Let's Talk Money - podcast episode cover

Let's Talk Money

Feb 22, 202547 min
--:--
--:--
Listen in podcast apps:
Metacast
Spotify
Youtube
RSS

Episode description

February 22nd, 2025

Transcript

Speaker 1

Good morning, and thank you for joining Let's Talk Money on news radio WGY. I'm gonna be your host for today's show. Palo la Pietra, one of the wealth advisors along with portfolio strategists here at the Bouchet Financial Group. I am a certified financial planner sitting in for the one and only Stephen Bouchet, who is taking a very well deserved break. But I do have my payes on

colleague Vincenzo Tesla with me on today's show. He is also a certified financial planner and CPA Vinnie, how are we doing this morning?

Speaker 2

Good, good morning everyone.

Speaker 1

You know, Vinnie, it's always a pleasure to have you on, and I know you feel the same way that I do that this weather has been brutal. I gotta tell you, I've lived in Upstate New York my whole entire life, so I don't have too much of a right to complain. But I feel like these winter cold months are fine during the holiday season and even through January, but once you get to February after the Super Bowl and it's zero degrees or below zero degrees, it just ends up

getting a little too much. So really looking forward to some more sunnier days ahead. I did look at the weather forecast for next week and it looks like we're going to get into the forties, which is very exciting news. Hopefully that can melt some of the snow and the ice at the end of everybody's driveways. But you didn't join today's show to listen to me complain about the weather.

I'm guessing you're joined to hear about some investment advice and some tax advice, and that's exactly what you're going to get on today's show. So being the portfolio strategist, I'm going to talk about the markets, what we see in the markets this week, some of the trends, and what.

Speaker 3

We're doing in the portfolios.

Speaker 1

And then with Videon this show today, he's going to be sharing a lot of tax planning advice and what you should be thinking about this year. And honestly, the timing couldn't be any better. Right, we're right in the midst of taxis and I'm sure a lot of you are getting your ten ninety nines and getting ready to file your taxes, so I'm sure you're gonna have a lot of questions for Vinnie. And we really, really encourage you to call in and ask those questions though.

Speaker 3

That number for you to.

Speaker 1

Call in and the phone lines are going to be open all throughout today's show is one eight hundred Talk WGY. That's one eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. Again one more time, one eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine.

Speaker 3

So let's kick off today's show.

Speaker 1

Let's do a quick recap of market performance this week, and folks, we saw some volatility. You know, I think we've been somewhat spoiled this year and seeing a lot of green and over the last few weeks we've seen some more volatility and certainly want to get into that, but this week we actually saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average down two point eight seven percent. We also saw the Nasdaq down two point one one percent in the S and P five hundred down.

Speaker 3

One point six seven percent.

Speaker 1

So definitely sell some volatility within stocks, and a lot of that just has to do with the uncertainty that we're seeing around tariffs right. President Trump has been very adamant on, you know, deploying tariffs and using that as a tool, whether that's for revenue or negotiation tactics.

Speaker 3

That's also soon to be seen.

Speaker 1

But nonetheless, there's a lot of uncertainty around exactly what tariffs are actually going to come into play and what that means from an inflationary standpoint. You know, some of the most recent information that we got was reciprocal tariffs meeting President Trump said if a country's charging us a tariff, we're going to be charging the same tariff back. Now we're seeing some new tariff proposals on aluminum and steel, and so the market's just really trying to get its

myths around what this means from an inflationary standpoint. You can never make any promises, you know, within the investment business, but one promise I can make you on today's show is the number one thing the market hates is uncertainty. So not understanding exactly what the concrete plan is and what the material effect will be on inflation just has some volatility on where rates are going right now, and that could be very challenging for both stocks and bonds.

So what what can you be doing during this What should you be thinking about? And one of the first things that comes to mind, you know, that we've been employing for our clients is something called direct indexing. I've talked about it a few times before on some previous shows, and this is a really powerful New.

Speaker 3

Age way of investing.

Speaker 1

So in direct indexing, instead of owning an index fund, for instance, you could own SPY, which is the S and P five hundred. Instead of just owning SPY, you can own all fun five hundred individual stocks within the

SMP five hundred. And why is that important. Well, in any given year, you know the stock market would say would be up like last year, you know, the S and P five hundreds up over twenty percent, But during that year, there is over thirty percent of the companies in the SMP five hundred that were negative or negative at one point during the year. So by owning individual stocks instead of just one singular investment, you are unlocking

the potential of tax loss harvesting. So you could sell a position at a loss, and we look at this on a daily basis, sell a position at a loss and replace it with a like kind company. So, for instance, to give you an example out there, if this week's a pepsi sold off five percent and we sold Pepsi in the portfolio, we would want to replace it with

a like kind security who would buy Coca Cola. So this way, you're always continuing to get SMP five hundred exposure and you're never added of the market, but you're continuously tax loss harvesting, and that's really really important. And the reason why that's so important is the tax efficiency that comes along with that. So the first thing that you could do with capital losses is you could write

off those losses at year end. You could write off up to three thousand dollars off of your tax return. But the other thing you could do is use your losses for the year and offset the gains that you might have for that year. So it allows you to have much more flexibility when you're doing distribution planning and liquidity planning instead of just being stuck with a big tax bill.

Speaker 3

This creates a lot more flexibility.

Speaker 1

So we've had a lot of clients have a lot of success in our direct indexing platform, and these types of choppy times are perfect for direct indexing platform because we're constantly harvesting those losses and offsetting them in.

Speaker 3

Other places of the portfolio.

Speaker 1

No, Vinnie, I don't I don't want to steal your thunder too much here, but you know, especially with this being more of a tax side. But I was just wondering if you had any thoughts there had any clients using direct and next thing and you know, if you wanted to share you know, anything from that on a tax standpoint.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I mean, it's a great opportunity to utilize tax loss harvesting in it.

Speaker 1

Again, it's like we might have lost Vinnie, So I apologize about that.

Speaker 2

Hello.

Speaker 1

What I also wanted to go into is some other ways that we can be looking.

Speaker 4

At, you know, the portfolio.

Speaker 1

So instead of just saying, hey, we're doing some volatility, we might want to get some more conservative, you know pieces in the portfolio. What we can also do is add more alternatives into the portfolio. And that's what we've been using right now for our clients. And those alternatives come in all different flavors. One of the most important pieces of the portfolio that we've been using for alternatives

is something called a covered call strategy. And what that does is it protects you know, the position while also producing income within the portfolio. And that's been something that's been really beneficial to a lot of our clients. It's a way to again have principal protection while also providing income.

Speaker 3

So it looks like I do.

Speaker 1

Have Vinnie having a little bit of a technical difficulty, So I'm going to take us to a quick commercial break to get Vinnie back on the line and then we'll be right back. So I do apologize about that, So I hope you stick with us through the break and we'll be right back.

Speaker 5

Momentarily, I apologize everyone, we're having some technical difficulties here.

Speaker 2

Paula is gonna call back in, but you're listening to Let's Talk Money. We encourage all listeners to call in at eight hundred at Talk WGY. That's eight hundred Talk WGY.

So before we had those difficulties, we were talking about something called direct invexing, which is basically this new era of investing where instead of investing in a fund, well, you are basically investing in a fund, but you're able to look at each position that you're invested in that specific fund within your portfolio, and it's spread across all of those funds within the ETF for mutual fund And basically it's a great tool for tax purposes, right, and

also it's a great tool to invest in things more that you were interested in investing in, or also to not invest in things that you might not of like tobacco or alcohol or things of that nature. But from a tax perspective, so I'm a CPA and a CFP,

and i also have another designation called ECA. So we do a lot of tax planning for clients at the firm, and you know, direct indexing is a great tool to help us do that, right, So we're able to basically sell out of positions that we would not be able to if we were invested in just an ETF, right, because the ETF is a basket of stocks and the

ETF has one single price. But we're able to look at positions within those funds and sell out of positions that it might have tooken a dive, right, And that's beneficial because clients might have capital gain income in a specific year, whether it's from real estate, whether it's from the sale of another position, and we're able to basically do something called tax loss harvesting, which is sell positions at a loss to kind of net against those other

capital gains and reduce tax liability. So it's really a great tool from that perspective, and also just an overall investment perspective and kind of just getting clients where they want to be and it direct indexing has been great.

Speaker 4

Vinny, I appreciate you finishing up that conversation there. It seems like I've been a little plagued the last couple of times I've hosted the show. I just had some more technical difficulties on that call, So I do apologize, but I am back and again, Vinee, I do appreciate you you finishing up on direct indexing. And again, folks, this has been very beneficial during shopping markets and what I was also talking about, and I'm not sure at what point I might have gotten cut off, So I

apologize if I'm repeating myself here. But other ways that we could think about how we want to be invested in some more choppy markets is what your overall allocation looks like. So we traditionally think about stocks and bonds, but something that we've been deploying in client portfolios is

our alternative sleeve. And alternatives again come in all different types and in flavors, and two of the biggest strategies that we use are covered call strategies, which are a way of tracking a certain index in writing covered calls.

On top of that, to have downside protection and also provide income and then also defined outcome positions that use derivatives again and they straddle an index to give us a certain amount of upside and a certain amount of downside on whatever you know index we want to cover. So these are great ways of adding some more defensive and income producing positions in the portfolio. And you know, overall,

just continue to add to diversification. And that's super super important at all times of investing, but even more so when we experience bouts of volatility, because you might be traditionally thinking, well, if we're seeing volatility and there's uncertainty, maybe I should just get much more defensive and add a lot more bonds to my portfolio, because historically speaking,

that's the way that you become more defensive. But the challenge is, and what I talked about a little bit earlier on the show, is if these you know, President Trump's tariff do come to fouis and they do end up being inflation area and interest rates continue to go up, that can be a very challenging environment in the short term for bonds, right because bonds have an inverse relationship to interest rates, So if inflation ticks up, and interest

rates go up, then bond prices will go down. And the longer term your bonds, the more that your bond prices will go down. So having access to an alternative sleeve, and again we use more derivative strategies in our alternative sleeves, but there's a plethor of other alternatives that you could use as well. Just helps to add another asset class and another piece of diversification to help write the ship

through bouts of volatility right through the storm. So these are things that you could really be thinking about and your overall portfolio. The other thing you might want to think about is you might have been sitting on some cash for a while and you want to get into back into the markets, but you've heard on the news that there is some uncertainty, there is some choppiness, and you're not sure exactly how you should go about it. And one of the best strategies to implement for that

is something called a dollar cost averaging strategy. So what you want to do there is you take the amount of cash that you have that you want to get invested, and you break it up into a few different pieces. So, for instance, I'm just going to use some plain numbers here. If you had one hundred thousand dollars and you want to get it invested, one of the most simple simple ways of doing dollar cost averaging is to break it up into four different pieces or what they call trunches.

So you would get twenty five thousand dollars invested now, and then twenty five thousand dollars invested every month after that for the next three months. And what that does, just like I was talking about diversification within your portfolio, this diversifies you over time into the market. Therefore, if there is any sort of bouts of allow utility while you're getting this money invested, you could take advantage of that. And it helps also just create some peace of mind.

So these are the things that you could be thinking about right now to make sure that you're doing all the right things from a portfolio perspective and a piece of mind perspective to get invested during some more choppy times in the markets. And Nvidie, I want to rope you in here and see if you wanted to add anything there or maybe start talking about some of the you know, tax planning prep or tax strategies that you've been talking to your clients about.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I'll chime in, so you know, there are some tax planning, you know, activities you could be doing. You know, this early in the year. It's obviously getting close to March, but we're at the end of February and it's worth

taking a look at a couple of items. And one of the you know, one of the items I really want to emphasize on is maxing out your retirement contributions early, right, and that means frontloading your contributions, right, because each retirement plan, whether it's a four to one, four three b IRA, traditional erraw if hsas, they all have contribution limits in any given year, and you know, taking the time to look at your payroll and your pay stuff and make

sure that you you know, if you have periodic contributions going in to your employer retirement plan, just making sure that you're increasing the you know, bi weekly or you know, the contribution that you're making every pay period right to match that contribution limit if that's what you want to you know, if you want to meet that contribution limit

for that year. Because it does increase every year, the IRS gives it a little bit of an inflationary increase to kind of keep up with inflation, and it's pretty standard so that it does change every year, and kind of monitoring that and making sure that you're getting the most out of you know, your contribution limit within your

pay period and adjusting your tax withholding. Right, So if you you know, work at a job and you have tax withholding, which everyone does federal and state, making sure, you know, having someone do a projection or even yourself doing a projection and making sure that you're withholding, you know, gets you to a point where when you file your tax return, you're as close to owing nothing or being owed nothing as possible. Right, That's really the name of

the game. And I know some folks really want to have a big refund and you know, I know everyone doesn't really want to pay, but the name of the game is really to avoid penalties and pay as much at filing with you know, with avoiding those penalties.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 2

So there's rules the IRS and states have that allow you to do that, and it's really based on your

income in the prior year. And obviously, you know, if you're not a layming to taxes, you could do this on your own, but if you're working with a professional, they should be doing this for you and adjusting your tax withholding could allow you to do that, and just kind of making sure that you're all paid and not owing significant penalties when it comes to filing, because they could be pretty significant if you're a higher earner and or you had some you know, unprecedented income large income

in a given year. So just making sure that you're paid in during there, because IRS wants their money ahead of time, and that the rules are structured for, you know,

to penalize you if you don't abide by that. You know, Also, if you own a business or a rental property, organizing your records and tracking expenses early, right, not waiting until the end of the year to kind of look at every receipt and you put into an Excel file at the end of the year, because you can miss things, right if you do it along the way each time you spend money, or if you organize your bank account right, if you have one rental property has one account, right,

each outflow you can track the expenses and each inflow is the rent right or the same thing with the business. Each inflow is the revenue to the business, and each

outflow is expense to that business. So kind of just making sure you're organized that way makes it easier for you to you know, report the income and expenses on your texturing, and it makes it easier for your tax payer too, right know, if everything's all organized, maybe it gives it more time or an opportunity to find some more tax planning opportunities that would benefit you if you know, they were not spending the time organizing your records for you.

So just a couple of items I think that are worth mentioning when it comes to tax planning early in the year.

Speaker 4

And viny those are all great points, And you know, I was hoping another thing that maybe you could touch

base upon. I know we've talked about it and we both have had client conversations around it, and it certainly I feel like there's been more buzz around these types of strategies, but ross conversions, right from your standpoint, I was wondering if you could share potentially more on a general standpoint, when do ross conversions kind of make sense and what type of preparation would need to come into play, you know, should we be doing it tax projection or

what are some key points that we should be looking at from a tax standpoint to see if a ross conversion would really make sense in a client situation.

Speaker 2

Yeah, So, a roth conversion is when you move money from your traditional IRA or for okay, so basically from a tax deferred retirement account. You're moving money, right, and when you move that money, it's taxable to you as ordinary income and you move it to a roth IRA, which you know, for those of you who don't know, roth ira is a retirement plan that allows folks to have their money grow tax free. Right, And there's a whole bunch of rules around it, but I'll kind of

just talk in the surface. So it's really beneficial, you know, for a multitude of reasons, and you know, just touch on apologists that from an investment perspective, the best time to do a Roth conversion is when the market takes a dip, right, if you think about it, because you know, a percentage of your IRA or tax deferred account is moving out of the account. And you know, as we always say, and Steve Bouchet will always say, you know, the market always makes all time highs and it always

goes on and make all time highs again. So if the market takes a dip, you know, that's our you know philosophy. Right, So if you're moving money when markets down out of you know, a percentage of your tax defer to count out into a roth ira, you're you know, it's going to rebound in the roth ira, right, and all that's going to be tax free, So that's when it's most beneficial. Right. But you know, obviously you can't

time these things. So if you're thinking about doing a ross conversion in February, you know it might not be the best idea to wait. Similar to investing in the market, right, you know, statistically you're going to have better performance if you invest all at once versus doing something like dollar cost averaging, which is, you know, maybe investing one fourth

of the money you plan on investing every three months. Right, So it's similar to the ros conversion, might not make sense to wait, But if they're you know, if the market takes a dip, hey, you know that's a good time for you to do it. If you didn't already do a ross conversion earlier in the year and it doesn't screw up your tax plan, you know, it might

be a good opportunity to do so. So we are going to take a quick break and I'll when we come back, I'll talk about ross conversions a little bit more. You're listening to Let's Talk Money to You by Bouchet Financial Group, where we help our clients prioritize their health while we manage their wealth for life. We encourage all listeners to call in it eight hundred eight two, five, five to nine or nine at eight hundred talk WGY.

Speaker 6

Thank you, hello, and welcome back.

Speaker 4

You're listening to Let's Talk Money on news Radio WGY, and I appreciate all the listening audience that stayed with us through the news and the break. If you are just tuning in on the first half of this show, myself and my co host Vincenzo Tessa, who is also a Certified Financial Planner and CPA and ECA, we're discussing some investment strategies and some tax planning and you know, going to dive into that a little bit more in

the second half of the show. But again, would love to hear from the listening audience that numbers one eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. That's one eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. Now, Vitee, since you're CPI and you know we're right in the midst of tax season. I feel like we should really break tax and full focus on the second half of the show, and I'm just going to start handing you some questions that I feel like a lot of clients

are really wondering about. And some of these questions come to distribution planning, right. You know, we talk about it all the time with our clients that when a client needs to start taking systematic distributions out of their portfolio, that we put in something called our cash distribution strategy. And what that simply is is taking two years worth of those distributions that you need and putting them into ultra safe investments, whether that be money markets or ultra

short bonds. And we do that to protect against volatility that we see in the market. Right, So if we get a year like twenty twenty two where the market's down twenty percent or over twenty percent, we're using our cash distribution strategy to weather the storm, get through, you know, the market volatility, not have to worry about selling investments at a loss and then allow the market to recover

before having to refill that bucket. But that's only a piece of what we should be discussing when we're talking about our distribution strategy. The other is you know what are the most tax efficient ways to go about it?

And Vinnie, if we have a situation where a client might have a taxable account, an IRA account or WROTH account, it's hoping again, more broadly speaking, if you could share kind of some of your thoughts and expertise on which accounts would you like to target first, or maybe you're using a mixture of all the accounts.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think it really depends on the balances of each account relative to the net worth of the client.

So when it comes to an IO, the IRA traditional IRA that's tax deferred can cause issues in the future for a client mainly because age, well, the current age is age seventy three for a required minimum distribution and that means that basically the IRS says you have to take money out of your IRA and pay ordinary income tax on it because so many years ago when you contributed it, you save money, so now they want their

money back. So when it comes to the RMD, if your IRA balance gets too big, that can give you a large rm D because the RMD is about four percent of the account balance and the the end of the prior year. So when it comes to being in retirement, you know, maybe your age sixty sixty one, sixty two, sixty three. Yeah, we might want to target the IRA first.

The IRA has a significant balance, and when it comes to funding your expenses, we might want to look at the IRA and say, hey, let's start pulling money out of this. So when you get to RM D age you have a little bit more control of your tax full income and we can deplete the balance a little bit before that happens. And that's the same thing with ross conversions. You know, if we do ross conversions, that's part of the reason why we do it too. In addition to that, the R and D again is gonna

kind of take away your control of your taxbile income. Right, so we're doing tax planning down the road, you know, the high r S saying hey, you have this much income, there's nothing you could do about it. So the other thing that affects is your Medicare premiums. So it's called IRMA right. So basically, your adjusted gross income in that given your returning AD sixty five and you become eligible for Medicare, your income in that year affects your Medicare

premium two years down the road. So if your rm D is big again, that's gonna basically I call it an extra tax, right. You know, when it comes to Medicare premiums, you could be paying one hundred and twenty a month, you could be paying two hundred and forty a month three sixty and if you're married, that premium doubles. Right. It takes account the couple's adjusted gross income in total for that year, so you can be paying significant amount

of money on a monthly basis. So that's another reason I really to target the IRA as well when it comes to the raws. Really it's not really the last thing we want to touch, right, And you know, just to talk about this a little bit more, there's a state planning considerations that need to come into effect as well, because when a beneficiary that's a non spouse inherits an IRA, they have to liquidate the entire thing in ten years.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 2

So let's say someone has a five million dollar IRA, right, they did the max every year for thirty five years, and their IRA has grown pretty significantly. They made some good investments. If they have one child, they inherit that IRA. The child has to basically pull out five hundred thousand dollars a year, which is going to put them in the highest tax bracket in their working years, and it's

just going to host the family more money right in total. Right, you know, when we look at tax planning, we want to look at the family as a whole. So if you start pulling money out of the IRA now and doing ross conversions and putting it into the rawth IRA, which grows tax free and doesn't have those same rules of you know, paying tax ordinary income tax on the money that comes out of it and LIQ we didn't need it in ten years, you know, it's really beneficial

for the family as a whole. So that's another reason why we want to target the IRA first. And if there is a taxable account, right, taxable accounts have different taxiplications. There's long term capital gains rates, right, So if you had an investment in that taxable account that you're investing in for over a year, you're you're eligible for long term capital gain rates on the sale of those investments on that gain, which are much lower than ordinary income

tax rates. Right. So there's a lot of tax rules that you know, these accounts abide by and we're kind of looking at it, you know, acumulatively and as a whole, so we make the right decision. But generally speaking, you want to pull money out of the IRA first. Depending on you know, what those balances look like relative to each account, you might say, hey, let's take half from

the IRA, half from the taxible account. But you're really never ever going to touch that, right, We're not going to let you touch that raw IRA unless you know the circumstances is deemed differently and there's some strange circumstance that you're in where taking out of the roll makes sense because the longer the rowth IRA grows tax free

is more beneficial to you. Right, the longer it grows, the more growth you'll have, and that's all going to be non taxable and when your beneficiaries inherit it, it's a greatest state planning tool. But the taxable account is also a great estate planning a tool because those capital gains that are built into that taxable account. When you pass away, your beneficiaries get something called a step up in basis. So basically, when you pass away, all of

those gains are wiped away. And if your beneficiary were to sell the position is that taxable account. They would not only tax right, there'd be no tax liability generated in the data death right. Everything after the data death is you know, considered, but on that data depth you get that step up in basis. So generally speaking, you want to target the high RA and maybe in some circumstances you know, do a middle mixture of both the tax ball and the IRA.

Speaker 4

Those are all great points, and you know, I think one of the biggest takeaways here, especially with all the detail that Vinnie provided, is when you look at your current situation, it's so important to not just think about the immediate right, but also think about the long term planning. So many times you could run into a situation where you need liquidity for something and your number one goal on mind is I want to pay the least amount

of taxes possible. And sure, a lot of times that can make sense depending on what the situation is, but you also need to think about what you're giving up in the long run. As any pointed out, you're really targeting that IRA early on is going to give you a lot more control during your R and D time and is also going to make your state much more

tax favorable when you know these assets passed on. I mean, as Anny pointed out, if you have a child or anybody other than a spouse that will be inheriting a pre tax IRA, they're going to have ten years to take all of that money out. And so many times we see during that whoever's inheriting that IRA that's a non spouse is usually in their prime earning years. Right

They're at their highest tax bracket already. They're usually in their late thirties or forties or fifty, making the most that they've made so far in their career, and now they have, you know, these extra IRA distributions that go on top of it and really puts them in a

tough tax situation. So doing some tax planning around that is important, not just for the immediate and how to be tax efficient now, but also in the long term planning to make sure that you're set up correctly, you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years down their road, and to make sure that your state is also in a great spot. So these

are all really important topics. And I hope that this is what you're thinking about when you're setting up distributions for retirement or I hope these are the conversations that you're having with your financial advisor. I hope he's asking for your tax return, and I hope he's offering a tax rejection. You know, I've seen Vinnie and the tax team do so much tax planning for our clients, and it just brings so much value, right because it's not just how much money you're saving, it also ties into

your investments in your state. Tax is such a pivotal piece, such a pivotal pillar to you know, your financial house, and it's something that you know shouldn't be overlooked and shouldn't just be casually addressed saying, hey, if I need money, I'm just might take it from my I R or taxicble account or rough account because I don't have to pay, you know, pay any taxes on it. It needs much

more thought than that and much more planning. And that's exactly what Vinnie and the tax team does here Bouche for our clients. And you know, again, I think it's extremely, extremely valuable. And you know, Viny, we were talking about direct and next thing earlier and you know again, we've had a lot of clients, uh, you know, utilize us for direct indexing and I've seen tremendous amount of value through the tax loss harvest thing. But this is a

newer strategy, right. So we also have seen a lot of clients I've had legacy positions, right, that have maybe bought Navidia back in twenty twelve, or Apple back in the eighties, whatever the case may be, and they have, you know, some stocks that are highly appreciated. And I know I was talking to you earlier today right before the show about you know, what you could do about you know, some really appreciated stocks and how potentially we could avoid some of those capital games.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah, So I had actually, I'll talk about a real world situation. So we had a client buy a specific position years ago within his IRA, and that IRA grew to somewhere in the realm of like eight to nine million dollars, right, and you know, obviously, you know, based on what we're just talking about, that could be an issue again IRA balance that big uncontrollable tax ble

income beneficiaries putting themselves in tough tax positions. So luckily he had also you know, purchased this position in a tax bill account as well, right, And this individual was charitably inclined so you know, our recommendation to him was take the money in the fund and the taxble account, which had like three thousand percent built in gains on that position, and donate it to something called a donor

advice fund. So a donor advice fund is a fund that allows you to front load, for the lack of a better word, your charitable contributions into the account right and then subsequently make those contributions to specific organizations after the money is funded and it could be invested and it

grows tax free. The only caveat is the contribution to the fund, not the actual checks being cut out, is what's considered a charitable deduction for tax purposes, and he eliminates the built in gain on that position when he put it into the donor advice fund. So you're allowed to donate appreciated stock, avoiding capital gains tax on the position itself and getting the charitable deduction on your tax return. So we did that with about three hundred thousand dollars

in in built in stock with built in gains. Subsequent to that, we did a ross conversion of around four hundred thousand dollars out of his IRA to get you know, deplete that balance and make sure that when he gets to R and dates that IRA balance isn't thirteen to fifteen million dollars. That's going to create some real issues. And what it did was the terrible deduction is kind of offsetting the ross conversion itself. So all of these

things are coming into play. He's moving money out of the IRA, he's paying you know, a small percentage of tax on it because of that contribution to the Donor Advice Fund, is allowing him as deduction, and he's eliminating you know, that built in gain on the position of the taxible account which he donated to the Donor Advice Fund. And there's an issue with an over concentration in one position. Right, anytime a client has an overconcentration in one stock, that's

a huge issue. Right, So if you have forty percent of your networth tied into one company, that's a big red flag. And like we're gonna shake you and you know, for lack of a better word, yell at you, and you know, allow us to help you plan to get out of that position if there's tax implications or what have you. Because you know, we have clients that worked at GE right, GE was a top company, the s P five hundred for a long, long time diversified company.

They had the tentacles and everything, and you know, no one really would have seen, you know, foreseen you know how much of a hit the stock has taken in recent time, right, And a lot of folks in this area, specifically, you know, schinected. The folks worked at GE lost a lot of money, right, And and maybe they're planning to retire and they weren't able to because they were so over concentrated in GE. You really have to diversify your portfolio.

It's really about risk reward. You know, someone like this specific individual, you know, they already won on this position, right, And that's that's what I would tell them. And it's like you're still you're kind of just gambling at a

certain point. Right. If you take all of that money you made and put in a diversified portfolio every year, you reduce your risk by so much and you're you're gonna get those modest gains and on numbers like that, you know, nine million dollars and you're getting you know, eight to ten percent every annually over the long term. Like you're, ye, you never have to worry about anything ever again, but if something goes south with that company, then all of that benefit that you created for yourself

is all gone. So I mean, these are the things we do guys for clients at the firm, like the tax planning piece, where we look very deeply into it. We bring a love that we save clients in this specific case, like down the road when it comes to his R and D and medicare premiums like doing these things annually for him are going to save them hundreds of thousands of dollars. So you know, it's really huge.

It's not really just about investing. It's you know, science planning, tax planning are huge proponents of everything we do here at the firm, And if you're working with an advisor, they should be doing it too. They're do need disservice.

Speaker 4

So I couldn't agree more of any And you know how complex these strategies are and how much attention to detail and how much hard work goes into it. Again, I think brings in a lot of value. And I've seen other situations as well that you specifically have worked with clients.

Speaker 6

On that have brought a lot of value.

Speaker 4

And I'm thinking of one right now with you working with a client on Nuay's right, where a client could be working for a publicly traded company and it's four to one k, he's got a lot of built up you know, stock of that company, and how you could go about making that more tax fici. I was wondering maybe if you could spend a few minutes on that as well.

Speaker 2

Yep. So net unrealized appreciation is what Pile's referring to, which is the acronym NUA. So it's when you work at a company. Again, working at a company and you have or you know, your employer stock in your four one k right, so you have money in this tax deferred account, tax deferred employee retirement plan, but it's your employer stock, right. So a lot of our clients, you know, they work, they retire, they roll over their four O one k to an i RA right with us, and

we manage it for them. So with nua's is something specific to when you have employer stock in your four O one k right, And this could be really beneficial if there's a large built in gain on the employer stock within the four one K. Let's say you bought you know, you work at Regeneron and you bought their stock, you know, years ago when it was four dollars, right, and you know, you come up with retirement and that employer stock is uh set. I think it's around like

six hundred dollars right now. That's a pretty significant game. But before I go any further, we do have a caller. We have Paul from Connecticut.

Speaker 7

Hey, guys, I have to command you for a focus on taxes. And I listened to shows all week and I've called stave before and I'm a self employed you know, non practicing CDPA. I don't do the CPA work, it's other stuff. And I've built models on some of the issues you're raising, like IRMA, and I can't comprehend how people don't. They basically act like they're shocked. So they have all this money and the strategy of conversions IRMA, that Medicare surcharge of three to eight or whatever you

want to call it. It all adds up and it's an incremental taxation at the federal level. So your focus

on it is important. And I do have one question about this because I modeled it and it sounds insane, but I've almost done it to the point where you get I don't have the money you guys are talking, but could you focus in on this idea that it's hundreds of thousands of dollars on IRMA because I ran off a model custom built till I'm ninety or something whatever, and the IRMA charges it's hard to get away from them.

And one thought was to do a one year conversion of four oh one k money because it's only a two year lag and there is some value to that. Have you seen scenarios like that where you could make an argument if the Trump tax rates stay and you follow me on that a little bit, and yeah.

Speaker 3

For sure.

Speaker 2

Yeah, So what I would say is, you know, with this specific client I was talking about, right, if we're so IRMA is like when it comes to managing tax brackets, like obviously IRMA is important, but if we're talking numbers where you know you potentially could have an R and D of four to five hundred thousand dollars, right, and if we could do roth conversions now when you're in the twenty two and twenty four percent tax bracket, saving

you from being thirty seven percent potentially forty point eight. Like when you're referring to the net investment income tax. Right, that's a big spread, right, So irma's really like, obviously IRMA is important, but like that's really, you know, my main focus when looking at this, because if we're talking about an extra twenty percent almost on.

Speaker 7

An Okay, I agree, it's almost your point, and now I'll move on. I agree, but I'm commending you because I listen to all these shows, and if you're paying let's say, combined federal and state, I'm making this simple thirty cents on a buck, a simple view that erodes to ten percent gain on stocks, let's say. And even in my case it may sound contrary to popular beliefs, but I like having mutual funds throw off fifteen percent capital gain distributions that I reinvest because I've modeled this too,

and it makes sense for a guy like me. So my point, overriding is that anybody who listens to these shows and does not understand that it's not just how much you make but the taxation strategy, they're crazy. And you guys, I know we're in a good shop to do that. That's kind of my point.

Speaker 2

Okay, to be day, Paul, I appreciate words. Yeah, and you know, I just want to touch on what Paul said a little bit more. You know, very educated guy knows what he's talking about.

Speaker 3

You know.

Speaker 2

The thing with when it comes to you know, when we're investing your money, right, obviously we want you to have those returns and that's what you're going to see on paper, right, But these these tax planning items like this is the number one outflow paying tax is the number one outflow of expense for every household in America. Right, So if we're able to you know, minimize that and you know, limit your liability, that's so beneficial to you. And it's not something you're going to see in a

monthly statement, right. The money we're saving you when we're doing this tax planning, it's not something that you're going to get in the mail at the end of every month and say, oh my god, I made this much. You know, we're no, we're saving you something, which is the same thing as making you something. So you know, great point, Paul, appreciate you calling in.

Speaker 4

Yeah, and the great questions by Paul. And again, you know, I think all these points that Devine is pointing out just how complex the strategies are that we implement for clients and what that means in real dollars. You know,

we talk about that in the direct indexing platform. You know, there's performance numbers as we kind of discuss where if you're up ten percent but you're paying thirty percent on taxes, what does that really mean in the direct indexing platform where we're selling uh, you know, stocks on a daily or weekly or monthly basis at a loss and buying white kind security, so we're always still getting market performance

by harvesting those losses. That adds additional right performance and something that we call tax alpha, and that just shows you know, how much you know, easier it is to liquidity plan off of you know, securities that have been trimmed and don't grow too far out of proportion with capital gains. So when we need to rely on these accounts for liquidity, they're there in a much more favorable tax situation, you know, and especially from a long term

capital gain perspective like Vinnie talked about. And again, Vinnie, I really appreciate all the insight you're sharing on today's show on the tax side, especially in the midst of tax season. I know a lot of the listening audience certainly appreciate that, and we're coming up towards the end of the show, but we definitely can fit in another caller if somebody has a quick question that numbers one eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. Again

that's one eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. So, you know, really to wrap up today's show, what we've discussed was, you know, investment wise, what you should be you know, thinking about, and a lot of that is direct indexing that we've been implementing for clients. It's a great strategy to use not only during bouts of volatility, but over the long term. Two, it's a way to grow your taxable portfolio in the most tax efficient manner.

And they're fully customizable to make sure that you know, you might have a position. As many pointed out, we've had clients that have a single stock position from an employer company publicly traded and you know, it's making up thirty or forty percent of their overall portfolio, and that's creating a lot of concentration. So using direct indexing could help hedge around that. And I don't want to get

into that too much before I get cut off. I am getting you know, my timer warning that I'm coming up at the end of today's show, so folks, as always, it's such a pleasure to host the show, and Vinnie, you know I appreciate all the tax guidance you're listening to. Let's talk money, brought to you by the Bouchet Financial Group, where we help our clients prioritize their health while we

manage their wealth for life. Really appreciate everybody listening, and I hope you stay warm this weekend, stay dry, and tune in tomorrow for Ryan Bousche will be hosting the Sunday show. Thank you,

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast