Financial Advisor Secrets Nobody Tells You

You know, one thing that we've learned through the years is having a great advisor is great for a lot of reasons, but having the wrong advisor could cost you literally millions of dollars. And the ironic thing is you would probably never even know that it cost you the millions of dollars. You know, most CPAs and advisors are, are well meaning. I, I truly believe they, they have your, your best interest at heart. But the problem is their training, maybe even the focus of their business or how they get paid keeps them from recommending Roth conversions. Sometimes it's just the firm that they work for, won't for, won't allow them to do that. When you think about CPAs, they serve a vital purpose in our life, but they're really, their focus is really on reducing this year's tax bill and maybe helping us with the next. Most financial advisors often earn fees based on the amount of assets under management or through selling financial products. So giving you advice that says, go sell these assets, pay the tax on them. This doesn't often hit their radar if they just don't think about it. I wanted to just kind of share a few basic points with you. You know, number one, the reason that most CPAs miss it is that they're, they're rewarded for reducing this year's tax bill, not your lifetime tax. It's hard for them to even imagine that it's better for you to pay at a higher bracket a lot sooner. That's just, just not what they've done in the past. And until we present CPAs with the planning that we've done for their clients, then all of a sudden they always change their tune and it's normally a big aha moment. In fact, my own CPA is the same thing. She kept recommending large contributions to retirement plans to help me save some tax. When I showed her the math and had her read the book, my most recent book, she was like, oh man, I even feel bad even recommending 401k plans now to clients. Why don't most financial advisors recommend Roth conversions? I already said to, to a large degree, let's assume that they really have, they really want to help you. But at the end of the day, their paycheck depends on assets under management under a traditional role. And, and even if you've been their client for 25 years and you know they have your best interest at heart, you know, when you start looking at, they start recommending roth conversions for one client and that's, that could be 20 clients that need to do Roth conversions and all of a Sudden millions and millions of dollars go away over the next few years to pay taxes. But I think the bigger reason trul only been lately that Roth conversions have come about. And so there's very little training, there's no continuing education on the subject that is meaningful. The software that financial advisors use is greatly flawed compared to what we've discovered and developed that actually comes up with the right answer. And so it's really difficult for them to recommend it. Sometimes they just can't recommend it because their compliance attorneys feel like they're, you know, doing something that they shouldn't be doing. And we don't believe that's the case at all. If you have an advisor that you trust in other areas or you have somebody that is maybe advertising and you're going to their webinars and they're talking to you about these smoke and mirror annuity schemes and purchasing products, maybe there's nothing wrong with those. But a couple of questions to ask. How do they get paid? If they get paid when they implement a financial product, then you can bet on the fact that it's like it's going to become the main tool in their toolbox. And you know, when the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. Maybe you don't have a nail, you know, maybe yours is something else. Another question is, you know, if they claim to do Roth conversions, do they model multi year outcomes? Do they look at every single tax bracket? Do they have the flexibility to get out of the tax bracket world and look at other things? Do they consider large charitable contributions for you? Do they consider the fact that you're going to have standard deductions to use over your lifetime, that you don't have to convert everything? But the bigger question is how often do they do this? How often do they do the calculations? What's their track record? What's their experience? How many people have they helped with strategic Roth conversions and what's been the outcome of what they've done with those folks? If they are telling you you should never convert above your tax bracket, then they're wrong. If you're an IRA millionaire, if they tell you that you should wait until your income is lower and that's what the dependent is, then if you're an IRA millionaire, you're just wrong. And that's not my opinion. That's what the math has said to us for 1500 clients and billions and billions of dollars of tax avoidance that we've done. So find advisors that don't have any conflicts of interest. Many will their fiduciaries. But that's not good enough. If they're fiduciaries, they still can sell you products and manage your assets. And that builds in an automatic potential conflict of interest. But find people who specialize in Roth conversions. So let me wrap this up for you and just say, look, this Rothology requires advisors who truly get it. And if yours doesn't, then find one that does.