So today we’re talking about it’s actually really interesting going into some of the fluctuations in the taxes and how you may not be in a common, I guess, tax bracket that you think. So it’s kind of interesting going into that. And you’ll, you know, you get to see more when Todd goes through the numbers and it’s interesting. Definitely, definitely woke me up a little bit to what, you know, what I thought of, where I thought it was and what I’m actually at and where how things could go in the future.

So yeah, it’s it’s super alarming and really excited about what we talked about today because this is actually peeling back real numbers, straight out of the IRS and, and discussing that and how you’re being incentivized to put your money in these qualified buckets. The reality is, is you do not know where tax rates or tax brackets are going to be in the future.

And Todd does a great job of explaining that in this episode. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. So good stuff.

Hello. Welcome to the Seed or Harvest Show, where we focus on financial education for a variety of things that affect not only your life, but also your spouse, children, charities, and your legacy. We discuss everything from health insurance to pensions, wills and trust, to the best way to for everyday tax planning. Our intention is to bring financial and legal professionals together with everyday people who need their help.

We have real conversations with real people who have real life questions and scenarios. I’m your host, Mario Luis Braga, and today’s show is part of our law enforcement series, so I’m happy to have our co-host, Officer Ty, who after two years at 18 year law enforcement, veteran and currently employed here in Arizona. I’m also happy to introduce, for our second visit, our special guest, who has served clients as an investment advisor for 25 years and is a certified financial future.

Sherry Todd des burg. Welcome, Todd. Thanks for having me. So our show is to help law enforcement officers understand the government benefits to the fullest extent possible. And then what happens after retirement today we’re going to find out if your household income is common or uncommon. And we’ll just start it off right there. And, Todd, I’m gonna let you take over and lead the show, buddy.

Sure. Well, thanks again for joining us, officers. Hi, Mario. Appreciate you having me. It’s great to be here. First, let’s just jump right in. Thank you for filling out your online confidential questionnaire. I took a look at it. I had a chance to review it. And before we go into that specifically, I thought there might be an opportunity to talk a little bit more about one.

Taxes, as we mentioned last time on the show. And two, your qualified plan. And so, you know, when I was looking at your questionnaire, I noticed, you know, your income. And I ask every client this when I meet with them, what do you think your income is? Is it a common income or do you believe your income is uncommon?

I mean, I can’t speak for other states, but Arizona, I would say it’s pretty common. Yeah. And, you know, that’s the answer I get most of the time from clients. They say, you know, my income feels pretty common, you know, and that’s understandable because you’re earning about the same as all your colleagues and your friends and neighbors and the people you hang out with, your family, they are likely earn about the same amount of money.

You live in the same neighborhoods and so forth. So it’s very common for people to have that reaction. But what I thought I point out to you today is, what we call the circle of knowledge. And, you know, this program, the circle of wealth that I’ve focused on, our software that we use, is a really great tool.

This is a little bit of a different image that I want to show you, because if you remember last time, you know, you have the three types of money, you have your accumulated wealth. That’s what remember, most advisors will focus on, say, what do you have? You know, we can do better or we can reduce costs or expenses.

That normally requires taking more risk. Now you realize this I explained last time we met. I’m not in the business of having my clients take more risks and they’re comfortable with. And so we feel it’s much more valuable to have those avoided wealth transfers, be our focus. So whatever that wealth transfer that’s occurring, we can at least reduce it or eliminate it over time.

And then there’s that third type of money, of course, your lifestyle money. And we just don’t want to talk about that. I figure you’re doing a great job with your lifestyle. If we find some transfer dollars, let’s move them over to that lifestyle, increase your lifestyle and also save some of those dollars for future resources. So getting back to the circle analogy, I just want to do a quick recap here.

Well, there are things in the world this this circle represents all of the information that exists in the universe. And there are things that you know to be true, that you absolutely know to be a fact, without a doubt. Maybe you could think of one. You want to give me an example of something that you know to be true?

The sky is blue. Exactly. I mean, we know that our whole life is very you know, there’s also things that, you know, you don’t know anything about. You know, I don’t know you. You’re in love, law enforcement. So I’m going to use brain surgery, for example. Yeah. You know, you realize that medical professionals can remove the skull and do something inside of a brain to improve a patient’s health.

You just don’t have any idea how that occurs and what the process is to do that. And so you’re aware of that. But then there’s everything else in this universe of knowledge that’s out there. And that’s what we call your blind spot. You know, these are things that exist that we know to be true, that you just have no knowledge of.

I mean, you, you know, it’s just like you’re going down the freeway going 80 miles an hour. You check your rearview mirror, you check your side mirror, and you don’t see anything until you look over your shoulder. And then you see there’s a 3,000 pound vehicle moving at exactly the same rate of speed that you are. Well, that’s what I’m here to do today, is just to help you, you know, look over your shoulder, perhaps, and see something in the financial world that maybe you just haven’t seen before.

And so while we’re talking about this, there’s three ways that you can get this knowledge. You know, you can experience it. You over time, you’ll gain a lot of information. That way you could also go out and study, you know, all the information in the world on the internet. You can go out and read about it, and learn this on your own.

But again, the opportunity that we have to today, we’re together, is that I can transfer my 25 years of experience and give you that knowledge so that you don’t have to take the time and energy to go out and, you know, obtain that on your own. So while we’re going through this process, a lot of times what I find with my clients is this red slice of the pie here, things that they know to be true, that perhaps aren’t necessarily true.

You know, a long time ago, everywhere, like the Cowboys are good. You know, we all believed at one point that the earth was flat. And so that would some still do of. Yeah, some people some people still do. But that’s an example of, of something that if we knew this wasn’t true, with your permission, I’d, I’d like you to allow me to point out to you.

Okay. And so, you know, that way we could at least, you know, move this out of there. And also focus on this blind spot. And if I could do a good job and point some of these things out, I can at least get you to look over your shoulder and see that so that now maybe you, you know, it exists.

Maybe it’s like brain surgery. You don’t know much about it, but, you know, there’s something out here that we were able to move into this. You know, you don’t know much about a category, but eventually I also want you to believe what I believe, which are these things that are true. And so that’s the whole objective of going through this.

I would like to start again today. You know, it’s after hours. Let’s play a little game here. This is what we call the income game. And as you just stated, you feel that your income is fairly common like most people. Yep. And here’s to how the game works. So I’m going to ask you a question. You’re going to answer it.

I’ll tell you. The answer is I like it. All right okay. Here’s how it works. So this is a chart of the household adjusted gross income for everyone in the United States. It’s going to tell us what tax rate they’re in based on how much they earn. And my question to you is how much do you think you need to earn to be considered in the top 50% of all income tax payers, household income?

Right. So this is combined household income, household. It could be 2%. 60,000 okay. So this is what you believe to be true. And what do you think the top 25% earns? 88,000. And how about the top 10%? Oh, man. All all taxpayers in the U.S. So 325 million people. I guess they’re not all taxpayers. That’s right.

Only about half the people pay to we’ll say 10%. Well, maybe 110 under 10,000. How about the top 5%? Now we’re getting up there to 50. Okay. And those pesky one percenters we all hear much about in the news. What do you think? They are increasing every year or hundred 400,000 okay, great. So this is what you believe to be true.

Here we go on and find out what is actually true. Oh, so you weren’t that far off. But you could see you know, the average household income is only 42 grand. And you said that’s combined. That is the total household income. So it could be her husband and wife. Okay. And you were pretty low here. Wow. That was a great get you almost there.

Yeah. So top 25. You’ve heard that he plans to force, I don’t know, make it over I can do I own these other ones. Here’s where you’re off a little bit and, you know, be in the top 10% of all income earners in the country. You need to be earning a little over 150 grand in the top 5%.

Another good guess, 220,000 a year. Yeah, you weren’t that far off and the top 1% is earning about 550,000 a year. Now here’s what’s so interesting about this. So now this is the truth, right? We’ve pointed out your reality in the fact that, hey, guess what, your income in relation to everyone in the United States that pays taxes isn’t common at all.

It’s very uncommon. If you’re in the top, you know, 20, 20, 10%, 5%. I would say that’s very uncommon. Yeah. Oh, sure. And here’s why I think this is so important, because most of the people in the United States that pay taxes, 73% of them earn over $152,000. So I could show you the rest of them. You know, most of the taxes, almost all the taxes are paid by the top half of income earners.

So yourself, that’s a lot of households. Yes, 78.7 million households. Now, this group that is in the 25% category, that’s 39 million households. But here’s what I think is more important for you, my clients, the families that I work with that live up here every year in this range. That’s 15.7 million households that make over $152,000. So as that saying that 73% of all taxes paid are paid by the top 10%, is that what that statistic saying?

They’re correct. Well, these three that these three areas combined pay the top 10%. So 62% of taxes are paid by the top 5%. That’s right, that’s right. What. So now here’s here’s what I’d like to point out. You know, people say, well, if the government government needs to raise revenue, which is what the IRS does, they’re need they need to, you know, raise revenue from people who have money.

And there’s only 1.6 million households in this 1% category.

But in this area, 7.9 million here, 15.7 million here. That’s a lot of taxpayers that the government, quite frankly, is going to be looking toward to find revenue to pay off that 30 what is now $36 trillion in debt. It was 35 trillion when we talked last time. I looked at a 36.1 and rolling trillion today. So when the IRS needs to raise revenue, where are they going to go?

They can’t go to the bottom 50%. They’re there’d be riots in the streets. Yeah. There are 40,000 nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And so my point is that folks that are deferring a lot of money into their retirement, people that are savers, that are doing the right thing, who have money are likely going to be, for lack of a better word, a target for increasing revenues in the future.

Well, and so getting back to the original question is, hey, if your income is uncommon, don’t you think it’s worth considering some uncommon financial strategies to start planning for your financial future? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Hey, Todd, before you go on and this, I’m kind of curious, where did you get this? And from where does this data coming from?

That’s a great question. So these are IRS statistics okay. Revenue puts out a report. These are the most recent values as of January 2024. So these are this year’s oh this year’s data. Wow okay I thought the year I thought you just did a Google search. I mean, you could Google search. It’s here. This information is out there for everyone to find.

We just you know, I spent a lot of time with my team developing the software to be able to communicate effectively this type of information in a clear, concise manner without having to as I said earlier, you could go out there and read all this information yourself. I’m just pointing it out because most of my clients and prospects are concerned about taxes and if you’re not concerned about taxes because you don’t think you’re making enough money or you think your income is common, I wanted to point this out to you because when people realize this, then they start to like what you said.

You want to consider some alternative strategies besides what you’ve been doing, which is you’ve been taking ordinary income or ordinary advice because you think your income is ordinary, when really your income is not ordinary and you know you should be doing something more than just what everyone else is doing, what you’ve been hearing on the radio. Sign up for your 401 K at work.

You know, try to max that out. I mean, that’s that’s good information for a lot of people. You know, there’s a there’s a bottom 50% of people who I really worked hard to encourage to start saving in their 401 K’s. And they did. And I feel good about that because they do move up this ladder. But really, if you’re already saving for your 401 K and you’re getting the match, well, maybe there’s some other things that might be worth considering that won’t leave you so exposed to future tax rates going up and having so much of your income that you’re saving, deferred for future or postponed taxes.

Yeah. So this kind of goes back to the premise of what the show’s all about. Yeah, right. Because it makes sense where you pay taxes on the seed or the harvest and and what you’re showing us here, Todd, is that, again, will high likelihood that the top 10%, we’ll have a target on their back to help offset that massive debt load that we have?

Because where else can they pull funds from? Right. And so, I mean, I had no idea the top 5% was at 220,000 combined income. I mean, that’s I mean, it’s a lot of money. But by comparison, I mean, it’s not it’s not like the you’re living high on the hog at 220. Yeah. Right. I mean that’s a pretty you would think that’s pretty normal.

So obviously they’re going to be pulling money from that bucket that wow. That’s really that’s a scary chart. Well, it’s scary because even jobs not necessarily police officers but like nurses and stuff like that, they can make pretty decent money. And if you have two in a household, you’re going to be, you know, you’re going to be hitting in that those top at least at least a five and 10% for sure.

So oh yeah. Like I know some nurses that make some damn good money and they can, you know, you put two of those in a household. That’s. Yeah. Where is the government going to go to to get money? They have to go to taxpaying citizens first off and they’ve got to have extra income. That’s right. And they know how much money is sitting in qualified plans that gets reported.

So yeah. Oh I didn’t think about that. They’ve got their finger on the pulse with that don’t they. Do you understand how unqualified parents are? I mean just I would explain to me maybe just to make sure I’m. Todd, you want to go right on a qualified plan there. There’s a variety of there’s a bunch of me like, oh, here we go.

There you go. Yeah. So we talk about qualified plans. Most people think of their 401 K, but any kind of pretax retirement savings plan like these plans that you see here. And but most of them are qualified plans that allow you to put money aside pretax from your paycheck, avoid paying current tax rates and defer the taxation until you pull the money out.

But you’re also remember deferring the tax calculation because we don’t know what tax rate you’re going to be at. Yeah. Imagine this I love to give this example. Imagine if you came to me and said, hey Todd, I need a loan. And I said, all right, all right. After time, you know, you’re a good guide. You know you’re good for it.

I trust you, you are serving the public. I’m doing well. How much do you need? And you tell me 100 grand and I get my checkbook out and you say, well, hold on. You’re going to ask me probably two questions, right? You what are the terms, right? You want to know what’s the, you know, and when do I have to pay this back?

Well, imagine if I said to you, you know what? I’m doing. Great. You know, I don’t know what interest rate I’m going to charge you until, let’s just say, like, when I need the money and I don’t really know when I’m going to need the money, but when I do, I’ll come to you and I’ll tell you I need the money.

And then I’ll tell you what the interest rate is. Well, what would you say to me if I offered you that deal? I mean, that’s, you insinuating that’s the US government there? Yeah, I know that. You probably tell me to take a hike, right? Yeah, yeah. What are you talking about? I’m not going to tell me the rate.

You’re like, tell me later when you need the money. But that’s exactly what the IRS is doing. That’s exactly what these qualified plans allow you to do is avoid the taxation, grow the money. You’re taking all the risk, remember? Yeah, you’re investing it in stocks and bonds and mutual funds, whatever you’re investing it in. And then later the government’s deciding what your tax rate is going to be on that money when it comes out.

And by the way, they’re also going to tell you when to take the money out at a hey to a question on a lot of these plans, fairly new. I mean, they just come out and over like the last 50, 60 years, a lot of these different 41K options of what’s the first to be. That’s right. So yeah, for A3B started in the 70s.

You know, these were plans that were designed for nonprofit workers, employees, the school districts and hospitals and any kind of nonprofit organization. And so the government passed these are risk laws to make these plans available to, to employees. Because if you remember, back in the 70s, the big shift in retirement was pensions were starting to go away. And today, if you know somebody who has a pension, that’s pretty rare, you’re rare.

I know somebody, once again, you know, 1 or 2 people. Yeah, I know a couple. Once again, these government guys, you’re lucky you’re one of the lucky ones. Most corporations don’t offer their employees pensions anymore. They technically we don’t either anymore. And as you say, Phoenix PD, when we have private retirement, I think it’s just I don’t even think it’s just Phoenix.

It’s everybody. Everybody doesn’t. Well. So they’re they’re sharing the responsibility with the participant. Now by allowing you to defer your income into these qualified plans. Now, there are some recent developments with Roth, so we could talk more about Roth for one cave or now available. But my point is that you have to ask yourself, well, why is the government encouraging all these plans?

Remember, you’re postponing the tax and the tax calculation. And with the secure 2.0 act that we just saw, you know, they’re they’re changing the required minimum distribution dates, but they’re also forcing distributions for beneficiaries. Whereas before if you passed on an IRA or for one, you know, you you died or you gave it to your kids, they could stretch it out over the lifetime, but now you have to take it all out within ten years.

Again, the government knows all these baby boomers that have been saving all this money. They’re not going to live forever. You know, they’re getting up there and age. Yeah. And eventually all this money is going to be coming out at much higher tax rates. And we talked about that last time. Remember we we did this tax history chart.

Yep. And I showed you here’s where taxes are today. But I want to do something a little bit different today because after we talked I thought you know Mario started to touch on it about the two levers that the government can pull the lever, Debbie. And one being, not only can they change the tax rates, these these tax rates can go up and down, but they could do something else.

And Mario mentioned the tax rate brackets and the threshold to be considered in the highest tax rate. So let me just pause for a second. I’m gonna do a quick little history lesson and just step back and show you how the tax code in the United States has worked since 1913. You know, the IRS, it just started in 1913.

Before that, there was no Internal Revenue Service taxing the public. But at this point in our history, we decided, hey, we needed to raise revenue. And the initial rate was 1%. Low income earners. Back then, it was $20,000, but the top rate was 7% on people back then who were ultimately very, very wealthy because of inflation. That was a big number back then, $500,000 like then.

Okay, but but just again, what can the IRS do? Can the IRS sell a product? Do they sell a service? What what what is what are they doing here? They’re just in taxes. Maybe they are just they have one job raise revenue. And so here’s what they’ve done over the years. They’ve adjusted not only the brackets but the rates.

So the brackets have gone up. You could see here how fast forward a little bit, but you could see where they went up to 20,000. And then they went back down to 2000. But what also went up the rate went to 15 and the threshold. Now you had to make $2 million. So you’re a, you know, a mega millionaire back in 1916 to be at that top rate.

But then the variance, which was only 15%, the top rate right until the very next year, went to see what did not happen. And that was maybe like 10 million or 20 million. How did it go to 67% went to and then it went to 77%. Well, you know, here we we had a we had a world war, war.

And so the IRS said, hey, we need some real money and we got to tax these wealthy individuals. And that’s what they did. They lowered the rate from 2 million to 1 million to widen that net. So they cast a bigger net. Now they can raise more revenue, and they raise the rate to which you could see that changed over time.

It went back down. You know, the Roaring 20s, lower tax rates again. And the threshold went down okay. So it went up to 500 that it went down to 100. So now yeah, you know rates went down. But more people are paying that higher tax rate. Yeah I said Lord the tax bracket. Yeah. That one kind of when the depression started to write words that was exactly right.

So so something a lot of things were going wrong here. Yeah. And then we had the Great Depression and then going up again some years acted and they started to raise revenue. And we did a little history lesson, you know, then we have World War two in the 40s. And here’s something really interesting, you know, look at this.

The top tax rate was 81,000, but I’m sorry, 81%. But you had to make over $5 million a year to hit it. Bracket. And the very next year back down to 200,000. And it was 88%. 88. Yeah. And then they went to 94. I mean, you could 94,000, I mean, 94% top and tax rate 1000 200,000. Yeah.

You know, Ronald Reagan famously said that, he would only do one movie a year because they paid him 100 grand for per movie, and if he did two movies, it would kick him into the highest tax bracket. And so you would it he felt it limited production. And that was that was what happened. You know, the, you know, he lower tax rates.

I mean, I could fast forward and show you, you know, here, here we are in the 70s. We have very, very low threshold at 200,000 and very high rates. Okay. And then, what happened? Well, 1982, least when, you know, Reagan was coming into office in the 80s, the rates started to drop. Look at this threshold, 85,600 hours.

Now, all of a sudden, in America, you’re making 85 grand. You’re rich. Congratulations. You’re paying the top tax bracket if you’re a small business owner in the 80s, which my dad was. I mean, I remember I grew up in the 80s. Remember what that was like? It was hard. It was hard to make money. So keep that in mind.

I mean, so the government incentivizing you to put all your money in these qualified plans. Yeah. When this is your partner, like that’s your partner right there. They have the they have that ability. I guess that leads to another not today, but another one, like talking about the business side of it, because it seems like they incentivize, you know, people start in businesses.

But whatever we that’s a another. Yeah. That’s a that’s a great point. And you know here in the in the late 80s this was George W Bush, the first, George H.W. Bush. You remember 88. So he, had low taxes. But look at this. There was there were really only two brackets. There was below 29,000 and above.

And, you know, you remember that maybe you don’t remember. You guys are young, but he said, read my lips. No taxes. But what happened? Well, you know, there were taxes, and they threw him out of office. They elected Bill Clinton, who came in and raised this threat threshold back up to 250. You know, because all these people weren’t real happy in these years in the highest tax rates in the United States.

And so they went up and and so did the top tax rate went up. And like I said, they’ve been there for quite some time. You know, they had three wars by the way, that we haven’t paid for. We’ve had a lot of things that we haven’t paid for. And we got another one coming. So what does your psychic tell you.

It’s going to be the tax rate and tax break in 30 years from now when you’re pulling your retirement and you need that money. I mean, just based on just looking at that, you can there’s no way you could tell. But we’ll get a good psychic. Yeah. That’s what they’re there for. Good impact. I mean, they have them listen to a podcast about, I mean, this they haven’t worked on.

Do you know, they have a you have the government share the chart with you, what they’re going to charge. And 30 years from now, here’s my strategy, Mario, because I don’t know, because nobody knows. What I want to do is I want to help my clients manage this tax rate risk. Let’s pay taxes. We always pay our taxes, but let’s pay the taxes that we know we need to pay and pay them now and take advantage of strategies where you can then perhaps even utilize tax free growth in different strategies, different accounts.

There’s a few of them out there, and maybe that’s another podcast, but there’s there’s three that we point out to our client different ways that we can utilize tax free growth or tax advantaged accounts so that you don’t have to worry about answering that question, which I just don’t know. All I can tell you is that, you know, we just elect Trump, we have a Republican Congress.

Maybe we get these tax cuts extended. But you’re a young guy. This is only four years. Yeah. Some of the stuff is that I’ve read two was good for first responder. So we’ll see I guess if he can get it through. But even still it’s going to be short lived because reality is I mean, you’re only in your 40s.

Yeah. Though you can’t touch this money until 59.5. And then even so, you know, fast forward however many years, you know, from now and then when you really start pulling it 30 years from now, who knows? Right? Right. So where’s the pendulum going to swing in the going? And who knows? There’s going to be an office what we’re or we’re in or not.

And that’s the big risk to me and what I love about some of the components. It’s why I got into life insurance when I started recognizing a lot of the benefits, of just, as being one of those vehicles that Todd’s referring to. It’s where you can play some money and not be be at the mercy of future administrations.

So I look forward to it. Yeah. To your point, Mario, the tax code does allow for some beneficial tax treatment to those cash value permanent plans that are out there that know we help our clients to understand how those word find out if there’s a need for those strategies, figure out, work with professionals like you, experienced advisors like myself who know how to design these plans.

Because let’s face it, a lot of people don’t know about these things because they’re complicated. Yeah, and a lot of advisors don’t know how to explain them. And let alone maybe some of them don’t even know how they work themselves. And so they don’t want a just a tiered. Yeah. It’s just a tip off the next, the next episodes.

You know, other than life insurance, I mean, what other vehicles really are not subject to future tax? It’s really quickly without getting much detail. Just know, of course, what are we gonna be talking about in our future episodes? Yeah. Have you heard of the Roth IRA? Yes, sir. Yeah, I have, yes. One of the greatest things ever put money in.

Pay your tax on those dollars. Let that money grow tax free for the rest of your life and take that money out tax free. There’s not many vehicles to the point. Even a Roth. You know, you have limits to how much you can contribute. So you. Yeah. So what do you have a mutable on the what we have now has a a Roth 401 k component that’s now present, based on the secure 2.0 act that a lot of employers can now match your Roth 401 K contributions.

So if you want to put money into your 41K at work, you can put a lot more money into the Roth 401 K, then you can, just a regular traditional Roth for a Roth IRA. Okay, so that’s it. They offer what, you know, what the threshold is there. What? It’s the current threshold for the Roth for them.

Okay. So that’s like only on the spot, but depending on your age. So if over age 50, you get a ketchup provision, it’s over 20 grand. Where is your very limited on the regular Rosh IRA? There’s a catch up provision there. If you’re over 52, but you can’t put a lot of money in there. And guess why?

I mean, you have to ask yourself, why is the government setting limits on such a beneficial plane? Question those qualified pay plans, maybe pay pad taxes on the harvest. And quite frankly, those plans that you just referred to Mario, you’re alluding to these those strategies? I believe it’s section 179 in the tax code. There are some limits to those as well.

You know, you can’t put an unlimited amount of money into tax free vehicles. The government won’t let you. There’s rules around that. So we know what those rules are. We know what those thresholds thresholds are and we know how to design. The plans were importantly to suit our clients so that if they do want to maximize one of those strategies, we know the proper way to design it and structure it so that we’re within those guidelines.

And you don’t have a tax bill, right? Yeah. And and it’s so it’s so confusing. And and Todd, we appreciate all your insight on this. Yeah. Well I’m really looking for action pulling back. Yeah. Well and I just don’t want to leave out that one last thing I think I heard you mention it, tax free municipal bonds.

You know, a lot of times our clients will utilize tax free municipal bonds in taxable accounts if that’s the kind of investment that they want because they want, again, those those three main words that I use all the time liquidity, use and control of their money. And so if you’re utilizing a strategy like that, you can have some tax advantaged growth plans in there.

And quite frankly, where interest rates are today, those are very attractive. And your note don’t need to take a lot of risk to get a nice yield. And when interest rates fall, it’s likely you’ll get capital appreciation and more growth on top of those, generous yields. And again, they’re tax free. So when you look at tax equivalent yields compared to other corporate bonds or other fixed income investments, they’re very the very attractive, highly competitive and very attractive.

So, those are the three main, other areas that alternatives that I would look at, make sure my clients understand so that we can make sure we’re exploring all those avenues again, you know, adding that last factor in that knowledge factor, once you have that information. You know, I said it last time, knowledge is power. But, you know, I heard another speaker the other day, really point out the fact that, you know, not really knowledge is power.

It’s the action behind it that’s the power. So just having the information and doesn’t really give you any power. But if you take some action, which we do with our clients and we, you know, manages on a regular ongoing basis, it does give you a lot of power. I think the knowledge is finding the right person, you know?

Yeah. You know, I mean, I think getting caught up and trying to have all the knowledge is, is where a lot of people get tripped up and then they’re scared to make a decision because they, they don’t feel like they really have an informed decision to make. And so finding that right advisor that they can trust isn’t, you know, and I do believe it takes a mixture of advisors, not just one, not just a, fiduciary like yourself.

I think it takes a collection of people, but you absolutely must have a fiduciary like yourself in the middle. There’s no question. You know, but I do believe from my experience of what I’m seeing is it takes a team and, if you, you know, in addition to you doing your own research to ask the right questions, and, and that way they, you know, they give you what you’re ultimate looking for, which is peace of mind.

And, and, Todd, I think we’re going pretty good here. So we’re at like, 42 minutes on the clock. So, and I know you’ve got some place to get to and, and and so, next episode we’re gonna be doing here shortly, I think we were going to get into, tax rates a little bit more, and, and some of the other, getting details about the plans themselves, those qualified plans.

So that’s what you can look forward to in the future. On our show. And we are absolutely, looking for other, officers out there who have questions. Yeah. You know, whether you’re, you know, 20 years from retirement or two years from retirement. We really would love to hear your questions. Todd’s going to be around to help answer these questions and enlighten us on on the things that we do not know about, because it’s a tricky world.

Yeah. And, so thank you very much for being here once again, Todd, and look forward to working with you, further and picking your brain body after tie leisure. Stay safe out there. Yeah. All right. And, should we just all do a go? Cowboys on the end? Sure. Oh, no. I’m not there to go, uncle Jerry.

I know I had to kind of break it up. Who wants to be all stuffy and talk about finances? We should talk about football now anyway, thank you very much. And, I’m laser working with the both of you, as always. Again, thanks for your service, officer. Ty. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me directly anytime.

I’m always here to answer those questions. And I look forward to that next meeting. I’ve got your information. So we can answer the four main questions that you asked in the first meeting. You know, we wanted to answer, how much should you be saving, what rate of return you need to be earning, when can you retire? And if you don’t change anything that you’re doing today, if you continue on this path, how much would you need to reduce your income or your standard of living in retirement to maintain, your assets so that you didn’t run out of money?

And we’ll answer those quite again. We don’t want that last scenario. We want to make sure that our clients have enough money in those two tanks so that we get them in what we call positional. Yeah. Position A and we have enough money adjusted for inflation. Mario. So that they can maintain their lifestyle for their life expectancy. I’ve said it a million times.

I know it’s a mouthful, but I had to leave you with that. No, I’m just saying what you said to even think about all those those four things, that’s the stuff that’s that you gain and that’s a financial advisor to, you know, fiduciary. I guess you’re not a financial advisor. Sorry for the sharing. No, I’m a financial advisor.

Absolutely. Investment advisor or registered investment advisor. There you go. My firm, we do, assets under management. We are a broker dealer, so we’re a full service, independent firm. So, I just obtained my certified financial fiduciary license so that I could hold myself out to the public. So it was clear that my my clients understood that I was acting in their best interest and that I was mitigating or eliminating any conflicts of interest and actually, I really want to talk about again, that’d be a good one there.

Todd Yeah, it’s understandable. What does that mean? You have full disclosure, transparency, all those things that are so important for the average investor to understand and you know, and make sure that you have all the information to make good, educated decisions. And that’s what that’s what my goal is. Love it. Love it. Yep. Sounds good to me. All right you guys.

Well, thank you again for your time. And, signing off everybody. We will talk to you on next episode. Thanks for chiming in. Talk to you soon. Okay. All right. Thanks. Bye now. All right. Next week’s episode. We’re going to talk about what tax bracket you’re going to be in retirement, what deductions you’ll have to make when you take out your money.

And then you have an exit strategy. So hopefully we can answer these questions because I can tell you right now I didn’t know any of these. So we’ll be going through it I’m sure. Exciting times. And if by chance you’re interested in being a guest on our show, please reach out to Officer Ty or, anywhere on one of our social channels and just, we’ll be happy to bring you on.