Ep 333 - 10 End of Year Preparation Tips

Hey, everybody. Flip and Danny here, founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies. And welcome to another episode of our.

Podcast, which is called Freedom through Passive Income.

That's right, and welcome to another episode. And this episode is entitled the 10 end of year preparation tips.

Yeah, it's the end of 2022. We are in our final stretch of our episodes here for you guys. And so we thought we'd talk to you about things that we're thinking about ourselves. And so the very first one we're going to talk about here is take care of you first. That's been something that we've talked about very recently on multiple podcasts about how important it is for your health and your mindset that you're always taking care of you before you're taking care of everybody else. Because the better you are in terms of health and mindset and meeting your personal, the better you're going to be able to serve your team. So end of your preparation tips. It's going to be a lot of stuff to get organized. So first, start off with you.

That's right. Another preparation tip is get organized. And this is everything where you work and all of your records and files. Hire a VA to help VAs. If you've never hired a VA again, that's that. We just talked about fear and failure. You don't know if you don't try with hiring a va. I remember when we hired our first va, I'm like, what is this gonna do? They're across the country, across the world. You know, how are they gonna help me? And now half of our company, if not more than half of our company, is vas, and they're amazing. And so it's a great way to help and being organized. Just even your desk in your office, when you walk in, if it's not organized and it's just a pile of just papers everywhere and there's stuff thrown all over the place. Kind of sounds like my office.

I didn't say it.

But I do organize my desk once every once a year.

I think when I walk in there.

And go, ah, yeah, we're getting close to 20, 23. So I got one more. There we go. But it helps you. It helps your mindset. A clean space. It makes the. I can work better here. I don't see the mess. I don't know what you're talking about.

All right, number three is create a process for tracking transactions. We personally use QuickBooks. It's a very great tool. Our financials associate in our company actually has everything she learned from our CFO exactly how to track them. So you're going to want to talk to your accountant about how you should be tracking them personally and professionally so that you can just keep everything organized. And at the end of the year when it's time to meet with your tax preparer or tax strategist, then you've got everything ready to show them so that you can discuss some other items that we'll talk about towards the end of this list.

All right, number four, have a resource for sharing important paperwork verifile. Then another new one we just started using is called box.

Yep.

So this is a way that you can share very important documents so you're not just putting them on Google Drive and say, here, this is safe. But make sure you have a resource for sharing all of these files because you don't want to. We talked about this earlier in this year. I think this was probably last spring. Just in case anything happens, happens. You'd never promised tomorrow. You want to make sure that what you're leaving for your family or for your loved ones, if you were to leave this earth, leave it in a way that they're not going.

Ah, yes, exactly right. All right, number five is keep everything you do simple. This is something that we talk about a lot as well. Complex issues usually cause confusion and a confused mind says, no, that's right. So everything that you can do, if you can say, okay, I understand that, but it's not very simple. Well, then think about how can you make the process easier and keep on doing that until it's so easy that it's just something that you don't even think twice about. You're like, okay, this is simple. I can do it. As opposed to maybe a 20 step process that involves multiple things that you're just so overwhelmed by, you don't actually do it. So keep everything simple.

I love simple.

Yes, me too.

Number six is leverage technology. And not only leverage technology, but learn new technology. Because, I mean, every day there's something new. And so I just recently got a magazine and I'm flipping through the magazine, I'm like, oh, I can do that now. Are you kidding me? I was like, oh, my gosh. So it's not only leveraging technology, but make sure you're learning technology because it's going to help out, especially with the organizing.

Yes, 100%. Number seven, have a weekly appointment to work on finances. This is something that we talked about in our how to talk to your spouse about money and finances. Common ground was meet every single week and talk about where you're at and did everything line up with what you previously talked about and are you still in agreement and is it working or is there a hiccup that you need to talk about? Doing that on a weekly basis again reduces overwhelm and keeps it simple because you know, it's just something. It's appointment on your calendar and it should be an appointment on your calendar that you don't miss. Just like, you know, a professional appointment that you would not miss. This is the exact same thing. If you don't treat it like that, you're going to end up at the end of the year suddenly having to do all of your finances and you just don't rem everything at that point in time.

What did I buy in January?

That's right.

Yeah. Not that I've ever had to say that before. I don't know what you've done about it. Number nine.

Number eight.

Sorry, number eight. Jeez, I'm just trying to get down to this. Number eight, have a designated storage for your paper records. And not only have a designated storage for your records, but also have a plan for your records so you're not looking in a box and go, oh, there's my tax returns from 1984. So you know that it gets to a certain point where yes, you can get rid of those paper documents. I mean, granted, they're all probably digitized anywhere somewhere, but so you have a plan and have a designated storage for them.

That's right. And number nine, this one's mine.

Yes. I'll let you do number nine. Okay.

Meet with an attorney and accountant for record keeping requirements. So there are certain requirements, depending on how you've got everything structured that you have to do every single year, every single quarter. We actually have somebody who reaches out to us once a quarter and says, hey, have you done this, this, this and this and this, this? And if we have not done it at that point in time, it's our opportunity to. So if you don't know what those things are, you want to meet with your attorney, accountant and make sure that you do have a list of what those are and try to do something simple like setting a time on your calendar that says, hey, here's the things that I need to do.

And then I'll do number 10.

Yeah, I'll let you do number 10.

Have a year end call with your tax professional, attorney and financial planner. And it's not only a year end call, it's not for the year previous, it's for the year coming up to really get everything planned and make sure that what you did this last year is all good. And now we're ready to fly into 2023 and are there any changes? So it's a great call to get everybody all on the same page because when you're dealing with tax professionals and then also attorneys and then also financial planners, it's three people that are very important to everything you're doing and they all three need to have all of those things in order before going into the first of the year.

Yeah. And it's really great if you can get them all on one call. It's not always possible, but they all have different skill sets and everything that each person does on that team is important and relevant to the other people to know and understand and be to provide the best advice that they can have for you. And it's also a way to spend your money wisely at the end of the year for reducing your tax burden. So if you haven't met with your tax strategist yet, I would call them and say, hey, this is what has gone on this year. I've got a little bit less than a month to spend any money necessary to maybe get another tax write off. So get that advice now because once we go into the new year, well, it's all done.

Yeah. At that point. Well, awesome. Well, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you're heading on over to our website, freedomcapitalinvestments.com to join our investor club. Make sure you're talking to Ben and or CJ to find out about all the stuff that's going on right now. We got a lot of stuff going on to end the year and we also have a lot of stuff going on in 2023 already. Yes, that's exciting, but we like to end all of our episodes with Invest Smart, Live Happy by everybody. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions and information on the show are not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit and loss.

Sam.