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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. ♪ Friday Q&A today, and I have six questions lined up to go over with you. Question number one is from Brandon. He asks, "I'm doing some planning for my six-month-old daughter. How do I handle the logistics of making sure that if my wife and I both die, our executor/guardian has access to the information about where our money is?

And also, should I consider a professional trustee to handle the money?" Question number two is from Kyle, and Kyle says, "I'm a resident physician making some good money as a start, but paying way too much tax. What can I do to fix that problem?" Question three comes from Daniel, and he says, "Is it okay for a young person to have an all-stock asset allocation?" Number four comes from Greg.

Greg says, "Got a couple million bucks trying to figure out if I can afford to retire. I'm 44 years old. How do I figure that question out?" Next is from John. John asks, "How on earth do I find a good financial team?" Your disclaimer at the end of the show always says, "Find a good team of professionals." How do I do that?

And then the last question is from Tom, and Tom asks, "So this cool Coverdell educational savings account thing, can I stick a property in there that's worth $100,000 and count it as being worth $2,000?" Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. Thank you for being here. My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host.

Today is Friday, December 5, 2014. And on a Q&A show, you make the questions, I make the answers. I do thank you for being here. I think I've got a really great lineup of questions here. I'm excited about the variety. I hope you enjoy them. There's going to be some good ones, and I think they'll be useful as teaching examples to go through some of the—a couple of technical details that we talk about, and then also some questions and some topics that we haven't covered on the show yet.

So I hope you enjoy. Real quick up front, a couple of quick announcements. If you're not connected with me and with the show, number one, check out the email newsletter. It is—since I switched the homepage around on the website, you can now see the email opt-in to sign up for show episodes.

I've noticed a couple weeks ago, and I haven't made the time to fix it yet, that it's broken. It's just sending out the titles of the shows. I apologize for that. But—so I'm going to fix that so it sends out the full text. I'm also planning—I know that a lot of you getting a daily email about the show is a lot, so I'm going to set something up where there's going to be something like a monthly newsletter, but it would—or some way of regularly or semi-regularly keeping in touch with you.

It would be super helpful of you if you would share your email address with me and get it onto a list. That way I can communicate with you. It was really a bummer last month when I deleted all my iTunes subscribers and didn't have any way to connect with everybody.

I was able to send the email out to the email subscriber list, and those people were able to find out about how to fix iTunes, but I wasn't able to fix—I wasn't able to send it to more of you. I'm working on some bonuses there. That's the secret, so to speak, in internet marketing, is to kick off and put an opt-in bonus.

I'm working on that, so I'm going to try to get that done here in December, January, and get that improved and give some options of a less frequent thing than daily. If you want to connect on Twitter, we are @RadicalPF, facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. I'm going to kick off today with a quick question for you all as listeners.

I'm always keeping an eye on the format of the show here. One of the things that I've thought about doing is I've wondered if you all like these Friday Q&A shows to be put together as one show, or if you would prefer some kind of separate podcast feed with a Q&A.

I could set that up differently. For example, I could have one feed set up, which is the longer shows, the teaching shows, the other content, and a separate feed for these Q&A. The reason I might consider doing that is I know a lot of people are really turned off by how long some of my shows often tend to be, and so I thought if I set up a separate Q&A feed, that might help some people who would be interested in hearing things but aren't interested in an hour and a half, today maybe an hour or two hours to answer these questions.

Let me know if you guys think that would be a good idea. If you would prefer that, I know some of you would prefer that, so I'm making an announcement here up front. Let me know. Or if you just prefer having it on a Friday as one show, and then when I put the time stamps in there for you, then you can switch around.

I'd love to get some feedback on that. I'm working a lot on increasing the professionalism of the show, and I'm going to be testing out some new things. I'm also going to be kicking off a new show here as soon as I can figure out the technology to do it for the irregulars only.

I've decided to share with you the process, some of the behind-the-scenes stuff of the show. So as you know, or as I'll tell you now instead of assuming that you know, I've launched the Irregulars program, and the Irregulars is the membership site, and that's how I plan to make a primary source of income off of this show so that I can continue to bring it to you on an ongoing basis.

And if this whole internet business thing doesn't work, no problem. I'll still do it as a hobby, but I might drop it down to two or three shows a week and go spend more time on some other businesses or something like that. But I really would like to make this show go as a business.

So my primary thing I'm planning to do is launch that as the membership program. So we launched that with episode 100, and some of you signed up for that, and I thank you. And a few more of you did, two more of you did yesterday, and I thank you for that.

I'd be thrilled if you've been considering signing up, go ahead and do that. I haven't gotten the address set up for you to send in checks. I know several of you have said to me as soon as you publish that address, then you'd send in a check. I will get that done very soon here.

So I've been thinking a lot, though, about content that I can bring to the Irregulars and how to structure that and how to really add a ton of value there. And one of the ideas that I had is I realized that I've got to learn more and apply more of what I already know about, essentially, the professionalism of an Internet business.

And I know many of you know a lot more than I do, and also many of you are interested in kind of the similar process to what I'm doing. The challenge that I've found is I haven't been able to find anybody that can help me, that can coach me.

I've looked, I've paid a couple of consultants to try to ask some questions, and I haven't found anybody that could be a coach to me to help me prioritize the progress of the Internet business here. And so I've looked, I've tried. If you know of anybody, great. But I'm figuring it out, and I'm a rank amateur.

And I finally decided, you know what, I'm just going to share it. And one of the things that I've learned about me is that I'm actually a verbal learner. So I learn through speaking. So I decided I'm going to create a show. It'll be an occasional show, nothing kind of on an ongoing basis.

And there's no goal of trying to become the next great Internet marketing guru. But I'll use it to share with the irregulars, is my idea. I'll use it to share with the irregulars the behind the scenes of the show, what's working, what's not working. And that may be encouraging to you.

And it'll also give me a chance to share some of the things I get questions about, like what books are you reading that I just don't think the content is appropriate for the show, for this show. So that's my idea. I'll talk more about it in the future. I think it's a pretty good idea.

I think it'll be a benefit to the membership program and then some of you will be able to benefit from that. And I think it'll also be a way for me to share behind the scenes with those of you in the irregulars program, what I'm doing with the show.

And in many ways, I'm viewing the irregulars program as essentially a system of accountability for myself, although it's certainly not technical, legal, or formal in any way. I view those of you who are members of the irregulars as my shareholders. You are, after all, sending me money, so I have a responsibility.

You're my customers, but in the business structure, I kind of think of you as my shareholders. So one of the challenges of being a podcaster, especially being a new internet business person, is I have to figure out all this stuff. So speaking with a sponsor, trying to figure out, well, is this sponsorship, is this in line?

If I set up an affiliate arrangement, am I doing that in the right way? Is this affiliate arrangement going to be a benefit to the audience? And I'd love to have that. I'd love to have essentially a system of accountability from regular, loyal listeners who have been here from the beginning and can say, "Yes, we like this," or I can say to you, "Hey, go check out this sponsor and see if, you know, this potential sponsor, and do your due diligence and let's see if we can find anything wrong about them." And so that's one of the things that I'm thinking to enhance.

So the point with that is I want to let you know about it, and then also, if you haven't joined yet, there's a lot that's going to be coming in the future in the Irregulars program. So consider letting me know what you think about the Friday Q&A, and then also switching that, if I should keep doing them like I'm doing here on Friday, or if I should set up a new separate podcast feed, or let me know what you think about the content for the Irregulars.

So let's get right into the questions, and with no further preamble, let's start with this question here from Brandon. Joshua, this is Brandon from the Virginia suburbs of D.C., and I have two related questions for you. Becoming a father about six months ago has brought a whole new set of worries to my life.

In addition to making sure that I'm providing my daughter everything she needs, I've been thinking more about making sure she's okay if something happens to myself or my wife. For this reason, my wife and I have substantial amounts of life insurance and good disability insurance through our works, and we maintain a shared "In Case of Bad Things" file in our password manager accounts that describes where all the money is and provides a checklist for each of us if something was to happen to either one of us.

I feel comfortable with what would happen if one of us passed. However, I've been thinking more about what happens if something happened to both of us. As a lawyer, I understand the legal aspect of what needs to be done. We plan to commission a set of wills shortly that will likely name my brother as guardian of our daughter if my wife and I both pass.

My first question is on the more practical side. My wife and I have the most up-to-date information concerning our financial accounts, such as where they're located and how much is there. Our daughter's potential guardian would, of course, also need this information if something happened to us. What's a good way to make sure that they have access to the most up-to-date information if we were to pass?

It's not something I would want to be routinely emailing them. My second question is to ask for your thoughts on using a professional trustee for the money that would be left for my daughter's benefit. If my wife and I both passed, my daughter would receive whatever our net worth was at the time, plus about $2 million in life insurance payouts.

I worry about burdening the potential guardian with having to manage that amount of money for our daughter, and have been thinking about having the payouts go to a testamentary trust managed by a professional trustee, such as Vanguard. However, at the same time, I want to make sure that the potential guardian has easy access to the money to pay for our daughter's expenses, so that caring for her doesn't create a financial burden on them.

Do you have any recommendations regarding how to handle this situation? Sorry for the long questions, but as they say, "Turnabout is fair play." Thank you. Brandon. When I first heard your question come in, Brandon, with the "Turnabout is fair play," I cracked up. It lasted for at least a minute or so.

You are right. Turnabout is fair play in every sense of the word. Thank you for the question. In essence, you have two questions here. The first question is the practical, "How do I make sure that if my wife and I both die, that the guardian and/or executor, they may or may not be the same person?" Essentially, how do I make sure that somebody is able to figure out where all of our stuff is?

That's a good question. Number two is the question on the professional trustee. Let's handle the first one. This is actually something that I'm in the process of working on myself. It's on the back burner. It's on my active projects list, but I can't seem to get it done. But I am working on making sure that my wife and if my wife and I both died, that our executor or guardian – let me use executor.

The executor would be the one who would need the information to settle the estate, and it may or may not be the same person as the guardian of your kids. But I would need to make sure that the executor of my estate knows where everything essentially is. Now, when I was previously with Northwestern Mutual, it was relatively simple because I managed all of my investment accounts and all of my insurance was with one company and everything was in one spot, that plus banking, and so it was fairly simple.

So I wasn't very concerned about it. But now, as some assets are there and some assets are in other places, et cetera, now I'm in a different scenario where I have to think through exactly the same thing. So I'm glad that you've set it up to where you and your wife have that arrangement.

I'm planning on creating for my wife an electronic document that would be updated that's in a secure password-protected environment and backed up so that she can just simply see it. And I'm also planning to create a physical document as well with instructions on how to access the electronic document.

And so in my mind, that would be the simplest thing. It is create an electronic document, and then what I plan to do is do it both backed up on the cloud. So you could do this very simple with an encrypted Dropbox file or some other file-sharing service, host it on your website, host it somewhere.

It's very simple to do. And/or also with something like a password-protected flash drive. So I plan to create a couple of encrypted flash drives and store them somewhere safe. So you could simply put them in a desk drawer. In this case, safety is--I mean, if you just disguise them slightly or protect them, I wouldn't be too worried about specifically being targeted for somebody to come in and find that.

My understanding is that the majority of just basic theft that you're going to face, you're not going to be dealing with sophisticated criminals that have planned ahead to target all of your financial information, which is sitting on that thumb drive. But just disguise it, hide it, or just save it in a safe location.

So if you have a safe in your house, a small safe, a small gun safe, or a safety deposit box, and give those instructions to the executive of your estate. And that's what I would do. That's what I'm planning to do. I trust the person who would be the executive of my estate and maybe share the information of the location with a couple of family members.

Just the location and a way to access is fine. And then you can figure out, depending on whatever your scenario is, you can figure out what's actually going to work. But it's a great question. And I may do a whole show on it in the future because it's something that I'm working on.

I'm behind on the project myself. But I think it would make a great Valentine's Day gift for a spouse. In my household, I run most of the details of the accounts. My wife doesn't get much involved with all the passwords and all of those things. So that is one thing to consider.

An easy solution also, a program that you might use. This is less supported now. When I first started using this program, there weren't a lot of other great options. Now there are many password management systems. The most well-known, I think, is a program called LastPass. And so that's one that works in your browser.

But I use a program called Password Guerrilla. And what I like about Password Guerrilla is it's a simple file program. It's a simple .exe file. And you load up the .exe program and you load up the file onto the drive. And it's simple and it's password protected. It can be loaded on any computer.

So I use it on my Dropbox account so I can access my centralized password database from any computer. But you can also load it on a thumb drive. You can back it up on a thumb drive, back it up on the cloud. So just search for Password Guerrilla. And it's a very simple program.

I don't know if they're still supporting it or not, but I don't know if anything is going to break on it. And that may be a useful option for you. But for any of you, if you're a spouse and you're in a relationship where one of you handles most of the details with finances, then I would recommend that this is a great Valentine's Day gift present for your spouse to share with them and give them a letter of instruction and say, "Here's what we have.

Here's where it is. Here's what we should do." At the end of the year here, it's a good time to be updating your financial statements. And it's December. You should be looking at any end-of-the-year tax planning that you're going to do. And with this end-of-the-year tax planning, you should be considering if there are any changes.

It's a good time to update your net worth statement, the balance statement. Make sure that all of your accounts are individually listed so that your spouse, if something happens to you, can easily do it. And then just make sure that the executor would be able to find that as well.

Number two, let's talk about the professional trustee question. So for a little bit of background on Brandon's question here, if you're not familiar with the idea of a trustee and the idea of a professional trustee, if Brandon and his wife have $2 million of life insurance, then on the day he dies, his little baby, somebody is going to be appointed the guardian of that child.

And so it will either be somebody that was appointed the guardian in his will, that he and his wife appointed to be the guardian, or it will be the court going through the process, the probate process in the court, designating who the guardian is going to be based upon the information that comes before the judge.

And it may or may not be the same person. So in this scenario, however, the question is if he has a six-month-old baby, how does a six-month-old baby handle managing $2 million? One of the biggest mistakes that I've seen in reviewing financial plans over the years is most of the time, people who have personally owned life insurance to protect their family will generally designate their spouse as the primary beneficiary and they'll designate either a specific child, specific children, or something like children of the insured as the contingent or secondary beneficiary.

And so what happens is if you and your spouse are out on date night and you get killed in a car accident, your children are now the beneficiaries of all of your life insurance policies as well as probably, since most people just have a will that simply says, "Leave everything to my spouse and leave everything if my spouse is dead to my kids divided equally," now all of a sudden your children are inheriting quite a bit of money.

And if you have any decent or normal amount of life insurance, that's a few million dollars. People often forget about this because they say, "Well, I have $50,000 in my retirement accounts. I don't have a lot of money." Yeah, but I got $3 million life insurance. So between my wife and I, we have over $3 million of life insurance.

So that's all of a sudden a massive amount of money and a massive responsibility to place onto somebody. It's a massive responsibility to place onto the guardian. It's also a massive responsibility for the child. Now in that scenario, there are a couple of concerns. First concern is who actually inherits the money.

So a six-month-old baby is clearly not legally competent to manage the money. So a guardian for that baby needs to be assigned and a trustee, somebody to manage the money for the benefit of the baby needs to be assigned. And often this trustee will be just usually my guess.

And if any of you are estate planning attorneys who have done this more than I have, I haven't been through this personally with any clients who have died. And so I'm just going from generalized knowledge. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, in the show notes for today, which is episode 113.

But the court will designate who is going to be the trustee for the money. And if your six-month-old baby inherits $2 million of life insurance benefit, the guardian for the money – excuse me, the trustee for the money can't just simply take it and use it for their own benefit.

But the court is the one who decides who that person is and that person could make mistakes. So the challenge is you should probably be designating that trustee in advance. And you probably should be designating it to be somebody that you trust and that you have confidence in. What I've often recommended to clients is that – and this is very dependent on who is in your family circle or social circle that you trust that you're going to designate in your official documents.

If you have a friend or a family member who is very competent financially, so perhaps they – maybe they're a financial planner. I'm listed in many of my siblings' documents simply because of my background and expertise. Or they're an attorney, so they have familiarity with the legal structure. Or they have been around the block when it comes to investing, things like that.

Just designate that person. And it may or may not be the same person as you choose to be the guardian. What I've often recommended to clients is that they establish co-trustees, not necessarily professional trustees but co-trustees. And one of the trustees be the guardian. And this can have advantages and disadvantages.

But that will often allow them to feel good about the fact that somebody who's financially experienced is listed. But that person – maybe your father or something like that, your mother – that person may not necessarily be the same person who's the guardian. And that's often been the case.

I think that you do need to be practical about this and consider the odds. It's relatively unlikely that both you and your spouse are going to die together at the same time. Relatively unlikely. It does happen, but it is very unlikely. So I think that in a perfect world – I usually like to plan for perfection.

But you might start by just saying, "I'm going to do the best I can and just designate it without getting too involved with a professional trustee." Now, when we get into the issue of the professional trustee, I would encourage you to ask the question, "What do we need the trustee to do?" If the problem is investment management, you may be able to solve that problem with instructions.

For example, my wife has had instructions. If I die, here is the person that I want you to go to. This is the person that I trust. This is the person who I want you to contract as your financial advisor and have this person guide you through the process.

I trust this person to give you good counsel. And so I've given her those instructions so that she is not left without an idea of who I think she should consult. If it's just fairly simple and if you're planning that, "Hey, if my child comes forward and my child is just going to be investing and the bulk of the money is just going to be released very simply at the age of 18," you can do that without a professional trustee and you could have the money invested and it could be a very simple investment plan.

Now, there might be a lot more complications that you want to set up in your trust. And so when you get into the world of setting up a more elaborate trust with more specific instructions about what are appropriate amounts that are going to come out, how much is actually going to come out at a certain age, how much is going to be restricted until the age of 30, until the age of 40, and you're an attorney, so you probably will draw up your trust – you probably will draw up your testamentary trust with that level of detail.

If that's the case, then I think that in that scenario, if you're drawing up a very detailed testamentary trust, then yes, a professional trustee, especially if the executive of your state and the guardian or whoever you designate as the trustee in the trust document, especially if they are not experienced, then yes, just having a professional trustee might be useful.

Or just designate them as a professional co-trustee. That's another thing that I've done several times for clients is designated a professional co-trustee. So when I was with Northwestern Mutual, we designate Northwestern Mutual as the professional co-trustee. And this is a big benefit to the company. The company likes it because they get to keep the assets.

So your insurance company will have you do it, will often do this. Vanguard will do it. Many of the big large companies will do it. You could set up – maybe you could explore some of the trust companies and set up that arrangement. Frankly, you've got to decide how deep you want to go.

So I can – you can design it very elaborately and very in-depth, but I would say consider the odds. I'll tell you in my mind at this stage, you sound like a young – I mean you sound like a young person if you have a young child probably. I wouldn't worry too much about it if the bulk of your asset is in life insurance.

I would designate the – I would designate a trustee and your insurance company may have a boilerplate document. That was another thing that I always had is I had a boilerplate document provided by the insurance company. Several insurance companies had one and a few of the companies that I wrote business with didn't have one.

But designate a boilerplate trust document that just simply says we designate this person to be the trustee for the money. And then if – and then once the – once my child is an adult, then the money transfers directly to the child. Another easy solution for you that I wanted to mention, if you do establish a trust, a testamentary trust, and if you do establish a testamentary trust that is restrictive and you set up one where you do have a professional trustee, consider designating some of the life insurance money directly to the guardian of – directly in order to help do any kind of transition.

So if you have $2 million of coverage on yourself and you're saying here's the guardian. This is the person that I trust and this – and so therefore I want to make sure that they're taken care of. But I do want to designate a professional trustee to manage the money to help make sure that the decisions are proper, the amounts are proper, and the investment choices are well done.

Then designate a million nine to the testamentary trust just in your life insurance beneficiary designation and designate, I don't know, $100,000 to the guardian. And in general, I mean your guardian is going to use the money prudently. I wouldn't trust somebody as a guardian that wasn't just going to take that money and set it aside to be used for my child.

But I would want to bypass some of the trust just to keep things simple. Now, most of the attorneys are cringing because that gives up control. I think you've got to balance between control and realism, realistically saying, "Okay, what's the actual scenario and what is actually probable and what is practical versus what is theoretically perfect?" So those are my thoughts on it.

If any of you who have more experience or any of you attorneys have other ideas or thoughts on the subject, let me know. And I hope that's helpful to you. I applaud you for being prudent with your planning and it sounds like you're in great shape. I love having listeners like you.

It's a great question and it's a good example of prudent planning. I would say start with it easy. Put some recommendations of investment management as you would want it to be done there so that if easy, it's just designated as an amateur. Consider adding a professional co-trustee. If you have relationships with Vanguard, I'm sure they do fine at it.

I haven't ever worked with them or worked for their trust department, but I think all of the trust departments at the large firms are well run. Trust management is a long and respected business and professional trustees, they know their business. They know what they're doing and they're very good at their job.

Next question, question number two comes from Kyle. Kyle writes this question about saving taxes and I'm going to read you the entire question because some of the details are important and you consider how you would answer this question. "Hi, Joshua. I've always listened to podcasts. I'm a big fan.

Thank you. I'm in the healthcare field. I just finished my residency and started working and I'm making $125,000. Sounds nice, but the problem is I live in Maryland and I'm not sure how, but I only take home about $6,000 per month. I know I'm very fortunate and there are many others that have it much worse, but on the flip side, I have studied a third of my life to be a doctor.

I have tremendous student loan debt and do expect to be appropriately compensated. And after taxes, the fact that I'm only making about $72,000 per year is very disheartening. So I want to ask you about how to decrease my taxes. I have a Roth IRA, but I'm going to be phased out of that soon and won't qualify to contribute.

My employer does not give me any 401(k). I am single and I don't own a home. I do have an HSA account, though. I've paid off about 60% of my student loans and right now I have the rest refinanced for about 4.7%, so I'd rather not pay more towards those because I'm thinking I can get a better return elsewhere.

If I keep paying the minimum, they'll be paid off in five years. So all I can think of at this point is to max out my HSA, but that's only $3,300 a year. I do have a traditional IRA with about $40,000, so I could convert that to a Roth IRA and pay about $12,000 on it, then start a non-deductible IRA, and then just convert that to a backdoor Roth IRA so I can have some retirement savings.

That still doesn't seem like much to me. I thought about doing a 529, which I will at some point once I find "the girl" and have a kid, but right now I'd rather not start that because, just in case I don't have kids, I don't want to pay the taxes and the 10% penalty if I don't use it for education.

I know about cash value life insurance as well, but I just don't think I need it right now and I can always do that later. So that's my situation. Can you think of anything else I can do with my money to decrease these brutal taxes? It just doesn't make sense that my tax bill is about $50,000.

I know personal finance 101 and everyone talks about maxing out retirement savings accounts and all these tax-sheltered accounts, but nobody talks about the people who don't qualify for any of those and whose employer doesn't offer a 401(k). Thanks in advance, Kyle. So I love this question. I think this is a great question.

This is a good example of a situation that faces many people, and it faces, in Kyle's case, it's facing him at $125,000 of income. But the problem is he doesn't have employer accounts. So usually you just say, "Well, put money in a 401(k)." Well, what do you do once you get past that?

What do you actually do? So I'm going to try to answer that question for you, Kyle. But I would encourage you to start with actually calculating how much your actual taxes are. The idea of your actually having a $50,000 tax bill, that seems a little bit unreasonably high to me.

And the reason I say that is Maryland's tax rate is 5%, and the marginal rate at your number is 5%. And $125,000 of income barely puts you into the 28% marginal bracket. Just because your take-home pay is $72,000, that doesn't necessarily mean that your taxes are the balance. So you mentioned the magic word "resident." So I'm wondering if you just simply have the deductions and if you haven't completed a full year.

If we do some quick back-of-the-napkin math here, take $125,000, and let's cover your employment taxes first. And you're just over the Social Security wage base, but I'm going to ignore that for quick and easy math here. So let's just take $125,000, multiply that times 7.65%. Your tax bill for Social Security and Medicare taxes, your employment taxes, will be about $9,500 per year.

Then if Maryland is going to cost you a maximum marginal bracket at your bracket of 5%, then let's take $125,000 and multiply that times 5%, we come up with $62.50. So you have $6,250 in Maryland taxes. And then if I just say you're going to be in an effective tax rate of 20% on your $125,000 salary, then that's coming out to be $25,000.

You're in a marginal bracket of 28%, but your effective bracket will be much lower than that. And I think all of those numbers are shooting high. So you need to calculate what your actual tax cost is. So use the cash flow statements that I've talked about in a previous show.

If you haven't heard it, it's episode 93. So you can find it at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/93. Start with your gross income of $125,000 and calculate each of the tax line items that you owe. So calculate your Social Security taxes. Remember, you're just over the wage base. So those taxes are only due up to the current Social Security wage base.

I can't remember the exact number. It's something like $119,000 right now, somewhere in that range, maybe a little bit less. Just do a DuckDuckGo search and find it on the IRS website. Next, calculate your Medicare taxes. Remember, there is no wage base for Medicare taxes. So that amount will go on all of your income.

Next, we're coming to the end of the year here. So do this after you finish your 2014 taxes and look at what your actual rate is. And my gut is that if that much is actually being withheld from your paycheck, you're probably going to get a refund on that.

So there's probably a little bit too much being withheld. Regardless, also make sure that you're not including insurance costs in your take-home pay. I would assume--I mean, you're a smart guy. You probably would take that out. But many times people have $1,000 a month health insurance costs, and they say, "Well, my take-home pay is only this." Well, it's because of your health insurance cost.

So calculate what the actual number is. Regardless, you are paying a lot of taxes. And in essence, you're pretty much sunk taxes. You're sitting in the worst spot that you could possibly be from a tax perspective. You're in a high-tax state within a high-tax region. That makes it tough to just live in the state next door and cross the region.

There aren't really many low-tax states in your region of the country. You're a single professional, which means the professional part is a problem because all of your income is wages, and wages are the most highly taxed form of income. Additionally, you don't have any dependents, which may or may not be a good thing, but from a tax perspective, it's a bad thing.

And you have no deductions that you can use. You don't own a home, so you don't have any mortgage interest tax deductions. Your wages are over the student loan interest phase-out. So the student loan interest phase-out is $75,000, so you can't even deduct your student loan interest. And you don't have a business, so you don't have the ability to shift any of your income or any of your expenses over to business expenses.

So you're sunk. You don't have any useful retirement accounts other than the HSA. And so you could probably be just as well off making half the money that you're making in either half the money that you're making there in Maryland--go and look at what your actual bracket would be-- or in another region of the country.

So now that I've depressed you, let me try to answer your question. But I want to point that out to the audience, that in essence, you're sunk, and this is the problem that people face. Our current tax system is--you're in the worst spot that I can imagine from a tax perspective.

So let's come back, and let's apply the financial planning process to this problem. And in financial planning, we don't start with a technique. We start with a vision. We start with a vision. So the first thing is decide where you want to live and how you want to live.

Figure out the location of where you want to live and then the lifestyle that you want to live. Don't start with, "I live here, and this is just where I'm at." I would imagine the residency thing--I know how residency works. It's a good chance maybe you're there as a transplant, and you're going somewhere else.

This is going to affect your personal financial planning. But regardless of that, as a young person setting up their life and getting ready to establish your career or practice, independent practice, if that's the direction that you're going, give careful thought to where you actually want to live and seriously consider your taxes.

Seriously consider your taxes. I would not, if I didn't have a strong reason to be in Maryland, I would never set up a life in Maryland. Now, I was just driving through Maryland. It's very pretty, but I can't imagine why I would want to set up a life there when there are many other options.

Consider taxes. I don't think taxes make everything, but consider them. A useful website for you, go to the website called Savetaxesbymoving.com. I just learned about this in Tony Robbins' book. This was listed on the website called HowMoneyWalks.com that I read in his book. This person or organization has created a very useful tax calculator.

It's imprecise, but it's useful to see how much you can actually save by changing states. So I put in, as an example here, I put in a single person earning $125,000 per year at the age of 30 and living in Maryland. I said, "Let's pretend you move to another state." So I put in Texas.

Texas is one of the six states that has no personal income tax. Florida is another one, but either one. If you just simply moved from Maryland to Texas or from Maryland to Florida or from Maryland to Nevada or from Maryland to Wyoming or to South Dakota or to New Hampshire, then New Hampshire is where I would look at to go if you like the cold, upper New England lifestyle.

You would save $5,500 a year just right off the top of your state income tax bill. Right off the top. So that $5,500 is a big number, especially when you compound it. So just in the state income taxes, $5,500 a year right into your IRA. That could result -- I love about this site.

They put right at the top. They say if that $5,503 is invested each year at 6% interest until you retire at age 67, you would have an additional $700,372 net worth. $700,372 in net worth. And also consider as a physician, consider where your clients would be. Now, I don't know your specialty, but there is a migration to warmer climates for an aging population.

And baby boomers are retiring every day. The demand for medical services could be much higher in the south. So that might actually improve your career prospects as well. You'll have to think that through for yourself. But I would give strong thought to when my residency is over, making sure that I live in a place where I can enhance my lifestyle at a lower cost.

And I would encourage you consider moving to a no income tax or a lower income tax state. Especially if you can do one in a scenario where it's actually going to improve your lifestyle. There are many places where you can go that it will improve your lifestyle. And play around at Savetaxesbymoving.com.

You might enjoy that. Now, if you want to live where you are, awesome. Go for it. Make your stand there. But as a young person, I think one of the most impactful decisions that any of us can make is where are we going to establish our life? And if you can get it more optimized at an earlier age, there's a big, big long term effect.

And it's a lot easier generally to move when you're younger than it is at your older. One useful tip for you, if you do move after residency, the nice thing about moving is that you don't have any deductions, but you can deduct all of your moving expenses. So, since you need deductions, consider that.

If there is a cost for you to move and you decide that you have been able to negotiate an offer in another place, all of those moving expenses for you will be deductible as long as you move at least 50 miles away for a new job, at least 50 miles away.

Next, consider your best guess as to what you actually want to do with your career. And here's why I say that. The career of a physician can be dramatically different depending on what you want to do and what you plan for with your specialty or your area of focus.

If you want to work in a staff position of some kind, awesome. So, if you want to work on staff at a hospital, great. In this scenario then, I would consider looking for a – after you're done with residency, looking for a hospital with a good retirement system. It may have a better – a good 401(k) plan.

And so, that's going to be an important criteria for you as you are going out and getting employers to bid on you and compete, which is what you need to have – I think you need to view your career prospects is don't go out looking for a job. Develop yourself to such a way to where your – where employers will be bidding on you and then look for the compensation package as a whole.

And so, look for a quality – qualified plan, a 401(k) system that will be useful for you. So, if you just want to work in a hospital, then I would start using qualified accounts and it would be good for that. You may – if your income is going to increase substantially after residency, which I would expect, that 401(k) is actually going to be quickly less relevant.

At $125,000 of income, the ability to set $18,000 aside in a 401(k), that's relevant. But at $350,000, it's a drop in the bucket. It doesn't solve your problem. So, you might look for some kind of group practice where you might join a group practice where they've established maybe a nice defined benefit plan internally in the practice.

Look at it carefully, but that might be a benefit for you and that could be great. But from a career perspective, you might want to be an entrepreneur. So, you might want to do something like establish a range of clinics and in this scenario or establish your own independent private practice.

I don't know what your area of specialty is, but if that's the case, then I would not – me personally, I wouldn't focus on qualified plans right now. I wouldn't focus on 401(k)s and IRAs. I'd save cash and I'd try to make sure that I had a cushion to get that new business started.

And in terms of a comparison of dollars, if the question – and people get nervous when I talk about don't fund the qualified plans. But here's what I would say. If your decision criteria is I'm either going to put $20,000 in my 401(k) or I'm going to go and spend an extra $20,000 on a new car, then you're better off probably to put the money in the 401(k).

However, if the decision is to put $20,000 in the 401(k) or to set that aside to fund my lower earning potential for the next two years when I'm starting my private practice so I'm not stressed out constantly, then you're probably better off to just keep it in cash and invest in your private practice to get you through that hump of getting your doors open, getting the office established, whatever it is that you are planning to do.

So if that's your goal, if you have any thought of an entrepreneurial pursuit, you might consider saving cash. And I would make that a bigger factor than what account do I actually focus on. I would really give that a lot of thought. I've worked with a physician that was an employee of a practice and this physician's income was excellent.

I think it was like $200,000 a year. But the owner of the six independent offices who was hiring the other physicians never was able to meet with him as a prospective client. But I guarantee that person was making more than $200,000 a year. And whatever it takes to get the six offices established, that would be an excellent area of focus if you have an interest in that.

That's up to you. Now, as to taxes, the only way to lower your current income taxes is to either defer your income to the future with a plan of some kind or to bring deductions into your scenario or to bring deductions forward now. So remember, there are only three ideas that we can use with tax planning.

And if you haven't listened to the tax planning shows yet that I've done, then go and listen to the tax planning shows. But there are only three scenarios. You can either adjust the timing of income and a timing strategy is a 401(k). I'm putting income in now that I'm not being taxed on so that I can pay the tax in the future.

The next strategy is income shifting. And income shifting is where we're shifting the income from a high tax rate taxpayer to a low tax rate taxpayer, either from a corporation to an individual, from an individual to a corporation, from one member of the family to another member of the family.

That's a shifting strategy. Or we are using a conversion strategy where we're converting income from an entity or from a series of behavior that we can't take a deduction on to another. We're converting income from a high tax environment to a low tax environment. The problem with being an employee is you can basically only take advantage of number one.

You can only adjust the timing of your income. And the only strategies that you have for timing of income, for adjusting it, is your retirement accounts and any personal deductions, which are basically not the very good ones. You can't really shift income because you don't have an entity through which you can shift income.

And with regard to family perspective, you don't have any family so you can't shift income from yourself to your kids or even run any of those ideas. And then you can't convert income because you don't have any activities that you can convert income. So what do you do? Well, the only thing you can do to lower your current taxes is to focus on the current income and deductions.

The 529 plan and the cash value life insurance, those don't help you at all with your current tax bill. They might help you over time with efficient investing and deferral in the future, but they don't help with this year's bill, which is what you're asking me about. So you've got to do something else to deal with this year's bill.

That was why I said move. That saves you 5,000 bucks right there, but I know you can't until you're done with residency. The student loan interest, again, not deductible. You're making too much money. That's phased out at 75,000 bucks. The HSA is good. Make sure you're taking those HSA deductions and make sure you're not using the money for expenses.

So make sure that you're doing the pile up the money in the HSA trick where you just – if you have medical expenses, make a careful listing and inventory of your receipts and your expenses, but don't worry about the – but don't actually spend the money out of the account.

But in your situation, you're right. It's almost irrelevant. What does 3,000 bucks mean with regard to your income? It's almost irrelevant. So look at the timeline. Are you going to be in Maryland? If you are, consider the investment plan like I went over. You're probably stuck until you're done with residency, but then get out and get into something else.

Look at all the plan options that are available to you. So look through your group benefits package. We're here at the end of the year. You may be in open enrollment. Look through your group benefits package and look to see if there are any benefits that you're not taking advantage of.

I've had lots of times where I've met with a client. We've gone through and you find, "Oh, wait a second. I didn't recognize how this little plan here worked or how this option here worked," or "If I take advantage of this insurance option, then this lowers my tax bill because this is an insurance option which is tax favorable." Max out those group benefits.

I would say consider contributing to an IRA for you instead of a Roth IRA. If you have the perspective that your financial situation is always going to improve, your income is always going to go up, and you're planning to work a full and long career, then yeah, put as much as you can into the IRA this year or that next year.

Once you're phased out of that Roth IRA, remember that anybody from any income can contribute to an individual retirement account and deduct the expenses as long as you're not covered by an employer plan. So as an individual, anybody can put money into a qualified account as long as you're not covered by an employer plan.

If you're covered by an employer plan, then that's where the income restrictions come into place. So even after you're phased out of the Roth, you can still contribute to an IRA, and as long as you're not covered by an employer plan, that IRA will be fully deductible for you.

Shop around for a better employer with a better compensation package. The whole idea of these retirement plans and things like that is that it's supposed to help the employer theoretically attract better employees. So shop around. Shop around for a better employer, and then put some pressure on your employer.

Let them know this is unsatisfactory, and I'm shopping around because of it. You need to start a business. You've got to start a business of your own so that you can do a conversion strategy and shift some of your high-cost expenses over onto the business ledger. So figure out what your business is going to be.

You need a business. You look at all of the online doctors. Look at the – what is it? Dr. Mercola and Dr. Sears, and those are two names I know. But look at these guys, how they build a huge publishing business on the top of their MD credentials. Now, if you're working 70 hours a week, which you probably are, you're not going to have time to do that necessarily, but you can get started on something.

What would be your specialty? How can you contribute? And so you need to start shifting some of your expenses over onto the business ledger. If you are going to go the entrepreneurial route with your career, then you may go ahead and get that started and start investing into that in whatever way is appropriate.

So if you need to go to medical conferences, if you need to look for property to start an office, whatever it is. And if you have losses in the first couple of years, that's OK. That's going to create some deductions that you can bring over onto your personal income.

You need deductions. So create them, but make sure you're not doing it only for the taxes. Make them fit into your lifestyle. If you're planning to move from Maryland, don't buy a house in Maryland while you're trying to deal with residency just to get a mortgage interest deduction. But if you're planning to set up shop in Maryland, then buy a house and run the numbers on it.

Buy intelligently, but that can be a really great scenario. Make sure that you don't do anything just for the tax deduction, but think intelligently about what your goals are and how you can get tax deductions to work in them. I hope that helps. Leave me a comment on the show and let me know if that was helpful.

That was my best job. That was the best shot I got for you, but you got a lot of options. I hope that was helpful to give you some ways to think it through. Next question comes from Daniel on asset allocation. He says, "Joshua, I was just listening to the episode with Todd Treseder where you shared your thoughts on target date funds and overexposure to bonds.

It came at an opportune time as my Roth IRA is in a target date fund, the Vanguard 2050 target date fund, and I've been going back and forth about just throwing it 100% into the S&P 500 Admiral shares. I suppose this has morphed into something of a more complicated question, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on a 100% equities portfolio, particularly for the younger investor with a nice long investment timeline in front of them.

Thanks so much. I have my Vanguard page open in another tab and was just about to tell them and make a decision on this before asking the question." Daniel. Daniel, it's a great question. Here's the problem with asset allocation. Asset allocation is very difficult to talk about in an intelligent sense, in a generalized intelligent way, because in my mind, the key with asset allocation is not about a specific number.

It's more of about a series of principles that will change depending on how you're adjusting your financial life. And number two, it's very difficult without knowing the actual investment goal and all of the parameters to know what's right and what's wrong. Here's my example. At different times in your life, contrary to what you read, when you read portfolios where it says, "Hey, you need a 60/40 this and split out the 60 into these four categories, etc." Those are useful, but you're always going to be somewhat out of balance in your life based upon those academic models.

When you're just getting started, if you have $5,000 in the bank, should you have that—and that's total, everything that you have—if you have that $5,000 in the bank, should you have all of that money invested in an 80/20 allocation between stocks and bonds? No. You should have all the money in cash.

So now your asset allocation is everything is in cash because this is all the money that you have in the world. And so you're out of whack from an asset allocation perspective. Now, if you have an individual account, which is the question that you're asking—I'm using the question as a springboard to talk about the general issue.

If you have an individual account, now we can look at that individual account and we can say, "What do we need to do with this individual account?" But we still have to take into as a factor all of our other assets and all of our other accounts. So it is impossible to answer asset allocation questions in a generalized way.

The only thing that I can hope to do is give you ideas and thoughts so that you can know how to think about your specific scenario. And it's a constant challenge because one allocation may be great from an academic perspective. You've got to fit it into your life. And at different times in your life—for example, right now I'm very overweighted in real estate because I have a lot of equity in a house.

So how do we factor that in? Do I count that in as part of my asset allocation? I personally do. So I don't want just in my investment portfolio to have real estate because I've got exposure to real estate more than I'd be comfortable with. So this asset allocation will change over time.

I cannot give you specific advice on asset allocation because that would be crossing the line of giving generalized ideas and information to giving personalized investment advice. For me as a young person, at the moment, my retirement accounts are invested 100 percent in equities at the moment. But that's not what you should base your decision on.

You need to base your decision on a comprehensive look of what you actually have. Now, the reason that I choose that with my IRA at the moment is multifold. First, I have a stomach of steel when it comes to market volatility. The primary thing that destroys investors' outcomes is market volatility where they bail at the bottom when they should be in.

And I have, so I've, hopefully we'll see when the next crash comes, but the last one didn't bother me a bit. And I didn't put as much money in as I should have in hindsight, but I didn't sell anything. So I have a stomach of steel, so I don't worry about volatility.

In that scenario, over time, I have a mental concept that owners of companies will get richer than lenders to companies. And owners of companies get richer because they demand higher returns in exchange for the higher volatility of stocks as compared to bonds. So that to me is a mental model that I have, and it fits.

Now, I do not have all of my money in stocks. I have other money in safe money. So I have other money in savings. I have other money in just in cash that's accessible. That's a part of it. I have money in cash value, life insurance policies. In my mind, mentally, I consider that to be my kind of safer investment dollars.

I consider that in a sense to be similar to what a bond portfolio would do as far as smoothing out the returns with fewer of the risks of a bond portfolio but different risks in addition that a bond portfolio wouldn't have. So when I look at that, I look at my situation, I'm comfortable with 100% equity allocation in my retirement accounts.

But I'm overweighted and focusing on business, and like I said, real estate, and so I don't fit into a classic asset allocation. So I take the principle of asset allocation, which is to be widely diversified, and then I apply it to the investment goal that I have with the retirement accounts is I have zero reason to use that money in the short term.

So I don't care a bit about volatility in the next 30 years. It doesn't matter a bit to me. And so in my mind, 100% stock portfolio is every bit as good as anything else. And now that stock portfolio, however, is broadly diversified. It's not just large cap US stocks, which is what you would be doing with an S&P 500 fund.

But even that, is that diversified enough? Sure, I'll buy it. 500 of the largest companies in the United States of America, it's probably not going to be the highest return, because large cap stocks are going to be over time, a lower return than mid, small, or micro cap stocks.

But it's perfectly diversified from the perspective of worrying about company risk of one individual company going bankrupt. You're in good shape there. So the key is you've got to absorb, I think you've got to absorb the principles of asset allocation and then apply it to your specific scenario. A financial advisor, when they're giving advice on a specific account, a good financial advisor is going to be doing that based upon what the goal of the account is.

If this goal is my house fund, or if this goal is my retirement fund, and then you take that into account with other things, then you can create an asset allocation principle, an asset allocation for that specific account. But the key for you to answer that question for yourself is going to be to absorb the principle.

If you have time, if you've got a stomach of steel, if you're not going to change your portfolio in a down time, pretend we got a 50% drop in 2015, if that scenario is not going to cause you to change your portfolio allocation, that's a big question. Because you very well and very possibly could face that in 2015.

And you have other assets, and you have other that are going to cover your short term needs, this goal is a long term goal, you're comfortable with it. Yeah, all of those caveats, then make your own decisions. It's your money. That's in many ways what I've done. But again, remember that what I've done is based upon my life, life and lifestyle.

And I have other goals, I have moderations, I understand the principles, I know what I'm doing. So just because that's right for me doesn't mean it make it right for you. Next question comes from Greg, and he says, "Hi Joshua, enjoy the podcast, keep up the good work." I'm sure you get these questions all the time.

I'm very tired of my job, and I'd like to quit, and find some other things to do that I would enjoy more. Hobbies I currently have, where I can still make a little income, would be the target. I would like to work one more year and then stop. The question is really, do I need to be concerned about the income, or do I really have enough to call it quits without the need for additional income?

My wife could still work as well if necessary as a nurse for a few years to make sure. That would also allow us to have less expensive health insurance for the family and continue the contributions to her 403(b) account. Some details, I have about a million two in taxable accounts, which is 100% in equities.

I've got about the same, a million two in 401(k)s, 403(b)s, IRAs, etc. That's also 100% in equities. I live in a paid-for house, and I have no debt whatsoever. We could probably live comfortably on about $5,000 to $6,000 a month. I'm 44, and I'm married. My wife is 45.

We have three boys ages 9, 11, and 14. It would be great if we could pay or significantly support their college, but if we can't afford it, then we will try to keep it inexpensive with in-state schools and nothing crazy. I also have a pension of about $4,000 per month if I stop now and collect at $65.

I could collect it early with a reduced benefit, but it would be about half starting at $55 and then increases up to $65. My wife doesn't have a pension. The current vested account value is about $800,000. What do you think, Greg? What a fun question, huh? That's what I love about financial planning.

How exciting is it? Greg, quit. From a financial perspective, I think that you've got so many margins of safety that if you can live comfortably on $5,000 to $6,000 a month, and that's a realistic summary, then in my mind, there should be no problem at all with your quitting.

Now, I have some ideas that might help you manage the transition a little bit, but how did I get to the quit? Let's just figure out. You've got $1,000,000 to plus $1,000,000 to, so you've got $2.4 million in an investment portfolio. That's fantastic. If we go based upon the 4% rule, that's $96,000 per year.

That's $8,000 a month. The 4% rule is a useful metric to start with, so that's $8,000 a month. If you're spending $5,000 to $6,000 a month, you have a margin of safety. You have a $2,000 to $3,000 margin of safety. Additionally, you don't have any debt, so as long as that $5,000 to $6,000 a month includes your personal luxury expenses, then you could drop that even lower if you had to for some reason because you had an issue come up.

That's one margin of safety. You have an additional margin of safety with your pension. The fact that you are going to be collecting a pension that would start at $4,000 per month at the age of 65 – I don't know whether that's an inflation-adjusted number or just a current number – regardless, that is a massive margin of safety.

When we put that into a cash flow scenario, you've got a great margin of safety there. Additionally, you have a Social Security margin of safety where you would have potentially some Social Security benefit. Now, you're at the age where I start to cut those significantly, and I have an arbitrary number in my mind at 45.

I use a 50% benefit in planning, but you do still have some Social Security benefit as a backstop. So you've got a great margin of safety. Now, what would be an intelligent way of shifting? I would recommend to you that the key that you need is you need a retirement distribution plan.

If you had that, I don't think you would have written me the question. Now, maybe you do, and it's just for fun. Let's see what another advisor would say. But if you had a retirement distribution plan and a retirement income plan, you wouldn't have the question. This is a problem that faces most retirees.

We think in terms of, "I have a lot of money. I'm a million. I have a million dollars in an account." When the reality is having a million dollars in an investment account is relatively useless. Relatively useless. You can't spend a million dollars in an investment account. You can only spend cash flow.

So we need money from that account, and we need cash flow. And so my guess is you don't have in place a cash flow plan that's allocated towards specific expenses. You need a financial advisor. And if you don't have one, you need a good one. And shop around until you get a good one.

Because you need a plan that's going to fit your specific goals. And there are different approaches that you can take. You can consider a bucketing strategy. So, for example, if you wanted to earmark some of the money towards the kids' college, then set that aside. You've got 9, 11, and 14.

They're at an age where I would allocate--I would adjust those portfolios. If you're serious about having money set aside, I would adjust those portfolios, and I wouldn't have them 100% in equities. I would adjust them to meet that goal. So pull that out to give yourself some confidence. You should look realistically at what a transition plan would be and see if--now, I haven't ever been retired.

And that's important for you to know. So I never have done the whole go from working to not working. I've got an interview I'll be releasing next week with Doug Nordman. He said the number one concern early retirees have is, "What am I going to do all day?" He said, "I don't have that problem." And I've interviewed other retirees as well.

But I would consider making a slow transition. So if you're tired of your job, could you switch to doing it 50% of the time and exploring some of those hobbies? I don't know. It would depend on your job. But if you could do some kind of slow transition, that would be good.

But if you're tired of your job, quit today. Pull out a couple hundred thousand bucks out of your taxable account and move it into cash. So you've got a couple years of income that doesn't have any volatility. Just quit. Take some time off. Recharge. Work on those hobbies. See if you can build them into a business.

Think about things. You may find another job that you want to keep going back to. But if I were in your situation and you're tired of your job, I'd quit tomorrow. I really would. If you weren't willing to do it half-time, I would pull money out of equities and I'd put it in cash in your taxable accounts.

I'd set that aside so I knew I had a couple years of runway to kind of figure things out. And then I would work forward. And I think that you would make a big difference as far as your comfort level and your perspective if you're out of a job that you don't like.

Call it a sabbatical. Tell them you're going to take a sabbatical with your kids. I would give some careful thought and research time to how you're going to manage your cash flow distribution. I plan shows on this. I've got so many shows I'd like to do. I have no time.

I'd love to do a series of – I could do 20 shows on different retirement distribution plans and explain them so you could pick what makes sense to you. But you need to think through how you're going to provide for cash flow. Do you need a – are you going to use a bucketing strategy?

Do you need a bond ladder that's going to pay you an income amount that you need while you keep an equity portfolio aside? Are you going to – do you like equities? Are you going to stay in equities and maybe you can build out a dividend portfolio? Can you adjust your allocation just a little bit so that you can just live on dividends so that you feel comfortable with that cash flow and it gives you the opportunity to budget?

I mean there are so many options that you have. I was going to go deeper but I can't do you any service. You need a good advisor and you need a cash flow plan and there are so many great options. I would encourage you to find a good advisor, which is going to be the next question here.

So let's just – let's jump into the next question. But find a good advisor, Greg, and quit your job and go do something that you love. That would be my thought. I didn't plan this but the next question comes from John and it's how to find – basically how do I find a good advisor?

Joshua, you always talk about how we should build a team of financial experts that we trust. How exactly would you go about doing this? Who would be the members of this team? How would you go about vetting each one? I feel like simply finding a handful of financial planners to call and go out to meet has been time-consuming and not very productive so far.

What kind of questions would you ask them to ensure they have your best interest in mind rather than their own commissions? How would you go about finding ones that will help rather than scoff at untraditional ideas like early retirement? I know that's a bunch of questions but I really feel like I want to build a team at the same time as I'm increasing my own education.

But it all seems to feel like a shot in the dark sometimes. Thanks. John, this is the most frustrating question that I get because I don't know. I'll give you my ideas but this is the problem that we face in the financial planning industry is there are some brilliant great advisors.

There are so many advisors that have a limited scope and there are some really bad advisors. The reason I stopped myself from saying that, I'm usually slow to say there's a bunch of really bad advisors and there are, is because I think often when an advisor is really bad and when somebody has a bad client experience, it's not so often that the person is a bad person.

It's that they're practicing in a market where their skill set is not a good fit, their knowledge is not a good fit for that market or the structure of their practice is not a good fit for that market. I'll explain that in just a moment. But there are some great advisors but we have this major problem of how do you help, how do you connect the two?

I mean I've heard from so many of you and I thank you. It's very flattering. I've heard from many of you that have said, "Joshua, if I could work for you, I'd hire you." And that's awesome. I'd love that. And that's so flattering. The problem is what do I do is if I do that, I can't do this show or at least I can't do it with the impact and with the depth and the frequency that I'm doing it now.

And so then if I weren't doing the show, then that flow of people that would say, "Hey, Joshua, I want to work with you," that would dry up over time. Not once I had it established but it would be far fewer. And then I would be in a situation where I'm – we're stuck.

You can't find me and I can't find you. And this plagues the financial industry. As I've mentioned in previous shows, I had to leave my firm in order to be able to do a show like this. And so I get inquiries and emails and people saying, "Joshua, I'd like to work with you." And I look at a guy like Greg, the last question I answered, and man, I could – what a fun account and what a fun plan to make.

I mean I could – Greg and I would be bouncing up and down and high-fiving. If we were sitting down doing planning, there's just – there's a world of opportunities there. But I know many, many caring, well-meaning financial advisors that simply wouldn't be able to do anything, wouldn't be able to give any advice.

So it's a hard question. I struggle with this. I struggle with it. I even think – I've thought about starting a firm and I don't – I really feel like my best, highest and best use of my skill is to do what I'm doing here, which is to take questions like this and talk you through a thought process rather than giving specific advice.

And I thought, well, if I were going to hire – start a firm, how on earth would I vet advisors? How would I do that? Just the fact that you have a – just – okay, so you're a certified financial planner. Great. Just because you're a certified financial planner doesn't mean you have a clue what you're talking about when it comes to early retirement or lifestyle planning.

And also it doesn't mean you have a clue what you're talking about with real estate. If I'm talking through – and a client is interested in real estate and we're talking through some complex real estate strategy and it's like – just because – it's like – so it's really hard to do.

It's really hard to know. And then when you look at the financial structure of the firm and how the investment up front works and I think a lot about it. And so I just don't know – I don't know how to answer – this is the toughest question I get.

I do have some ideas. And so number one, get very clear on what you want from a financial planner or advisor. There's a big difference between budget coaching because you're trying to get out of debt versus life insurance planning because you just had a baby and you need some life insurance versus the disability – versus my physician question I answered earlier.

I think it was Ken. I think it was Ken. Kyle. Versus doing disability planning for a physician, disability insurance. That's a very specialized area of knowledge. There's a big difference between that versus doing tax planning for a real estate investor versus a big difference between setting up a defined benefit plan for a medical group where these guys are all making a lot of money and we got to figure out how do we get a couple hundred thousand bucks a year set aside pre-tax.

And to the plan without spending too much on the assistance in the office versus estate planning for a guy here on Palm Beach that's got a $200 million estate. All of these are specialized areas of knowledge. And what happens is the level of financial competence and knowledge for the average person in our society is relatively low.

And so you often don't know what you need or want. And so then it's just whatever you happen to find. If you're clear on what you want from a planner or an advisor, I think that you'll have a much better relationship with them. My hope is that by this time in the show you have at least an initial idea of what you want and what your situation entails.

Again, I can take a brand new life insurance agent right out of their class and their licensing exam and with about 20 hours of training. And they can sit down and I can train them in 20 hours to sit down very competently and work with a 30-year-old couple and help them.

The first question that I answered from Brandon, sitting down with him and helping him get some life insurance squared away. But if Brandon is saying, "I've got this $30 million real estate portfolio. How do I do that?" That person would be so frustrating to talk to. So I think if you're clear on what you want and you should have an initial idea on that, then you'll be able to get out and at least tell someone what you're looking for and they'll be able to say, "Hey, yeah, I can help you with that." Number two, I think you need to get clear on who you are as a prospective client for an advisor.

And you need to get clear on – which is tough because I haven't given much information on this. It's been here and there. But you need to get clear on what type of client you are. If you are a client who is saying, "I've got $100,000 in an IRA.

How can I get a world-class financial advisor?" You may be able to find one, but you're not going to find the guys who are over here on Palm Beach who are working in a private family office working with 100 millionaires, with people with $150 million fortune. And so there's nothing wrong with that.

You've just got to learn your way there. So you've got to get clear, I think, on who you are. If you've got a nice, juicy investment portfolio, you've got a couple million bucks in investable assets, that's going to give you much greater clout than if you are a – again, if you have $100,000 in your IRA.

So then that's also going to help you to know where you're going to look for advice. If you want world-class advice on a $100,000 IRA, you're either going to have to get it for free online or from a show like mine where this is actually scalable, or you're going to have to pay for it on a high hourly fee and you're just going to have to dedicate the money to it.

Because you can't expect an advisor who's earning his fees on an assets under management model, you can't expect him to give you hours and hours of his time at $1,000 a year gross fees into his practice. You can hardly pay your staff out of that money. So that's why it's tough to get serviced.

If you're at that stage, I think you need to be working with somebody on an hourly basis or on a monthly retainer basis. So if you're looking on an hourly basis or a monthly retainer basis, I would start with the networks that are focused on that. The two that I know of, number one is the Garrett Financial Planning Network.

They work exclusively on an hourly basis. And the -- what's her name -- Shilah Garrett has -- whatever her name is -- has put together a real group of people all across the country who work on an hourly basis. And if that will work well for you, especially if you're older, if you are -- that'll work well for you.

New entrance into that space is also the XY Planning Network. And XY stands for Generation X, Generation Y. So this is kind of tilted towards a different model. All of the XY Planning Network advisors will work with you on a local -- on a lower -- on a younger basis, on a virtual basis.

And so they'll work with you from wherever you are. So go on the XY Planning Network. I'm technically a member of there, but I'm not listed on there simply because I never finished filing my RIA paperwork. But that was my plan until this show started to take off was to do that until I basically recognized that I can't do it anymore.

But that's a really good model. And they're working hard there to put that together. If you've got some assets, I would look -- if you've got some assets, I would consider looking a little bit farther than just the hourly basis. I don't know any really great financial advisors who work on an hourly basis.

Now, I'm sure they exist, but I don't know them, and -- or at least on an hourly basis exclusively. Because the incentive for a great advisor to work on an hourly basis is very, very low because the cost is -- he's not going to earn much -- he or she is not going to earn much money.

If I -- or if you're willing to consider -- and different people feel very strongly about this -- but if you're willing to consider an advisor who you're going to pay on a fee basis, so a fee as measured as a percentage of your portfolio, then what I would do is I would start looking around, and you could use an organization like NAPFA.

NAPFA is the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. They are fee-only planners, and they will have a directory locally. And that'll be one thing that'll be useful for you. Most of those will be independent, registered investment advisory firms. Additionally, you could look and one of the -- well, the sponsor that I've been negotiating with -- I'll go ahead and tell you, but if you're going to use this one, wait a little bit because I need -- I'm still working out the details of it -- is a company -- is a place called the Paladin Registry.

And it's the best financial advisor basically filtering mechanism that I've found. Most of the advisor listing services are total bunk. It's just they don't do anything. It's a total waste of time. It's just completely hit and miss. Jack Waymire, who's the founder of the Paladin Registry, I think has done the best job of anybody that I've found of actually going through and vetting his advisors, and he's done a good job of that.

And so I've been talking with them, and we're right now working out the details of -- I think I'm going to bring them on as a sponsor. And if I do that, it's going to be structured probably as an affiliate link where I'll have a form set up to where if you go through that form and you talk with one of their advisors, then I'll get a commission for that.

And so if you're going to go ahead and check them out and use them and look around if you want, if you've got a few days, I should have that ready. My goal is to have that ready in a couple of weeks. I'm 90% sure I'm going to bring them on board as a sponsor and work with them.

So I'd love to get the referral commission that would help me out if you go through them. They do a good job. The other thing that I would do is I would not necessarily go away from wire houses or large well-known firms. Firms like Merrill Lynch or firms like UBS, firms like J.P.

Morgan, firms like Northwestern Mutual, New York Life, Mass Mutual, Prudential. All of these firms -- Edward Jones -- all of these firms have excellent advisors. What I would do is I'd call them and I'd just talk to them on the phone and tell them what you're looking for, tell them what you've got and what kind of client you are and get their input.

If there's a large office -- so if there's like the local Edward Jones office where there's one advisor in there, then I would just call and just talk to that advisor. If there were a large office and you're calling the Northwestern Mutual office and you don't know anybody, call and ask to speak to the managing director and tell the managing director what your scenario is and ask them for their best advice.

Ask them for their best advisor. Tell them what you're looking for and tell them, "Here's what I'm looking for. Here's who I am." Chances are the managing director will either say, "Hey, here's -- you could talk to me." That's probably going to happen a lot of times or they'll say, "Here's my best advisor that I think is going to fit you." And get them to make a few phone calls.

It's easy to get on the phone and walk around. If you can tell somebody on the phone, "Hey, here's what I need. Here's my situation. Here's what I'm trying to solve and here's the situation that I have. What do you think?" That will give you a productive phone call.

Then you don't have to spend your time going all over town. And then if you have a productive phone call, then it may be worth setting up a meeting. Just like anything, get multiple meetings, talk to multiple people. And then hopefully, my big hope is that the information on this show is making you more educated.

Because if you're more educated and you're more knowledgeable, that's going to make you a much better client for an advisor because they're going to have to spend less time babysitting and they'll answer your questions. And make a list of them. Record conversations. Take a voice recorder with you or record it on your cell phone.

Take careful notes and just shop your way through. And I think what you'll find is if you'll demonstrate your knowledge, which hopefully you're gaining by listening to the show, and just ask direct questions. A good advisor, I love that. A good advisor loves that. And recognize that your advisor is going to have different restrictions based upon where they are.

And that's not necessarily bad. I have a personal belief that a good advisor can function in just about any environment. And if they can't function in that environment because it's a bad firm environment, they're going to leave and go somewhere else. So a good advisor is not going to stay where they can't do something that is good for the client.

And so I'm not too – me personally, I'm not too worried about what everyone makes a big deal over, the architecture. You can get a great portfolio with Vanguard. You can get a great portfolio with Fidelity. You can get a great portfolio with T. Rowe Price. You can get a great portfolio with Templeton.

Any of the – with American Funds, any fund company can put together a good portfolio for you. Now, if you have a thing you're trying to accomplish, it's going to go in different directions. And any good advisor can help you in a different – in different scenarios but with different products and will show you where – what the best company is.

When I was with Northwestern Mutual, there are some scenarios where Northwestern Mutual has world-class products and they're the best in a situation. There are many scenarios where another company had better products. And so I would either – the nice thing was I could sell the other company. So I'd either sell the other company's product or I would make the connection because – so I think if you can find someone, if you ask direct questions and look for character and how to judge character – I don't know.

I hope – I don't know how to answer that question but look for character and ask questions. And my – I would rather have my wife – I think about this a lot because for me it's one thing. But my wife – I think if I were dead and my wife said, "OK.

I've got my – Joshua died. Here's two and a half million bucks of life insurance. What do I do with it?" I would rather that my wife work with somebody with character and deal with the personal shortcomings of whatever the situation is the advisor faces and be connected with an advisor that they trust rather than focus too much on firm architecture.

I was just talking with an advisor who was leaving one large firm, leaving – going to another because the firm was making changes and he was no longer – up until then, he had gone – he would start – he had started as independent. He had moved to – I'll skip the firms for now.

But the point was that he was transitioning because he could no longer serve his clients to an acceptable level at that firm. So he was moving to a new firm. And so in my mind, that's what's important to me. Now, your mileage may vary and many people would vehemently disagree with that and I respect their opinions.

I'm just – it's my show. I get to answer the question. Last question here comes from Tom and it's a question about the ESA accounts. And Tom says this. Hey, Josh. I just want to say I appreciate your podcast. It's amazing. My name is Tom. And I had a follow-up question from your recent podcast about Coverdell Savings Accounts.

I know this has to be illegal, but it's just a question I couldn't find an answer to in that, say, parent of child has a rental property, sells rental property valued at $100,000 to child's education savings account for $2,000. Child resells rental property to general public for actual market value of $100,000.

And all of a sudden, the education savings account is now worth $100,000 and the parent gets to take a capital gains loss that could be put against regular income at $3,000 a year and potentially at a capital gains rate of 23.9% for the years in the future. If you could respond to this line of thinking and show me where it's not right, I would love to hear.

Thanks so much for your show. Bye. First time I listened to that, I thought, "Huh?" So, let me, if that got you saying, "Huh?" Let me explain what he's trying to do. Essentially, what he's trying to do is move an asset into the educational savings account for less than the market value.

So, if I own a, let's say I own a rental house that's worth $100,000, what he's suggesting is that I set up a self-directed educational savings account. And so, if I set that up, I set it up with a custodian that allows me to own real estate within that educational savings account.

And I set that up with a custodian that gives me check writing privileges on the account. And so, I simply drop a bill of sale and I sell my rental house to my son's educational savings account. And my son's educational savings account gives me a check for $2,000. Now, the problem is I bought this thing for $100,000.

And so, man, I just got this massive loss. I lost $98,000 on the account. And so, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to depreciate this. Excuse me. I'm going to carry over the loss going forward as a deduction against on my tax return. Now, the cool thing is my kids' ESA, they got a bargain.

And this was a good bargain. And they paid $2,000 – my kids' ESA paid $2,000 for this house. It's worth $100,000. They turn around and they sell it for $100,000. Now, they got $98,000 gain sitting in the educational savings account. And that gain is totally tax-free. And then I can use it to pay for my son's second-grade private school.

So, that's the scenario that he's saying. Now, to answer your question, Tom, remember that I'm not an attorney. So, I've never litigated anything in a tax court. I'm also not an enrolled agent nor am I a certified public accountant. So, I am technically completely unqualified to answer the question according to the IRS.

So, don't take your tax advice from me. But I would say absolutely not. There's not a chance. And let me explain why. Now, in the tax world, one of the things you mentioned at the beginning of your call, you said, "Would this be illegal?" To the best of my knowledge, and please, if you know differently, come correct me in the comments.

To the best of my knowledge, there are very few things that are illegal, so to speak, for the IRS. But in the sense that we usually think about illegal, it's tough to get the IRS to throw you in jail for doing something like this. But it will be disallowed.

And if you are audited and if this is found as this transaction, it will be disallowed and you will be paying the tax and you may be paying a tax plus a penalty. And the penalty will vary from just a straight interest to an actual significant penalty. But there's not a chance in the world that this is going to fly.

Theoretically, you could still do it. And if you win the lottery, so to speak, about not being audited, then you're in good shape. And so theoretically, you could still do it and just kind of play your chances and then, hey, they come and do it. But let me explain to you why this won't fly.

I would never do this transaction. It's definitely not something that is going to work. Here's why. Go back and listen to episodes 36 and 41 and pay special attention to the IRS doctrines. This one, just off the top of my head, violates the Step Transaction Doctrine and the Substance Over Form Doctrine.

And then worse, also included, is that this is a transaction with related parties and this is a red flag. Now, let me explain what those are. Fundamentally, the Step Transaction Doctrine – and I'll put a link to a Wikipedia article in today's show notes. But the Step Transaction Doctrine, according to Wikipedia, says that interrelated yet formally distinct steps in an integrated transaction may not be considered independently of the overall transaction.

By thus linking together all interdependent steps with legal or business significance, rather than taking them in isolation, federal tax liability may be based on a realistic view of the entire transaction. That's all we need to know right now. There are some tests that are applied. There's a binding commitment test, a mutual interdependence test, and the intent of the result.

But you can read those on Wikipedia. In essence, if you have structured a transaction, which is what you've done, you've arranged a sale to the educational savings account. Then the educational savings account has arranged a sale to somebody else. That's not going to work because they're saying this is all one transaction.

So what you're actually doing is you're actually conducting this – it just doesn't work. It's all one thing. It's all collapsed together, and you did the whole thing just for tax planning, which is the second doctrine this violates, which would be substance over form. And so the substance over form doctrine is basically saying that if a transaction has no substantial business purpose other than simply avoiding or reducing tax, the tax law will not regard the transaction.

That's the key. So essentially, according to Wikipedia here – I'll just quote them – "A taxpayer is bound by the economic substance of a transaction, where the economic substance varies from its legal form." So although in legal form what you just said could work, the whole thing was being done as a tax mechanism, and so therefore it's completely – they're going to look at what actually happened, not what technically happened.

I want to read one paragraph here from the Wikipedia article. They're talking about the Supreme Court case in which this was litigated, which was Gregory v. Helvering from 1935. And it was a United States Supreme Court case on U.S. income tax law. And I'm going to skip the details, although the details of the case are interesting to you, and just read the final paragraph here of the entry.

"In these circumstances, the facts speak for themselves and are susceptible of what but one interpretation. The whole undertaking, though conducted according to the terms of the statute, was in fact an elaborate and devious form of conveyance, masquerading as a corporate reorganization and nothing else. The transaction upon its face lies outside the plain intent of the statute.

To hold others would be to exalt artifice above reality and to deprive the statutory provision in question of all serious purpose." So in essence what you've done is exactly that. In your scenario, the whole undertaking, though conducted technically according to the rules, was in fact an elaborate and devious form of transitioning property through the account in order to save on taxes.

So there's no chance that it would work – it would completely violate the substance over form doctrine. Finally, any time you are dealing with the IRS, you have to focus on what is an independent market value and what is an independent – what is the open market, basically. There are various issues that you could look at, but there are a lot of issues, especially with real estate, in related party transactions.

So for example, if you're doing a 1031 like-kind exchange of real estate property among related parties, major problem because it used to be abused doing exactly what – not exactly what you said. The law was changed in 1989 because of abuse of basically a practice of – I go way too deep on this stuff sometimes.

I've got to learn how to simplify. It was doing basis shifting where they were shifting the basis of properties from one property to the next among related parties. So the law is changed. And so anytime something is done with related parties, this raises a red flag. This is why you – the same exact reason that you can't hire your 8-year-old son to work for you on Saturday mornings emptying the trash cans in your office and pay him $1,000 for his two hours of work emptying trash cans.

That would not be deductible on your business tax records as an employment cost for – cost for an employee simply because the whole thing is a sham. That's not what an open market value – open market normal standard value would be. So that would be the third – I don't know if there's a name for that as a doctrine.

But basically the IRS always will apply what would an unrelated party – what is an open market unrelated party transaction? What are the features of that and does this conform to what that would look like doing this with an independent stranger? So those are the reasons why this wouldn't fly.

And so there's not a chance of any kind that that would work. So I like your creativity, but there's the reason why it won't work. There are options, and so you could theoretically – I mean I could theoretically design a scenario that something like that would work. But if you had – let's say that – I'm going to get out on thin ice here making this stuff up.

So off the top of my head I would say – let's say the property burned down and at that point in time you wanted to transition it using the same – remember that burned down example I gave in the Covered LESA show? Let's say that your $100,000 property burned down and it was actually worth – there's no way it would be worth $2,000 because of the value of the land.

Let's say it was worth 10 and you had 10 in the account. So now it's only worth $10,000. What I would do if I wanted to do that is go and put it on the open market and get some bids. So it's establish a paper trail of value and then go ahead and sell it to the ESA.

You've got to establish a paper trail. You've got to establish some comparative paperwork that's going to illustrate the value so that when you get audited you could say, "Look, I went. I put it on the market. I got these offers and this was the best offer," or "This was a relevant offer in some way." And then by putting it – then I would transfer it into the account and then at least that would accomplish the first transfer I guess if you could sell it out somehow.

So it's not that you can't do something and take advantage of the taxes. One of the things we always try to do is if you're going to transfer – in estate planning, if you're going to transfer assets out of your estate for the purposes of avoiding transfer taxes, you want to do it when asset values are low.

So if I'm going to give my son shares in a new business that I've started because I want him to be an owner of it and let's say that the market value of – let's just say it's a publicly traded company. The market value has declined by 35 percent.

That's the time when I want to give it to my son. So then I go ahead and transfer the shares and then the market value comes back next year. Well, I've gotten all of that appreciation out of my estate and I've gotten it into him. They transferred the ownership.

So anytime there is a change in market values, a dramatic change in market values, that's the time – there are often planning opportunities in that scenario. Nothing wrong with taking advantage of those but you cannot do what you said and expect it to go. So that's it. That's it for the questions.

I'm going to play real quick one last comment on the way out here from Derek and let's play this as I go as a comment on the show. Hey, Joshua. How are you doing? It's Derek from New Brunswick, Canada, and I am one of your irregulars. Thank you for providing the membership.

I just wanted to send a quick comment regarding your concern about receiving one-time payments. I would do that if I were you. That's my suggestion. And the reason I say that is because you do provide good quality content. There are some of us that are regular listeners and want to continue listening on a regular basis and therefore are happy to support you on a monthly or annual membership basis.

However, you're going to find that there's going to be people that will find specific episodes that they find value in and will want to support or thank you for the content that you've provided. And my suggestion is to put a link at the end of each day's show notes.

I would go so far as to go back through your history and then add the same link to all of your hundred-plus episodes. But going forward anyway, I would add a link at the end of the show notes saying, "If you have received value and would like to support the Radical Personal Finance, you can do so here." And provide them a link to a page which would allow them to make some form of one-time donation.

Some may receive value and say, "Yes, I'm going to provide Joshua with $1. Thank you for your time." But you'll probably find others that are perhaps more well-off or your advice has provided them some real solid value in which they actually have saved perhaps hundreds of dollars and may feel more inclined to provide a larger one-time donation for your help, such as $25 or perhaps even $100 for the advice that you've provided them.

So don't feel you're taking charity. You are providing great content, and I would consider adding that one-time payment. You will still have your membership program. Us irregulars will continue to support. And as you mentioned, you do want to provide some additional content and material, and I think that will also help drive membership and benefit.

But do not deny yourself with the one-time payments because many people will want to provide thanks for your good content. Anyway, keep up the great work. We will keep listening. Thanks again. See you. So, I'll play the music so you know we're done for the day. But, Derek, thank you so much for the comment, and I just want to let you guys hear that.

Thank you for those of you who have sent me emails with great ideas about how to structure the business and the value and all of that. I'm totally new to this space, and I'm not ignorant in it. I do research stuff. I didn't just fly into this blind. And so I did look around and look at what other people were doing.

But the key for me in kind of figuring this out is I don't like some of the stuff that other people are doing, but yet there is value in it. So I'm kind of figuring it out as I go. And it's going to be one of the things that I'll – why I'm going to start that other show is partly to help me figure it out better, but also to share some of what I've been learning just along the way as a resource for some of you who – some of you who are interested in learning about it without the, you know, come and buy my stuff and I'll teach you how to get rich online.

Just as a resource. So I think I will do that, Derek, and I appreciate that. I'm also probably going to go ahead and set up the Patreon profile, which allows people to pay directly for the content. I'm figuring it out. So the reason I played that for you all, it was good feedback for me.

It was just simply so that you all could hear it, and I wanted to ask you for feedback. So if you have things that you like, ideas I've said, or you agree with Derek, whether or not they're on this issue or not, I wanted to let you know that I just really value that feedback.

I read every email. You can always email me, Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I read every email. I read every review. I read all of the feedback, and that really helps me to tailor things. So I've asked for a couple of bits of feedback today on that Friday Q&A show idea and also on some of this stuff.

I love hearing from you guys. Thank you all for the great questions. That cleared out most of my list. I had a couple that I wasn't able to get done today, but I've got room. So call in the questions. I prefer you do that as a voicemail, so do it as a voicemail if you would.

But I do like it's easier to get more numbers into an email, and I'm happy to do those as well. Have a great weekend, everybody. Talk to you soon. Make sure to subscribe. By the way, there's a new app coming, so with the new app, you'll be able to subscribe on any platform.

I've been working on that, so thanks so much. Thank you for listening to today's show. This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. Your situation is unique, and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you. This show is not and is not intended to be any form of financial advice.

Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy. And consult them, because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions. Hold them accountable for your results. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person, and I make mistakes.

If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment, so we can all learn together. Until tomorrow, thanks for being here. Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th, for an unforgettable Kids Day, presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits.

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