Get Out of Debt and Make Money in 2022 | Mark J Kohler

Hey everybody, don't go anywhere until I announce give you the lowdown on today's live broadcast. Thanks for checking this out. I want to help you have an awesome 2022 saving money, making More money. My name is Mark Kohler, cpa attorney, author, podcaster, video, yada yada yada. Sponsored by Rockstar. Someday. We're going to talk today about getting out of debt and making sure you've got rid of all that crappy debt. Even paying down your mortgage on your personal home or your rental property faster than you ever imagined. I also want to hit some other business topics that'll help you in your business today and do Open Forum. My time is yours. If you've got questions for your accountant, your lawyer, and you can't find time with them, you're going to write it down below. I'm all yours. Please use this time wisely. Get a yellow pad, get some paper out. You're going to love it. So I'm so grateful to be here with you. Now, a couple announcements before you go. Yes, this is my Tesla truck that someday I will own probably in 2030. Please Elon, let's ramp up the two engine model as fast as you can. And I've got my white pad here. We're going to be riding and I've got an announcement on. I'm going to write it up here. January 29th is the Crypto Taxation Summit. Go to cryptotaxsummit.com and we're doing a whole day virtual and live in Phoenix, Arizona. We got a new location to even expand more seating. It's been off the hook. We're going to be hitting in six different topics on how to save money in your crypto. That wallet that may be, gosh, have a huge capital gain you might be sitting on. Talking about defi staking, mining. We're going to talk about the Metaverse using a Roth IRA to do all your trades and basically make money in the crypto industry tax free. Doing business in the Metaverse Charitable Remainder Trust. Anything to do, anything to deal with anything you might be doing in the crypto technology area. And the Metaverse is it's going to be awesome. So check it out@cryptotax summit.com and it's going to sell out again. We had to expand to a new location. We're selling live tickets every hour right now and you're going to love it. There's a certification quiz at the end with an awesome plaque which I'll reveal soon here on our lives every week. For those that Want to get certified and know what you're doing when it comes to taxes in the Metaverse or with your crypto. Okay, now, today we're going to eliminate debt. And then I want to talk to you guys about any of the topics in your business structure for the new year, tax strategies, legal structuring. But we got to talk about debt. So hear me out. You're going to love this, I promise. All of us have gotten into too much debt at some point in our lives. Some of you may have a credit card maxed out right now or a little bit too much on several credit cards. Some you may have a mortgage that's killing you in your own personal residence or on your rental property. Debt can be suffocating, and it can be. It's so limiting in our mindset when we're trying to move forward and we're trying to make changes in our lives and we're beating ourselves up for getting into debt, and we feel like losers and we feel like we were stupid or made the wrong decision, and we go into paralysis. Just kind of like analysis paralysis. We're just analyzing where we're all screwed up and we don't make any steps forward. And I want to just encourage you that there is hope, there are options, there are strategies that you can focus on that help you stay future focused. We don't want to worry about the past. We don't want to get sucked into the drama of, why did I get into debt in the first place? Forget it. It's over, it's done. What can you learn from it now? It's over. Find a reason to say, you know what? That was perfect. I learned some great lessons from that. Now I'm moving forward, and we want to focus on the solutions instead of all the crap that got us there in the first place. So I want to talk about getting out of debt. Answer any of your questions on this, Help you build your plan for this year, because here's one of the major point. And then we'll get right into the strategies. When you're trying to focus on the success of your business, making more sales, hiring the right people, what products am I going to release? How am I going to buy more product? How am I going to service my clients better? Whatever your business is, if you're waking up every day depressed and strapped and suffocating from debt that you from mistakes in the past, it is so hard to be successful moving forward, Then you're like, why am I listening to a tax lawyer about my personal mindset? And Debt and life and all that. It's because as a tax lawyer, my team of lawyers and accountants, we get on the phone with you and we have clients call up and go, I need an LLC or I need a trust or I need a charitable this or I need a write off here or blah, blah, blah. And then we ask you, how are you doing? Is this what we should be spending your money on? Are you in debt? And then the conversation takes a turn real quick. And so that's why I wanted to focus this on this today. So please, everybody, some of you maybe even know someone that's struggling right now with this. And you can be a lifeline to a parent, a child, a brother, a best friend, a sister, whoever. So I'm not going to spend the whole time on this. We're going to do some awesome Q and A on whatever freaking topics you guys want to hit on the tax and legal front. But let me hit this debt topic and hopefully throw you a lifeline. All right? So, okay, number one, well, let's do this. I want to talk about the debt snowball and then paying mortgage pay down strategies. And we're going to come to this, this pay down strategy here in a moment. So don't look at that. Let's just focus on the debt snowball for a moment. That's what I want to talk about. Okay, Dave Ramsey, he's freaking nailed it. If any of you follow Dave Ramsey, he's got his, the debt free days and everybody's shooting for the date when they're going to be debt free, out of their house, out of their cars, out of credit cards and all that. And I, that's great, love it. But to me, I think having debt on a rental property or going into debt to buy your own home so you're not renting and throwing money down the drain. I think using debt to build wealth is okay. Now this is where Dave Ramsey and I part ways. So not all debt is bad. If I can make money with debt, an SBA loan, a business loan, a rental property acquisition, maybe again, buying my own home, maybe I've got to get a cheap car so I can commute and build my business or get a better equipment, truck or van or whatever it takes, that's okay if I'm making money with that debt. But where the debt snowball comes in is the debt that we're just saddled with because of medical bills, maybe a divorce, a bad situation with a child or a partner that ripped me off or an auto repair or a disaster or My grandma died and I had to buy a plane ticket or blah blah, blah. The list goes on and on, right? But we're not going to focus on that. We're not going to worry about the past. We're going to say, okay, what do I do now to get out of that debt so I can be future focused on making money every day and having more enjoyment in life and not so stressed out. So a debt snowball gives you a solution. Now the general strategy here, I'm going to go past all those goodies and I've got a video. I'm going to throw this out. This is free. The co author of my book. Maybe I should give away some books today. We'll see what we're doing. My book, Financial Freedom I got, we'll give away some books. I got all these different books we can throw down here. Business Owner's Guide to Financial Freedom. My co author, Randy Luckey. If you email me, I'll say it right now. Email markjkohler.com@markjcohler.com if you email me and in the subject line, just put snowball. Just put snowball in the subject line. I will send you a little video on how to build your own snowball and a spreadsheet is all for free and then you can start filling out your own little debt. Snowball Spreadsheet and get on it. I use Randy Lueke, my co author. He produced a little video. We have a little email that goes out and it's helping so many people around the country. Just send me that email. MarkJ Kohler.com Subject Snowball now here's how it generally works. What you're going to do is going to create a list of all your credit cards and maybe car payments. So you're going to take all your debts and you're going to list them down. And I want to know the total amount owed, how much do I owe? So how much am I owing? Whatever grammar wise, okay, so you're going to say how much do I owe on each one of these debts? And I don't care about the interest rate. I don't care about the minimum payment. What I care about is stacking them with the highest amount at the top. So this is the highest debt owed to the lowest. And we're going to create this spreadsheet and you're going to. And what we're going to do is with each one of these debts, you could have auto in here, you could have credit cards, you could have all sorts of debts that are just A nightmare that you're trying to. Medical bills, whatever. You're going to put all these debts in here, from lowest to highest. And then what we're going to do is say, mark, I can allocate an extra couple hundred bucks a month to getting out of debt or 500 bucks a month. And as you're building your small business, you may say, I'm going to take the first 500 bucks out of my new business venture to get out of debt. See, now your business is helping kill the monster because this debt is just on us and we've got to get rid of it. And so as we're building our new little small business, instead of buying new this or new that, we're going to take $500 on top of our regular payments. So we have all of our payments that we're regularly going to make and we're going to keep doing those, but we're going to add $500 to the equation or 200, whatever, 5,000, whatever you can afford. And we're going to focus on this debt first and we're going to put the extra 500 on top of that payment and kill it. Then we're going to take that payment plus the 500 and kill the next debt, then that payment plus the other payment plus the 500 bucks and kill the next debt, folks. And you, you've seen this. Some of you have been seeing this on Dave Ramsey a thousand times. You can be out of debt and sometimes 12 to 18 to 24 months when normally a credit card just making minimum payments can be up to 15 years. So, my friends, this is a debt snowball. I've done a debt snowball while I was an attorney after law school and we're trying to build our small business. My wife and I got into more debt in a year that we wanted to. It was a nightmare year. I had debt to get out of. I did a debt snowball. Guys, don't beat yourself up again. Don't compare yourself to others. Don't focus on the past, focus on the future. And on a daily basis basis, what do you focus on? The solution. And get up every day going, I'm getting out of debt. It's working. It's freaking rocking. And you're excited and share your successes with your close friends who can be your cheerleaders in this. You can make this happen. Don't get into the drama. Look for the successes in the process and the progress you're making. Okay, now that's a debt snowball. If you again, email me markjcohler.com Snowball we'll send you all the info you need for free to get going. Okay, now the next topic that's really powerful that a lot of people want to focus on and this is for clients that are Mark, I don't have any credit card debt, but I've got rental property and I want to build more rental property or I've got a personal residence, or I've got a cabin, I've got a beach house, I've got a store, second home, I've got an rv, I got whatever. And we want to pay down that mortgage faster. Well, out there in the, I was going to say the metaverse, not in virtual reality, but in current reality we have three methods that are the most common and there's a lot of misinformation out there. And I want to lay out these three for you real quick. I don't make any money on it. I'm not trying to sell one of them to for you. I just want to tell you your three options so that you can go in with your eyes wide open. So number one is kind of a pay down accelerator with a HELOC or simple interest. Now there's all different words for, or terms for this and I want to be careful not throwing out companies come up with all sorts of names to pay down debt quickly. And they've kind of copyrighted or created their little cool phrase of how to pay down mortgages. And one of the methods, number one is where you take your home mortgage that's been amortized over 30 years. We're one of the few countries in the world that does it this way because banks make a lot more money because you pay for interest times, two times the value of your home a lot of times right over that 30 years. So one strategy out there, I'm not saying this is the best one, I'm going to give you three options is that you'll, you'll get rid of your current mortgage by refinancing and setting up a heloc. And when you have a heloc, you're using simple interest rather than compounding interest. And there's companies out there that will help you get restructure your debt so that you're paying far, far less interest and you're putting much more towards principal and you can pay off your home mortgage. Instead of 30 years, 7, 10, 15 years. I've seen clients do it in under 10 and it's crazy. Now this is a strategy that usually requires and it's out companies are out there providing a service to help coach you through it. They're going to be a cheerleader for you. They might do regular meetings monthly or yearly to help you go through the process. They're going to maybe represent you in finding the right loan, the right bank to work with. You can spend anywhere from a do it yourself plan of three to five hundred bucks to four or five thousand dollars to have a company help you through this process. That's option one. Now it's not the only option, so be careful. When these companies are going, this is the only way to do it. No, there's other ways to do it. But a lot of people have found great success going this route. What I found is that to really make this work, you've got to have some equity in your home already. And typically you've got to be able to qualify for a good HELOC loan. Now some of you may disagree with me that have done this before or sell a service like this. Forgive me, I'm just telling you my personal opinion that I've really only seen at work with clients that have some equity in the home already and could go out and get a new loan that's better structured or more strategically structured. Okay, that's option one. Now I'm going to do Q and A here with you guys. Corey is already scrolling through a bunch of questions. We're going to hit whatever the heck you want. Okay? Number two, you got a 30 year mortgage and what's amazing here is you can pay it off in half the time by simply making one extra payment a year. Isn't that crazy? I mean it sounds nuts, but it's true. And so if you have your mortgage payment every month, you may say, well, I'll just make one extra payment at the end of every year. That's not the strategy I'm talking about. I want you to make 13 payments, but you have to do it throughout the year. And there's two ways to go at it. The first one is getting with your bank and doing bi weekly payments because there's 12 months in the year. But if you pay bi weekly, there ends up being a 13th payment. So you talk because just the way the months work in 52 weeks. And trust me, so if you say, well, instead of paying my mortgage on the first of every month, I'm going to pay make a mortgage payment on every other Monday. And so for if you're making a payment every two weeks with the way the calendars work, you're going to hit end up with a 13th payment in the process. By doing that, you're paying down the principal faster through this extra method of making more payments. Now, a lot of, a lot, a lot of banks aren't going to go for that. They don't like getting payments every two weeks and they don't know what to do with it. Do they apply it to next month or this month and pretty soon you're getting nasty emails from your bank going, what the hell are you doing? Just make your payment once a month. So another way to do it that's even easier is take your mortgage payment, whatever your current mortgage payment is, and let's say it's. And divide it by 12. So let's just say it's $1,200. So I'm going to put this in red and let's just say it's $1,200 and I divide it by 12. Okay, that's $100, right? My mortgage payment is normally 1,200 bucks. If I divide it by 12, that's an extra $100. Add that $100 to your current payment. So now you go from $1,200 plus 100, right? Easy math, folks. Now I'm making a mortgage payment of $1,300 every month. Well, what's happening is this extra hundred dollars ends up going directly to principal and you're doing it every month. And with compounding interest in these 30 year mortgages, that $100 a month brings down your payoff date by years. It's crazy. Now you may say, holy crap, Mark, if that's how easy it is, I think I could afford an extra 200amonth in my mortgage payment. Go for it, baby, do it. And it's kind of like back to the, if we go back to our debt snowball in this debt snowball. If you can allocate $500 a month to just get out of debt quicker and do it in a snowball method. Once you get out of your credit card debt, take that 500 and start allocating it to your rental property mortgages or to your personal mortgage. So we just don't want to get rid of that 500. We want to use it wisely once we're out of our credit card debt. So that's the way to do it. So you kind of, you end up making 13 payments by adding a little bit more to every month's payment or doing the bi weekly strategy. Okay, now number three. Number three is our last option here. And this is called the refinance hack. And a Lot of people like you've looked at interest rates lately. You may be going, oh my gosh, interest rates are lower than they've ever been. I had someone the other day say they got a 2 point whatever percent interest rate on their mortgage. I was like, holy crap. So you might be motivated to refinance your mortgage, but let's think about it. Here's what's going on with a lot of people. They have a 30 year mortgage and let's say you've been making payments on it for five years. And so you're like, well, Mark, I only have 25 years left. I don't want to refi and start the 30 year clock all over again. It doesn't help me. I don't, I don't want to do that. And so what you can do in this refinance hack is you say, what was my original mortgage? If my original mortgage was 200,000, my current balance is 100,000, I'm going to refi for the 200, take a cash out refi and on the first month when my first payments due, I'm going to take that 100,000 of cash out and make a payment on my mortgage for 100 grand. Now I've got a lower interest rate. I'm back to the original amount I was in the first place. I'm going to be able to pay off my mortgage even faster because I've done a refinance and lowered my interest rate, but I haven't increased the years per se because I'm going to keep making my same payment and I'm going to take this first hundred grand and just pay down the mortgage on it. And this is a way to kind of if you're. Because really what you're combining is this strategy. You're going to keep making your same monthly payment, but I'm going to refinance and lock in a lower interest rate. Now in your mindset, you're like, I'm getting out of debt and I'm making the same damn payment I was before. But even more is going to principal and you're reducing more is going to principal. I lowered my interest rate, but I didn't increase the term or my current mortgage balance. So that's called the refinance hack. Now, in summary, some of you are like, holy crap, Mark. That was a lot. Three options. That was a lot to digest. You can rewatch this video, kind of get your basics. If you. I'm going to, if you get the debt snowball, you're going to get the link to Randy Luckey, his website and his video that he provides for free. I would recommend a consult with a financial advisor that understands debt pay down strategies that isn't motivated to sell you a $5,000 strategy of some sort of. And I love Randy for this. He didn't know I was going to give him a plug today. But if you get that debt snowball email, Lifetime Paradigm. Did you put it in the notes? Can you do that, Corey? Okay, okay. He'll put it down in the notes. We'll have lifetime paradigm.com down in the notes and you can get a hold of Randy that way too. But just do a consult with him for a half hour, an hour, pay for it and have him help you create a strategy for your debt. He's also going to want to help you build a lot more wealth at the same time because he. Folks, here's the big picture. In summary, I want to be paying down debt and making more money by shifting the wealth for paying off interest that I shouldn't be paying to putting money into my bank account to build future income. But you know what the side benefit of all this is, is that mental shift that inside I got. I just got a ting of emotion here inside. You're not beating yourself up anymore for your prior mistakes and being in debt. You're looking forward. You're going down this path of financial freedom, financial flexibility, and you're in control of your life. The debt is no longer controlling your life. You're controlling it. And you're focused on what matters. Quit thinking about the drama. Quit thinking about your mistakes. Think about the solutions you're going to employ and it'll empower you and set you free. Pen drop. There you go. All right. Now we're going to talk about whatever the heck you guys want to talk about. We can talk about debt, talk about business. I was rocking some freaking disco music before this started. I'm kind of getting into disco lately. I don't know why I was. And I was listening to Staying Alive, you know, with John Travolta and someone freaking made me watch Foul Play with Dudley Moore dancing to Staying Alive. Do not do it. It will ruin your image of Staying Alive and John Travolta, who's pretty damn sexy. And now you're going to be thinking of Dudley Moore while you're listening. I'm not going to blame Corey for this, okay? So just. I'm just. Spoiler alert. Do not watch Dudley Moore dancing to Staying Alive. You'll never be the same. Now for those 80s folks out there. You know what I'm talking about. All right, so my questions, Corey, you got my questions. Where am I going? Okay. All right. I don't know if my glasses help at this perfect distance. It's kind of perfectly unfocused. Put these on. It gets worse. I take them off, it gets worse. Okay, Sir Juan says with a self directed ira, who's the actual broker? Can I still use my Schwab account? Great question. All right, everybody, let's put this in perspective. And I will take a proverbial toast to the rock stars and all of us, the rockstar recovery. Find them at your local convenience store. Okay, Corey, I'm going to pull the plug on this so I can get this closer to. Now we're charged. All right. Okay, everybody, Sir Juan asked an important question that I've got to put in perspective here. He's asking about a self directed ira. Now we have to go to our trifecta. Oh, the foundation for building wealth and living the dream, baby. So here's our trifecta. In fact, I'm going to do it this way. Trifecta goes down below in our trifecta to help you build wealth, make money. Your trust is at the bottom. And we're putting your operations on this side and your assets on this side. Okay? Now over here you might be building a 401k. You might be building an IRA. You also might have an LLC for your cute little rental properties where you're doing a pay down mortgage strategy. Okay, over here might be your personal home with a pay down strategy. And then over here is your LLC or your sole prop and or your S corporation that you're going to eventually graduate into. Okay? Now typically, millions of Americans. Millions of Americans think the only thing I can do with my IRA is set up an account at Schwab, Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, TD Ameritrade, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And I can self direct by buying the stocks they let me on their app. That is not self directing people. Self directing means taking your IRA and buying cryptocurrency. Maybe buying real estate. I bought cows in mine. You can buy rental property you can buy. You can do mining in your cryptocurrency. You can do currency and gold and silver. You can do all these fun things in a self directed ira. So if I convert, I can't call Carl Schwab. I can't call Schwab and say I want to do self directing and all these cool things in my ira. They're not going to let you do it. So you have to take your IRA and move it to a self directed IRA custodian. And this is a custodian that's going to say, hey Mark, what do you want to do on day two? What do you want to do? Okay, so when you move it from Schwab to here, it's no longer at your broker dealer. It's over. Now. You can leave some money there, Juan, you may say, well I'm going to leave 10 grand here and I'm going to move 50 grand over here. So you could leave some there. I have some clients that do that. They want to keep doing some stock brokerage trading in their TD Ameritrade account. That's cool. But if you move it all over here to the self directed Iraq on day two, you're going to have to start deciding am I going to buy promissory notes, gold, silver, real estate, crypto, what am I going to do that's outside the box that Merrill lynch normally won't let me do. Now at our directed trust company, so directed ira.com let me give a shameless plug. I'm sorry, directed ira.com you can that's the broker, that's the custodian. That's, that's where your money's going to sit until you deploy it. Now@directed ira.com Juan, we have a brokerage option so you can put some money in the regular market while you're waiting to deploy it. We also have crypto IRAs where you can go straight into crypto through the Gemini app or you can form LLC and set up institutional accounts or buy real estate or whatever you want. So we have all these options@directed ira.com But Juan's first question was who freak has the money? Well, it's the trust company of directed ira.com and you call us up and tell you where to put it. Now it's FDIC insured. It's under that managed under the, or should say regulated under the Arizona Banking Commission. Your money's safe there until you deploy it. And that's a self directed ira. And you can have a brokerage option. But really think of it this way, Juan. If you're going self directing, you're, you don't want to be in the market anyway. Leave what money you want left at Schwab and do your Schwab thing or TD Ameritrader, Merrill lynch, but then move over here what you want to do with the self directed IRA anyway. Hope that helps. Okay, where am I going next? Jim Burrow and by the way, Corey, we're going to do it. Everybody, if you're still on and you haven't left us by the end of this podcast or podcast, sorry, broadcast. I'm going to give away each one of these books. I'm going to give away four books and an eight steps. This is 99 bucks on Amazon. Freaking awesome. Been selling thousands of. You're going to love it. So anyway, I'm going to give away all my books. So we have five winners. Corey, you got to choose our winners. All right? From YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. Okay, Now I'm asking. I'm doing Jim's question. Okay? All right. Jim Burrow says I'm getting a windfall of 200 million. Jim, I love it. Are you single? Because I've got a list of ladies that would love to take you out. Okay. Jim says I'm getting a windfall of 200mil after paying off 25,000 in debt and getting some dream stuff, putting the rest into a Wyoming C corp to keep from getting the shaft from the irs. I'm making a mistake. Yes, you are, Jim. Oh, my gosh, back up. Hopefully you have not sold. And I have a feeling, Jim, you're talking about cryptocurrency. If you've got a $200 million windfall, do not sell it in your name. Do not trade it for a stablecoin or USD or some other coin. No, let's talk about the Charitable Remainder Trust, where you pay zero tax on the sale and can create a stream of income the rest of your life and it's asset protected from a lawsuit. So, Jim, I have a feeling you haven't watched my videos on this. Go to YouTube and type Kohler Charitable Trust. My name, Kohler Charitable Trust. And there's two videos. There's a part one and a part two. Okay, the title is Paying zero on Cryptocurrency, Part one and part two. Jim, watch those videos. Especially part two. I talked about the Krat Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust in part one and the crut chart Unit trust in part two. My crypto traders are doing the crud. That's what. That's what we're focused on now. By the way, Jim, you've got to come to the crypto conference. Less than four weeks away. January 29, cryptotax summit.com. get there. If you've got this much crypto floating around, you got to come. Okay, now, so the first thing is, Jim's got a huge gain. I do not want him to sell it in his own name and pay 30% or more in taxes by the time he gets through Obamacare, state tax and federal tax. I need to know what state Jim lives in. We may move him around. We've got to look at the charitable trust. There's all sorts of options. Okay, number two, A Wyoming C Corp has to be the worst idea. And whoever gave you that idea, Jim, I've even read, I even write about it in my book and put my money where my mouth is. And that's in what your CPA isn't telling you. And I compare the C Corp to the S Corp and why C Corps are a joke. And you may say, Jim. Jim's going, Mark, the tax rates lower in a C Corp. Sure, if you leave it in the C Corp. But don't you want to spend that money? Don't you want that money? Well, yeah, I know how to get it out. I'll borrow against it. No, you're not. If you borrow against it, there's a day of reckoning where you have to pay it back. Well, no, I won't. I'll die. But then you're going to pay. There is so much tax involved in mistakes and messes with a C Corp, let alone in Wyoming or Nevada or Delaware, people. I've written about it till I'm blue in the face. I love to have fun and joke around, but I get a little anxious and a little upset. I'm going to break something. We need some. Can I break anything, Cory? Okay, Jim, do not think about the C Corp in Wyoming. Learn about the charitable trust. Okay, next question. West Coast Longy 85 okay, says Mark, if my house is under my husband's name and not my name, can I still take a home office write off? Absolutely. Everybody. You should be taking a home office deduction here in your LLC with rentals. You could be taking a home office with your operational business. I don't care who's on title if it's husband on title or wife on title. Frankly, west coast, you should have a revocable living trust on title. That's who I want on title. And I don't care if you're in a community property state or you've got a prenup or a postnup and all that. If this is your house and you're freaking living in it, we're taking a home office write off. And I love, I love the home office write off. Now your homework, everybody. For the home office write off is the movie with Ben Affleck, the accountant. I mean, where's My poster, I got. Where's my. Is it up there? Oh, my gosh. Okay. I got to show you this. Okay. This is legit. Okay. All right. When they were casting for, they were casting for accountant and Ben Affleck and I were in the running. They did this mock up. Yep, that's me, the accountant. It was, it was going to be sweet, but no, Ben Affleck got the role. But in the first, in the first 10 minutes of the movie, Ben Affleck breaks down the home office write off and I freaking love it. It's the best. Go watch it. All right, T.J. what are the tax advantages? Oh, sorry. What are the tax disadvantages of having a living trust? None. Absolutely none. Hundred percent none. A revocable living trust if you're married or single. Let's build our little trifecta. So here's our trust and if I'm single or married. The revocable living trust does multiple things but it does not save you taxes and it does not cost you taxes. It's tax neutral with income tax. The goal here with the trust is to avoid probate and make sure it owns your home, your LLCs, your retirement accounts, investment accounts, your operational business, your RV, your cabin, your rental, your blah blah, blah. I want everything to go in your trust when you pass away. There's no probate number two. All the wealth you've been building, you get to dictate how, where it goes and how so you're not jacking up some kid in rehab or losing your money to lawyers or to the brother or sister in law that you always hated or whatever. You the trust you control how the money is distributed. Now number three, in fact, the revocable living trust could save you taxes when it comes to estate tax. Now estate tax is a big deal. When you die, the IRS takes a picture. How much are you worth? What's all your assets, retirement accounts, money in the bank, any life insurance you own, even if it's going to your kid or your spouse. Doesn't matter. All that is in the picture minus any debts, whatever you're worth above a certain amount is taxed federal tax of about 40% certain states. And I've got this in my calendar that we're almost going, we're going to go to print next week on this. Everybody that pre ordered my calendar, I ordered an extra thousand. They will sell out. Can get them at my website, markjkohler.com I have a little table in here that goes through all the different taxes and which, you know, what are Your write offs and I have a calendar for the year and oh, so many good things. Okay. Some of these states you're going to pay state tax of. One of the big ones. That's brutal. Is Washington state. If you're worth more than $2,000,000 is $2.192,190,000. The tax can vary from 10 to 20% when you die. That's Washington state. Well, you go, well, there's no state income tax in Washington. That's right. There's no income tax, but there's a state tax. So anyway, in a long, in a nutshell, a revocable living trust, save you taxes. There are no disadvantages from a tax standpoint. Thanks, T.J. ryan Rigby. Ryan Rigby or I'm doing Roberta. Can I do both? What is what they. Is this what they call infinity banking, people that are selling you the infinible? Infinity banking are sometimes there's all sorts of terms. I don't want to throw out company names and get in trouble or. Anyway, infinity banking is kind of borrowing from yourself using a whole life insurance strategy. There's life insurance somewhere in the mix on some of these banking strategies. It is not a pay down mortgage strategy. It's a. I'm going to use life insurance to build cash value and borrow against it tax free. I have to be really careful on sharing my opinion on some of those strategies. I think some of them work for certain people and they definitely don't work for others. Regrettably, it gets sold to a lot of people that shouldn't be doing it. Other people that should be using invented banking haven't heard about it. So be careful learning about a life insurance banking strategy. Okay. Now Roberta says, is it possible to create your own charitable remainder trust or do we need a lawyer? Oh, Roberta, thank you for asking. No, there's no way you could do it yourself. Really. They are so, so complex. Now if you're doing a charitable remainder trust, Roberta, you better be saving close to 100,000 or $200,000 in taxes. You can afford five grand to eight grand. Get it done right and you're going to have so many questions. There's about 30 variations. Oh, okay, cool. And Roberta says, should I create a crypt. Should I create a CRT if my crypto value is less than 100 grand? I wouldn't, I think at 100 grand, just sell it. Take the tax, walk away. Where I'm seeing the charitable remainder trust work for people is when they've got 750,000amillion or more. So if you got a crypto wallet with a big gain sitting in it and your. Your value is 750 or more, that's when a CRT makes sense. Now some of you are like, well, Mark, we're waiting for the pop. Crypto is going to bounce back, and we know it will. It will. It's going to come back, and it's holding steady. Some good buy opportunities from week to week, have your trust ready to go. You don't put the crypto in the CRT until it hits the value you want to hit. Then you pop it into the crt. So, Roberta, don't do it yourself. In fact, you will jack it up. They are so complex. In our firm, if you do a crt. This is dangerous to say because I'm so freaking busy, but you work with me one on one. There's no. I've got 15 attorneys in my firm, and I'm the only one that understands them. They are very, very complex. I'm not saying my attorneys couldn't learn it and understand it, but they're swamped on other issues on the calls, but they're very complex. I have attorneys in my office that won't even touch them for themselves. So, Roberta, get a professional. And if you come to our firm, you'd be working with me. Just google kkoslawyers.com and there's a little bit of a wait list to get in with me right now. But right now you've got time. Crypto's kind of holding steady. Am I going Kevin or Colin? Kevin. Kevin says, if inflation persists, should I invest before I pay off credit card death? Kevin. And this is a great question, everybody. Maybe you've seen the recent movie the Matrix that just came out, and I'm a huge fan of the Matrix. The first one is classic Keanu Reeves. Love him. My daughter, I said, I told my daughter Molly, she's 18 years old. She's like, dad, let's go to the Matrix tonight. I go, you haven't even seen the first one. You can't go to the Matrix tonight. If you haven't seen the Blue Pill and the Red Pill. You got to go see the first Matrix. She's like, all right. So we got a bowl of popcorn. We sat down to watch the Matrix. We were into this movie, 10 minutes, and she goes, once. Keanu Reeves going to be in the show. I'm like, that's him. She's like, that looks like a kid. I'm like, oh, you're just a child. So apparently Keanu Reeves looks very different from the first Matrix to today's Matrix. Anyway, in the movie the Matrix. This is important, Kevin, I'm coming around to this. In the first movie of the Matrix, do you remember the red dress? Remember this? They're going through. Morpheus is taking Keanu. Oh, what's his. The movie name. Oh, my gosh. Corey. Oh, you guys are going to hate me. I was quoting. Morpheus is taking Keanu Reeves through the Matrix and he gets distracted by a red dress. And when he sees the red dress, it takes him away from the goal of being able to fight against the Matrix and everything. It's about Kevin. This is how I feel about inflation. Inflation is something that is obviously we can't predict. The feds are constantly trying to battle inflation. And I have clients that make all their decisions based on what inflation is doing, and oftentimes to the point it hurts them financially. Now, you may disagree with me, but I'm just going to tell you my opinion and everybody. This is my opinion, and I feel so strongly about it. If you're in debt, get out of effing debt. Don't worry what inflation is. Don't worry what have the interest rates are. You owe someone and it can be a noose around your neck. And if there's. Some people think there might be a white whatever event and this, that and another. And we have problems with our economy that are devastating and tragic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The last thing you want to be is in debt. When the crap hits the fan, when the music stops, you want to be out of debt. Don't let inflation or fixating on the red dress of inflation take you away from the goal. And that is being lean and mean and not in debt. Now, did I say get out of mortgages on rental property? Maybe a mortgage on your own home. I'm going to use business debt to make money. I'm talking about all that other crappy personal debt and certainly car debt, education debt, credit card debt. I want to get out of that. But I'm not saying all debt's bad. All right, okay. Who am I going to next? Neil. Neil Morpheus and Neil. No one said that up here either. I got that. That came right here. Okay. All right. Okay. We're going to. Doug, any recommendations for accepting credit card or debt, debit card or Venmo? Seems expensive. Thoughts, Doug. That's great. I'm glad Doug asked this question. Oh, my gosh. Every time someone asked me a question, I've got to tell a story. I'm sorry about that. So this is important Doug and everybody Doug is asking, is there an easy way to take payment from people with credit cards that's the most affordable? Doug, here's what I tell you and everybody. Don't get stressed out about Merchant accounts and 2 to 3%. Just know it's a cost of doing business. If you have to increase your prices by 2 or 3%, then frickin do it. But story I had a client that came by my office. Sorry, came by my house to do landscaping. Came by and he's like, hey Mark, you promised. You said I could do some landscaping. I'm like yep. So I gave him a bunch of projects on the house and da da da. And he did his landscaping. He came up and I go, okay, how much do I owe you? Can I Venmo you? Can I PayPal you? Can I. Here's my credit card. How can I do it? He goes, oh, just give me a. I'll just send you an invoice. Write me a check. I'm like what are you crazy? Is this 1987? No, you're not going to write me a frickin. I'm not going to write a check. I don't even have a checkbook on me. I've got a credit card, I got a debit card, I've got Venmo. People make it easy for your customers to pay you. The last thing you want is a hassle. Collecting collections can be one of the biggest things to kill a business. Never, ever, ever say you're going to bill someone when they're willing to pay you. Right now, pay the damn 2 or 3%, Doug. Just do it. I use square. I use Coinbase Commerce. Clients can pay me for all of our services at the law firm. And if you want to go to my crypto tax summit, you can pay with cryptocurrency. Boom. Coinbase Commerce you. So you can take payment in any way, shape or form, Doug. But don't shy away from taking a credit card. Even if it costs you 2 or 3% that time value of money. And the time you waste trying to chase someone down for money is not worth it. Now with that said, Venmo is on being regulated now to disclose anybody receiving payments over $600. Because people are trying to live under the table and they don't want to take cash, so they take Venmo. There's no Venmo tax people. It's just Venmo reporting what's going on because the IRS is people sick of people Cheating on their taxes. So there's no Venmo tax. If you can take Venmo, if you can take PayPal, if you can take Square Apple, pay. Whatever it is, Doug, take it. And I do not care about the 2 or 3%. Get the money and run. Save yourself time and make another sale. That's what matters most. All right, we're going to go to Alxi and I apologize. It's an Eastern European pronunciation, Alexi. Okay, thanks, Alec. Maybe you go by Alec for short. I apologize, Aleksey. I set up a new Airbnb with almost 100,000 in renovation. Okay. Love the income coming in. I. I just now opened an llc and I will transfer the home into the llc. Okay, so everybody, let's bring him up to speed. So we have Alec here, Alec's down here with his trust. He set up, he bought a Airbnb, and then on top of buying it, he put in an extra hundred grand of renovations. Now he's creating an LLC to hold the Airbnb, so that way he has asset protection. Now, we're not going to set up this LLC in Nevada or Wyoming or Delaware. We're going to set up the LLC where Alex Rental is. So if his rental is in New Jersey, then we're going to set up a New Jersey llc. If it's in Florida, we're going to set up a Florida llc. We set up the LLC where the Airbnb is located. And I've written book after book after this, and I'm going to give away five books here before the end of our show. We're coming up on. How many more questions. Couple more questions. Okay. Now he says, all right, I've got an llc. It owns my Airbnb. I have asset protection. Perfect. And then he says, will I have problems claiming deductions under my personal W2? Now, Alec jumps all the way over here to his W2 that's coming into his 1040. So some of you might have an LLC, you drive Uber, or you're a consultant or a coach, or you have an S corp over here and you have a sole proprietorship and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And over here, you may have a day job. And what Alec is asking about is, Mark, I've got all these write offs over there. How do I write them off against my W2? Well, that's a whole chapter in my book on rental property. Let me say in general, this is how it works. You're going to. Typically, in this situation, Alec would report his rental property operations on a schedule. C that drops into his 1040. Now, even though it's an LLC. Oh, my gosh. I said Schedule C. I am so sorry. Accountants, you're like Mark, you are crazy. I apologize. That's a Schedule E. Schedule E is an echo. I'm going to even clean that up. I can't believe I said that. That's a rookie move. Okay, sorry. That's a Schedule E. I was thinking over here. Your sole proprietorship is on a Schedule C. Your S Corp is on an 1120s. All right, so Alex is going to report his Airbnb income and all of his write offs, including depreciation. Now, if Alec has a loss, it's not that the write offs are a direct write off against his W2, it's that if there's a loss, he might be able to write that loss off against his W2. So let's say that Alec has $100,000 W2 and he has a $15,000 loss after all of his write offs. All right, well, down on his 1040, we'll put this in red. He's going to take $100,000 W2 minus a $15,000 loss, and he's only going to pay tax on $85,000. That's his adjusted gross income. Very simply stated. So the beauty is, Alec and any of you that own a rental property, I want these write offs. You got to take the write offs against the income first. And if you have a net loss, then you take the loss against your other income flowing from over here. So it kind of gets all sorted out in your 1040. Here's the quote, unquote bad news is that if I'll put this in blue, is if Alec over here is making 150,000 or more from his day job or his small business, and now his income is over $150,000. The loss is suspended. If you make more than 150,000 and you're not in the business of real estate, this loss goes into a bucket. And you never lose the write off. You always get to take it, even when you die. It's netted against your income someday when you die. But this $15,000 loss goes into what's called a pal. It's a passive loss carry forward. And it's there for whenever you sell any rental property, you can dump it out, but you're going to get the write off. Alec, track all your expenses, and it's going to be based on your marital situation and your income on whether or not I can take the loss this year. Okay? Couple questions and I'm going to throw away some books here. Marco says, hey, Mark, I have an LLC for my business. How to add my wife. Well, Marco, very interesting. Let's stay with this diagram we have here. No, it's too complicated. Let's go over here, start fresh. So here we have our trust. Here is Marco and his wife. Okay. Oh, and his kids, too. Okay. Geez. Anything else, Marco? Do you want world peace? Anything else? Okay, I'm just playing. All right. Is that Dylan Kohler commenting on my. Oh, wasn't Neil. It was Neo. Oh, I leave it to my son, who I am impressed, is actually listening to my live broadcast, who used to be my. I'm shocked that. Dylan. Dylan. Little shout out. I love you, bud. Dylan used to be the one on the other side of the camera until he moved on to bigger and better things. Working for your dad your whole life is not a great idea. So he moved on. He's freaking awesome, and taught Cory everything he knows. So, Dylan, thanks for. Oh, look at all the Neos. Okay, okay, It's Neo. Okay. I thought it was Neil. I thought it was Neil. Was it Neil in the real life? But Neo, when they rescued him? No, it was always Neo. All right. Okay. Sorry, everybody. Okay, now we're back to Marco's question. He has an LLC and he has some kids. Well, everybody, Marco's question is really complicated because it depends on how much income he's making. Did he make an S election? This is why Marco and all of you just make an appointment with one of my tax lawyers for a consult. We will save you 10 times whatever the freak you're paying in taxes. And we're not going to set up some damn structure in Nevada or Wyoming for $15,000. We don't do that. We just charge our time. We have a $1,200 tax review consultation with a trifecta plan. That's it. We're not going to take advantage. So let me throw out a few ideas. First of all, if Marco has an LLC and he's making not as much to be an S corp, and he's going to graduate to an S corp, and his LLC will turn into an S corp at some point. Everybody. I just don't put your wife on the business at all. And it's not taking away from your wife. She doesn't have to be an owner. She doesn't have to be an employee. If you put her on as an employee, you're paying fica. If you put her on as an owner, you're Going to file a bigger tax return. I have a whole video on YouTube. Should I put my wife on payroll? Go watch that video, Marco, because it's not taken away from the stay at home dad or the stay at home mom. It's being efficient with the irs. The only time I put a spouse on payroll. When is it, Cory? When do I put a spouse on payroll? If I'm going to fund a 401k? Good job even Cory. My guy's on it. So if I'm going to fund a 401k, then, Marco, I'm going to put your wife on payroll, but I'm not going to put her on as an owner because I don't need to. All the income is going to come down to your joint 1040 anyway. Okay, now he said he has kids. If you have an llc, I'm going to pay your kids directly out of outside labor. If they're under age 18, you don't have to issue a W2 or 1099. I've got whole videos on that. Go watch them. The S Corp, you're going to do a W2 for yourself, maybe your spouse, if we're going to fund the 401k. But if you have kids under age 18, we're going to set up a little management company. And this little management company is going to pay the kids if they're under age 18. If they're over age 18, then I'm going to issue a 1099. Now, I've got a whole chapter on paying family members in here, including the spouse and everybody. I've got to tell you this. I've got what's called the tax and legal library. And this is a library of, gosh, almost 30 hours of content on all these topics and more. And you can get to my library@markj kohler.com and I've had several people tell me it needs to be a kind of a recurring monthly fee to have access. But right now, if you buy it, it's lifetime access. That's going to change in the near future. So if you want all my videos and all access to them, I've been doing it for nine years and I shoot new videos every year. All these topics, you can learn about them in the library for like three or four hundred bucks. Lifetime access. So I've got whole videos on paying your kids. When should I convert to an S Corp Paying your spouse? Go watch those, Marco, before you pay for an attorney consult. And you'll get a lot of your answers by really diving deep. Okay. One last question and then I'm going to give away some books. Jeanette Porter. I have Fidelity with my Roth, but I don't know if I can buy crypto and Fidelity. No, you cannot. Now, there may be some funds that are crypto based, but that's not buying crypto directly. So what you're going to have to do. Now, Jeanette is over here and if she says, I have a Fidelity account. And she wants to buy directly Bitcoin in her own name, now I know someone at Fidelity is going to watch this and be pissed and say, oh, you can buy crypto through this method and an ETF and through this and that. No, I want to buy the coin directly myself, not in a fund, not in some sort of ppf. I just want to own the account. I want to own that cryptocurrency. If you have the Fidelity account in your own name, Jeanette, you're going to have to open a crypto trading wallet. And I mean, you're just going to have to open your own wallet and your own name with an exchange. And you can do that at all sort. You know, Coinbase to Gemini to kraken to. There's 50 of them. But you're going to go out and find an exchange, set up your own wallet, and you're going to transfer the money down here and whatever amount you want to transfer. And then you can start buying cryptocurrency. All the different coins that you want, depending on the exchange you choose, is going to dictate what the fees are and what coins you can choose from. Now, if you have an IRA at Fidelity. Oh, now that's a different thing. See, your, how can I say this? Fidelity is not your IRA. That's just where you parked your IRA. You can move your IRA to directed ira.com. so if you come over to directedra.com you say, I'm going to move my IRA from Fidelity and move it over here. This is where you. Now, as a trust company, we hold your money and you have several options. Your first option is you can say, we have a relationship with Gemini, an exchange that's over here typically. But you can take your directed IRA account and immediately open up a Gemini account and have a Gemini app on your phone and you're trading your Roth IRA right in Gemini within 24, 48 hours. But if you're like, I don't want to be at Gemini, I want to be at some other. I'm going to be at Kraken or Coinbase or somewhere, then your IRA has to set up an LLC that opens an institutional account and then you're back to kind of like this. You're going to have an exchange or wallet that's owned by your llc, that's owned by your ira. So we've been doing these for five years, maybe more. And this is very common when you want to get to a cold storage or a different exchange than Gemini. But if you just want to go to Gemini right out of the gate and move your Fidelity account through your IRA to direct@ira.com, you can do that tonight online. Now, if you again own your Fidelity account personally, you don't have to worry about any of this crap. Just go open and exchange your wallet in your own name and you're off to the races. Okay, Corey, tell me my winners first, the self Directed IRA Handbook, which is all about self directing. Let's do that. Russell Easton, Houston. Russell Houston, the winner here. Now, Russell, any of you that I call out your name, you've got a message. Corey. Now, Corey, do you want to meet your email? Cory Kohler. Okay, just email coreyarkjkohler.com and he will send you your book. So just message Corey, Mr. Houston, and we'll get you your book. Okay, now I'm going to give away this book as the granddaddy of them all. This is my 60 videos and podcasts and workbooks and a business plan and a strap plan. You can get it on Amazon for 99 right now, but I'm going to give it away. Okay, let's do Financial Freedom with Pay Down Debt Strategies and Building Wealth. Who's our winner? Tia Hines. Tia Hines. H I N E S. Tia Hines, winner of the Financial Freedom Book. Corey is writing that down. So TIA. Email Corey c o r e yarkj kohler.com and what? Your CPA isn't telling you the story that'll get you addicted to tax planning. You're going to love it. Mitch Ballmer. Mitch Ballmer. V A L V M E R V A L M E. Rich Volmer. Mitch. Right, Mitch. Tax and Legal Playbook. Email Corey. Okay, you know what? And he's a CPA too. Oh, he was a CPA winner. Okay, CPA winner. Okay, who wins the Tax and Legal Playbook? That is Tracy Ellman. Tracy Elman, winner of the Tax and Legal Playbook, second edition. Oh, I've put hours and hours, months and years into writing this book. You will love it. Okay, you know what, Corey? I'm gonna get crazy. I'm gonna give away a virtual ticket to the Tax Summit. Crypto Tax Summit. This is a $299 value. Okay. That's gonna be our grand prize. Okay. First, eight steps to start and grow your business. Who's our winner? Marco Cipion. Eight steps to start and grow your business. And by the way, I want to tell everybody, thank you for your comments. I'm sorry, couldn't get to all your questions. I apologize. This is so flattering and humbling to have so many of you watching today. I truly appreciate it. I hope I've helped you in some way. Now, the winner of a virtual ticket to the first ever Crypto Tax Summit, January 29th in Phoenix, Arizona. Cryptotaxsummit.com $299 value. And if you do not want to attend virtually because you hate cryptocurrency, I will allow you to transfer it to someone. Corey, who is our winner? We're just going to go with Bianca del Carmen. Bianca del Carmen, you are the winner. Oh, my gosh. Bianca del Carmen. Boom. You are going to the Crypto Tax Summit Virtual. If you want to come to Phoenix, I'll give you a credit for the value of the virtual summit. And for a couple hundred dollars more, you can come to Phoenix and be around the crowd. It's going to be electric. So much content. Sounds good. Hey, everybody, I want to say one last thing. From the heart, circling back to debt. All of us have plans this year. Focus on the future. Don't let the past beat you up. Write down your positive thoughts today of what you want to accomplish this year and read them every morning. Reprogram your mind. You can do this. Being a small business owner, building wealth, being an investor. It can be so exciting and thrilling. Don't let your past hold you back. You can do this. And I'm going to be here every week trying to help kick you in the butt, motivate you, give you any content or help I can to help you succeed. I love you. I'll see you next week.