Do This To Become DEBT-FREE And EXPLODE Your IRA

Today it is 2024. And I know it's tough out there. The economy is brutal. Many of us probably spent way too much during the holidays, maybe ate too much, drank too much. It is time to get our house in order. And I'm not kidding, it is. It's lean and mean out there. It's tough. I want to share some principles today. They're going to help you feel more financially secure, stronger financially and set the stage for an incredible 2024. And it has, it can be baby steps. We're not going to try to reinvent our entire life. We're going to turn, we're not going to turn everything upside down. I want to help you get out of debt as fast as possible and start saving to get to that million dollar Roth IRA as fast as possible. And people is so doable. It truly is. Now, my name is Mark Kohler. I'm a CPA attorney, best selling author, podcaster, author. Did I say that already? Whatever. I'm out there. I'm on Main Street America, freaking Wall street spit on. I want to help you guys on Main Street America. Help build your little side hustle, help you save a little more money, help you cover those bills that are just burying you and you feel like you're drowning. I know it's tough. I've been there. I'm. I mean, we're all there. It doesn't matter how many zeros are behind your monthly income. There's a lot of zeros behind our expenses too. And it can be tough. So, so I want to take your questions. I want to try to help give you some actionable items. I'm going to give you some free content here via email. I'll give you who to email where when me. You're going to email me. I'll give you some subject lines to put in there and I want to send you some usable content. So please don't go anywhere. And if you find this video helpful, please share it with your friends and family because we're all in this together. The American dream is real, but it takes a little bit of work and we got to be active at it. And it doesn't matter if you're a full time worker with no side hustle or you got a full time hustle and no day job. There's everybody in between and there's a plan for you. Now first, let's talk about getting out of debt. Now an important concept here is there's productive debt and reductive debt. Now this is where Dave Ramsey and I Part ways a little bit. And you know what, God bless him. He has changed the lives of millions of Americans. Helping him get out of reductive debt, which is bad debt. Credit cards, student loans, car loans, maybe even a home loan. A debt that doesn't make us money. We don't want debt that doesn't build our wealth. We can get into debt because of an emergency. We can get into debt because we got to pay off other stuff and we consolidate and all of a sudden we're down a rabbit hole and it's hard to see the light. So that is the debt we want to get rid of. But you want to buy a rental property, do you want to get a business loan? Do you want to get debt that can make you money? And I think debt to buy a home so you're not paying some landlord is not a bad thing. And then we want to pay down that home debt as fast as we can. That's productive debt to me. So I don't want you to think the sky is falling if you have some sort of debt. We got to analyze it. That's step one. Now step two, do not cut up your credit cards in this process. We want to pay off credit cards as quickly as possible and then use them for maybe $50 every couple months. Pay them off now some. You may have the self control to use those credit cards more regularly and pay them off at the end of every month and build points. I love freaking building points. Taking advantage of the credit card companies and turning it on them. Points are tax free. So if I can turn in points and travel and all that, don't get me started. I love it. But also when we're in the hole of debt, it's a loaded gun. We don't want to play with it too much until we get it really under control. So I would recommend to any of you that have credit card debt that you're struggling with, let's get out of debt, not cut up the credit cards. Because when you get a debt, guess what's going to happen to your credit score and your credit score is going to rock it. And we want a good credit score because we want a buy assets that make us money. We want to buy rental property in a better home and maybe get an SBA loan and start a business and all these other things that require a credit score. Having a credit score is not a bad thing. Having a credit card is not a bad thing. We just got to use it wisely. So let's analyze our debt. What debt do we need to get out of. Let's not cut up the credit cards. Let's have a pragmatic approach and then we're going to implement the debt snowball. Now, some of you have heard this term thrown around so many different financial advisors around the country. Even Dave Ramsey, of course himself teaches the debt snowball. It's super simple. And this is good review for all of you. I had to review the debt snowball equation myself before we started this live because it can seem a little odd. You know, don't I want to pay off my credit cards that have the highest payment? Don't I want to pay off the credit cards that have the highest interest rate? Well, the answer to both of those is no. In the traditional debt snowball, which I am a firm believer in, once you find that reductive debt that we're going to get out of as fast as possible, and I wouldn't start with your home loan on that or maybe even a fat car loan. Let's get rid of the credit card debt first. Because where we're going today is I want to get out of debt first. Then we're going to take that money we've been throwing at debt. Oh, and we're going to ramp up that Roth ira. We're going to ramp up our savings. Because the wealthy at age 40, 50, 60 years old, they're living on tax free money. The smart ones are. They've done it. They built that nut. They're growing it. And I want you guys growing it. And the younger you start doing it, the better. And for those of you that are listening to this, that might be 40, 50 or 60 years old, it's never too late to get started. You can always get started. And I'm not going anywhere with my weekly podcasts, my articles, my workshops, my blog articles. I'll be there for you. I'm going to continue to work my retirement account and my wealth and retire in real estate and investments just like you are. So we're all in this together again. Now. That's where we're going. Okay, so you got your reductive crappy debt. So what you're going to do is make a list. What's all this debt? And you're going to list it from the highest debt amount to the lowest debt amount on a spreadsheet. Now, spoiler alert. I'm going to give you the the link here or the procedure to get a free debt snowball video where I go through this in detail and a spreadsheet already built for you. So you can plug it right in, does the math for you. It's free. I have a weekly newsletter. That's all I ask, is start following. Start drinking my Kool Aid, man, because I'm going to make you rich. All right, so what we do is we list out those debts, high to low, and then we're going to tackle the smallest debt first. I don't care about interest rates. I don't care about minimum payments. I care about the lowest, the, the least debt, the lowest balance debt first. And then what we're going to do is make minimum payments on all the ones above it. And then the, the smallest debt, we're going to make a commitment. We're going to say, you know what? I could do $50 a week. I could do $200 a month. Towards that, you're going to pay yourself. You're going to make an investment in yourself. And we're going to talk about where to get this money here in a moment, too. There's a bridge between getting out of debt and making a million dollars in your retirement account. And we're not talking Wall Street. You can invest this money wherever the freak you want. So don't think when I say IRA or 401k, I mean Wall street crap. You may want ETFs and mutual funds, we can go there, but it's bigger than that, so a lot of options. Okay, so we're going to get there. So you're going to commit maybe 100 a week. That could be $500 a month. You, some of you may go, mark, I don't have $500 a month. I'll tell you where it's at. You got it? I'll show you. But it can even be as low as $50 a week, 200amonth. So what you're going to do is make your minimum payments on all those debts above that small1, add $200 to the equation, bare minimum to that last minimum payment, and you're going to double down. Let's say that minimum payment is $50 on that smallest debt. Now we're going to make a $250 payment. You might pay that debt off in three months. Maybe it's a $750, little crappy Visa. It could be a Macy's A card, it could be a Home Depot card, I don't know, some little crappy credit card you picked up along the way. That could be the lowest one. It may take you six months. So you're plowing $250 every month for six months at that debt and the minute it pays off, you celebrate maybe a little Taco Bell night, something simple. I don't want to get crazy. You're going to go out and celebrate and go, I paid off the freaking credit card. And then you're going to take that $250 and combine it with the next debt up. The next debt up there might have a minimum payment of $75. You now you're throwing 325 at that debt, the 250 plus the 75 because you've been making minimum payments along the way. So you got the 325 blowing down that second debt. Then all of a sudden, six months later, four months later, eight months later, that one's gone. You celebrate maybe a little Red Lobster, maybe a little, you know, Olive Garden. Let's get out there. I love those breadsticks. Get out there. And maybe it's because it's January and I'm not eating carbs. So I'm thinking, oh, Olive Garden breadsticks. But you're going to take that extra payment and apply it to the next debt and then the next debt and then all of a sudden you start feeling confident, you're feeling proud, you're feeling positive and boom. Most debt snowballs create complete debt free and less than two to two and a half years. Many times 18 months, sometimes like three years. We've seen incredible stories and this, this is where I'd love again. Last plug I'm going to say is Dave Ramsey's debt free days. And people celebrating on going, I'm debt free. Now that may not mean your home loan. That's okay, I want you out of debt. Of all their crappy reductive debt. That could be that student debt hanging over you as well. Now here's the transition. Let's say you, by the time you're on your last debt, you're like holy crap, Mark. I've been throwing three, three grand, two grand, fifteen hundred a month at all this stuff. Woo. Now I got $1,500. I'm going to go get that BMW lease I've been looking for. Whoops. Slow down tiger. We are not going to go get a new lease on a luxury vehicle. We're going to take that fifteen hundred dollars and shift. You've been living frugal, you've been getting out of debt and now you're going to live like the millionaire next door because you're going to take that fifteen hundred dollars and shift it over to plowing it into investments. Investments in Maybe buying your first home investments into building a business, but at least $500 a month into that little retirement account called a Roth ira. That Roth IRA could buy crypto. Boy, crypto's rolling this week. I'm loving it. You could be buying real estate, you could buy gold, silver, you could buy stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, it's all available. I've been teaching self directing your retirement account for years. So don't think it just means open up a Schwab account and buying something you totally don't even know what it is. So you're going to take that extra money that you've been doing and using to pay off debt and just start plowing it into investing. Now I was doing some math here right before we started, and if you take that $500, $500 a month from what you were using to pay off debt, now I've got another way to find that $500. We're going to come to it here in one minute. Then I want to answer your questions and we can talk tax wealth building, legal, setting up entities, suing your brother in law, whatever you want. I'm a tax lawyer. I got you. But this fundamental principle is what's going to set you free. So that $500 a month, if you're anywhere between age 25 and 30, by age 60, you're going to have over a million dollars tax free. Set it on autopilot. You know, it's funny, Jack, my director here, I was walking down the hall, he's like, you got to go live. And I was, you know what? I was looking at my acorns. My little acorns. I love acorns. Acorns is an app that, and we ought to put an acorns link in there too for people to sign up for acorns. I'll send that over to you right now. I love acorns. I'm full, transparent. I got my acorns. I just put $50 a week in my invest and $50 a week in my later. And right now, over the last year, I've built up $11,394. I don't mind saying that that's why I'm little, my, my little acorns that, you know, you're like a squirrel putting away acorns. Do you get it? It's kind of cool. Okay, so you're going to use your acorns to build some wealth and just track your income and go there. Jack, I'm sending this over to you now. Here's the link. Pop that link into our chat and when you sign up for Acorns, you get to set that amount you're going to put away. And it could be out of sight, out of mind. You can round up to the nearest dollar when you're at 711 or Circle K, go to Walgreens, go to Walmart. You round up to a dollar, it goes into your retirement account and you don't even see it. About $40 a month goes into my acorns. Just rounding up. So you're putting away a fixed amount, maybe $25 a week. Boom. And you're getting started. People, you don't have to be rich initially to get rich. Everybody that's rich didn't start out rich. They got there over time. And so as you pay off that debt, we're going to reallocate that money to building our IRA, to building a Roth and just $500 a month. 30 years from now you'll have over a million dollars. And you hear all the experts talk about this all the time. People don't worry about these influences that are talking about being a billionaire. And you're going to have $10 million. And you people, it's so out of touch for me too. I'm not one of those types. I'm about slow and steady wins the race. I'm not the rabbit running around with their heads cut off. I'm just the turtle plugging along on the path, doing the basics every week. And I love my little Acorns app. Just go in there, boom, boom, boom, putting money away. Now where could you find another 500 bucks? Maybe some of you are like, Mark, I'm not in debt, but I don't have 500 bucks. Let me give you some kick ass stats here. You know, 45% of working Americans, this is over 50 million Americans have a side hustle. I have multiple sources of income. I could very well fall into that category. I because I've got multiple sources of income, I'd say I got side hustles, I might have two or three. Over 20% of those have with a side hustle make over $1,000 a month. The average time spent in a side hustle in America of this group that I'm talking about five to 10 hours a week, that could be one day out of the week. On the weekend it could be one to two hours a day at most. The average side hustle income is $688 a month. Now give us some numbers. What are these side hustles? It could be uber doordash, selling a product online, doing Turo with your car, renting out your car on the weekends, thumbtack, being an affiliate, Etsy Rover. What were some of the others, guys? I mean, all sorts of good stuff. I mean, you could be making money on upwork, Etsy, get out there and sell a product online. Sell. What was the average income on Etsy? What you're saying, almost all of them are $20, 20 to $30 an hour on almost all these. And if you do the math, one hour a day gives you 500amonth. Now for those of you that start to get a little more creative and you start selling products, ebooks, creating a little digital product, and you're out there learning how to do this. This is where the real money's at. Because you're making money while you're sleeping. Now what are we gonna do with that money? Are we gonna go out and buy a bigger house? Get a Range Rover, Go get a Beamer? No, we're gonna plow it into savings. We're gonna save money before we spend it. And people, all of a sudden, you get addicted to getting rich. And getting addicted to being rich is freaking fun. It's awesome. And it's doing the little things. I'm not out here telling you to go out and start a new business and invest 50 grand. By the way, there's no boot camp of mine. I'm selling for 10 grand in Vegas. I don't want you do not give me any money today. I do not want any money. I want you following learning, drinking the Kool Aid, getting on your American dream path. Let's make 2024 freaking awesome. The American dream is real for Main Street America. And that's you and me. We don't have to be uber rich. We can be comfortable. So let's get out of debt. Let's analyze our balance sheet. What does our debt look like? The good debt and the bad debt. Let's not cut up our credit cards. Let's build our credit. Let's build a debt snowball. Start getting out of debt of the crappy debt we don't need. Then reallocate that money we're spending on debt to saving and investing. Final key to this equation, keep learning. Keep learning. Get some good podcasts you love. I'd love you to listen my podcast, Main Street Business Podcast. We're talking about Main street business. I would love all of you have a side hustle that freaking changes your life and the next generation's life in your family. Leave a legacy so, so, so powerful. So that's it? There's no, there's no magic sauce here, no secret sauce that just. There's no easy button. I wish there was. I love staples. I wish. I love that easy button. But it just doesn't happen overnight. We got to do these little things just over and over and over again and make it a habit. Super cool. Alright, now I want to start taking your questions about building your side hustle, making your side hustle more effective. Trying to get out of debt, trying to save. What can I invest in? What crypto do I love? How do I use my eight course? You want to talk about the NBA right now? Ooh, we got the NFL playoffs. I'll tell you, you know, I'm worth about nothing. My advice on that, I go listen to Stephen A. Smith on espn. But let's just talk here. I'm here for you. You got a tax lawyer at your beck and call. So Brianna and my studio, give me some questions. Give me something good. What do you got?

Okay, so K. Demers asks that or basically says an H and R Block. CPA told me that if I have an LLC that I can't get my rental income as passive. Llp. Sorry.

Can't get my rental income as passive. Did everybody hear you? You're good. So that can't get my rental income as passive. Okay, wow. All right, first of all, not calling out H and R Block. They do a great job. You know, they have thousands of employees around the country. Some employee might be a little rogue at times. Let me give everybody a great recommendation here. Do not own a rental property in an LLP or an lp. That's part of the problem. People. We've set up last year over over 8,000 entities around the country in our law firm. I got a great law firm. We'll put our link down below. You want to use it, that's cool. We're cheaper than half of the influencers out there selling their crap at a in some sort of sweatshop in Nevada. We're a real law firm getting on a zoom call, helping you set up an entity affordably. Oftentimes our paralegal setup is cheaper than legal. Zoom. So I know what I'm talking about here. That's what I want to say. We. I don't. I can't remember the last time we set up an lp which is called a limited partnership or a limited liability partnership. Llp to hold rental property, go with an llc. Limited liability company. Now, the person that asks this question May go, oh, that's what the H and R block said. I can't get passive income out of an llc. Wrong. And I've written articles on that and I'm a real lawyer and a real cpa and they're wrong. An LLC is perfect for rental property. And it doesn't mean you run out to Wyoming, Nevada or Delaware to set up your llc. Set up the LLC where the rental property is located, set up a bank account for your llc, make sure the LLC is on title, make sure the LLC is on the lease agreement, collect the rent, pay the bills. That income is passive. And by the way, 90% of LLCs with rentals generate losses because of the big D. And I don't mean Dallas depreciation. So that rental property is going to help you on your tax return. So get out there, use the LLC and for that question, get a second opinion, call my law firm, get out of that LP LLP right away, and let's get you into the right structure. It's not that the LOP won't give you losses or passive income. They're just there's so many other problems. It's. They're just not workable for that. Don't do it. Don't go there. And it creates liability because in a limited partnership, someone's got to be a general partner. So you're now you're the general partner of your limited partnership. Guess who's liable for anything at the rental? The general partner. That's you. What the LLP do for you? Nothing is why I go to law school and why the guy at agent or block did it. All right, Sorry. Was that rude? That was kind of rude. I'm going hard. I'm going hard today. All right, I had another comment here. I want to give you another tip. I love Waverly. How many of you have an RV sitting on the side of your house doing jack? How many? You have a piece of crap RV that if you just polish it up a little bit, you could rent it out for a couple hundred dollars a night. People. I love Waverly. If you have an RV sitting on the side of your house, you could be making well over a couple thousand a month getting that thing out and getting used and you use it when you want. The tax write offs are insane. Turo. I love Turo. We've talked about this in our office a ton. If you've got a car that you don't use on the weekends, pop it into Turo, rent it out for $100 a day, doom. You just made an extra $200 a week times four. That's $800 a month that you could be using towards the car payment. Getting out of debt and then saving. Love, Turo. Love. Waverly. Put your assets to work, not your ass. Sorry, can I say that? Racy. Okay, what do you got, Brianne?

Okay, so we're tied on time, but I have a couple questions for you. Bucks03 fan. Can I trade in a solo Roth IRA?

Yes, trade buzz. 1385. Whatever. Bless your heart. I love that handle. There's no such thing as a Solo Roth IRA. You might be talking about a Solo 401k Roth. You might be talking about a Roth IRA. Here's the good answer. Yes, you can trade all you want in either one. So let me tell you the structure. Typically, folks, if you want to just trade ETFs, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, just go open up a Schwab Roth Schwab Roth ira. Do it tomorrow. Easy, Schmidt. You can do it tonight on your phone. If you have a small business, you can put in four times as much money and fund a solo 401k. Now, we set those up at our law firm for under a thousand bucks. You meet with a real lawyer, you get your own Solo 401k, you control the bank account. Now you can go open that Schwab account under the Solo 401k, and you're trading away four times as much money. That's cool. Now, if you want to go buy crypto, you want to buy real estate, you want to buy gold and silver, you want to do notes, invest in your brother in law's landscaping business, you need to self direct that IRA. That solo 401k. Both could be Roth. Whatever. Get to directed ira.com. directed ira.com allows you to take that old 401k from that job you hated, roll that 401k out into a Roth IRA and self direct it. And invest in what you know best. That's the real power. I have a whole podcast on that every week. The Directed IRA Podcast. You'll freaking love it. That'll be down in the notes, too. Next question.

Brianne B. Wallace. I have a roth max out 8k at 54 years old. How can he add, slash contribute more?

Okay, first name again. B.

It's just B. Wallace.

Just B. Wallace, everybody. I want to repeat that. B. Wallace, 56 years old, says I'm maxing out my Roth IRA at eight grand. I need to do more, Mark. Okay, here's your trick. This is so powerful. We help so Many clients do this. Side hustle. Plus solo 401k. Can we go to the whiteboard? No. Yes, we could go to the whiteboard. Should we give it a shot? Can I? We'll just try. Let's see. Boom. Oh, we got whiteboard. Okay, everybody, I'm going to introduce to you the trifecta. So what you do, B. Wallace, down here, you're going to have your trust. This is your 1040 tax return, your trust. Revocable living trust. And if you have a day job, that's great. That's over here, off to the side. Bam, bam. And over here is your Roth IRA. And you're like, Mark, I'm plowing 8K a month into this thing. Boom, boom, boom. But I need to put away more. Okay, okay, that's cool. Side hustle. So what we want to do is find two or three revenue sources that work for you. Upwork, turo, doordash, uber, thumbtack. Selling a product online. Affiliate income. Hell, you can sell my stuff for an affiliate fee, set up an llc. All this income goes in here. So, B. Wallace, if you could make an extra two to three grand a month. Let's just say two to three grand a month working some side hustles, I don't want you to take that money and pay taxes. You could. We're going to go over here and fund a solo 401k. If you say, well, Mark, I have a 401k at work. You can have a 401k at work, and you can have your own 401k. You can have two. You can have both. Well, Mark, I can't have a Roth IRA and a 401K. No, you can. You can have a roth and a 401k and a 401k. You can do all three, and then this two to three grand a month. Oh, that's 24 grand. That's 25 grand. That's 30 grand. You can put up to 30,000 plus this year, in 2024 in your solo 401k. And it could be all Roth plus this. Roth plus your Roth at work is called a mega backdoor Roth, baby. And this year, you can almost put over $70,000 into this. Google me on YouTube, wherever Google and YouTube. I've got training on this. The solo 401k Roth combo is insane. So, B. Wallace, the world is your oyster. You can get involved in a variety of ways, learning about this from me. Please continue to follow my podcast. I have over 400 podcasts, YouTube videos with millions of views on these topics. So continue to follow. Please give me a like, give me a subscribe a bell icon and you'll hear whenever I talk, you're going to hear about it. Couple more questions. Brianne, anything good?

Yes. Last question. Dean says Mark, what are your thoughts on paying off your personal residence before investing? Ramsay preaches paying off your home before investing.

Let me give you a technical, technical term. Hell no. Is that, is that okay? You didn't have me muted. I was supposed to be muted when I did that. Dave Ramsey, I love you, but here's the thing. And you know why Dave Ramsey says that? Because the home and the asset of the home is sometimes the lifeline for millions of Americans. They have a blue collar job, getting out of debt, paying off their home and starting to save in their little IRA or 401k at work is their path to success. And Dave Ramsey is right. For a certain type of American, that is the best thing for them. That it's a vision, it's a plan people can get their head around and it's, it's, it's their safe path. But folks, that's not all of us. That's not all of us that have bigger dreams. We have more self control. We have the ability to generate income. If I took the time to pay off my home loan, it could be 10 years in a debt snowball. I'm going to wait 10 years to go invest. Are you kidding me? When I could get that money to work right away, when my interest rate on my home loan is 3 to 4%, I'm going to rush to pay that off. When I could be making 10 to 15% in real estate or a note or, or in nine other types of investments. Are you kidding me? I'm going to wait that long to start building wealth because I got to pay off a 3% home loan. Give me a break. People. That's not building wealth. That's putting your head down and being a drone. We're not going to do that. Now for some people, they need that. Going out here and building wealth at 10 to 12% is beyond their skillset. They don't get it. And that's okay. I'm not trying to beat them up. But that's not everybody. Dave's helping them out. Love it, Dave. That's cool. But you know what? I got Mark Fuller followers here. They want to be rich. They want to get out of debt as fast as possible. Crappy debt. And then they're going to slowly pay off our home debt with a 3% freaking interest rate and go out and make money. Let's go out and build wealth, people. Let's not wait to do it. Let's do it now. Was that too much? Okay, sorry. I guess the camera was on. I got out of control. All right. Our time together has come to a close. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be here next week. I'm going to be here in your lives trying to help you. If you'll just let me. Please follow me. Give me some likes, give me some love. Now here's the giveaway. This is for free. Send me an email to my email, my personal email. My assistant hates this because it blows up her email for about a week. Markjkohler.com that's M A R K@markjkohler.com it's right down below and in the subject line put snowball. And we will send you an email with a little tutorial and a spreadsheet and a way to get into that debt reduction program. I don't want to say program because I'm not selling you anything. I just want to give you the tools. The only thing I'm going to ask, you're going to see it is join my newsletter. I have a newsletter that goes out every week with great little videos and tips and articles on helping you build wealth, save taxes, start your business, stay out of lawsuits, freaking, you know, all the good stuff that we need to build our dream. So check that out. I'll be providing more and more content on my website. Markjkohler.com Please continue to follow me on all the social media platforms. You can find me on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. People, don't give up. Don't give up. I know it can be hard waking up every Monday morning thinking, what the hell? I'm in a little rat race here. Well, I want to give you some hope. Do the little things. Get your acorn savings going. Get out of debt. Start that side hustle. Build that side hustle. I'll see you on the back.