The Power Of Zero Show

This is an apolitical podcast. The goal is to call out fiscal irresponsibility no matter what side of the aisle it's on. It's less about politics and more about math. Joe Biden recently came up with a proposal to reform capital gains taxes. The increased revenue that is thought to come from this reform is earmarked to pay for childcare, universal pre-kindergarten education, and paid leave for workers. The state of capital gains taxes currently is that if you are in the 10% or 12% tax bracket you don't pay any capital gains taxes. It currently sits at 20% for people above those brackets and for people making more than $250,000 per year there is an additional surtax of 3.8%. This puts the baseline for wealthy Americans at 23.8%. When it comes to capital gains tax, there are four different taxes that may come into play. The first is at the federal level, then there are also state capital gains taxes and local capital gains taxes in some parts of the country, and finally the Obamacare surtax. The Biden proposal basically says that anyone who makes more than a million dollars per year would see their federal capital gains tax go from 20% to 39.6%. If you lived in New York City and included the other governmental layers of capital gains taxes, this would result in a total capital gains tax of 58.2%. Residents of Portland, Oregon would be looking at a capital gains tax of 57.3%. This doubling of the federal capital gains tax rate would generate roughly $1 trillion in additional revenue. This proposal will not likely pass through the usual route and would likely have to come through budget reconciliation. In its current form, the proposal will not likely pass because there are Democrats who believe that the tax is too high. Most people see the bill as the initial salvo in the negotiation process and the end result will be somewhere in the middle. Compared to other countries, this proposal would put America at the top of the list for capital gains taxes. If you make more than a million dollars per year, this proposal will likely affect you quite a bit. If you make less than that, you won't have to worry about it. If you're concerned about capital gains tax rates, you need to stop accumulating huge amounts of money in your taxable bucket. Raising capital gains taxes is not going to solve our country's problems. We need to see broad base increases in taxes across the board and dramatic reductions in spending. If you want to protect yourself from the inevitability of higher capital gains taxes, you need to stop accumulating money in your taxable bucket and take advantage of all the tax havens that are available to you. The Roth IRA and Roth 401(k) are great options and allow you to put a lot of money into tax-free vehicles. There are unlimited amounts of money that can be converted to the tax-free bucket with Roth conversions. The LIRP is the great antidote to taxation in the taxable bucket. Someone is going to get your money, you might as well get something useful in exchange for it. There are no income limitations or contribution limits with the LIRP. Whether you make a million dollars a year or not, there are a number of alternatives to situate assets to grow tax-free wealth without having to worry about what's coming down the pipe with regards to taxes. One of the fundamental issues with these tax raises is that they are always earmarked for some new initiative and never aimed at restructuring or fixing the entitlement programs that are driving the fiscal problems in our country.

If you want to maximize the amount of money you can safely spend in retirement some economists say that you should sell some of your bonds and replace them with annuities. According to Tom Hegna, there is only one mathematically ideal retirement plan and annuities are a key component. While you are working, a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds is the most efficient way to save for retirement, but once you retire the rules of the game change and you need to start thinking about distribution. Tax rate risk is not the number one risk in retirement, longevity risk is more frequently cited by retirees as the number one risk they are most concerned about. In retirement, you should not have a lot of bonds in your portfolio. There is a simple guideline that you can use to determine how much income you need to guarantee with an annuity. Look at your lifestyle and subtract your guaranteed streams of income, like social security or rental income, and whatever is left should be guaranteed with an annuity. Everything else goes into the stock market portion of your portfolio. If you have your lifestyle expenses guaranteed, you have the luxury of watching your stock market portfolio recover after a down year. If you have money accumulated in a life insurance retirement plan, you can take tax-free loans out of that life insurance as well. The last thing you want to do is to cover discretionary expenses by taking money out of your stock market portfolio while the market is down. Annuities are a form of longevity insurance. It offloads your longevity risk to an insurance company which can manage better than you can. The alternative is relying on the 3% rule to avoid running out of money in retirement, but accumulating enough money to make that a viable choice is very difficult. Annuities will extend the life of your investments more effectively than a well-allocated balance of stocks and bonds. The bottom line is that bonds and stocks do not mitigate longevity risk and actually expose you to a number of other risks that can threaten your retirement. If you have longevity in your family or anticipate living a longer life, annuities reward you for doing so. The stock/bond approach penalizes you the longer you live. There are instances where you don't need an annuity. If you have plenty of income to pay for essential expenses there may be no need. You need to cover your fixed expenses with income that will last the rest of your life. However, this approach can spook some investors since the only money left over with this strategy is invested in the stock market portfolio. Social security is an inflation-adjusted income annuity itself and it's generally best to max it out by not claiming it until age 70. If you want to get an idea of how long you will live, go through the underwriting process of the life insurance retirement plan. The very best annuity you can buy is to delay social security. Replacing the bond portion of your portfolio with annuities runs counter to much of mainstream financial thought but it really is a great strategy for mitigating longevity risk. All these strategies are true, but if you take your guaranteed stream of income from your tax-deferred bucket you can unleash a chain of unintended consequences which can bankrupt your portfolio years in advance. Once taken, income from your tax-deferred bucket is stuck and is exposed to tax-rate risk for the rest of your life. It's also counted as provisional income which will dramatically increase the likelihood that your social security will be taxed. When there is a hole in their social security and guaranteed income, most Americans are forced to spend down their stock market portfolio. You can end up spending down all your other assets seven to ten years faster this way. Bonds and cash are not a great place to store your money in retirement. If your lifestyle expenses are covered you have the luxury to leave most of your money in the stock market and can take more risk. If you want the dollars that are earmarked for your discretionary expenses to last the full arc of your 30-year retirement, you can't have a lot of money in bonds. Mentioned in this Episode: The Case for Replacing Some Bonds With Annuities - https://stockxpo.com/the-case-for-replacing-some-bonds-with-annuities

Bernie Sanders is heading up the proposals regarding estate taxes, and his proposals are deviating to some extent from what President Biden has campaigned on. Joe Biden's plan says that the estate tax exemption, which is currently $11.7 million as a single person, or $23.4 million as a married couple, will be reverted back to its 2009 levels. Anything above and beyond those limits would be taxed at a rate of 40% and as high as 45%. Bernie Sanders' proposal begins at 45% and goes up as the amount being passed on increases. When Bernie Sanders ran for president he proposed a maximum estate tax of 77% at the highest tax bracket but has since toned it down. He is targeting the top .5% of all Americans with this tax and has promised that 99.5% of the American people will not see their taxes go up under the plan. The wealthy already pay a tremendous amount of taxes. The 657 billionaires that are in America will end up owing $2.7 trillion in estate tax under the current tax law, and that money has already been accounted for. Bernie Sanders' proposal would generate an additional $430 billion in revenue and would be earmarked for additional proposals, not to pay down the existing debt. This is essentially rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It doesn't change the overall trajectory of the US and does nothing to shore up the programs that are driving all of the debt on the government's balance sheet. It's not about what your estate is worth now, it's about what your estate is worth when you die. You may not have an estate that would be taxed now, but you need to project out what your estate could be worth in the future. Another question is what the estate tax exemption will be at this point. When a country is going insolvent, it looks at quarters to raise revenue to keep itself solvent and that could be the estate tax again in the future. There are ways to mitigate the risk of estate taxes but it requires a long runway and careful planning. It involves shifting money, gifting money, and even loaning money into a trust. The specter of a much lower estate tax exemption means we are going to have to start addressing ways to mitigate tax rate risk when we have 20 to 30 years of runway to be able to position into the right types of accounts.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a pernicious threat to the Republic and has become a popular theory among left-leaning economists. MMT is less an economical theory than it is a political theory. There are politicians in certain quarters that truly believe that MMT will solve all of our economic problems. They believe that the debt doesn't matter, printing money has no consequences, and if we want something we can borrow or print as much as we need with no adverse effects. America is already in dire fiscal straits and if we adopt MMT as the prevailing economic policy, it will send the country into a tailspin from which it will probably never recover. MMT says that as long as a country's debt is denominated in its own currency, that country can borrow as much as it wants. Such proponents also believe that you can print as much as you want with no inflationary consequences. The idea is that the additional money printing will grow the economy, and that will prevent inflation from taking hold. The loudest supporters of MMT come from the progressive wing of the Democrat party, which is the basis for such programs as the Green New Deal, Universal Basic Income, and Free College and Healthcare. The claims of MMT are not only flatly false, they are dangerous. To understand MMT's appeal, you have to understand the three basic ways you can eliminate debt. The first is by reducing fiscal deficits by either raising taxes or cutting spending. The second is to grow our way out of the debt. Lastly, you can use central banks to print money. MMT proponents will often point to Japan as an example. Japan has a 250% debt-to-GDP ratio so it would seem like a good example of MMT working, but Japan has also taken steps to cut spending, raise taxes, and hold interest rates close to zero for decades. If interest rates ever return to historical levels, Japan, like most countries, would be in trouble. There are certain special qualities that allow the US to continue to borrow at lower rates, the main one being the reserve currency status. Eventually, interest rates will encompass the federal budget of the US government and this could cause a crisis of confidence which could threaten the reserve currency status. MMT advocates deny the existence of that limit and therefore propose to borrow to infinity. They also ignore the history of debt and inflation, with Weimar Germany being a salient example of a country trying to print its way out of a debt problem. At the end of 1923, German currency was worthless with $1 US being equivalent to 4,210,500,000,000 German Marks. Weimar Germany wasn't the only country to experience hyperinflation. Brazil, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela have experienced extremely high levels of inflation in the recent past, with Zimbabwe's economy essentially falling apart so completely that the US dollar had to be substituted for their currency. The real mystery is how MMT has such a following despite not having a foundation in reality. The theory has more in common with a moral ideological movement than it does with economics. You can't borrow in perpetuity, because eventually the people loaning you the money will become skeptical of your ability to pay the money back. Interest rates will eventually rise and inflation will follow shortly after. There are only a few different ways we can solve our problem. We can either cut spending, raise taxes, or some combination of the two. MMT is a dangerous fairy tale that could be more dangerous if it becomes more popular. Mentioned in this Episode: nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-weakness-of-modern-monetary-theory

Now that Joe Biden has the pandemic relief bill behind him, he can begin to focus on his tax plan which he heavily campaigned on before the election. Joe Biden's pledge that nobody making less than $400,000 per year will face tax increases has a small asterisk next to it. That threshold only applies to families, and if you are filing as an individual, your threshold is $200,000, which means it will come into play for a much larger number of people. He is still planning on increasing the taxes on corporations, going up from 21% to 28%. For all intents and purposes, this will be felt like a stealth tax for most people since this will likely result in prices going up. If you make more than $400,000, your tax rate will rise from 37% to 39.6%, but he also wants to cap itemized deductions at 28%. Joe Biden tends to view the current system of 401(k) deductions as unfair to people in lower tax brackets, so he's also planning on leveling that out. This will ultimately result in getting the 401(k) deduction on the front end. That makes much less sense if you are in the 26% tax bracket or above. You are much better off taking the Roth approach and paying taxes on those dollars today so they can grow tax-free in the future. The arrival of the tax bill is still up in the air until we have more information regarding the vaccine rollout. Social Security is also a major focus for a number of reasons. Biden has discussed some major changes to the taxation scheme for the Social Security Payroll tax to try to shore up the coming shortfall. Social Security was previously projected to be insolvent by 2034 and Medicare by 2026. Those projections have been revised to 2031 and 2022. As a president, they typically try to accomplish their biggest changes in the first 100 days in office, which is why there is such a big emphasis on tax reform so early in Biden's administration. All these changes are likely to take place this year because of the Democrats only needing a simple majority to make it happen. For those who make more than $1 million per year, he wants to make it so that capital gains are taxed at ordinary income. He has also talked about raising the estate tax rate, which could impact people looking to pass their businesses and wealth onto the next generation. There has also been discussion around eliminating the state and local taxes deduction, but that could be seen as a tax break for the wealthy, which is something that he's trying hard to avoid. More recently, one of Joe Biden's big initiatives is a $2 to $3 trillion infrastructure package, which may be combined with his tax legislation proposals. This indicates that any tax increases coming down the pipe are not going to be earmarked to pay down debt or shore up the things that will be driving debt going forward. There is currently nothing in the works to shore up Medicare or Social Security to any real extent or paying down the national debt. Joe Biden is currently contemplating extending the Jobs Act tax cuts implemented by Trump and pushing them back all the way to 2030, at which point they would revert back to 2017 levels. 2030 is likely to be a point of reckoning for America. The country will probably be in such dire straits by then that the government will have to raise taxes across the board on every tax-paying American. Ed Slott believes that the math will force the government to raise taxes on Americans starting next year, but David disagrees. If you raise taxes on mainstreet America before you are absolutely required to do so, you will probably be voted out of office, but that time will come. There is a slim possibility that we will see higher taxes for people making less than $400,000 as Americans begin to recognize that there is just not enough revenue to pay for all the entitlement programs. We will see the tax reform bill over the next couple of months, and it will probably be pushed through budget reconciliation. In terms of the extended tax cuts, assuming they come to pass, you now have nine years to shift your money to the tax-free bucket which could be very beneficial. The lower the tax bracket you are in as you shift money to tax-free, the more money that stays in your pocket, and the longer your retirement savings lasts.

If you have a history of premature death or cancer in your family you may still be a good candidate for an annuity. If your spouse has longevity it can still be a good option. Even if you're not in the best health there are still annuity products with certain features that can still make sense. Some people always want to have control of their money, but they have to realize that an annuity is not giving up control, it's about taking control over your risk. Annuities give you control over longevity risk, the risk of deflation, withdrawal and the sequence of returns risks. You're simply taking key risks off the table. The people who buy annuities are the people that want to have control of their future. Annuities are not meant for all of everybody's money. Most people should put 20% to 40% of their portfolio into annuities. If they did that it would solve most people's retirement issues. Life insurance is a great bond substitute for younger people, once you're 65 and above you can replace it with some time of income annuity. The way an income annuity functions inside a portfolio are like a triple A-rated bond with a triple C rated yield and zero standard deviation. This makes them a much better alternative to bonds. Most people don't realize that they can lose half their money in a government bond because of the risk of interest rates rising, which is a risk that's not present in life insurance and annuities. You aren't getting any younger and you can't take your money with you. This means you are supposed to spend your principal. If you have life insurance in place it allows you to spend your money guilt-free in a way where everyone wins. Annuities are ordinary income, but most people overestimate the amount of capital gains they are receiving. If you're in a mutual fund or managed money account, a lot of the time it's actually ordinary income because of the turnover within the fund. When it comes to the stepped-up cost basis the only area that applies is in unrealized capital gains. Most people think the stepped-up cost basis applies to their whole account but they actually paid for it in taxes for all the years they have it. It doesn't matter whether it's Republicans or Democrats, both parties spend like drunken sailors. Both parties are spending too much and borrowing to pay for everything. If you look at Modern Monetary Theory closely it only works as long as interest rates are low. Once interest rates start to rise they advocate for slashing spending very strictly which is the source of the problem. We are always willing to take the easy road (spending) but we're not willing to do the hard things (cutting expenses). It's hard to predict where the economy is headed over the next ten years because of the crazy amounts of unprecedented money printing recently. 1 out of every 5 dollars in America's history were printed in the last 12 months. They can keep printing money in the short-term but they can't do it indefinitely. Tom believes that at some point in the next ten years taxes will go, the market will crash, and there are good odds of another great depression-style event. People need to move from the mindset of building wealth to protecting wealth, and that's what life insurance and annuities can do. Another interesting point is that in the state of Arizona, the money you put into annuities is protected from lawsuits. Protecting your wealth is more important than building your wealth. Mentioned in this Episode: For advisors interested in learning more about Tom's training materials, go to tomhegna.com/webinars

Popular speakers in the financial and retirement space like Ken Fisher and Suzy Orman have made annuities rather unattractive. The major objection has to do with the supposed fees of the product, even though many of the annuity options are not actually fee-based products. Ken Fisher has high fees, just like other investment options like commodities, hedge funds, and real estate. Variable annuities have higher fees than mutual funds but they also come with guarantees, and he's essentially convincing people to move from those guaranteed products to another high fee fund. People often say they want no fees, but if that was the case they would just put their money into a savings account. It's not about the cost of the fees. Its about the value you're getting in return for the cost. Life insurance and annuities are not a religion and don't require your beliefs. They are both basically risk transfer vehicles. An annuity is essentially a guarantee that you will never run out of money as long as you live. With all the medical breakthroughs that have happened recently, people are living longer lives, which is only increasing the odds of falling prey to the number one risk in retirement. Tom believes that you should spend all your money and leave life insurance to your kids. Leaving your IRA to your kids is not a great vehicle to transfer your wealth. People have been programmed to spend their paychecks while they are working while not touching their 401(k)s and IRAs while they are working, but once they retire they have to switch their mindset. You should use your money to actually enjoy your retirement. Any money that you want for retirement is appropriate for an annuity, especially after the age of 59 and a half. Annuities are not meant for a down payment on a house or your children's college education, but depending on your goals, annuities can be one of the best places to put your retirement money. If you're young and want to save as much as possible without losing what you have, an annuity is a great option. It would be possible to purchase a significant stream of money by the time you're retired and it wouldn't be that painful if you spread it out over your working years. People need to start thinking about income, rather than accumulating a big pile of money by the time they retire. Tom owns eleven annuities but he has even more in cash-value life insurance. Tax-free income in retirement is going to be vital, and people are not prepared for how much taxes are going to go up in the near future. If taxes go up and the market crashes, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to suffer. Liquidity is not a one time event, it's a lifetime event. When you buy additional lifetime income you are increasing your lifetime liquidity. Annuities are a long-term plan. That money is not for emergency expenses. The overall strategy is not all or nothing. You can't put all your money into an annuity or life insurance, they are all part of a balanced portfolio. If you guarantee a portion of your income in retirement by way of an annuity, it will free up the money in your stock market portfolio to continue to perform for you. Life insurance and annuities are permission slips. They give you the ability to spend all of your money and invest more aggressively elsewhere. Tom has been a proponent of investing 1% of your portfolio in Bitcoin which fits right into his overall strategy. Having guarantees in your portfolio gives you that kind of option. In this low interest rate environment annuities are more efficient than normal because the interest rate matters less and less as you get older. You also have to compare the other options. Why be in the market when you can guarantee a 12% payout rate for the rest of your life? Mortality credits are extra money from the risk pool that you get paid the older you are and the longer you live. Because the insurance companies can predict mortality in a large group pretty accurately, they can price the plan differently and afford these kinds of payouts. Mentioned in this Episode: For advisors interested in learning more about Tom's training materials, go to tomhegna.com/webinars

The amount of money that we've printed over the course of the past year and what we'll print in 2021 is equivalent to the entire economy of Japan. Van Mueller believes that at some point in the future the US dollar will no longer be the reserve currency, and when that happens the standard of living for Americans will go down almost immediately. Every country is printing money and destroying their currency's purchasing power, but the US is doing it on a scale that's unheard of. If you talk with the right specialist, they can show you a strategy where you won't be hurt by these economic shifts. Leadership is the key missing factor in solving these problems. If we had politicians that were willing to make tough decisions we could salvage our country but those are few are far between, and people need to elect the ones that show leadership. There is no end of the world situation. Eventually, the US will fix everything, either through great leadership or a great calamity. For the people that don't strategize and plan for the upcoming changes, they will have a lower standard of living. If you want a better standard of living you need to plan now. The debt will never be paid back and we can make a number of assumptions from that. The government will do everything they can to keep interest rates low and there will likely be a ton of volatility in the markets over the next ten years. There are products and strategies that allow you to win in any circumstance, but you have to take the time to build these strategies or these forces will destroy everything you've worked for. Studies have shown that 93% of Americans take Social Security to their detriment instead of their benefit. If the goal is to maximize retirement income you should be maximizing your Social Security. There are all kinds of planning opportunities if you understand the right questions to ask. If you really want to know how long you're going to live, go through the life insurance underwriting process. Almost everyone is willing to have the conversation of how to keep their wealth to their family's benefit instead of sending it to the government, a hospital, or a nursing home. Based on the math, if you're married and don't do any planning, and you have two children, if you both pass away the IRS is going to be the primary beneficiary of your money and not your children. 99% of Americans don't understand tax law and don't realize the government's need for revenue in the future, and if they don't plan for that there are going to be a lot of people's hopes and dreams decimated by that. If you're an advisor, talk to your dry cleaner, your mechanic, and anyone that you know and ask them some simple questions because chances are they have no idea what's coming. This is the greatest time ever to be an insurance or financial professional. This is also the greatest time ever to own cash value life insurance. There is nothing else that can compete based on what the American government is about to do to people. Mentioned in this Episode: Van Mueller's newsletter and audio training for financial advisors can be found at vanmueller.com

The general public should definitely be paying attention to the impact of inflation and what's driving it. The government has gone to such ridiculous measures printing money that by the year 2029 the government will literally have to print the entire budget of the United States. Instead of inflation, we should be thinking of it in terms of a stealth tax. The M2 money supply is a good barometer for inflation statistics and by 2029 they are expecting the current M2 money supply to exceed $122 trillion, a near ten-fold increase from what's in circulation today. This increase in the money supply reduces every single American's purchasing power and constitutes an additional tax over and above the existing taxes. If you can reduce or eliminate your income tax liability, you are offsetting some of the damage of reduced purchasing power. It's vital to understand that not only is the government going to increase your income tax, they are also going to dramatically increase your stealth tax by decreasing your purchasing power. There are solutions to these situations that allow you to win, not just reduce the pain. The secret is in taking action before these problems can impact you. Truthinaccounting.org was created by accountants to give people an accurate picture of the financial state of the federal and state governments. The situation is bleak with the vast majority not being able to pay their bills already. We will be about $87 trillion in debt by 2029. We are going to have to deal with a new financial world that requires some strategies that protect you from the ridiculousness of government. States and cities are unable to print money, so the only way to pay their bills is to increase taxes, reduce benefits, borrow more money, or a combination of all three. The bailout precedent has already been set, but even if they get a bailout you will still be impacted. Even if the benefit remains, they are going to increase the taxes on it and reduce your purchasing power at the same time. If you add up all the money that the US government has ever printed, you will find thatover 40% of it was printed in the year 2020. They now have an unlimited printing machine that they are going to use regardless of the damage it's going to do to you, your children, and your grandchildren. The debt we talk about is not even the full picture because it does not include all the unfunded obligations. Most people expect to inherit their money all at the same time, regardless of the taxes they will have to pay. This usually doesn't end well. Van helps his clients to eliminate the income tax burden completely. It makes much more sense to pay taxes at the grandparent's historically low tax rates and reposition the money to tax-free now, instead of having to distribute the money all at the same time because of the Secure Act. Covid-19 has changed everything, but nobody knows just how much yet. The latest jobs report indicated that another 792,000 people have filed for unemployment. This means that 49% of all the workers in the US have filed for unemployment since the pandemic began. There are many jobs and industries that are not coming back or will be operating under a completely new paradigm. Even if we taxed every person who made more than $100,000 by 100% it would barely make a dent in the yearly federal budget. 81% of Americans make less than $75,000 a year, so anyone who makes more than that has a major target on their back. The government needs revenue, and they aren't going to wait. Over the next 25 years there are going to be 140 million Americans over the age of 65 and they are going to need money to pay those people. We don't have a tax problem, we have a spending problem. It's easy to blame taxes, but if we spent what we brought in and lived within our means we would be in a completely different scenario. The trouble is no one has the political will to say no. Mentioned in this Episode: Van Mueller's newsletter and audio training for financial advisors can be found at vanmueller.com

Some people have a concern about the implications of the tax arbitrage they could be receiving if they just waited. This is the key to the Roth plans and Life Insurance vehicles that Ed described. The big myth is that you will be in a lower tax bracket when you retire. If you let your IRA just continue to grow, at age 72 the plan will be out of your control, and you will be forced to take the money out at the prevailing rates, whatever they are at the time, for the rest of your life. For married couples, there is another problem they don't think about, and that's that one spouse usually dies first. This means the surviving spouse becomes a single taxpayer again. This means they will have the same assets and income but at much higher rates. If you don't pay the taxes now, there will always be uncertainty. If you lock them in now, you will never have to worry about taxes again. Most retirees don't suddenly begin spending like rock stars. If your single child inherits a million dollar IRA, they are going to be forced to realize it as income over the course of 10 years when they are probably at their highest earning potential, at a period of time when they can least afford to pay the taxes. If you don't need some of your money in retirement, doing a Roth conversion on that money is like a gift to your children and grandchildren. You can give them a tax-free account which can be coupled with a tax-free life insurance plan to maximize the benefits. We are in a period of historically low tax rates, and in a rising tax rate environment, it only makes sense to pay the taxes now and get the money moved to tax-free. Yet 90% of all retirement dollars are in tax-deferred accounts. Most people believe that tax rates are on the rise, yet still have the majority of money in tax-deferred accounts. The secret to having more later is to pay the tax now. All the good things in life you pay for upfront, but it's the bad things that you defer that end up costing you. If you take care of the problem early, you have less to worry about. Like spending money on dental care, waiting until the very end makes the problems more painful and more expensive. Covid has led to people running to their estate planners. It has put more attention to making sure people have a plan in place in case they die or get sick. When you combine that with the additional $3 trillion dollars in debt the US government has accumulated, we are going to have to face the day of reckoning much sooner than we thought. Just like stocks, with taxes we should buy low and sell high. Right now taxes are low, and they may never be this low again in our lifetime. A good analogy is like paying off the mortgage to your house. When you finally make that last payment and own your house free and clear, it's a great feeling. You can get that same feeling by paying the taxes now and owning your investments tax-free forever. You can do everything right when it comes to your IRA. You can build and save and invest well, but if you don't protect it, all your family will remember about you is that you blew it. The people with the most money want the best trained advisors. Ed has several opportunities for advisors to learn how to help people keep more of their money and other tax planning technologies. All people want larger inheritances, more control, and less tax. You control your rate and which advisor you work with. Only invest with an advisor that invests in their education. The problem with the tax rules in the tax code is that they are rigid and unforgiving. You need to get the right answer the first time. Mentioned in this Episode: The New Retirement Savings Time Bomb by Ed Slott can be pre-ordered on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TSZSSY5/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0