible 00:04:29]-   Marc: And they've got decades still to do it, you don't.   Tony Mauro: They've got a lot of time, yeah. And you're running out of time. And so, I would limit this if you're going to do it at all, and try not to do it. Just for nothing else, hopefully they can figure things out on their own and become their own financially responsible adults, but obviously we're there as parents if they really fall, but I strongly urge my clients, yeah, not to do this.   Marc: Yeah. You made an interesting point too, if they really fall, yes. But I mean, look, at the same time, no, because you're going to have to sometimes, you got to rein it in, especially if your plan is just barely getting you the retirement that you needed or not even the dream retirement but just getting you into it and through it, allowing you to stop working or whatever, every situations are different, you can't sacrifice that to help them. I mean, I know it's tough, but sometimes you just got to bite that bullet or they've got to bite that bullet. But isn't it funny though how like throughout time it's some weird thing like, "Oh, well this is the grandkid and the grandkid is now more important than you. Sorry, bye."   Tony Mauro: I tell you what, it's hard. It really is, because you get like... I never thought I would be like that, but yeah, and you want to ensure their future. I don't know why.   Marc: Well, maybe because they're little and it's like it takes you back to when yours were little. And of course, we're typically in a better position when we have the grandkids to help them out. So, that probably has something to do with it too.   Tony Mauro: That has something to do with it, exactly.   Marc: Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. All right. Number three, expensive toys that become expensive burdens. Some of us spend a lot of years, Tony, the 30s to mid 50s collecting those toys and doing things that we like. And then you just one day go, that's a lot of crap.   Tony Mauro: It is, and I admit it.   Marc: Do I want it? Do I need it? Right?   Tony Mauro: Yeah. And we've all been guilty of it, whether it's a boat, you name it, a classic car.   Marc: Yeah, a travel trailer, whatever.   Tony Mauro: If you've got money, yeah, airplane, something like that. If you're not using this stuff and really don't enjoy it, you do have to start asking yourself is, do the cost of these things sitting around actually match what the enjoyment that I get out of them? For me, a lot of things is not. Things don't interest me as much as they did when I was younger. And now that you, most of the time you get a little closer to retirement, in retirement, you have the money to pay for them. But it's like, yeah, just because I can do it, I don't really necessarily get enough enjoyment out of it to just have it sitting around. Then I've got maintenance and everything else and it just freaks me out. But this is something to talk about with your advisor, especially, if you're looking at all of your assets, which your advisors should know about, not just your investments. He or she should know about everything you have.   Marc: Good point, yeah.   Tony Mauro: They may be able to advise you, "Hey, do you still enjoy this? If so, let's keep it in. If not, well, what can we do with that money to get you more enjoyment?"   Marc: Good point. And in that list, and you could have maybe put point number four here in point number three, but maybe not. I get where they're going from this, but I have a real hard time with this one, Tony. So, this will be fun to-   Tony Mauro: I do too.   Marc: Yeah, this will be a fun debate here. It's the second car. Now the argument is without the commute, two cars sitting in the garage maybe costing more than they're worth in insurance, maintenance, and so on and so forth. And granted, at a certain age, maybe this becomes more realistic, right? But you think about retirement, people are more active, they're more healthy in early days of retirement. The loss of freedom to an American is a huge deal. I mean, think about our country, our identity for, God, since the '50s has been tied up in the car, right? When we built the interstate system and all the vehicles and everything, I mean, this is a big country. And when you want to jump in the car and go someplace, even if it's down the street to the store, you want to be able to have the freedom to do that, right?   Tony Mauro: You do. And I don't have many clients, they talked about it on the video. It might be from a strict, strict planning standpoint, might be something to consider. And again, I maybe asked the question, but you hit it on the head with the word freedom, is that less Americans, at least me I know and almost everybody I know, do not want to give up that freedom of I can go, like you said, get in it and go wherever I want.   Marc: Yeah. Well, Tony, you travel a lot to Europe, right? You were just talking about that on our last podcast, right? Europe is designed differently. They walk everywhere.

Summer's here. And somewhere between the excitement of planning a big trip and the anxiety of what it costs, a lot of retirees end up doing something that surprises us… they feel guilty about it. They worked hard, they saved, they planned for decades, and then they second-guess a beach vacation. Today, let's talk about how travel fits into a real retirement plan and how to enjoy it without guilt. Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  Marc: Summer's here and somewhere between the excitement of planning a big trip and the anxiety of what it costs, a lot of retirees end up doing something that surprises many. They feel guilty about it. So today let's talk about how travel fits into a real retirement strategy and how to enjoy it without all that guilt.   Hey everybody, welcome into the podcast. It's another edition of Plan with the Tax Man. Tony and I are back for more content as we talk about investing finance and retirement. And we are going to talk about, again, that guilt-free vacation, planning, strategizing ahead of time so that you can enjoy some of the things that you really worked towards in your retirement years. And Tony, this works out well because you've had a bit of travel yourself, took a couple of vacations. And how you doing, my friend?   Tony: I'm doing wonderful. Yeah, I'm back from vacations and I like this topic because it is as people get closer to retirement, I think about a lot of these things too, so I'm anxious to talk about it.   Marc: Well, I think a lot of people have heard and probably know and admit, Tony, that most people will spend more time planning a vacation than they do their retirement. That's pretty common in this field. But when you're thinking about what you guys do, strategizing, putting these plans together, when you're building those out for people, is travel and vacation something that actually makes it into the plan? I know some advisors do, some don't. I feel like it's something that you've got to take into account and be budgeting for. And I'm sure that you guys do. What are some reasons why and how does that help the end user?   Tony: Yeah. For a lot of our clients, it's one of the first questions I asked when we get to the point of, okay, what do you want to do in retirement? And if I don't hear, I mean, for a lot of people they say, "Well, I want to travel." But then we try to get a lot more specific with that. But if I don't hear it, I'll ask it. But what a lot of people do is the ones that don't think about it, they plan for everything else and they don't really plan for fun because once we get through everything, it's like, okay, what do you want to do that's fun? Because that's the whole reason for retiring and enjoying the last part of the game of your life.   And so that's one thing I ask them and see if travel comes in there. And I think some people, they feel like they've never traveled a lot in their life so they don't feel like,... They want to do it, but they don't feel almost like they're worthy of it, like they haven't earned it yet, which I think is a mistake because obviously you have.   And if they haven't planned for it, a lot of times then it gets kind of stressful and that's what leads us to, well, let's start planning for it. I mean, everybody's got different budgets and different thoughts about what their travel is. So what's great for me is not going to be great for a client or somebody else, but they just need to get it in their plan and obviously we can throw it out later or we can massage it, do whatever we want. But I definitely think that if it's important to them, we got to get it detailed.   Marc: Well, and I think that some people probably seeing it on paper in their plan makes them feel like, "Okay, yes, I can spend this." Because like you said, they're so busy thinking, "Do I have enough to survive? Do I have enough to live on? Am I going to run out of money?" The classic things there. And it's like, no. And even with the vacation spending in your plan, you're not going to run out of money. I think that gives people that ability to do that more guilt-free.   Tony: Absolutely. That does. And once they know that, yeah, they can ease up a little bit and feel a little more calm about talking about it and actually trying to plan something. It's fun to see when people haven't traveled a lot and they get to do some stuff that they never dreamt they would do.   Marc: And I imagine that budget would change over the years. Like maybe you're budgeting 20,000 or 25,000 over the early couple years and then that tapers down a little bit because I'm assuming that there's a natural rhythm to how retirees spend. And we've all heard the terms about the go go and so like that. So obviously early on, most people are probably wanting to do more because A, free from work, I'm free from the time clock. But also B, I'm feeling good enough to go do it.   Tony: Yes. And I used to think that too. I used to think that my retirement was going to be just the same from the beginning till the day you die. And as I've watched people over the years, that's so far from the truth because you're exactly right. Most of the time, as soon as people retire, they want to hit the travel and hit the stuff on the big bucket list as soon as they can for the reasons you mentioned. And then we see about 75-ish and beyond, things slow down. Your body isn't moving quite as fast. The mind isn't working quite as fast. And so they don't want to be so far from home in case something happens. And so it really starts to slow down. And then you get over most of the clients I see anyway, over 80, 82 years old, it's really gone to where those days are over.   It's really just visiting family and trying to stay closer to home. So your travel budget does, it starts out high and then it starts going down, which even I think is more of a comfort to people to get them to take and do things while they're a little bit younger in retirement because you're not going to do this forever.   Marc: Right, right. Yeah. And everybody, again, situation is going to be a little bit different. I imagine you often have to, and we've talked about this many times in other aspects of the retirement strategies, you have to put on that therapy hat, for lack of a better term, because I imagine there's many couples that don't see eye to eye on travel spending, right?   Tony: There's a lot. Yeah.   Marc: You got to balance some of that. What are some things to think about there?   Tony: Well, generally, if we're on that page and somebody they can't come to an agreement, we definitely try to talk it out with both spouses usually and let them know that they are going to have the money to do it. Now, if there's some other reason that they don't want to go, then we can get that out in the open. But really we just try to convince them that you are going to have the money and you don't have to worry about that. Now, if you're averse to travel planes or something like that, I can't really help them with that, but it's really not the trip itself. It's just really kind of talking through, seeing on paper, reassuring them that, "Hey, this is able to be done." And see what they do. Sometimes they compromise, sometimes they don't. It's kind of funny to watch, but it's kind of interesting.   I only had one couple where, and that's a real trouble where one of the spouses, she just didn't want to travel at all. I mean, it doesn't matter what the other spouse or I said. They had plenty of money and so he ended up kind of doing some things by himself and she was okay with it, but that was a rare instance. Most of the time they come up with something.   Marc: Yeah. And again, how you've lived leading into that, my wife travels a lot for work so I know that she's going to want to do a little less than... And I don't travel. I don't leave the house at all very much because I can work from my home. So like a lot of people have done, so I imagine that adds an interesting dynamic too where one wants to go, one doesn't want to go. So you got to kind of find that balance. One wants to spend, one doesn't want to spend. So finding that balance. And a good way of thinking about this, Tony, is the plan itself might become the referee, right? Because then when it's in the plan and it's structured out and you go, look, you can see it. And then it maybe diffuses some of those arguments.   Tony: It does. Yeah. Because once that time period comes up in the plan, everybody's ready for it. There's not any real surprises and they know they have the money. And yeah, it does ease the stress of it again.   Marc: The tensions a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Do most people think far enough ahead when it comes to planning for travel? I mean, I imagine most don't, right? I mean, there might be somebody who's a bit of a big planner, "Hey, I want to take this really big family trip three or four or five years out." But I imagine most people probably don't do that.   Tony: They don't. I see this so often that they want to travel and then it's like, well, let's do something in six months. And then, okay, you could do that, but I think you need to focus on, especially in retirement, come up with a plan. I get a friend of mine because he always laughs at me because I do plan three, four, five years out even now for travel. I've got it already down for the next four years. At least what we think we want to do, obviously you can change it.   Marc: Yeah, but it gives you time to kind of build in the funds and kind of see what you're going to do. I mean, things pop up like a popup wedding destination or something like that, sure, but a little bit of structure could help.   Tony: It certainly can help. And I tell you, the shorter term planning, to me, I don't like surprises and most people don't. And I think some o

Quick question before we get started... which Easter candy are you most looking forward to this year? Whatever your answer is, we're going to use it. Because today we're building a financial Easter basket and matching some of your favorite candies to the products and tools that belong in a solid retirement plan. Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  Speaker 1  00:00 Quick question before we get started, which Easter candy are you most looking forward to? Yeah, that's my opener for the podcast this week, because we're going to talk about financial Easter baskets. So we're going to talk about candy and what they might say about you here this week on plan with the tax man. You   Speaker 1  00:35 everybody. Welcome into the podcast. This is plan with the tax man with Tony Morrow from tax Doctor Inc, at your planning pros.com that's where you can find them, online. Your planning pros.com, and Tony, we're gonna talk candy, because you and I are in our 50s and we love candy, but it don't love us as much anymore.   Tony Mauro  00:53 That's right. And I grew up eating candy and all these things, although my favorite Easter candy is not on there.   Speaker 1  01:00 Okay, we'll add that. Get to that at the end. Yeah, we'll add that in. So what are we going to do here? Is, I want to give you some, some, you know, Easter candy in lieu of the, you know, the end of the month here and Easter upon us. And we'll do a little financial Easter basket, and let you kind of give me some sort of, we'll do some sort of an analogy. I'll set you up with something, and I'll let you kind of talk about it, so we'll have a little bit of fun. So, are you a jelly bean kind of guy? Easter time? Do you like some jelly beans? You know? I like the kind of, what I would call those artisan jelly beans that they now have come out with, you know? So I do like them. But we always used to get just to run the mill stuff. Oh, yeah. Like, like, you know, I don't know Apple Cinnamon, or, you know, I don't know pumpkin spice or something, yes, although they probably do make a pumpkin spice Jelly Bean. And people are probably like, no pumpkins for October, not for, you know, April, but so, all right, the Jelly Bean, so, lots of colors, lots of combinations, right? And so maybe you're, maybe the analogy here is the 401 k right? Maybe, maybe some combinations, or some, some different things, some variety, potentially, yeah.   Tony Mauro  02:08 I think the biggest thing for, you know, the anchor of most retirement plans is either, you know, 401 K Sep, simple, you know, you name it as the anchor for what you're trying to do as you get toward the end.   Speaker 1  02:23 True and jelly beans are probably a good staple, a good anchor in the basket, if you will.   Tony Mauro  02:27 Yeah, you know, good anchor in the basket, you know. And you find them in every basket. If you don't have this, you know, you need to be starting it. Most employers are offering something these days, and you need to get started. I can't. We're in the midst of tax season, and I'll say this as a public service announcement, I and I've been doing taxes for 30 years. Is I always when I'm reviewing a return, look at somebody's w2 and look in box 12 and see what they're contributing or not contributing to their retirement plan. And many times I see the box check that they the company offers one, I see nothing being contributed, or I see a little bit, which is better than nothing, yeah, but you got to get it going, because it's one of the best deals on the street. It's usually some free money in there. And I think you need to start those early, the use time and compounding and everything else, so that you've got this anchor for when you you know, are at the end,   Speaker 1  03:22 yeah, I don't know why. I just got hit with it. You're talking about, you know, out there on the street, I'm thinking jelly beans in the street. And also I'm like, could you imagine a funny little world where we're out there dealing jelly beans on the corner? Hey, man, right, I got some, I got some pinks. I got some yellows. I got some of those, those terrible black ones. They're those are never very good. I'm not a big fan of, maybe it's just the, maybe it's just the, like black liquors, not very good   Tony Mauro  03:47 to me. I never did like the black ones. But I think, though, to your point, with the different colors, once you start contributing to one of these, then you need to have some diversification. Most, most retirement plans will offer you, you know, an array of different choices, which is, you know, probably behooves you to work with your advisor and come up with a strategy as to what those choices should be.   Speaker 1  04:09 Now, the Jelly Bean choices in the 401 k are, it's not crazy assortment of colors, right? So, like an IRA, you're going to have a lot more to choose from, you know, because you're kind of stuck with whatever they you know, the company goes within those 401 K options. So some people, Tony, often think about, hey, look, from a workplace plan, get that match, get that free money. But then maybe let's do some contributing to an individual account or something we set up so we have more control or more options. How do you feel about that strategy as well?   Tony Mauro  04:39 I like that strategy a lot. Well, that's what we generally will say, is, is somebody comes in, we tell them to start with their 401, K, get that company match. You could certainly continue to max that out if you want. Yeah, absolutely. And then one. Once you get to that point, then you've got to turn to outside. It might be a Roth, might be a traditional something like that. But yeah, if at least get the match. And then if you want more control, total control, then you have to go to an IRA or Roth. The only, the only drawback is, is you are limited on your contribution. So if you want to do more, you got to stay in that retirement plan with some of that. But yeah, they're all three are good ideas.   Speaker 1  05:17 Okay, all right, so moving on here with our Easter basket analogy, things you might find on the Easter basket and the candy, and then how that, you know, might correlate to something. Let's talk about peeps that teach the nasty. And if you like peeps, don't yell at me yet. I'm gonna give you I'm gonna do pros and cons here. But, you know, look, when you're a kid, man, they're colorful, they're fluffy. They're marshmallowy. A lot of kids like peeps, right? They're just kind of fun. You're kind of play with them. You stretch them out a little bit, you chomp on them. They're sticky on your fingers. But as you get a little older, I don't know, they're kind of nasty, right? And they're kind of a pain a little bit. But, you know, some people grow up and they still really love them. And this, to me, is got to be life insurance, right? Because it's kind of like when you're younger, you kind of dig it, right? And then you get older, you think, why do I like this? Or why do I do I even need this anymore?   Tony Mauro  06:08 Yeah, and, and just like peeps, and I don't like peeps anymore. I used to like them, right? Just like you life insurance generally, when we start talking about planning, is not very well, I would say, understood number one or used. So it's not everybody's first choice, that's for sure. And when we start talking to them about it, you know, everybody you know is going to die. And when you're younger, obviously, you know, especially today, term insurance is peanuts to get and protect your family. My son, who's 30, you know, got a new daughter. And, you know, home, and, you know, start accumulating debt, because they're just getting started, it's important that they have coverage. Yeah, for the family, in case one of them, you know, goes down. And yes, you can get some coverage through your employer, which obviously you want to take advantage of that. But it generally is not near enough to what you need, especially as you are younger now, as we age, we get in their 50s, like me, and I'm looking at my life insurance, and as some of this kind of is set to expire in the next five or 10 years, I don't need this much anymore, because I'm, you know, I'm closer to the end, all my bills are paid off, you know, it's in my other financial You know, situation is intact. So you may not need that. Now, some people say, Well, you know what, I don't care if I don't need it. I want it. I want to know if i i think a perfect scenario is I'm at retirement. This is me talking personally. I know that if I pass away, I can, I can, while I'm living, enjoy some of my money I've worked so hard for and I know that, okay, my son, if I'm going to pass money on to him, is gonna be taken care of through life insurance. And some people like, like, like, that angle as well,   Speaker 1  07:49 just like peeps, right? I mean, in some people love it, and it's not everyone. Some it's not everyone's first choice sometimes, right? So, but it could be a useful tool, right? As far as the life insurance thing, right, to pass on that wealth. So at least consider the conversation, have a chat and discuss it, because, again, life insurance is one of those pieces of the retirement strategy that, you know, it's, it's, there's some more wiggle room in there, but there it could be, or life insurance products in general, there could be some aspects of those tools that can be beneficial. So again, talk with your financial professional about that. And of course, Tony's here to help if you've got those questions as well. All right, inside the financial Easter basket, diving back in. Here we go. Here, robin's eggs. Okay, now, we didn't get these often, but occasionally we did. We get these interesting little candy, right? Kind of a divisive candy. Some love them. Some can't stand them. Kind of like peeps, r

Nobody likes tax season. But for new retirees, it can come with a few unwelcome surprises. The rules have changed, the income sources have shifted, and strategies that made sense during your working years may no longer apply. Today, we're looking at some of the biggest tax mistakes retirees make, as discussed in a recent Kiplinger article, and whether these match what we see in the real world.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  Speaker 1  00:01 Nobody likes tax season, and certainly not even Tony Morrow here on playing with the tax man. But for new retirees, it can also come with a few unwelcome surprises. So this week on the podcast, let's talk about tax mistakes new retirees make. Look up in the sky. It's a bird.   Nick  00:17 It's a plane. No, it's the tax man. He may not be a superhero, but Tony Morrow has saved many retirement plans with his extreme knowledge of tax planning strategies. It's time for plan with the tax man.   Speaker 1  00:32 Everybody welcome into the podcast. Thanks for playing tour. Thanks for hanging out with us here on plan with the tax man. If I can get my thoughts together, Tony, it is tax season. And I made the joke there in the intro that not even you like taxes, even though it is obviously something you've been doing for a long time as a CPA and a CFP and an EA of 30 plus years. But it is a it is a hectic, confusing time, for sure, every year, isn't it? It really is. And as we're taping this, we're right in the midst of it. And it seems to me, you know, I mean, we like helping clients, but this truly is, you know, compliance season, you know, and the tax planning has to go on before after this. And so what I find, ever since covid, it seems like taxpayers, our clients anyway, tend to really just kind of put it off. And, you know, we're down to kind of where we prepare tax. Most of our tax returns is March and April. It used to be kind of from mid January on, but yeah, stuff gets out later and everything's slower, yeah,   Tony Mauro  01:31 yep, yeah. So it is a hectic time. And I understand, from a taxpayer standpoint, nobody likes to gather all their stuff and they put it off and yeah, you know,   Speaker 1  01:40 yeah, yeah. So yeah. But we were just talking before we started the podcast, folks, and I was saying, I got to get my stuff over to my CPA. And of course, you know, he was like, Well, why isn't toning your CPA? Well, we're in two different parts of the country, so that's the beauty of the internet. But, but, and he's, you know, he's like, look, my public service announcement to everybody out there is, get them this information as soon as possible, so they have time. And I was like, Okay, I'll get it over there. So I got scolded. So not that, not that we, all, you know, don't do it right from time to time, Tony, but yeah, the sooner we can get it in, the better, right? But it is. Let's talk about tax mistakes for new retirees, specifically on this week's podcast. Okay, because there's a recent article from Kiplinger, we'll put a link into it there, talking about big mistakes that tax retiree new retirees make. And so we'll focus on some of those comments there, and just kind of get your thoughts on it and see how it matches up with what you see, you know, in the real world, right, from just you know, from just an author as an article standpoint, versus what you see in the trenches. So starting the conversation with ignoring the upcoming RMDs, especially if it's your first one, right? Yeah, so you got to be careful here. So talk to me a little bit about that, and some of the stuff you   Tony Mauro  02:49 see, well, some of the stuff we see, and we, you know, base what we see, because a lot of our retail tax clients are retirees or nearing retirement, and so we do see a lot of these things come up, rather than, you know, working with the younger crowd who don't have these problems yet, but they will. But yeah, ignoring the RMDs. I mean, RMD is required minimum distribution, you know, for those that are unaware. And so you you may have an IOU to the government for these, and they're going to come knocking and say, hey, look, once you reach a certain age, at 73 now and 75 for people like me, born after 1960 you need to start taking money out of your tax deferred accounts, because the government says you have to, because they want their their tax. They want their cut. That's right, they want their cut. So it's important that you work with your advisor or figure this out, because there is a large penalty if you delay this past the date you're supposed to do it, so you don't want to get in that situation, and then you have to start taking this money out every year, which creates a little bit of a tax problem, because you're going to, you're going to have some taxes due on this and whatnot. But the kind of, the hidden problem is, is the government will allow you to defer this a little bit past your full retirement age or your RMD age, but you got to be careful, because then you could end up taking two in one year if you wait till the last minute. So you want to plan this carefully,   Speaker 1  04:08 and you can do that the first time, right. Tony, you can push it back on that first one, but to your point, you'd have to take two, and that could cause you to bump a tax bracket if you're not careful, right? If you're   Tony Mauro  04:20 not careful, depending on how much you have to take out, you hate to go into the next tax bracket and pay some extra tax needlessly, when just a little bit of planning could have saved you. That Gotcha. So I would stay, you know, stay ahead of that and work with your advisor. So, you know, these important dates coming up and your options, yeah, you know.   Speaker 1  04:37 And of course, we're off conversion conversations, and are going to can fall into there. And, you know, just again, getting efficient with it and getting handled is just gonna remove some of that stress. And people are always the question always comes back, I don't need it. Why do I gotta take it? Well, we said it a minute ago. The government wants their cut, right, right? They want their cut. There's no way around it. People often ask that question to Tony. They're. Like, how do I get out of the RMDs? It's like, well, you don't, well, I heard a Roth conversion gets me out of it. No, you're just convert. You're still paying the taxes. You're just moving it to an account that you want, that your heirs won't have to deal with, or, you know, later on,   Tony Mauro  05:12 that's right. And Roth conversions really can be a really powerful tool. We use them all throughout the age brackets, depending on your stance on, you know, if you want it, you know, tax free forever, or tax deferred, and worry about it later. But Roth conversions, if done correctly, you know, and you gradually do them over, you know, especially your early retirement years. So really, what that means is, all you're doing is taking money out before your RMD, paying taxes on it now, no penalties, right? And filling up the tax bracket you're in not going into the next one, so you're not paying tax needlessly. And then you got, you've got that money out of Uncle Sam's crosshairs for the tax IOU, because it's, it's now tax free forever, the earnings, and, of course, the principal,   Speaker 1  05:57 yeah, and keep So, yeah, yeah. And definitely keep in mind, I say, like the state you're in, right, their state, lower tax, state issues. You know, people often think about moving as part of that equation when thinking about Roth's right, or the Social Security factors, Irma right, triggering the Irma cost. So just make sure that if you are considering a conversion, you're doing it correctly.   Tony Mauro  06:16 Yeah, and all of those points are good points, because all that stuff comes into play. I get a lot of seniors. Do they get tripped up on the higher Medicare costs, because all of a sudden, you know, their income is way high, and then they get a bigger Medicare bill. Course, it's coming out of their Social Security. And then they're mad. You could file some forms and do some things there to get it back lowered, but it's just more work and more, you know, and it's tricky too, Tony, because it's a two year. Look back. Two year, look back. Yeah, so it's, again, a little planning goes a long way in this area, you know, going back to my first point, all of these require some planning, but it's not difficult. It's just you got to have the conversations.   Speaker 1  06:54 Well, you and I were chatting when we first kicked things off that people are owing a bit this year. You're doing some returns, and people are, you know, and you know, and you were kind of surprised to see a few more people owing, which is interesting, because, you know, we were seeing a lot of reports in February that, you know, with the new tax law changes and things that they expect more people to get, you know, returns and so some confusion, again, around the whole social security piece. So again, as a new retiree, that's our conversation point today, getting blindsided by Social Security taxes is a thing, and unfortunately, the confusion around what happened with the passing of the Oba is still tripping some people up. Right? They did not remove taxation on Social Security. They added a senior deduction, right? Added a senior   Tony Mauro  07:39 deduction, which is helpful for the seniors who don't have a lot of other income outside of Social Security and a few other sources, but it's not as helpful to the higher income retirees, because it does get phased out. They don't mention that. And what happens? What I've been seeing this year as we were talking is I see a lot of people that are at their full retirement age or beyond, and starting to take out and spend some of their money, which is great, sur

For many business owners, retirement savings don’t show up neatly in a 401(k) or IRA. They’re tied up in the business itself. Today’s listener question comes from a couple facing a sudden transition from “almost nothing saved” to managing a large lump sum late in the game. And they’re wondering if it’s enough.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  Speaker 1  00:00 For many business owners, retirement savings doesn't show up neatly in a 401, K or an IRA. It's tied up in the business itself. Well, this week, we're going to tackle a question from a listener dealing with the possibility of selling a business and what that might look like for their retirement. Look up in the sky. It's a bird,   Nick  00:22 it's a plane. No, it's the tax man. He may not be a superhero, but Tony Morrow has saved many retirement plans with his extreme knowledge of tax planning strategies. It's time for plan with the tax man.   Speaker 1  00:36 Hey, everybody. Welcome into the podcast. This is plan with the tax man, with Tony Morrow from tax, dr, Inc, find them online at your planning pros.com that's your planning pros.com where you can drop a line into the team and get yourself some time onto the calendar, and, you know, ask your questions, get some things answered. And we're going to take a listener question here this week on the program Tony, about selling a business. And I know you've as a business owner, you've also got a lot of business clients, and so a lot of people do find themselves in this position in America, a lot of small business owners. So we're going to tackle this here a second. But first, how you doing? I've been doing real well. You know, I like this topic because it's near and dear to my heart, and we have a lot of clients that I've seen experienced this exact thing we're going to talk about. So I'm excited to talk about that. And Spring is almost on us, so things are good, good. Well, yeah, let's dive in. Let's because there's quite a few additional pieces that is kind of a lot of lot to unpack here for if we want to dive in. And we'll try to keep this within our normal timeframe here, but see if we can help some folks out, if they might be in a similar situation. So here's the setup. The listener says, Look, I'm 60 years old. My husband's 58 we're definitely behind when it comes to retirement savings, because we have basically nothing saved, but we put it all into the business, and we're going to be selling our business soon for just under a million bucks. I'm very nervous about dealing with this large sum of money, since we don't have any investing experience. Wondering where should we start, and Will this be enough to retire? On any pointers you can help would be great. So I guess we can start with a couple of pieces of this Tony. So when you're, when you're selling a, you know, a business, and you've not saved anything, I mean, it is very it's awesome that the business is, first of all, I guess, sellable, enough that you're, they're selling it and making this money, right, right? That's the first step. I think for a lot of business owners, it's like realizing, hey, is this valuable? Is it sellable? You know, is there value there? And then, if you do sell it, now, what do you do? So what's some things to think about here?   Tony Mauro  02:27 Well, I think the first thing to think about is, and we see this a lot, is, I'll tell you, what they all say is, when we start talking about retirement and whatnot, they all that's what they say is, look, I'm not saying for retirement. My retirement my retirement is gonna be my business, and I'm putting all my money into the business. And so when we that's how the conversation starts. And then in this case, you know, I'd love to know more about it, but I'm gonna make an assumption here that they are gonna be at a million. I don't know what just under a million means. Yeah, let's, let's round it off for easy. Yeah. We'll just, yeah, we'll round it off. But what a lot of people don't realize is, if it's a service business like mine, or they don't owe anything on it, you sell a business for a million and you have no basis, which is kind of like, you know what you paid for your stock, then all of that potential money could be taxable, and if you're getting or giving up, say, 20% of it to the feds, another three or four to the state, you could end up with maybe 750,000 total after taxes. And then you also, you know, you got to factor in selling costs and things like that. So I'm just going to use 750,000 so it's not the million you think, because you're going to owe some taxes. Now, there's a lot that goes into that, because that capital gains, Tony, that's capital gains, yes, capital gains, taxes, and so you know, at first glance, you're 60 years old, and you've got 750,000 net to to, let's say, you know, save for retirement. Are you going to retire now or not? Or because I don't to me on the surface this probably, I don't know if it's enough or not. Depends a lot on their lifestyle and what they want out of life. Well, I don't know, yeah, what enough means?   Speaker 1  04:10 Let's break that down for a second. Okay, so based on your question, there is a million enough, or even 750,000 Well, first of all, the ages were 60 and 58 so you can't even access social security yet for either person, and you certainly can't access medical. So those are two pieces that certainly have to pop up, and if you've done no saving at all, then you're basically rocking this 750 grand for at minimum two years before the first person can turn it on for Social Security, Tony and and five for medical right? So that could be a huge problem. You know, in eating away that 750 may not last for someone's lifetime of 20 years more, I definitely don't think it'll last person's lifetime for sure, because if you know it just isn't going to work again, unless you're going to what you. Retirement to you is, you know, 3040, $50,000 a year total. But let's say, like you were saying, You got to go two or three years with spending, let's say 50,000 including, you know, paying for your for your medical and all of that. Well. Now you're down to, you know, 600,000   Tony Mauro  05:18 and you know, you're, yeah, or less. And you know that's not gonna last you 20 years. You know it just won't even at 50,000 a year. Even if you're earning, say, four to 6% on it, it's it's definitely not gonna be enough. I think it's good. You might know that now, yeah, and hopefully, if maybe the sale is not final, right now you're just thinking, maybe you keep it for a while and build it up and or save and then sell it later. That's a possibility. But I think let's say they're going to sell it now anyway. I think what you definitely need to do is get all these numbers with your advisor and start thinking about, you know, spending. I think you should think about, well, what are we going to do for the next 10 or 15 years? Because we really can't, other than this, we don't have any more income coming in. How are we going to save more?   Speaker 1  06:11 Because, yeah, you've got to get a plan together. I mean, you just mentioned, like, if you're making 4% off of the 750 that'd be the first question for someone like this, who doesn't know even where to start. Where do they park it? To get seven, you know, to get 4% right? So you want to get with an advisor. Are you looking at maybe some in an annuity? Are you putting some in the market, you know? Because you need to be a bit more aggressive, because you don't have any other money saved. I mean, there's a, this is where a financial strategy really comes in handy.   Tony Mauro  06:37 I think so. And I hit on a good point I was going to mention, is, I'm not a huge proponent of annuities, but they have their place, and this might be one of them, if, you know, you talk with your advisor and you figure out, I need an income I can't   Speaker 1  06:51 outlive, right? That's what I was thinking. Was the guaranteed income putting, you know, I don't know, you know, 200,000 or something of that into something that generates income. Yeah, it   Tony Mauro  07:00 generates income, and, you know, you can't outlive it, because I think that's the biggest fear with this couple, or biggest threat, I should say that they'll face is outliving this income. And if you've got nothing else coming in, eventually it's just gonna be down to Social Security, which is a meager existence, right?   Speaker 1  07:18 Yeah, so and that. So the whole question of what's Enough? Enough? Well, that's lifestyle. And, you know, all those pieces go into it. So, Tony, if you were, if you if this person came into your office and said, help us out, right? So you would start with, you start putting, kind of the, you know, the strategy together. Start putting an income piece and expenses right. Is, do they is, do they have a home? Is it paid for? That? That changes things, right? Changes things so there's a lot of data that would then go into hopefully helping somebody like this kind of see in black and white, are, where are we? Are you behind? Do you have a shortfall? And how much   Tony Mauro  07:52 exactly a client like this? This is why I love this topic. This is a very, I want to say, complex, but a very in depth conversation you need to have with somebody, with your advisor, because you have to lay all this out, and then you as the client got to be able to picture this. This is what it's going to look like. I've seen it before. And are you okay with that, or do you need to make us, you know, maybe make a change. But I think if you're going to go through it, that you really got to, you know, buckle it down. And, you know, figure this stuff out, the income needs, the expectations on longevity, all that kind of stuff. And so you are not going to get there. And because I've seen t

Everyone’s got an opinion about money (especially the people with a book deal or a TV show). Some of that advice is useful. Some of it sounds better on a stage than it works in real life. Let’s break it down.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  Marc: Everyone has got an opinion about money, especially people pushing a book deal or a TV show. And sometimes maybe that advice is useful and sometimes it's not, it works better on a sound stage than in real life. Let's break it down and have Tony react to some controversial financial takes here on Plan With The Tax Man.   Hey, everybody. Welcome into the podcast. This is Plan With The Tax Man with Tony Mauro, here in Des Moines professional alternative at Tax Doctor, Inc. Hanging out with me to do a little reaction type podcast this week, Tony, we'll get your take on some interesting hot takes from some financial talking heads out there and see what you think about it and practice in the real world. Because you see clients and help people every day and of course are governed and have rules that you have to follow where a lot of these talking heads don't, they can say whatever they want. We'll talk about that a little bit this week.   How are you doing, buddy?   Tony Mauro: I've been doing good. As were taping this, we're getting into our tax season so getting busy with a lot of new tax changes and whatnot that's hitting everybody.   Marc: Yeah, a lot of changes with the OBBBA. You got to be on your toes, right?   Tony Mauro: Mm-hmm.   Marc: And we talked a lot about that on some of the prior podcasts.   Tony Mauro: We did, yeah.   Marc: Yeah. If you guys aren't a little sure about some of those things, make sure you go check those out and you can find us at whatever podcasting app you like, Plan With The Tax Man. Just type that in the search box or just go to yourplanningpros.com. But if you need some help, of course, reach out to Tony as tax season is upon us again at yourplanningpros.com.   All right. My friend, let's dive in and have some fun with these.   Tony Mauro: Sure.   Marc: All right. You're probably familiar, maybe a lot of our listening audience is with Robert Kiyosaki. A number of years back, he wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Really good book, actually. Quite helpful.   Tony Mauro: [inaudible 00:01:51] yes.   Marc: Yeah, quite helpful for a lot of people. But he's since gotten a lot more aggressive and interesting in some of his stances and takes. And again, a lot of that is the demographic I think he's marketing himself to and pushing and things of that nature. But let's talk about this take here more recently. He said people shouldn't work for a company and save in that retirement plan, instead should launch their own startups or maybe buy gold, silver, and Bitcoin, or all of the above. At the time we're talking, Tony, it's early February and gold and silver and Bitcoin, we're doing pretty good last year and earlier into the year this year, but not so great right this minute. At the time we're talking, there was a recent 30% downturn in gold and silver so that didn't age so well.   Tony Mauro: No. And I think it's interesting you pick this one because I have read his books and I think by and large the Rich Dad, Poor Dad, especially the Rich Dad, Poor Dad Cashflow Quadrant are great books for people. And this strikes me because... Don't get me wrong, I like people being in business for themselves. We serve a lot of those businesses.   Marc: Absolutely.   Tony Mauro: And the tax planning and accounting capacity and the financial end as well.   Marc: But I bet they got their own SEPs and things, they've got their own retirement accounts they're doing.   Tony Mauro: We've got them in almost anybody that will listen and take us up on it, whether it's through us or somebody else. Yes, they have their own retirement plan of some kind.   Marc: Yeah. Not saving in a retirement plan just seems crazy, especially if you are working for somebody else, Tony. Because if nothing else, take the free money.   Tony Mauro: It's free money. And that's exactly it, it's free money if you're working for somebody else. I think depending on who he's trying to market this measures to, not everybody is cut out for having a business for themselves. They may be good at it but they don't... A lot of them tend to get themselves into trouble, whether it's tax-wise or lack of planning, lack of cash flow, that kind of thing, let alone the headaches. Again, I love small business. It's my favorite thing so it's somewhere deep in me. I say, I get it. I get what you're saying. Yeah, I think everybody should work for themselves but not...   Marc: Everybody doesn't have the right temperament though.   Tony Mauro: They don't. They don't. They don't have the right temperament. And I definitely think if they're working for themselves or if they're working for a company, they should be in a retirement plan of some kind.   Marc: Yeah. And to just invest in gold, silver, and Bitcoin, come on, that's crazy. Have some if you want but...   Tony Mauro: I agree. That goes against every financial prudent planning aspect that I know of, that's some diversification...   Marc: 150 years?   Tony Mauro: Yeah.   Marc: Right.   Tony Mauro: Like you say, you can have some but I think you've got to have some diversification, you got to have a plan. I'd love to hear what his rationale for that.   Marc: Well, I've watched some shorts and some reels he's had out there recently. And I do think he's targeting the younger generation right now, this kind of mindset of we're not going to work 50 years for somebody and then retire, we want to make all our money in our 20s by being aggressive in technology and this, that, and the other. I think he's pandering a little bit to that crowd. Maybe not. Maybe he's totally on board with it. But it just seems like a big departure from some of his previous stuff.   Tony Mauro: It does. Yeah, it's a real departure from his books.   Marc: Yeah. Anyway, interesting hot take there. Look, if you want some gold and some silver and some Bitcoin, hey, cool. Talk with your advisor about that, make sure being prudent though to Tony's point. Don't get crazy.   We were joking the other day. I was talking with an advisor, Tony. The Dow just hit 50,000 at the end of last week at the time we're taping this for the first time ever, right? And the comment was, "Hey, the Dow hit 50,000." And somebody goes, "Yeah, so did Bitcoin." Of course, it started at 100,000.   Tony Mauro: Right. Right.   Marc: Because it's not had a very good couple of weeks.   Tony Mauro: No. And that just goes to show you the volatility there.   Marc: Massive, yeah.   Tony Mauro: Yeah. Having all your eggs in those three baskets, definitely very aggressive.   Marc: It could be, for sure. Yeah. All right. Let's go to a different take here from Suze Orman, host of Women and Money, recently suggested and this is... If Robert was getting a little crazy and aggressive, Suze is maybe getting a little too conservative. Tell me what you think about this, Tony. She suggests retirees set aside three to five years worth of living expenses. Not six months, right? Not three to five months. Just in case bank accounts crash or stock market crashes, things of that nature. Three to five years, a little too conservative? What do you think?   Tony Mauro: In my opinion, yes. I think that's far, far too conservative because assuming, again, if you're a retiree and you have a diversified portfolio, hopefully if you are in stocks that are high yielding, good quality individual companies. But most people don't have that, they have mutual funds and a variety of things. And even in a market downturn, if you look at 3, 5, 10-year periods, there's not very many that last very long. And if you take it in 10-year periods, there never is over the entire period so that seems very, very conservative.   And who in their right mind is going to take a large chunk of their portfolio and stick it in a 2%, 3% yielding vehicle when they're trying to live off of the income? I don't know where she's coming from with that at all. And again, these people sell a lot of books and whatnot. But keep in mind, I always like to point out that... And they have a lot of followers, they've made a lot of money. But sometimes if you're listening to some of this stuff, you might want to bounce it off your financial advisor as well, just see what they think because I don't agree with that one at all.   Marc: Yeah, it's a little too... And again, if you got... I don't know. I guess if you're worth $100 million, putting aside three years worth of money is a little easier than most folks, right?   Tony Mauro: Right. Right.   Marc: It's three years. I can hardly put side six or eight months, let alone three years worth. And again, interesting takes. And of course, these folks are talking heads out there in the landscape and pushing their books or their programs or things. And while technically, Tony, doing a podcast makes us a talking head, we're a smaller talking head.   Tony Mauro: True.   Marc: But again, you're in the trenches. You're a CPA, a CFP, an EA, you work with clients day in and day out. These folks don't do that so that's a little different there.   Tony Mauro: No. Yeah.   Marc: Kevin O'Leary and his amazing suits, his very colorful, interesting suits he wears. This one might be the most realistic, Tony, of everything on my list today. And this one is still a little bit too much, I think. But what do you think? He insists that if you don't know your net worth at all times, you're being irresponsible with money. He promotes constant tracking, optimization, and performance measurement.   Tony Mauro: Some

One of the biggest retirement decisions people make doesn’t involve the stock market at all. It’s a choice hidden inside their pension paperwork.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  Speaker 1  00:00 Hey, time once again, to plan with the tax man, and we are going to talk about the biggest retirement decisions people make that doesn't involve the stock market or could make, right? So it's a choice hidden inside the pension paperwork. Let's get into it. Would you trade $600 a month to protect your spouse? Look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane.   Speaker 2  00:21 No, it's the tax man. He may not be a superhero, but Tony Morrow has saved many retirement plans with his extreme knowledge of tax planning strategies. It's time for plan with the tax man.   Speaker 1  00:34 Welcome into the podcast, folks. This is another edition of plan with the tax man, with Tony Morrow from tax doctor. Inc, and you can find them [email protected] and again, yourplanningpros.com and Tony, this week, we've got a listener question, a variation. Anyway, I'll change it up just a little bit. And you've been getting some of these lately yourself as well. And so we want to talk about this, the pension trade off conversation. And so we'll, I'll just set it up. Let me read the email and then, and then we'll dive into it. All right, okay, all right. So with my pension, the person says I can get $3,500 a month, but the wife gets nothing when I die, or I can take 2900 a month and she'll continue to get all of it after I'm gone. As always, I'm wondering which is better and Tony. It seems cut and dried, like the spouse is sitting there, probably listening, going, duh, take the one where I get money after you die. But let's, at least, for the sake of the conversation, talk about, you know, the pros and cons of both ways. And I think that's what people need to think about when this situation comes up, right? It's not Yes, probably 80% of the time, it probably does make sense to take the spousal continuation, but maybe not always. So let's discuss it. How you doing?   Tony Mauro  01:47 I'm doing good. I've been doing good since first year. So getting ready to dwell into tax season. And we do get this question a lot. And you know what I find with tax clients is I find more of the clients that I've talked to, they actually take the higher amount not knowing. They don't read over their paperwork. Very, very well true. And you know, so I find that, you know, make sure you're before you even dwell into this read this paperwork, make sure you understand before you check boxes. And make sure that you get some advice you have any questions on it, yeah, because one can, you know, really devastate you if you pick the wrong one, but you're, you know, in this case, and this is a topic of mine, because as I get a little closer to the end, my wife has worked for the government for it'll be probably 47 years, but she goes, Oh, wow. And so we'll have this choice in our public retirement plan called IPERs, and, you know, so yeah, me, as a spouse, I'm just like you said, you know, let's take the lower amount, because I want to make sure you know that if something happens to you, that I've got this till I die, right? But the nice part about IPERs, in our case in Iowa, is, if I go first and we're at the lower amount, she can actually bump herself back up to the higher amount. Oh, it's rained or her life. So, yeah, you know, that works. But what a lot of people need to take a look at in this and make some decisions and talk to their advisors about is, you know, the very first thing is, what kind of longevity does the covered person, meaning the you know, person that's going to get this benefit, have within their lifetime? And you know, use that, you know, to make this decision, because obviously, you know, the higher payout shifts the risk to the surviving spouse, correct, and you know that that's kind of a risk. And so that's why we kind of titled this, you know, is this reduction or this $600 a month worth it? Because it does act like a little bit of insurance, you know,   Speaker 1  03:38 if, yeah, for sure, it's like a little insurance policy and that. And I guess we can skip around a little bit, because that really it's easy for us to walk to that conversation piece, because that's what a lot of people tend to think. They go, Well, why don't I take the bigger amount, the 3500 in this example, and invest that $600 difference, and I'll buy my own life insurance, right? And so that's certainly something that people think, and I in their statistics that show I can probably do better and leave some tax free money, because it'll be in a tax in a life insurance policy. And that's fine, that's totally possible, but you need to run the math first and see, and to your point about longevity, that's going to play into that. Because if you don't really have longevity on your side, and you go that route, you may not live long enough to fund that policy exactly. You may not live long enough, and you may not be healthy enough at 6570, they're even going to issue a policy another, I don't think, you know, 600 a month may not buy you a whole lot at that time, because you might, you know, hey, if you can get the policy, it's gonna be well more than that pending.   Tony Mauro  04:35 And, you know, you may not be even insurable. So again, conversation to have, but that is a that's an option, which is why you want to have these conversations, you know, which I think is good   Speaker 1  04:47 well, so you think about, Okay, a couple of different things, right? So let's just go with the standard statistics. Male passes first, the females right behind, typically goes, guys pass away first. So a couple things happen, right? So this, this the shift you talked about, the risk. Shifts to the spouse? Well, a couple of things big, big things happen right off the bat. One is you're going to higher tax bracket. You weren't expecting that, right? So you've got that. You're going to lose one social security, so you're going to go to the higher one. So if you don't have this spousal option checked in on, can you survive the lower income hit right? Depending on what your other assets and the other things you have in place. So talk a little bit about some of those things and how you've seen that. So again, this is it's case by case specific.   Tony Mauro  05:26 Case by case specific. Is exactly it, because you hit all the topics and it needs to be discussed. Because if you have the assets where none of that you just mentioned, it matters, and you still gonna have plenty of income and everything, well then maybe the higher amount, you know, is a better option for you, but more times than not, in our case, exactly what you said happens, expenses don't drop, income drops, and now all of a sudden you've got higher taxes, more you know, same expenses, less income. And you know, then you've underestimated the impact of all this, and by taking that higher amount, you still may not have enough to cover things, and then all of a sudden the whole retirement plan shifts and changes on you. And, you know, do you really want that? You know? And so that's why I think it needs to be discussed. Yeah.   Speaker 1  06:14 And there's a lot of little pieces to that, right? So there's those different pieces. And I think sometimes Tony people kind of fall into that factor of, well, they've heard it forever. Well, they're only going to need half the money coming in when one of us dies anyway, right? So, so we're good any if, even if we did take the bigger amount, because we've got plenty. But half is a misnomer. It's, it's not, it's more like 85% I   Tony Mauro  06:36 think it's, yeah, at least that. I don't. People always say that to me. I said I've never seen it happen. Expenses don't drop to half. Everybody that I've I've worked with, I haven't seen one yet at best, yeah, they dropped 10 to 15. I had one case dropped about 20, but not half. And luckily, in his case, everything else he had, it didn't really matter too much, because he was pretty well off. I mean, he had not only social security, but he had a big pension of his own and a big portfolio, you know, things like that. But I think all those other things you need to have the discussion to figure out where this fits in the rest of your overall plan, right? I mean, with everything else, because that's going to really guide you on what to take, well, you know, or which way to   Speaker 1  07:19 go, yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, how the pension fits in with the rest of the overall plan, right? I mean, that's really going to be a big key. So this is where, again, why not stress test the situation? If this is on your radar, if you're eligible for our pension, right? If you've got somebody in the in the family that's going to possibly be getting one, go sit down with somebody and say, let's look at the different options. Because Tony, just like Social Security, you well, actually, even worse than Social Security, they typically don't come with colas, and there's no do over there's   Tony Mauro  07:45 no do over on this, no. And I think a lot of us, as you get into retirement, I mean, for me personally, I like to, what I value is, I want to make sure that my and my wife's income, you know, it's monthly income, is the way I look at it, is not is going to be the same regardless of who dies first, and the remaining person can be here and have the same income coming in, you know, if one of us is gone. Now, I mean, yes, we've got the nest egg over here that's funding that income, and then Social Security and some other things. But to me that I want more certainty than, you know, a little bit higher monthly amount? Yeah, I mean that, like, say that's just me and for us, you know, I'm gonna assume I'm gonna die first,

A new government-backed savings account for kids is coming. On the surface, it sounds like a win. Free money for newborns, long-term investing, and a head start on adulthood. But once you look under the hood, Trump Accounts raise some real questions about taxes, flexibility, and whether they beat existing options. Today, we’re walking through the pros and cons and asking if this new account is worth the effort.   Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381   ----more---- Transcript:  00:00 A new government backed savings account for kids is coming. We've all heard about this, and on the surface it sounds like a win free money for newborns and long term investing and a head start on adulthood. But when you look under the hood, the Trump accounts raise some questions about taxes flexibility and whether they beat existing options. So this week on plan with the tax man, let's break it down. Look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's the tax man. He may not be a superhero, but Tony Morrow has saved many retirement plans with his extreme knowledge of tax planning strategies. It's time for plan with the tax man. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. This is planned with the tax man, with Tony Morrow from tax Dr Inc and Tony. Let's talk about the free money, or the future headache of the pros and cons of the new quote, unquote Trump accounts, and just kind of see if we can kind of give some, you know, back and forth, a little bit on some of these things, because there's a lot of interesting ideas, but there's also some conundrums as well. So we'll dive into that. How you doing? My friend, doing good. You know, New year, new goals. Hopefully everybody's got some new goals and feeling good. And so, yeah, we're looking forward to, course, tax season starting for us shortly as we as we're taping this right, right? So we've got that coming about. Get busy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so let's break into this. Let's chat on this conversation here a little bit. So I guess let's kind of start with big picture, right? So this was part of the Oba the one, and they launched this year. So this stuff, if it all goes through again, this would start this year in July of 2026 give us some some highlights here, some big picture. Yeah, so the big picture. And the reason I wanted to talk about this because we're starting to get some questions. Some questions from tax clients. I think they're hearing things, you know, out on the news and things in Google and whatnot, but I still think there's a lot of people that don't know anything about it. That's why I want to at least try to reach as many people as possible. But you know what they did? And you know, again, putting all politics aside whether this is right wrong, we have the money, but this is what's going on, and you got to decide whether or not you know you want, can take advantage of it. So what they did was they're basically saying that starting in July 26 children born between 25 and 28 so we're only talking 25 at the moment, 26 to be but they got to keep this in mind, the government's going to give each of these children, if they open up a Trump account, $1,000 free money, which, on the surface sounds good, and what happens is, is the child owns the account. The parent is the custodian, till they're 18, other people, like grandparents, parents, friends, all that contribute up to $5,000 a year to this account in total. And even employers could throw in 2500 but it's not, I don't know. See a whole lot of that happening, but who knows? Maybe. And then what they're going to do, what the federal government is going to do, is take this money invested in low cost US equity funds are probably going to be ETFs and index funds, things like that. It's very low cost. All of this interest in gain is going to grow tax deferred, and then when the child's 18, they do have the opportunity to withdraw this amount, but they don't have to any withdrawals. It's treated just like any other retirement account. It comes out taxed at ordinary income, and they could face penalties there and whatnot. That's kind of the big, big picture of that. And you know, we'll continue to move on, and I'll go over some numbers that I ran before we got this on here, and just to kind of give some people some numbers to put with it. But I think the big thing they're what they're looking at, in my opinion, is, again, I think a lot of times the government sometimes means, well, they rush things out, don't think it through. I think their big you know idea here is, let's start something for newborns, so that if they save this money and end up with it all the way till they retire, that maybe you know, if we don't have the programs we have now, that they're going to be okay, in other words, less reliant on the government. But that's my opinion of that, because I you know they know that not enough Americans are saving on the regular, and I think that's, that's their primary motivation, yeah. And I think there's two pieces to that, Tony, and thank you for breaking that down, good and concise, good stuff there. I think one is to get people saving. Or, I think these are really three. There's really threefold, really right? One is to get people saving from a young age, teach in the value or the power of compounding, as you know, is massive, right? Absolutely. And so I think that's one piece. I think another piece is get people making kids, because we're going to have a real shortage of workforce, not only our country, but a lot of countries. And I think, I think there's some of this is a leftover Elon kind of feel right with with Trump and with the administration, because he's a huge proponent of we are going to have major shortfalls in society, in the workplace in about 2025, 30 years, right? And so if you look at China, they're going to have huge workforce problems as well. So I think it's that and that, and then tax revenue. And the reason I say that about the tax revenue and I'm going to have you buy.   05:00 Break this down for us is because they're a little sticky, right? There's, there's some criticisms here about how it works. So why don't you break down some of the the cons, some of the negatives of this, some of the negatives really, you know is, and this is what, what I didn't even know until we started really dwelling into it, is, if somebody like me. So the reason this is near and dear to my heart because I had my first grandchild. First grandchild in 25 so, you know, I want my son to open up this account get the 3000 I'm gonna I'm planning on putting the $5,000 a year in for her, and we'll get back to that. But one of the cons is, is these contributions don't qualify for the annual gift tax exclusion. A lot of people don't know that when they give gifts away of cash and other things, there's an annual gift tax exclusion, and after that, you have to file a tax form using some of your lifetime exemption. These don't qualify for the exclusion. So therefore, when I do this, I'm going to have to file a gift tax return, which is a form 709, which is not terribly difficult, because obviously I know how to do them, but people that don't know how to do them are gonna have to go pay somebody two. To go pay somebody to do them, or they could get themselves in trouble, you know, with the IRS. The other thing too, is, and I just found this out before, well probably a couple weeks ago, is this is not supported this form by DIY tax software, you know, so half of America is using DIY tax software. You're going to need to pay someone like ourselves to do this for you, which just means a little more money out of your pocket. The other thing too is there's no tax deduction for these contributions, because it's not, you know, not a qualified charity or anything like that. Withdrawals are taxable, unlike Roth's and other types of things. And then there's limited flexibility, I feel like, for me personally, I don't mind assuming this all comes off like they talk about letting the government run the account until she's 18, but after that, if I were to convince her, if I'm still around, and not to let the government hold that, we move that into something, you know, a rollover IRA, something like that, that we can Control outside of the government hands. That's just me personally, but so I think there's some of those. Are some of the criticisms. I would say people have to watch out for some of the cons. But I think the pros, you know, really are number one. Government's handing out 3000 bucks right of a child you know, born between 25 and 28 you might as well take it if you have a child. But even if you don't do anything else, you might as well take the free money. Granted, we don't, maybe not have the money to do it, but they're going to hand it out. So, you know, why not take that? I think that's one. I think two, like you were talking about, really gives the child early on some sense of, you know, investing, using compounding things like that, the investments are going to be very low, and you don't have to make any decisions about them. It's just going to be invested in index types of funds. And I ran the numbers before we got on so you know, if you take advantage of this, if you have a child, and you just open one up and the government puts the 1000 bucks in you, nothing else, right? If you leave it like that, and let's say that these funds earn roughly 7% you know, not, not very high, but I they probably gonna do better than that over 18 years. But so you would have, for that child $3,379   08:15 you know, it's not a ton, but it's free money. I ran, I think I ran it Tony. And if you go out something crazy, like 40 years, just, just the I ran that one, right? Yeah. Did you run that one too? I ran that one. Go ahead. Took the same 1000 bucks and you left it so you're 3379 and 18. You took it out another 48 years till they were 65 that person would have an 81,250   08:3