Video Tour of Financial Services
From Lack to Abundance.
Admittedly, I didn't care much about my financial health until it became clear to me fairly late in life just how important it is for my physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual health. Some amount of adversity or stress is a good thing, as it builds character and resilience. But as we know, stress comes in two forms: distress and eustress. To be constantly in a state of scarcity is distressing. It's self-perpetuating and removes so many opportunities and possibilities. To lead a life well-lived, it's just obvious that financial responsibility is a crucial skill and discipline to master.
Embrace Prosperity Now For Posterity.
Something else that becomes obvious with just a few questions is how important it is to leave something for future generations - even if it's not your lineage. It's hard to disagree that most people want to leave the world better than they found it. If you have kids, or you plan to, exercising this desire might include giving them the financial means to do so. My paternal great-grandpa gifted my father the funds for a down payment on our first house as a family. Wouldn't you like to do the same? And when you've passed, what a blessing it would be to leave a grand estate for your heirs, those you love, and causes you care about.
Getting There.
So how do you build an estate? How do you fund it? How do you protect it? Stop me if you've heard this before...
Pay off bad debts
If you've got personal loans and credit card debt, every dollar you're paying on interest is an opportunity cost to you. That dollar could be working for you. The smart way to use credit cards is to pay them off every month. If your balance is too high to do this, consider taking a short-term hit on your credit report by getting a card with a 0% interest balance transfer option, transfer debts to it and pay the amount monthly you'd need to in order to pay it all off by the end of the introductory rate term. Credit rating agencies (the three big ones) all give you a higher rating if you hold less than 30% of available credit as the balance on your cards. So you'll have a lower credit rating until you pay that balance transfer amount down below 30%. Another consideration for the credit rating is the average age of your credit lines - the younger, the worse a rating you'll have, but of course this factor will improve with time.
"Snowball" If You Have To
You've probably heard of Dave Ramsey's "Debt Snowball" strategy to pay down debts faster. Not everything he says I agree with, but this does work and I've heard success stories from people that I know personally. (See also the debt snowball calculator). Here it is in a nutshell:
- List your debts from smallest to largest (regardless of interest rate).
- Make minimum payments on all your debts except the smallest debt.
- Throw as much extra money as you can on your smallest debt until it’s gone.
- Take what you were paying on your smallest debt and add that to your payment on the next-smallest debt until it’s gone too.
- Repeat until each debt is paid in full and you’re completely debt-free!
Make More Money (Unironically, yes, really it's possible)
If you feel stuck in your job or career and are not upwardly mobile, or you're in an area with a high cost of living, ask for help. No, seriously. If you want anything in this life you have to ask for it. There are career coaches - some people do this professionally. You've probably had some unsolicited inquiries from head hunters if you have a presence on LinkedIn or Indeed. Consider going to a career fair or even your local community college where there will be an administrator who is connected to local employers. I've had success just knocking on doors. These days a resume submitted digitally is parsed for key words and ranked and may never make it to a human being to review, so getting out in the world, looking someone in the eyes and shaking a hand shows that you're confident, resilient, willing to work, proactive, and competent.
Consider Moving. You've probably been feeling pinched by the cost of living in major cities. If your goal is to own a house, form a family, have some kids, it's hard and not ideal to do all that in a big city. Maybe you could even get some friends to make the move with you.
Consider a remote job. Cliche at this point perhaps, but still worth mentioning. Even if you're taking a pay cut, if your cost of living in a new place makes up the difference, it could work out. Digital nomads have been doing this for over a decade now.
Consider a side hustle. Maybe I can help you conceive of a value proposition and put it into action. I'm sure you see plenty of people on Instagram who've made that work for them. E-comm, digital products, moonlight consulting in your field...
Consider a career change, like this one:
Consider Moving. You've probably been feeling pinched by the cost of living in major cities. If your goal is to own a house, form a family, have some kids, it's hard and not ideal to do all that in a big city. Maybe you could even get some friends to make the move with you.
Consider a remote job. Cliche at this point perhaps, but still worth mentioning. Even if you're taking a pay cut, if your cost of living in a new place makes up the difference, it could work out. Digital nomads have been doing this for over a decade now.
Consider a side hustle. Maybe I can help you conceive of a value proposition and put it into action. I'm sure you see plenty of people on Instagram who've made that work for them. E-comm, digital products, moonlight consulting in your field...
Consider a career change, like this one:
Looking for a career change?
Save on Taxes
A lot of people already work as contractors to small and large companies alike, or are self-employed. As I mentioned in the Business Consulting section, there are just a few steps you can take to reduce your taxable income by 25% by changing the way you get paid, while saving for retirement. And by doing this process, you can reduce your taxable income even more by taking advantages of the same tax code as businesses do every day. Do the following in this order:
Need a little hand holding with this? I'd be happy to help and I know the most affordable options for each of these steps. Schedule a call today.
- Open a revocable living trust (more on this below).
- Open a bank account in the name of the trust.
- Set up a Solo 401(k).
- Incorporate an LLC (preferably in FL, WY, etc) with a registered agent and name the trust as the member.
- Get an EIN from the IRS.
- Give the EIN on a new W-9 to whomever you're contracting for.
- Make an S-Corp election.
- Determine what is a defensibly "reasonable salary" for your profession; consider also what your actual living expenses are that can't be written off. Consider talking to a CPA.
- Set up your bookkeeping, maybe with a bookkeeper if you need to.
- Set up payroll and set aside 25% of your "reasonable salary" as a pre-tax contribution and pay the other 75% as your W-2 wage, and pay the FICA or set it aside to pay quarterly
- Keep track of your expenses that you can write off, and pay these expenses with your business revenue.
- At year's end, whatever is left over in profit you'll have to pay taxes on. If you want to take it as income, you can cut a check to yourself as the owner (via your trust if you chose to wrap it all inside your trust), and you'll only be liable for 15.3% total (FICA) taxes on that income.
Need a little hand holding with this? I'd be happy to help and I know the most affordable options for each of these steps. Schedule a call today.
Utilize Qualified Accounts
Opening and funding Qualified Accounts is a good way to reduce your taxable income in the current year or in the future, depending on which ones.
My personal favorite is the Solo 401(k) because it's set up to accept contributions into both pre-tax and post-tax (Roth) buckets. You've probably heard of a Roth IRA. You can put three times more post-tax Roth money into a Solo 401(k).
As part of your compensation, you can contribute to a Solo 401(k). The maximum employee contribution (either pre-tax or Roth) is the lesser of $23,500 for tax year 2025 or 100% of your employee compensation for the year. As the employer, you can also make a separate employer contribution of up to 25% of your employee compensation. The combined total of employee and employer contributions cannot exceed $70,000 for tax year 2025 if you are under age 55.
(a) To maximize your taxable income savings for the current year, maximize your pre-tax employee contribution.
(b) To maximize your tax-free growth in retirement, maximize your employee contribution to the Roth 401(k) bucket instead of the pre-tax employee contribution bucket.
I've found what I believe to be the best Solo 401(k) plan out there because the fees are low and you can invest in ANYTHING that the IRS Code allows you to and does not specifically prohibit - even real estate, cryptocurrency, precious metals, alternative assets.
Something else that most people don't know is that you can pay for life insurance premiums with pre-tax money inside of a 401(k), if your plan allows it, and ours does.
Set up an appointment today to see if our Solo 401(k) is right for you. And we offer any other kind of IRA as well.
My personal favorite is the Solo 401(k) because it's set up to accept contributions into both pre-tax and post-tax (Roth) buckets. You've probably heard of a Roth IRA. You can put three times more post-tax Roth money into a Solo 401(k).
As part of your compensation, you can contribute to a Solo 401(k). The maximum employee contribution (either pre-tax or Roth) is the lesser of $23,500 for tax year 2025 or 100% of your employee compensation for the year. As the employer, you can also make a separate employer contribution of up to 25% of your employee compensation. The combined total of employee and employer contributions cannot exceed $70,000 for tax year 2025 if you are under age 55.
(a) To maximize your taxable income savings for the current year, maximize your pre-tax employee contribution.
(b) To maximize your tax-free growth in retirement, maximize your employee contribution to the Roth 401(k) bucket instead of the pre-tax employee contribution bucket.
I've found what I believe to be the best Solo 401(k) plan out there because the fees are low and you can invest in ANYTHING that the IRS Code allows you to and does not specifically prohibit - even real estate, cryptocurrency, precious metals, alternative assets.
Something else that most people don't know is that you can pay for life insurance premiums with pre-tax money inside of a 401(k), if your plan allows it, and ours does.
Set up an appointment today to see if our Solo 401(k) is right for you. And we offer any other kind of IRA as well.
Use Leverage
Most people know about margin accounts. If you have a Robinhood or Public account, or one of those zero fee brokerage accounts, you typically have access to a margin account. Trading on margin allows you borrow money against your invested capital, at a fixed interest rate, to invest in more assets. As long as your investments are doing well and capital appreciation outpaces your the interest on your borrowed cash, you're winning. So invest well so you don't have to face that dreaded margin call. Maybe this is outside of your risk tolerance. I know someone who in 2022 when the asset bubble was deflating had to get out of a leveraged position in the seven figures, and then he faced an enormous tax liability. So there are other risks to be aware of.
But what if there was a way to use leverage over a long term play, when you didn't need to worry so much about volatility, margin calls, or tax consequences? There's something called a Premium Finance IUL, and if it's well-designed and with 1 or 2 year index allocations spread out equally over time (every month), it could be a core part of your long term estate planning and retirement portfolio. This is a quite advanced instrument that requires design and stress-testing. Recently it's become available for middle class individuals earning a minimum of $100k annually.
Book an appointment today to learn how to use leverage carefully for part of your estate planning and retirement portfolio.
But what if there was a way to use leverage over a long term play, when you didn't need to worry so much about volatility, margin calls, or tax consequences? There's something called a Premium Finance IUL, and if it's well-designed and with 1 or 2 year index allocations spread out equally over time (every month), it could be a core part of your long term estate planning and retirement portfolio. This is a quite advanced instrument that requires design and stress-testing. Recently it's become available for middle class individuals earning a minimum of $100k annually.
Book an appointment today to learn how to use leverage carefully for part of your estate planning and retirement portfolio.
Diversify Your Investments
It is obvious to most people that investment diversification, but most people aren't very good at managing their investments for diversification in a disciplined and theoretical way using technical analysis and for instance the Sharpe Ratio, or concepts from Modern Portfolio Management. Most people don't even keep a spreadsheet of all their assets, and couldn't tell you what percentage they have allocated to a given investment class.
Or, they outsource this to their "money guy", which that guy tasks some algorithm to do the job. And if that's the case, you're getting screwed by hidden fees of all sorts, and forgoing a lot of growth in opportunity costs, while your money languishes in ETFs and Mutual Funds whose underlying investments you've never looked at, and chances are your money guy hasn't either.
While I don't have any FINRA licenses (yet), I do worth with a company that is a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), and I've had lengthy conversations with the Chief Investment Advisor. And I've been an investor myself for over a decade now. So I can say with confidence that this team is highly competent and takes their fiduciary duty very seriously. They understand very well how to optimize a portfolio for the clients' risk tolerance and wealth goals.
Join a free discovery call with me and the RIA today, and bring a statement with you so we can show you just how much you're paying in fees for what is almost certainly a sub-par return.
Or, they outsource this to their "money guy", which that guy tasks some algorithm to do the job. And if that's the case, you're getting screwed by hidden fees of all sorts, and forgoing a lot of growth in opportunity costs, while your money languishes in ETFs and Mutual Funds whose underlying investments you've never looked at, and chances are your money guy hasn't either.
While I don't have any FINRA licenses (yet), I do worth with a company that is a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), and I've had lengthy conversations with the Chief Investment Advisor. And I've been an investor myself for over a decade now. So I can say with confidence that this team is highly competent and takes their fiduciary duty very seriously. They understand very well how to optimize a portfolio for the clients' risk tolerance and wealth goals.
Join a free discovery call with me and the RIA today, and bring a statement with you so we can show you just how much you're paying in fees for what is almost certainly a sub-par return.
Invest Wisely
If you're not already using free tools like Seeking Alpha and Google Finance to evaluate your investments, you're flying blind. Even if all you're doing is dollar cost averaging into the Mag 7 every month (not a terrible idea), what's missing is due diligence, and you may not be aware that some very large shareholders may take short positions on some of those very companies. For instance in 2025 Warren Buffett divested from AAPL in a very big way. Maybe he knows something you don't.
Find Arbitrage Opportunities
I recall in my MBA program that my finance professor tried to tell me that arbitrage doesn't exist. Maybe theoretically, in a perfect market, and with adjusted risk factors, he might be correct. But I was looking at several different crypto exchanges at the time with different market caps for Bitcoin, and his statement simply didn't hold up to evidence.
But this isn't the kind of arbitrage that I'm talking about. Let's say you can get a first-position HELOC on your home to take some equity out at rates between 5.5% and 7%, and invest it in contractually secured, asset-backed trust deeds or promissory notes that are earning fixed rates of 12%-15%. Then you'd be making a spread of between 5% and 9.5% on that money. Now that's what I'm talking about when I say arbitrage.
Where else can you find this kind of arbitrage opportunity? Let's say you put a chunk of capital into an IUL for 30 days so it sweeps into an allocation, and then take out an alternative loan for nearly all of that same capital at 5% against those same funds which are now allocated to indexed investments, and you put that to work to earn that same spread. Or maybe you buy a property, or do something more fancy by combining some other strategies, investments and instruments. Leverage plus arbitrage.
Feeling bold and want to use Archimedes' Principle on your Principal? Book a free call today with me and my team and let's get your capital working harder and smarter for you.
But this isn't the kind of arbitrage that I'm talking about. Let's say you can get a first-position HELOC on your home to take some equity out at rates between 5.5% and 7%, and invest it in contractually secured, asset-backed trust deeds or promissory notes that are earning fixed rates of 12%-15%. Then you'd be making a spread of between 5% and 9.5% on that money. Now that's what I'm talking about when I say arbitrage.
Where else can you find this kind of arbitrage opportunity? Let's say you put a chunk of capital into an IUL for 30 days so it sweeps into an allocation, and then take out an alternative loan for nearly all of that same capital at 5% against those same funds which are now allocated to indexed investments, and you put that to work to earn that same spread. Or maybe you buy a property, or do something more fancy by combining some other strategies, investments and instruments. Leverage plus arbitrage.
Feeling bold and want to use Archimedes' Principle on your Principal? Book a free call today with me and my team and let's get your capital working harder and smarter for you.
