E 129 Retirement and Investments 101 Jason Rainier CFP

e 129 a doctors perspective retirement investments jason rainier cfp
Jason Rainier, CFP talks to Dr. Justin Trosclair DC on A Doctor’s Perspective Podcast.

Doctor based Retirement and Investment options. Jason Rainier CFP will cover FSA’s, 401K, SEP IRA, 529B education funds, Trusts, Estate taxes, Wills, Index vs Managed Funds and Life Insurance. Novice or established you will learn something new.

What is a Certified Financial Planner, CFP? Qualifications, job role, CE’s etc. While the CFA has a broad spectrum of things they can do, part of their job is to coordinate and make sure the CPA and Lawyer are also all on the same page.

The generic goals of investments and retirement are to save as much as possible and not pay more taxes than you have to (legally).

  • 10:35 – Retirement Vehicles
  • 11:30 – 401K and 403B
  • 17:00 – FSA Account
  • 21:10 – SEP IRA –self employed
  • 24:18 – 529 Education Plans
  • 36:20 – Gifts
  • 37:23 – Estate Tax
  • 41:05 – Trusts
  • 43:25 – Testamentary Trust
  • 49:15 – Wills
  • 54:40 – Expense Ratios
  • 57:30 – Index Funds
  • 1:09:55 – Life Insurance
  • 1:23:45 Happy Family Life

What are 401K’s and 403B’s investments?

Limits on investing, tax benefits, when do you pay the tax, employer contributions, investment options, how much can you contribute each year  and all those type of questions are answered.

What are Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)?

When should you consider saving for health bills as well as reducing taxes? A big quirk in the rule that you must pay attention to otherwise you lose all the money you put in.

What type of person should consider prepaying for health bills?

What are SEP IRA ‘s investments for self employed people? There is a certain formula you have to use but you can save nearly triple the amount as a 401k.

In’s and out’s of 529B educational funds.

Jason helps us understand the limits, what qualifies as a school expense, what doesn’t count, and what to do if your kid decides to not go to university at all and the tax benefits of using an In state vs Out of state sponsored plan. Plus he discusses the legacy of paying for school for your grandchildren or other family members.

Why does he caution over funding an education fund at the cost of your own retirement?

You can gift a high amount of money tax free, Jason discusses the details behind Gifting: whether that’s to your kids, grandkids or whomever.

BE INFORMED AND ASK QUESTIONS and READ THE PROSPECTUS

Estate tax used to big a real threat, but recently the rules have changed.  Learn a bunch about estate tax in this segment. What’s the Annual Exclusion Amount and how does that tie into gifting.

What is a trust?

A big topic that Jason Rainier CFP talks about is Trusts. What is a trust, why would you set one up, and is it just for the rich? Reasons to set up a trust could be to protect your own loved ones from blowing through millions of dollars at a young age or you can even set one up to benefit a charity. Listen for all the details and examples of this fiduciary capacity.  

Testamentary trust, what are they? It’s probably one you might consider for your own family when you have children.  How to stop someone from stealing the inheritance that your kid should get while a person is overseeing the trust in their teen years?

What is a good schedule and time frame for your children to start receiving lump  sum amounts from their trust?

Fun side note: a notary in Louisiana also has to understand law, so the pass rate is only 20%.

Important parts of trusts are for probate reasons, protecting or guiding the way your wealth is distributed from beyond the grave and a few other reasons you can listen to. One reason you may want to avoid a general Will is to avoid the public records in the court system.

Expense Ratios and Index and Managed Funds

You have to understand about the Expense Ratios and Percent in passive Index Funds vs actively managed funds.  Let’s learn the pluses and minuses of both investment sides of the argument and what are considered mutual fund expenses to begin with.

Index Funds and Actively Managed investment funds: lots of reason to maybe pick one over the other. Jason will lay the ground work on the differences.

Life Insurance

Life insurance: term, whole, universal, variable and more.  Differences, tied to the stock market, cash values, death benefits and more are explained.  He also warns about taking too much cash out of the policy and then when you are older the policy implodes or lapse.

Jason Rainier is available for private consultations and can be reached at http://www.rainierwealth.com/  (225) 953-8286 or by email at Jason.Rainier@LFG.com

Since partnering with Sagemark Consulting nearly a decade ago, JasonRainier, CFP® has assisted affluent families and business owners toward achieving their financial goals by designing customized strategies for the accumulation, preservation, and ultimate transfer of their wealth. His experience over the years ranges from working with clients to solve complex financial issues, to creating financial road maps tailored to clients’ specific situations. Jason understands that every dollar under his care has a family attached to it. Serving his clients as a mathematical steward of wealth, he does not stray from the fundamentals of investing and believes in taking a measured, broadly diversified, high quality, low expense approach with the assets entrusted into his care. Jason has earned the Certified Financial Planner, Practitioner certification and holds Series 7 & 66 registrations in addition to life, health, and accident as well as variable life and variable annuity insurance licenses. He graduated in 2004 from the Louisiana State University EJ Ourso College of Business, holding a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Management. After his studies at LSU,

Jason successfully completed the CFP Certification Education Program through the College for Financial Planning in 2013. Jason most recently passed,the Louisiana Notary Exam and is commissioned as a Civil Law Notary Public. He is a long-standing member of the Financial Planning Association of Baton Rouge as well as a member of the South Baton Rouge Church of Christ. Dedicated to the betterment of the community in which he lives, Jason spent two years serving on the Board of Directors for a local nonprofit preschool and continues to serve on the Board of Directors for another local non-profit organization.

*DISCLAIMER: Jason Rainier, is a registered representative of Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp., a broker-dealer (member SIPC) and registered investment advisor offering insurance offered through Lincoln affiliates and other fine companies. Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp. and its representatives do not provide legal or tax advice. You may want to consult a legal or tax advisor regarding any legal or tax information as it relates to your personal circumstances.

Show notes can be found at https://adoctorsperspective.net/129 here you can also find links to things mentioned and the full transcript.

e 129 a doctors perspective retirement investments jason rainier
Full Transcript of the Interview (probably has some grammatical errors). Just Click to expand

Justin Trosclair 0:05
Episode 129

retirement and investments one on one. I’m your host, Dr. Justin trellis player. And today, we have Jason Ramirez perspective. Join 2017 and 2018 podcast Awards Nominated host

as we get behind the curtain look at all types of doctors and guests specialties.

Let’s hear a doctor’s perspective.

Well, I sure hope everyone is having a fantastic July 4 weekend, where you’re going to the beach or your barbecue and staying local. I’m excited for you, I hope you really maximizing these mandatory vacation days. So I look at it sometimes, for those of you who review really want to appreciate it. It’s very motivating. If you’ve been thinking about it, if you’ve gotten something good out of this leave us review doesn’t matter where Google device Apple, I really appreciate it when you do that. If you can,

there’s two sites you might want to look at the doctor’s

perspective, net slash question is just a basic question one question and kind of helps me know where to do more with the podcast. I mentioned a few times let me know what you think about these Minnesota Should I continue them? If you have an episode that you listen to that you like, definitely shoot me a message and I can listen to it and give me give everyone else the summary because you thought it was that awesome. I’m very happy to do that for you, and even culture. Lastly, the revamped known to acupuncture is still there.net slash bundle packs if you want to check it out. That’d be great. And on cited Instagram over 14,000 followers, thank you so much for being a fan and give me the motivation to keep on doing these talking new people really appreciate you and for your for what you do. So hope you have a great July 4 weekend if you listen to it during that timeframe. Next up, we’re on the second week of the financial series. I hope last week you learn a bunch about student loans, different options, I sure didn’t know what the next bad thing that’s kind of cool. If you don’t know it’s all about let’s go back and listen.net slash one to eight. On this week’s episode though. We have all things retirement investment, we’re going to cover, you know, 401k is Sep IRAs for the self employed by 29 education funds. FSA is trust states taxes wills index fund versus a managed funds, life insurance a little bit at the end. One thing I’m going to do for this episode that I haven’t really done in the past isn’t going to actually give you a time where we’ll start talking about each thing. Because you might be like, Look, I already know about four own K’s don’t bore me, our know about trust and estate taxes cool, you’ll know where to go. I’m not sure how to put timestamps where if you click it, it goes directly to that. So don’t expect that but you’ll be able to scan it yourself. So that’s really cool. It’s nice long episode like that’s why I put those because they’re just so much information. All the show notes can be found at a doctor’s perspective slash 129 as well as the transcript. On this episode, we do have to give a disclaimer. So I’m going to speed it up. But here’s the disclaimer.

Just bring up the registered representative of Lincoln financial advisors court a broker dealer member SIPC, a registered investment advisor offering insurance offered through other fine company, financial advisors. do not provide legal advice, you may want to consult a legal, legal protect information as it relates to personal circumstance.

There we go. As always say we should say in these episodes, we’re not your account. We’re not your lawyer. We’re not your CPA, we’re just giving you information so you can follow up with somebody you trust on your end. Okay, now, let’s go hashtag behind the curtain. Live from China, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Today on the show. We have a CFP, a certified financial planner, with Sage Mark consultant for almost 10 years. He assists families that are looking to grow their wealth and their retirement and beyond talking about accumulation, preservation and the ultimate transfer of their wealth. You know, he has a thing every dollar his care has a family attached to it. You got to know what you’re doing and do it with the highest integrity. And that’s what our yesterday, Jason, we’re near is all about. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Unknown Speaker 4:05
No problem. No problem. Well,

Unknown Speaker 4:07
let’s start with an icebreaker today. You ready? Yeah.

Justin Trosclair 4:10
Let’s do it. So my wife As you already know, things she looked like Captain America. Avengers, the last one that just came out. And he pops on the screen. He goes, Hey, that looks like your buddy in Baton Rouge. I said, Yeah, you said that. But one thing she never told you. But remember, it’s it’s the pre before he got big. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 4:35
no, Jay Jay.

Justin Trosclair 4:40
Lucy’s handsome. You know, always a handsome man. But this guy. He’s actually in power lifting. He used to be a runner. No. Now he’s a kind of power lifter. So you know, maybe it’s an in between guys. Anyway, I thought that was really funny. I was like, JJ. Yeah, exactly. Right. So as you can we’re friendly. We actually went to we’ve been known each other for a long time ever since LS you? Sometimes you just you find friends that can stick with you. And you make an effort. And they can last for Wow, almost 20 years? What?

Unknown Speaker 5:13
Yeah, that’s a really long time. Now. I know.

Justin Trosclair 5:15
Because I can remember being like 18 and 19. And seeing 25 year olds and thinking man, their old.

Unknown Speaker 5:24
Friends are almost 30 thinking they were ancient.

Justin Trosclair 5:26
Yeah. I don’t feel that old. I really don’t. But I mean, I’m sure my cousin thinks Oh,

Unknown Speaker 5:33
yeah, my kids think anything over nine or 10 years old is just, you know, dinosaurs are running around the Earth back then.

Justin Trosclair 5:42
Yeah, don’t ask a kid how old you think they are? Or the opposite? I will be honest,

Unknown Speaker 5:45
they thought I was 100 at one point.

Justin Trosclair 5:50
So messed up. Oh, man. Well, let’s jump in. We just had the previous episode with the student loan planner. You know, as doctors, we come out of school, roughly around 200 some people all the way up to like 600,000 in debt. And so we were talking about ways that you can consolidate our Can you have loan forgiveness programs, and he kind of was talking about near the end a little bit about retirement. And like, you know, if you do this, you actually save money, but you need to have a 401k you need to have all this other stuff. So I was like, that’s great. I think Jason would be a great follow up in this financial series, to just kind of go through the 411 somewhat basic, but also some of these higher level things like trusts and wills and things we should look out for and estate planning that most doctors I think we need to know about because they should have the wealth accumulation that warrants those types of investment vehicles. So audience, if sounds really basic, stay with it. You’ll find some stuff that’s kind of heavier at the end. And if you’re really just like, wow, yeah, I’m 32. And I haven’t started investing for my retirement yet. Then definitely perk up and grab a pencil in don’t wreck while you’re driving. So, long intro, but tell me first before we started, what’s a CFP? Why is that better than just a whole one person who can invest in some kind of mutual fund for you?

Unknown Speaker 7:12
Okay, well, it’s not necessarily a better or worse thing, but I can tell you what a CFP is. And so people can conduct themselves and make informed decisions before hiring someone like that. So, I am a CFP professional. It stands for Certified Financial Planner CFP designation is is really it’s given out by the CFP Board of standards. And to qualify to be a CFP professional, you have to go take graduate level coursework in the areas of investment planning, retirement planning, tax planning, risk management and insurance planning, estate planning. And once you pass all of those classes,

Justin Trosclair 7:55
like a master’s program, almost basically,

Unknown Speaker 7:57
yeah, yeah, okay, you didn’t have to sit for a board exam, I believe it’s six hours long. Now when I took it, it was 10 hours long. It you got to take it over two days, and then they waited something like three months to give you your results, and had a pretty low, whoa, the pass rate wasn’t that high was very, very difficult exam, you have to have three years of practical experience before even if you pass the test, you have to have three years of practical experience before you can call yourself a CFP, professional. And then on top of that you have to adhere to a very strict code of ethics. And then once all that’s done, you have to do continuing education. They require about 30 Yeah, well, they do they require 30 hours of see each reporting period. And that’s on top of any of the CPE that you take for your other registrations or license. Man, that’s more than what a doctor takes. I did not know that.

Unknown Speaker 8:52
Yeah, we definitely most places don’t have to take 30 hours, plus all the other stuff

Unknown Speaker 8:57
talking about, well, there’s ethics, you have to take some see CFPB ethics. And again, that’s on top of the any other insurance licenses or securities registrations that you may have that that’s you had see if the specific type of seed, and yeah, so it’s very difficult to become one, you really have to know what you’re talking about in order to get that designation. And really sort of person, somebody who is a CFP, professional, they’re really the best fit into your financial life as really the quarterback it from my perspective, because they’re really trained to understand your entire financial situation, kind of from a global perspective, or the 30,000 foot view, just not just really your investment planning, or just your insurance or your estate planning, but they’re trying to really understand the entire picture, and understand how it all plays, because planning doesn’t just happen in a vacuum, really each each area of your planning inner connects and intersect and can affect other areas. And so,

Justin Trosclair 10:04
so you gotta really, you might get some advice from you. But then you got to go and talk to the lawyer that can put it together like the LLC or an escort, then you got to talk to the accountant that can help create sort of the things that you gotta have for what you need to do as well.

Unknown Speaker 10:16
Yeah, so really, yeah, you do, you have to really know as much as possible about that person’s situation. It does involve coordinating with the other advisors, oftentimes, I tell my clients, you know that they, I’m not necessarily here to replace anybody, I’m here to basically join the team of advisors, your trusted advisors, and tie everything together and help coordinate everything, because I find oftentimes, the CPA may not be speaking with the investment advisor, the investment advisor may not be speaking with the attorney, and the attorney may not be speaking of the CPA. And so the client is doing little pieces of their financial planning in bits and pieces, and no one’s talking with one another. And so you’ve it may have things that conflict between planning and may actually either contradict or conflict or even void out some of the types of planning you’ve done. Basically, they’re working against one another, not intentional,

Justin Trosclair 11:13
you could depreciate some building or something like that way more fat, like way faster than like you would have recommended, you know, or whatever. I’m just throwing things out there. But yeah, it could put a couldn’t put a wrench in what you were trying to do, because like, Whoa, you didn’t do this correctly. Now you’re in this other tax bracket. And now you don’t have this no qualify for these things anymore. Because y’all just didn’t do something right.

Unknown Speaker 11:31
Generally speaking, I mean, it, it’s not that you’re preparing their tax return as a CFP, but taking a look at their schedule 1040 or their their federal tax return, can give you a huge clue into what’s going on. And some adjustments that may may be able to be made that you can go back to the CPA and discuss on the investment front to maybe reduce the the tax, the taxable interest or or, you know, there are lots of different things you can do to reduce the amount of taxable income. Now, I’m not saying changing your income, reduce the less exposed to taxes. And just by taking the simple steps of having two people talk to one another, you can make a huge difference. It’s kind of like when you go to the doctor, and I’m not sure if this happens with you and your patients. But sometimes you have people that don’t want to tell you everything, either because they’re Yeah. I mean, they could be embarrassed, or they may just feel like it’s none of your business. But yeah, how how are you supposed to do your job to the best of your ability? If you can’t know if you don’t know everything? I mean, if you go to the doctor, and you don’t tell them about an allergy to a medication, I mean, they could kill you.

Justin Trosclair 12:42
I mean, you go to a chiropractor, you say you don’t tell me you have cancer? That’s a problem. That’s because if it’s bone cancer, that’s kind of what I’m working on. That’s not a good thing.

Unknown Speaker 12:50
Well, exactly. And it’s not it’s not that I’m trying to be nosy or anyone in this position is trying because he is that they need as much information so they can give you control. Yes, sir.

Justin Trosclair 13:00
Okay. All right. So let’s take a few minutes, and just kind of go through the nuts and bolts 401k I’m self employed, I know we have something that’s pretty much the same thing. But it’s called a sip, simple for I don’t know, something like that. There’s a mutual funds in ETFs, pure stock, kind of give us like a rundown on kind of what you’re looking at Roth IRAs, as well, I love those. So that we just kind of have an idea of some of these buzzwords, and then we can kind of move on into some of the other stuff that we wanted to talk about.

Unknown Speaker 13:32
Okay, well, so these are all ways to, to handle or either save for retirement, reduce your current income taxes, or maybe future income taxes in the case of a Roth type of plan. But I always encourage people to one and my position to save as much as you can and to to never pay more taxes than you have to. I’m not telling you to not pay taxes that you have to pay your taxes, but there’s no sense and overpay, well, you don’t have to,

Justin Trosclair 14:01
there’s plenty of loopholes, and plenty of deductions that you can take, if you know how to do it legally, right, and not even gray area, you just gotta have somebody that knows what they’re doing.

Unknown Speaker 14:10
Yeah, it’s just basically gifs, the Congress has given you that you can take advantage of it. And so we’ll start with some of the simple ones that are low hanging fruit. For one Kaizen for the three B’s, I know a lot of the people listen to your podcast, or physicians, you’re probably dealing with folks who are either direct employees of hospital or a medical practice, or they may be self employed, and they own the practice. But we’ll start with the most basic situation, let’s say you are a just a W two employee of a hospital or an organization. So in that instance, you would probably have access or should have access to 401k or 403. b. And let’s say for those who aren’t familiar with those, bear with me for a second, I want to speak to the people who are not. And just give them a little rundown. What that is, is basically a tax deferred retirement savings plan, the money comes out of your paycheck, you decide how much you want to contribute, and is taken out of your paycheck before taxes are taken out. If it’s a traditional 401k or four, three be the money has the potential to grow, tax deferred, so any growth that you have is to expert until you begin taking money out. And so again, I want to caution people that this is a retirement account, this is money you are putting in for a very long time. Assuming that you’re young in 2019, you can, if you’re under the age of 50, I would assume folks listening to podcast are probably a little bit younger. But for those who are in their 50s and older, that’s great. For those who are under 50, you can contribute up to $19,000 a year this year, if you’re over 50, there’s what’s called a catch up provision where you can contribute up to $25,000 to be over 50 catch up, that’s a lot of money that you can’t actually suffer from today taxes. And that’s actually if you’re married this per spouse, so both of you can do that.

Justin Trosclair 16:04
And the hospital is going to match part of it.

Unknown Speaker 16:06
Usually sometimes they do just depending on the on the plan. But that’s that’s free money, more or less, you know, by not participating in it, you’re not allowing them to give you a raise more or less.

Justin Trosclair 16:17
Hey, would you ever say if a hospital says okay, I want to save let’s say I want to save 15% of my income, but the hospital only matches 3%? Should I just invest 3% with them? Take that other percentage and go to somebody like yourself and maybe get a better a better option? Well, then just given them the whole 15?

Unknown Speaker 16:36
Yeah, honestly, it really depends on the person’s situation. It depends on the plan itself, some some 401k plans are very good, they have low expenses sometimes or can have expenses, they may have very good investment options. So it’s really going to be situation specific. And okay, okay, before you make any decision as to not participate in your 401k. Or to instead of participating the 401k, putting money into a traditional IRA, there’s a lot of things you need to look at expenses would be one, the investment options will be another the amount of money that you can contribute, because there are different kind of contribution limits for both. And you’re going to look at whether or not there’s a match, because like I said, if you’re not contributing at least up to the mash, you’re you’re basically throwing away money, because that’s the

Justin Trosclair 17:26
3% raise practically.

Unknown Speaker 17:28
Yeah, basically, yeah, well, so let’s say, let’s look at the higher limits, because you’re probably dealing with folks with higher incomes, or who, at somewhere down the road would have a higher income, let’s say you got somebody who’s under the age of 50. And they’re contributing $19,000, this year to their 401k, or therefore three be, let’s just assume you’re in the 24%, or federal tax bracket that starts about hundred and $68,400 in income for this year in my state in Louisiana, that would put you in the 6% tax bracket. So roughly roughly that save you somewhere around $5,700 in income tax, just by putting that money into your 401k or for 3d plan instead of your savings account. You it allows you to keep more money and put more money into your pocket. That’s a significant difference. And then if you do that both spouses do that, then that’s what an $11,400 tax savings right there roughly. And

Justin Trosclair 18:27
yeah, it’s going to grow for the next 20 years,

Unknown Speaker 18:30
it could grow and that growth on a traditional for 3d or 401k would be tax deferred until you start taking money out. So one other thing to keep in mind, if you have a four three be, there’s also something called the 15 year catch up. So if you’ve got over 15 years of service, you can put a little bit more money into that on top of your over 50 catch up. But there’s some special rules with that. And so you need to talk to generally talk or work with your payroll department to have them help you determine men, how much you’re eligible to contribute. And one other big thing, big thing to remember, this is a retirement account. So if you are under the age of 59 and a half and you decide to take money out, you may be subject to a 10% penalty on top of the taxes you can pay. So that’s a consideration that you want to make sure that you’re thinking through.

Justin Trosclair 19:24
Yes, you can easily lose 25 to 35% of whatever you’re trying to take out.

Unknown Speaker 19:28
Yeah, it’s an A plus it can put you in a new tax bracket you’re taking out lump sums is it just don’t do it. And and and it depends on the person’s situation. I personally never tried to judge somebody because, you know, things come up. But it’s definitely can put a crimp in in your style. One thing to that I would probably be remiss if I didn’t mention before we move to the self employed people are FSA. So yeah, yeah, those are basically they want first of all their users it. But an FSA for those who are not as as familiar with those, there a flexible spending account, or Flexible Spending arrangement. And it’s three year we love them.

Justin Trosclair 20:11
Yeah, they we love swiping that card.

Unknown Speaker 20:15
I use one too. But you basically you can funnel your medical expenses through them. And you can each spouse, let’s say you’re married, each spouse can contribute up to $2,700 to an FSA this year. Now, not all plans have caught up to that IRS limit. But right now the contribution limit is 2700 per spouse or per individual and the money that you put in there, as long as you it goes in before taxes. And as long as you use the money for qualified medical expenses, it’s not subject to federal income tax, Social Security tax or Medicare tax. And so that’s an additional tax benefit that you have using those plans that aren’t available. Well, the 401k. And so but if you don’t,

Justin Trosclair 21:02
but you lose it at the end of the year, if you don’t use it

Unknown Speaker 21:05
correct,

Justin Trosclair 21:06
and so see better budget correctly,

Unknown Speaker 21:08
you should and so my wife and I in our personal case, we we have a pretty good idea of what our medical expenses are ongoing. Now, of course, you’ve got emergencies that come up and things like that. They they’re harder to fix, really expect or plan for but, you know, we know generally what we’re going to spend each month on just the doctor visits and on we have a good average of how often our kids get sick. So kind of real man, we’ve got three of them. So you know, we got we’re kind of on a first name basis with our doctor, a pediatrician, but we just plan for how much we expect to spend that year. And that’s how much we put in and money that we spend on on those medical expenses for us and our children. That’s basically income tax free money. And it’s important though, I would caution people more or less just to know and be considering this when you’re deciding whether or not to contribute to the FSA is that because you’re not having to pay Social Security tax or Medicare tax on it, that that piece of your income isn’t used in the calculation for calculating your Social Security benefits down the road. And so it puts more money in your pocket today, but could mean that you have less in your pocket later it so i would i would really, I guess caution people to if you’re going to use this to just make appropriate plans, you know, save, put as much as you can and your 401k and your four three be your retirement accounts.

Justin Trosclair 22:43
But if you know your kids going to need braces, you can tell me 2022 the year I better start saving up now because I know my kids gonna need some braces, and now you have the money.

Unknown Speaker 22:51
Those are not we’re already looking at that that’s not not a

Justin Trosclair 22:55
No, no, not at all. But I mean, it makes sense. You know, as a doctor, we’re excited to see it because it’s so easy on us for paperwork. It’s there’s less red tape, and all that kind of stuff. So we we like them and near to the end of the year, you start to see an influx of people trying to is this covered? Is that covered, you know, they’re looking at your wall of stuff that you might be able to buy, and they’re like, I need to get rid of it. I’m not sick and only got two weeks.

Unknown Speaker 23:20
Well, that’s why you just careful to really think through how much how much you might need to spend that year. I mean, you can’t, it’s impossible to predict it down to the dollar. But you know, yeah, Think it through and

Justin Trosclair 23:32
Miss only 2700 bucks. That’s not even your deductible for most people.

Unknown Speaker 23:35
Yeah, well, and, you know, I mean, you know that my wife is diabetic. And so we have a lot of medical expenses, just personally. And for us, it’s a very helpful, you know, it may not be as somebody who has no medical expenses ever, because they never get sick, and they have no children are married. But but it’s definitely something to put in your tool belt and think about now for your self employed people, you know, you may not have an FSA available, but you have what’s called a SEP IRA. If you are self employed, you can use a SEP IRA. And that’s basically an IRA, that is for the employer. And the that particular IRA has a slightly different well has a different contribution limit or higher contribution limit. So as the employer, you have to follow a formula, but the absolute maximum contribution you can make is $56,000. In 2019, come on. Yeah, I mean, assuming that you the formula works, works in your favor. So I’m assuming you’re the way it works is you you know you it’s based on your net income. So assuming your net income is high enough, you can actually defer up to $56,000 of income into your SEP IRA. So if if you’re in the top tax bracket, and in 2019, and you did contribute $56,000, you get rafal, a $24,000 income tax break by putting it into IRA instead of your savings account. that’s a that’s a really good planning tool. Now it doesn’t, it’s for everyone, it really depends on your income,

Justin Trosclair 25:12
right. But then one thing I heard when I was trying to do that once upon a time, if you were in a match, like if you’re an S corporate Corporation, and you wanted to say Oh, man, I want to I want to match my business wants to match me 3% or whatever, yeah, but you also have to every employee has to be able to contribute to the fund. And if you match yourself, you have to be able to match what they put as well.

Unknown Speaker 25:35
Well, that’s true. So basically, I mean, there are special rules, if you do have employees, if you make a contribution to yourself, or for your SEP IRA, then you need you have to make contributions to employees, and there are rules you have to follow.

Justin Trosclair 25:51
But they don’t have to participate if they don’t want to at all.

Unknown Speaker 25:54
No, it really is set up for you to as the employer to make contributions, generally speaking. But yeah, I mean, if you do have employees, you just have to bear in mind that you’re going to most likely have to make contributions and again, or to your employees, SEP IRA, as well, but bearing in mind that, you know, you’d have to look and see if they met those requirements to receive the contribution as an income requirement and some other ones, but I’m a big fan of treating people fairly. So you know, it’s not necessarily a bad thing there.

Justin Trosclair 26:29
I mean, come on. Exactly. Like, I know, we get on these big corporations like me, you can’t even pay your people minimum, like a livable wage, much lesser retirement package. And then at the same time, we’re like, oh, I don’t know, I don’t want to pay an extra $200 because of that. 401k they’re gonna get like, Come on, guys. Don’t be so cheap.

Unknown Speaker 26:45
Yeah, you know, help yourself and help your employees come on treat people. Right. And I, this is just me talking, but I think it treat people right. In your kind, fair, so much more than fair. People are going to be loyal, they’re going to treat you right. Return. It comes back to you, you know, yeah. Yeah. Continue. Yeah, something else you can use. And this would apply to both self employed people and direct employees, but they can use 529 plans. So a lot of people want to send their kids to education one. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people want to send your kids to college. And I mean, it’s no secret that college is getting very expensive. I mean, the last time I checked the tuition, I know you and I will tell us you together, tuition now is way more than it used to be when we went there. Free baby,

Unknown Speaker 27:32
like 15. Thank you. I know,

Unknown Speaker 27:34
right?

Justin Trosclair 27:37
Anything, the net? But no, but like, through it’s like, what, two, maybe two 3000 a semester. And that’s cheap is

Unknown Speaker 27:45
more than it was we went and I mean, my kids are still young. If it keeps if the cost keeps going up at the same rate, it’s gonna be a lot more expensive than it is now. And so we’re personally starting to try to save for that to give our kids at least a jumpstart our tuition. And the way to 529 plant works is you’re able to save for for college, and that money grows tax deferred, if you so you put money in and that money grows tax deferred, if you take money out for qualified education expenses, then is tax free. So if you there are a lot of different plans to that, I guess it’s important to to bring up

Justin Trosclair 28:24
that’s the problem. There’s so many plans, there’s a lot of plans,

Unknown Speaker 28:27
and you don’t have to necessarily contribute to a plan in your state. So like, for instance, Louisiana has a plan. Virginia has a plan, Mexico has a plan. All these different states have their own plans for their for their citizens. And that’s great. If you contribute to a plan in your state, generally speaking, you’ll see a state income tax deduction for it. It’ll reduce your state income taxes. But if you contribute to a plan outside of your state, you you may you may not get that tax break, or probably probably Walt,

Unknown Speaker 29:03
but it’s more fluid, though.

Unknown Speaker 29:04
Well, you’ll still get you’ll still get the benefit of the money growing tax deferred.

Justin Trosclair 29:09
But I mean, if you’re a kid, you don’t know where your kids gonna go to school. Like they might like, Oh, no, I’m going to New York for school you like well, you can pay for Louisiana,

Unknown Speaker 29:17
you can use the plan in any state. So okay, and can pay for the university outside of Louisiana. The issue is that you just may or may not get the tax deduction, if you’re contributing to a different states plan than where you live. still get that that pre tax growth? And then if you take the money out for qualified education expenses, you’re not going to be taxed on those withdrawals. Okay, so that’s the long term. Yeah, it’s very useful, it is very useful. And there are certain reasons why people will go out of state for their plans. Sometimes they may not like their they may not like their state’s plan, they may not like the investment that they’ve shown that they’ve chosen, you know, they may feel more comfortable with a plan that are more familiar with the plan is out of state, or maybe some plans. Some states don’t allow advisors to work with the plan. So and I having to go with can

Justin Trosclair 30:09
you work in a lot of different states, you just your home base is Louisiana.

Unknown Speaker 30:13
Right? Right. And so you know, it really there are a lot of different reasons to choose different states plans, but it’s really important to be informed, ask questions, try to understand the the pluses and minuses to each state’s plan, the investment options available, it to make sure that you’re making a very well informed decision before you actually start investing money.

Unknown Speaker 30:37
Tell people to you know, ask for free perspectives, read through the prospectus. Ask questions, and that’s what we’re going to do. Yeah. And well, that’s what we’re going to read.

Justin Trosclair 30:49
What I’m paying you for, give me the top three. And you know, to that,

Unknown Speaker 30:52
I mean, there’s no there no guarantees that investments can go up or down in value. But it

Justin Trosclair 31:00
but this is along with that would be sad. Hmm. 20 years from now your kid goes to school, and you’re in a down market?

Unknown Speaker 31:06
And you make wise choices for this? Yeah, no, it really helps to, to pay close attention, to ask questions to if you can work with an advisor, someone who can kind of guide you through the process over time.

Justin Trosclair 31:21
Hey, real quick on that plan. Yeah, obviously, it’s tuition, school books, I heard. And this is what I think some people get excited about when they have the extra money. I don’t know what the limit is. But let’s, let’s just say you put in a 15,000 a year for like, 15 years, man, by the time your kid goes to school, that’s gonna be a nice chunk of cash right there. And instead of buying an apartment or making them live on campus, what I’ve heard you can do is you can get a condo or you can buy a house because they’re going to school, and that’s considered their room and board. And then that you just bought a house tax free. You know, the growth was tax free. And then they could have roommates and they can pay your rent, and other sudden they’re paying your house note. And now you got an extra rental property out of it all, just from money that you invested a long time ago for an educational expense.

Unknown Speaker 32:08
Yeah, I would, I would definitely say and caution you to speak with your CPA at length about

Unknown Speaker 32:17
the

Unknown Speaker 32:21
iris has a big stick. And so I would I got to speak with your CPA, disclose all the details of what you were planning to do, and get their advice before you did anything like that.

Justin Trosclair 32:33
But they do cover some kind of room and board though. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. room and board I give you stayed on campus. That’d be probably the most obvious like you live on the dorms? Yes, that’s

Unknown Speaker 32:42
considered part of your education. Right. Right. But okay, but generally speaking, I don’t you know, I don’t work for the IRS. But I would I would suggest you talk to a CPA before you had something that something like,

Justin Trosclair 32:55
yeah. Alright, guys, remember, I am not a financial planner, he’s not yours. So we’re just throwing out ideas that you need to go and find out more information about See ya people.

Unknown Speaker 33:07
Something to that I forgot to mention is if you take money out of the 529 plan, and don’t use it towards or for education expenses, you’re going to pay a 10% penalty and taxes on the growth. So if there is any growth, so what happens?

Justin Trosclair 33:23
You kid goes to trade school in two years, they get a scholarship for four years, you have $150,000 in this account, what are you supposed to do? And you only have like, say one kid, like, what do you do with all that money? You just got to take a penalty? Can you roll it over into something else? Well, so Shame on you.

Unknown Speaker 33:43
Shame on you, you’re planning it August or backup, let’s say you have multiple children 529 plan, you can always change the beneficiary. And we see that frequently. So one of your kids gets a large scholarship or decides decides not to go to college, nothing wrong with say they go to trade school, or they just, you know, they decided that they need to do something, yeah, they do something. But it doesn’t involve involve school, well, your other kid decides to go to grad school or medical school while you take, you have the ability to change the beneficiary of that that account and then use it for your other child. You can also you can also change the beneficiary, let’s say your kid has a child, you can say change the beneficiary to your grandchild. And so you’re leaving a legacy of education for your family. So we can go deep. Yeah, I mean, go pretty deep. You could also, I mean, there there are, and again, this will be something to talk to you CPA about. But if your child gets a scholarship, there are certain provisions to be able to get some of that money back without having to pay a penalty. But before you get

Justin Trosclair 34:49
because, I mean, that’s my favorite CPA.

Unknown Speaker 34:51
Yeah, talk, talk to you soon. Okay.

Justin Trosclair 34:54
All right, because you would be the person that put us into the plan, but the CPA is kind of gonna help you take it out so that you don’t shoot yourself in the foot at the end?

Unknown Speaker 35:01
Well, yeah, I’d be the one if it for for my clients. Yeah, I helped them physically do the withdrawals and things like that. But we always we always try to reopen the CPA as well.

Justin Trosclair 35:12
You get to the point where your clients, they’ve been putting it in, you’re looking at it, you’re projecting you like, Yo, man, we don’t really need to put any more Education Fund away, because you’re probably gonna have more money than this kids ever going to be able to spend. Unless you really do want to pay for your grandkids college as well. Like, we just need to stop.

Unknown Speaker 35:30
Well, I’ll be really honest with you. I just don’t come across that that often.

Justin Trosclair 35:38
Okay, okay. People aren’t putting that kind of money in there. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 35:41
I see people that are trying say really hard for college. But getting to a point where there’s just so much money set aside for college I, that I just tell somebody, hey, look, stop. I have not seen that. Now, I will usually caution people that there are no, you don’t want to give your kids so much at the expense of your own ability to maintain a good standard of living throughout your lifetime. Right? Yeah, it’s and that’s coming from a dad, you know, it, I can’t tell somebody necessarily how to feel about their children and their their goals and their hopes. But I always caution people to think about this, you know, there are no student loans, or for retirement, there’s no grants, there’s no scholarships for retirement. Hmm. I mean, we have social security, some people have pensions, but generally speaking, you’re kind of on your own. And so you need to be saving, so that you don’t have to work till you’re 90, you know, it. People that choose to work that long, or life just deals on the hand like that, there’s no judgment here, life happens. And people sometimes really enjoy their jobs, enjoy their work and more power to them. But you don’t want to see yourself in a situation where you’ve given your children so much, that you just really you’re not going to be able to ever retire. Or if even the slightest bump in the road comes up, that you’re out the street, you know, we kind of ask people jokingly, you know, when you when your kids spend all your money, are they? Are they gonna let you move in with them? True? I don’t know, maybe they will, you know, I hope that you will, do you want to? Do you want to nobody wants to be a burden. And so yeah, that you need to use there needs to be some balance. And that maybe that’s why I don’t run into that situation as much it just because we do, we do caution people to, you know, think about your own situation. First, you know, when when you’re on an airplane, when they go through all the list of the emergency procedures, they always say, put your own mask on first, if there’s a cabin pressure problem, put your own mask on first, then turn to your child put their mask on, you cannot bless the person next, you can’t bless your child. Unless you’re in a you’re in a healthy position to and so, you know, I kind of compared to that. Exactly.

Justin Trosclair 38:07
You kids in school, and they’re like eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It’s like, that’s not that’s not good. That’s not the way you want to live your life

Unknown Speaker 38:13
like ramen, but you know, I don’t eat it because I have to anymore.

Justin Trosclair 38:18
Exactly, exactly. You know, I looked at it as like, I had the money available. And you know, right now, it’s not like, I’m not like putting more than I would normally put probably the first year since like, you know, that first year, I got 18 years, I’d rather do it now while I have it. And then in five years, you know, if you’re like, well, I don’t really have as much to put without hurting my own lifestyle. Well, that’s okay. It’s still growing from that big chunk that first year. And I can still sleep good at night.

Unknown Speaker 38:44
Right. And if you’re going to do a large chunk, I’d again I’d tell you to talk to your CPA, because there are if you contribute over certain amounts, you may be subject to finally get tax return. Not necessarily a problem. But it does create a little bit more administrative work for you. And so again, I would just I would talk to your CPA before you, you start making large contributions, just so you know what you’re getting into, and what would wire to be going forward?

Justin Trosclair 39:12
Hey, when you talk in what we’re jumping around in this one, when you tell me like a gift. I know there’s like when your parents are old, and they’re retired, and they’re like they have more money than they can spend? And they’re like, yeah, you know, I’m probably going to be dead here in the next five years from my bad health, they can start giving a certain amount of money to all their whoever they want, really, as a gift every year. Yeah, that’s true, right?

Unknown Speaker 39:33
Yes, it is. And again, I would, I would tell you to talk to your CPA, before you start doing that, just because there are limits on how much you can how much you can give. You want to know what you’re getting into if you’re going to start filing gift tax returns, things like

Justin Trosclair 39:50
that. But again, you coach people, like when you’re talking to these people, and you’ve had them as customers for a while. And they’re getting to that point, they asked you that kind of question. You’re like, yeah, there’s a way the funnel off some of this money to people that you love. And that way don’t get hit with the death taxes bad when they have to split your money when you pass?

Unknown Speaker 40:08
Well, we do. I’m guessing. Right. So yeah, we have those conversations. Typically, with folks that were doing comprehensive financial planning or estate planning. It’s becoming less of an issue right now, because the estate tax exemption has gone up so much it was was considerably lower. Now. It’s $11.4 million for a single individual and $22.8 million for a married couple. That’s a lot. Yeah, no, I mean, so you can have an estate of 20 to around 22 billion before being subject to estate taxes. Again, you know, you’re going to work with CPA, when you are your executor is going to when you die, but that’s that’s the largest state that you can have before you start having running into those sort of tax issues. At one point, I mean, many years ago is much lower somewhere around a million.

Unknown Speaker 40:59
Yeah, I remember that. That was like people were freaking out.

Unknown Speaker 41:01
Yeah, I mean, it’s changed over the years. And most recently, when the President work to work with Congress to change the tax laws here about a year, oh, man, Time Is Flying at the end of 2017 is Obama or 18. But President Trump, if you for folks who do have estates larger than that exemption, their techniques you can do to start are used to start reducing your your estate tax exposure, and reducing your estate. And so like what you’re talking about, gifting, and this, this is kind of what I was alluding to, with the 529 plans as well, about gifting. So you can gift up to $15,000 as an individual to an individual before you become subject to having to deal with the gift tax returns, things like that. So it’s called an annual exclusion amount. And it’s $15,000. So a married couple, let’s say this is this is probably more common scenario that I’ve seen, you may have a married couple that has some children and grandchildren, let’s say they have two kids and two grandkids, well, that married couple can gift 15,000 a piece of 30,000 $30,000 to each one of their children. So those two children, so $60,000, and then they’re two grandchildren, another 30,000 to each grandchild, you know, before they start having to be subject to, you know, give tax. You know, there’s some other things that other tax issues you might want to talk to your CPA about. And again, before you do it, that’s a lot of money to part with before you, you know, get your CPA to sign off on it. There’s generational skipping tax that you might want talk to your CPA about but, you know, let’s just even even if you’re just dealing with your two children, that’s the $60,000 you can get out of your state. And you can do that every year without having to be subject to begin to act. So that’s one way to get it out of your state. What one thing? Yeah, that’s one way. And that’s what one of the things we do and work with with people on that as gifting those that annual exclusion amount. And right now is for housing. But it does change from time to time, used to be 14,000. Up until really 2018 at went up. But yeah, it can be a useful tool.

Justin Trosclair 43:21
So that’s a nice way where like a grandparent will be whoever really, you know, and not have to pay as much taxes in the long run. And it’s because you could just here, here’s the gift,

Unknown Speaker 43:30
there’s a child or grandchild or something, but sometimes grandparents contributed 529 as well, you can upload it and put

Unknown Speaker 43:39
a larger amount in there.

Justin Trosclair 43:41
That’s nice. So they can do that, too.

Unknown Speaker 43:43
Yeah,

Justin Trosclair 43:44
yeah. Well, that’s true. It doesn’t have to be the parents to put in the five to nine, really, anybody could put into 529 for that person for that kid, right? Oh, yeah. That’s pretty cool. Yeah, I think I think my parents are doing that. Yeah, that’s really interesting. That’s, that’s good one, hey, let’s talk about what what’s it trust? Why was somebody used that I like to think of it as those spoiled rich kids who they care about the environment, and they’re in college, but you know, they don’t even have to work. So that’s why they care about the environment so much, but I’m just I’m just picking on environmentalist at the moment. Babies, you know, you just have all this money, you got 510 million dollars, and you know, your kids 18. And you just don’t want to give an eight year old, I think $10 million, because you passed away in a car accident. That’s a really bad situation, I would think for an 18 year old to have that much money coming from not having that kind of money. So give us give us the rundown on what a trust is, and why would you use one and all that stuff?

Unknown Speaker 44:34
All right. Well, that’s actually really good question. So a trust is really just a legal arrangement. And I’m going to try to not use legalese, the most the best I can. But it’s basically a legal arrangement where a person or an entity like a company acts as a trustee, or someone that holds property and a fiduciary capacity, or someone else said fiduciary capacity basically means that you are obligated to ask in that other person’s best interest. You want to talk to an attorney before in us or set up a trust or ask as lots of questions, make sure you understand what you’re doing and work with an attorney in Louisiana, and ironically enough, Louisiana has a civil law state, the other 49 states are common law states and Louisiana, you can actually work with a notary to set up a trust and a notaries can’t practice law, but they have the legal authority to to do sorts, those sorts of things.

Justin Trosclair 45:32
It’s a way big deal in Louisiana, they’re not just watching you sign a piece of paper and stamping it

Unknown Speaker 45:37
off in Louisiana, a big deal is that a big deal it hard that the pass rate on that exam is like 18 to 23% statewide, because you’re actually being tested on the law. It’s It’s crazy. So we deal with this a lot in terms of working with clients and their attorneys. And and trying to help them work through the pros and the cons of informing them about certain things to talk about what their attorney so I guess we can talk about it’s a it’s a really complex issue. But we can we can talk about the different types and uses and, you know, maybe somebody can glean something from that. So I’ll talk to speak to the one that I use personally, and it’s because it involves my personal situation, we’ve got three children. So a very common discussion that I have with our clients is about testing memory trusts and working with an attorney for to discuss a testament to a trust, and what a test a mentoring somebody word, Jason. Yeah, it what it is, it the trust is set up through your will. And oh, there, it only comes to life basically springs to life when you die. And it’s a trust that is set up to receive your assets when you die, so that there’s somebody that can administer them while your children are still young, mature, and take care of those assets, help them either grow, or just be make wise decisions with them, build or write checks to The Guardian, or well write checks for medical expenses for to buy clothes, your kids to buy food for your private school, private, private school, if you say it enough, but but basically, it’s it’s a trust that set up when when you die, to have somebody responsibly take care of your children, financially, what I want to see, and I see this too often, and I mean, I knew people growing up and you may have to that when they had a parent die, they had a trust. And I guess I don’t know if the terms of the trust were loose or what have you. But you know, as soon as they turned 18 the money became the kids and because they were buying, buying their mama a house or buy and you can take in the girlfriends on these extravagant dates. And they were always the life with everybody wanted to be their friend, because they just had loads of money. And I’ve seen people burn through so much money, it would I mean, it would make you you’d have a stroke, I told you the numbers is crazy. Well, it would make their parents roll over in their graves honestly, we we usually encourage people to talk with their their attorney about using this trust, to make sure that our channel doesn’t just come into loads of money when they turn 18. So not only is there somebody to take care of their money while their children and make sure that their needs are met, financial needs are met while their children, but you know, choosing the appropriate time and the appropriate amounts to give them it so that they don’t just come into large inheritances all at one time. So in our personal case, our testimony trust, we’ve got it set up to where all of our life insurance, our our retirement plans, they all pay into the trust the our house every goes into the trust. And when the kids turned 25 while while their children, the trustee would be able to you know, pay for their school pay for their their food, pay for their medication, everything.

Unknown Speaker 49:13
But when they set up where they can’t steal your money.

Unknown Speaker 49:15
Yeah, yeah. Now they I mean, I guess they could it probably could have,

Justin Trosclair 49:20
like, they might have a certain amount like you could stipulate like, Look, I exist, it would cost 25,000 per year to take care of these kids. This is how much you have access to per year. Yeah, that way, they can’t just take 200,000. But guess what it costs this

Unknown Speaker 49:33
year, it’s more or less controlling the money from the great. And so Okay, all right, we would the way we’ve got to set up, our kids wouldn’t receive their first lump sum from the trust until they were 25. And then they only get one third of it. And the reason we did that is in our personal case, I, I want my kids to have to struggle for a while because it builds character, it helps them learn how to have to have to survive on their own how to pay their bills, and and have to try to improve their lives. You know, I want them to experience real life for a while I want them to just be a trust fund child, when they turned 30, they get another third of their inheritance when they turned 35 then they get another third. But you know, another reason was that they would hopefully if they were going to get married, have gotten married sometime during the time period. I was married at 22. And so you know, there’s there’s less of this having to worry about somebody marrying them for their money because they’re still broke.

Unknown Speaker 50:34
Right. But that’s how

Justin Trosclair 50:36
can you put provisions for college? Can you put provisions for like a wedding? So like little things that you know that they’re probably going to need that way? They’re like, dude, if I could just get to 25 years old, I finally go to pay off all this debt that I have. But I was unwise at that point in my life. You know,

Unknown Speaker 50:51
I mean, you can you can have a setup just about any way that the law allows. And again, I would talk to your attorney, but there’s good bit of flexibility in the how you do it. Okay.

Justin Trosclair 51:01
I just curious, you know, if you get married, you might want to drop 8000 for the kids like here, here’s 1000 it’s not the best wedding, but it’s not a bad wedding.

Unknown Speaker 51:08
Yeah, yeah, I mean, those are all things that, you know, you can you can talk to your attorney about and have them incorporate. Now, they may have other advice and maybe suggest something slightly different. But yeah, the key takeaway here is he gives you gives you some control from the grave more or less, and it allows you to protect your children from themselves from themselves, and also in some cases from creditors as well, because you can put something called spendthrift provision. But it basically helps to protect the money from in some cases from from their own bad decisions and debt, they make it into another thing. Another reason people use trust is because a trust doesn’t have to go through probate, they don’t have to go through the court system, when you die to have your your assets transferred to whoever it’s supposed to go to that’s that can be done privately. If you don’t have a will, or you don’t have a trust in place, it all just goes through the court system, even a will actually have a world those assets that pass by will have to go through the court process called probate. And it’s all a matter of public records. So you know, folks that that’s the

Justin Trosclair 52:18
what’s the point of the Yeah, let’s say what’s the bad thing about going through court? Okay, you got public record. Now everybody knows your business? Can they decide, like, Hey, we don’t like the way it’s distributed among you, brothers and sisters, and what some of the drawbacks or whatever?

Unknown Speaker 52:30
Well, I mean, if you have a valid will are not going to do that. But I would say really, cost and privacy are two of the drawbacks I’ve seen in the past, it can be costly to go through probate, depending on the size of your state and where you live, and also is public. So I mean, you remember the guy from the sopranos. I mean, there there are different there are cases where if you have a lot of money, you may not necessarily want the whole world to know that your wife is worth 40 million dollars for your 18 year old is worth 100 million dollars. I mean, that that that sets them up for all sorts of failures, right or day, it can be dangerous. I’m not saying that the court system or that the probate process is a bad thing, because it’s not. It’s just that as public and so it’s one thing to consider is definitely want to

Justin Trosclair 53:18
consider, Is it expensive to set up these trusts? Like why aren’t more people doing them?

Unknown Speaker 53:22
I wouldn’t say that it’s not being done. It’s it’s really a matter of being educated and and, and your personal situation is it may not may not make sense to do it. It may not be something somebody wants to do. Maybe something the attorney advises against. But I would say that you know, in this is kind of getting into where you need the advice of your attorney, some legal advice, determine whether or not is a fit for you

Justin Trosclair 53:51
know, anything else about trust that are burning on your heart to tell us well,

Unknown Speaker 53:55
this may be as useful as some people in in your listenership. But you can do what are called charitable trusts. And because I know if you’re in a higher tax bracket, you may really want to get a tax deduction for your charitable donations. And with some of the changes in the tax law, it’s a little harder to get them. So if you’re making a larger donation, some people will use a charitable trust, which allows them to make a larger donation of to charity. But they can still in some cases, depending how it’s set up, and the your work with your turning on this. But depending on how it’s set up, you might be able to live on the income from that trust during your lifetime. So you’re basically you’re you’re giving access to the trust, but still getting income off, let’s say you use stocks or bonds or something like that. You could be getting paid out the income from those investments or whatever it is you’ve given, but still give you know considerable amounts of assets to that charity, that helps the charity in the sense that they know what they have to work with later on. And right year after Yeah, and it helps, you know, or helps you in the sense that you might go get a charitable deduction out of it. And you know, all money aside, some people are just very charitably minded, and they they like the idea that they’ve been able to make a difference.

Unknown Speaker 55:13
What’s the large some we’re talking 20 500,000?

Unknown Speaker 55:17
Well, new

Justin Trosclair 55:18
debt that depends upon the person’s individual situation was large to me, maybe large, not large to someone else. And what’s common legally? Oh, it really depends. It depends a, okay, we these can be done in all different sizes. So if you had a really a pastor, like spinal bifida research, and you had 75,000, you can set up a trust where they just, they can’t ever touch the 75,000. But all the dividends pushed off every year. And now they know, oh, wow, we have this much to work with per year, thanks to this person from, you know, five years ago. And this could last forever.

Unknown Speaker 55:53
You can set it up to where you live off the income until you die. But they have the asset. And they know that, you know, they they they have X X number of dollars that they can work with now. And it’s something that it’s something that can really be useful, both for the giver and the and the charity.

Justin Trosclair 56:12
Yeah, that’s great. I’m glad you mentioned that charity is a big deal. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 56:15
absolutely. Can you do that for churches, too?

Justin Trosclair 56:17
Yeah, you just nonprofits

Unknown Speaker 56:19
now? Yeah, you can. Churches are our charities. It just depends upon, you know, which church? Well, actually, it doesn’t depend on which church you want to donate to some churches, what I would like to share with people is that some churches actually have entire departments devoted to this. Some of your big some of your innovations from your bigger denominations do have departments that, you know, they have attorneys that volunteer their time, or he may even work for the church that helps set these up for people.

Justin Trosclair 56:49
Are they cold calling all these people? Hey,

Unknown Speaker 56:54
I don’t know. But

Unknown Speaker 56:55
I heard you Baptists heard you rich.

Unknown Speaker 57:00
particular case, you know, we we go to church, and you know, I whether or not we’re just giving we give because we want to give it’s not because it’s definitely not because we’re getting cold call.

Justin Trosclair 57:16
Can you set up a trust, please? Weird.

Oh, man, I’m cracking myself up. I’m sorry, everybody.

Unknown Speaker 57:27
Pray for you to

Justin Trosclair 57:30
do that today.

Unknown Speaker 57:32
Okay,

Justin Trosclair 57:33
so when I’m reading books, they’re always talking about, you know, be safe with your money, you know, you don’t need it actively managed, you can just invest with wealth front, or Vanguard or like a mutual fund ETF and the expense ratios are just, they’re so low, but then you gotta be careful, you go somewhere else, you might be paying 1.5 or 2%. And then all of a sudden, it takes you know, in a down market and and up market, you got overcome the expense ratio, my is the actual percentage you made for this. And then and then like, over the lifetime, it’s better to use this as like, Man, you hear that? And then you hear the other opposite opposite in and you’re like, no, it’s that’s dumb, like maximize the return that you can get the expense ratio is really not that bad, will make you way more returns over the long term and all this kind of stuff. So what’s going on with that explain this the the expense ratios and what we should be cautious about her look out for.

Unknown Speaker 58:26
Okay, so expense ratios. So generally speaking, cost me going down over the last several years. And expense ratio is really a measure of how much of the investments assets are going towards operating administrative costs.

Justin Trosclair 58:42
This is for like mutual funds and stocks and stuff, right?

Unknown Speaker 58:45
Yeah, so an expense ratio would apply to your your mutual funds or exchange traded funds, a stock wouldn’t have an expense ratio, it that’s really this buying piece of ownership at a company.

Justin Trosclair 58:57
And at this point, 401, K’s and all that stuff, you’re talking about IT investments in mutual funds,

Unknown Speaker 59:02
a lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them. So if you do have mutual funds, or exchange traded funds in your 401k plan, you’re going to have expense for they’re going to be expenses with those funds. And it’s called an expense ratio. So an expense ratio, or the expenses, the operating costs and administrative costs of the fund will reduce your returns because basically, you’re taking some of that money or someone’s assets to pay the portfolio manager to pay the analysts to pay the electricity bills to pay marketing, marketing, that they may also be paying for airline tickets to be able to fly halfway across the world to sit down with the CFO of a company that they’re trying to determine whether or not is worth investing in. So there is there a you know, with any business, they’re going to be cost, I think the key is to try to understand what the costs are, try to understand if why you’re paying them, maybe I ought to get into kind of what the differences are in terms of their different types of funds and and what those expenses may or may not pay for. So let’s let’s talk with index about index funds. Because a lot of people ask about those, there’s a lot of discussion about them out there in the investment world. clients ask about them. an index fund is generally speaking going to be a very low cost investment. They are they are first and foremost funds that invest in an index just like their name. So let’s say you might invest into the s&p 500 index fund. This is not a recommendation. This is simply

Unknown Speaker 1:00:51
that if you were to invest in the s&p 500 index fund, what’s your innocence doing? It are essentially doing is just you put $1,000 in debt fund, they’re taking your thousand dollars, and they’re spreading it among every single stock that’s in the s&p 500. And the s&p 500 is generally speaking, the largest is the 500 companies in the US stock market, or the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the US. And so you’re you’re essentially just taking your money and you’re spreading. And among those companies, good or bad. Those companies whether or not they’re doing well, this year, whether or not they’re doing poorly, whether or not one wants business model, it has it to where it’s going to maybe do poorly for a few years, you own everything, they may or may not be appropriate given your situation. And I would strongly advise you to to one read prospectus, they’re free, speak with your financial advisor, do your own research, make sure you understand what you’re getting into. But the part of the reason that they’re their costs are so low is that they’re not enough necessarily paying managers to go determine whether or not something’s investment, whether or not my company’s investment worthy, they’re simply buying the index. Now those can, those can play a role in your portfolio, they can be good, it can be a percentage, but a different everybody’s situations different. And in it, the on the opposite end of the spectrum is actively managed funds. The way those work is you have a fund manager or fund managers that work with a team of analysts, who are actually making decisions based upon the books in the records of of companies of municipalities, sitting down with CEO, CFO CEOs of companies and trying to make a wise decision as to whether or not a company is investment worthy. And then how much money to put into other funds money to put it that that company or maybe a bond issuance that naturally is going to carry a little bit higher cost. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just, again, understanding what you’re paying for. If you’re investing in say international and international fun. So a fund that invest in stocks of companies that are overseas, you’re going to probably incur a higher expense ratio. And that’s because fly out to Germany, you run. Yeah, I mean, you’ve got you’ve got to fly people over to those companies, you’ve got to have possibly boots on the ground, people that actually work over in a different country, you’re having to have people that can navigate all the different laws of different countries, it costs more to be able to do that than if you’re just simply buying every company and an index out of give you a good example. Several years ago, I was listening to a presentation by a bond analyst and she was trying to determine whether not a bond was was investment worthy. It was a bond for Chicago O’Hare, some improvements they were doing and she actually got she went to Chicago got on the tarmac and had she had her heart head on. And she was talking to the people that were doing the construction and trying to figure out you know, schedules and figure out impact on the the flights and possible delays from the flights and trying to determine whether or not it was worth the funds and time and money and investors time and money to invest in this in this bond issuance for the Chicago O’Hare improvements. Also, I was listening to a an analyst who who handled investments overseas, this was actually a few months ago. And he said he spent a lot of time in flying and traveling. Obviously, he covered Latin America. And his thing was he was trying one example he gave was, he was trying to determine whether or not it was worth the investors money to invest in a specific bond issuance somewhere in Latin America. And I thought was really interesting that this man had worked and gotten to know quite a few people down there in his time. And you know, he he’d actually knew the finance minute minister of the country that he was dealing with personally, because he had had been working with him when he had a lower position in the in the government. And, you know, he he was trying to decide whether or not this was worth investing in. And he actually picked up the finance minister of the concert, pick up the phone called the finance minister of that country, and just started interviewing him asking him questions. And of course, it was all public information. But he was able to go directly to the source and just ask, you know, like, what was going on? Why? What do you guys do? What’s going on in your country? Can you just straight from the horse’s mouth, and again, it’s nothing, it wasn’t anything that wasn’t public information, but having the ability to pick up the phone and call the CEO of a company, that’s something that you and me and the average investor can do. We can’t call the CEO, CFO, and just ask them what’s going on in their, their company? Where do they see their company in the next couple of years? And what are their plans. And when you have these mutual funds that represent large blocks of money from investors, the CEO usually answers the phone or call us back.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:28
And so that that’s what in that particular case, that’s what you’re paying for. But again, I would all that to say you know, know what you’re paying for, understand what you’re paying for, be mindful of the expenses, ask questions, read the prospectus, it again is free, understand your options, if you see that there’s a cheaper share class or version of the same fund at ask your advisor while you’re in the more expensive one, there may be a good, there may not be, it might be time to have a discussion with your advisor about you real heart to heart, or the advisor might be able to give you a very valid reason why you’re in that higher expense ratio, because some, the rules were what they were that you you bought it. And that’s that’s just how it is now changed. And share classes of funds are only available in certain types of accounts. And so, you know, again, it warrants a discussion and, and you know, just make sure that you, you understand what you’re getting into, and what you’re paying for. So really, they could they could have a fund

Justin Trosclair 1:07:29
and they, they might have 100 out of those 500 s&p 500 companies, but then they might also have another hundred and 50 companies from all over the other places that maybe not on the top 500. But they have done their research and like know, these are going to be they’re gonna be really good always they catch some duds here, and they’re like, they didn’t pan out. But, you know, they actually go through and they pick all these other companies that they may not have heard of. And they might be mid cap or large cap, I don’t even think I’m going to bore people with that large cap, mid cap and value. And it’s pretty much just money they make like you’re in this bracket of of income. Now you’re you’re a mid cap versus a large cap and benefits and risks. When you invest in something like that. Well,

Unknown Speaker 1:08:13
please, you’ve got companies that whose whose goods and services are favorite right now we’ve got companies whose goods and services are out of favor, it is it’s very important to be diversified. And, and, you know, typically when we build portfolios, we’re trying to make sure that you have exposure to to small companies, to midsize companies to large companies, you’ve got an exposure to companies whose goods and services are in favor right now. And then it may be may seem counterintuitive, but to have exposure to companies whose goods and services are out of favor right now, you know, it, typically, the way I explain it to clients is that investments are sort of like a symphony. So you know, you’re in the symphony, you’ve got a you got the flu, you Well, I’m not a music person, but I’ll just say the flu, you got the trumpets, you got the Bible, you got the cellos, you’ve got, you’ve got all these different instruments. And if they, and especially trumpets, in my opinion, if you hear a trumpet playing on a sound, it may not sound it might be kind of shrill. It may not be a pleasant experience, just to hear one trumpet playing, or even three or four trumpets. But when you put them all together for a purpose, playing one song in a unified manner, it comes together and makes beautiful music. each instrument serves a purpose within that song. And within that, that Stephanie, and it’s the exact same way with your investments, you’re wanting to build a diversified portfolio, that each each asset class, each each type of investment within the portfolio needs a certain purpose. It can’t necessarily completely get rid of risk. But it can reduce risk, it definitely doesn’t guarantee profit. And you can’t get rid of all risk. But but it is a way to at least try to manage that risk.

Justin Trosclair 1:10:08
I’ve never gone to an advisor before, without them showing you the little bar graph of international, here’s your bonds, here’s your large, here’s this, and we want to balance this based on your risk ratio, or tolerance. And so he’s like, okay, and there’s like, you’re right where you need to be, or this year, your international was really good, but now you’re out of whack. So we gotta kind of get that back down to the number that we think is better. It’s easy to see. Yeah. You know, you don’t talk about right. Yeah, yeah. I think it’s great. I want to know, I mean, that’s a great little visual. Wow, I’m really heavy and international. Okay, Is that good? Is that bad based on my situation? And then they can talk to you. But I’m not saying that is what it is. I’m just making the comment.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:50
Well, and and that’s good. I’m glad that you that you pay attention to that. I always, I always try to caution people to ask questions, you know, make sure that you want understand, if you don’t understand the word, what I’m talking about, please ask me, please tell me, let me know. So we can back up. And we can we can discuss it. And until or rephrase until it’s something that makes sense to you. Because I don’t know the first thing about medicine, I’ll be really honestly, I’ve no idea. You know, when you get an X ray, you know what, you know what you’re looking at? I just see a bunch of white stuff on the screen. And I think, Oh, that looks like a skeleton. Oh, is that a broken bone? That looks bad, you know?

Justin Trosclair 1:11:29
Yeah. I don’t know what, I think the arms should be straight.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:32
Right, right. Oh, that doesn’t look like it’s in the right place. Yeah, exactly. I know exactly what to do with it, what the patient should do, I have no clue. And that’s, that’s because it’s not my world. That’s not what I deal with a solid, I’m trained in everybody’s good at different things. Everybody’s trained in different things. And so, you know, probably like you, you probably tell your patients that, you know, ask me questions, if you don’t understand asking questions, and you’re probably happy when you have somebody that genuinely wants to take it an active role in their healthcare. Hmm. When I am working with with clients, I have the same thing they I understand. And I try to make it very clear that I understand this that they don’t deal with investments day in and day out. They don’t, they don’t sit and watch the stock market. They don’t do research necessarily all day, every day about this sort of thing. That’s what I do. That’s what what I like to do what I’m trained in. And so when when they walk into the room, and we begin going over a portfolio, we do it with the understanding that you know, if they don’t if they don’t understand, that’s okay, that’s okay. And I they need to ask questions, and it’s my responsibility to help them understand so they can make an informed decision. Yep.

Justin Trosclair 1:12:47
Hey, real quick before we go. You said that a couple minutes. Yeah. Okay. We didn’t touch on life insurance. I think the skinny term is whatever it could be 20 years, you pay your premium each month after 20 years. If you don’t die. That’s it. Congratulations, you didn’t die. You just lost some money over the last 20 years. Okay. Whole Life. On the other hand, you pay more money per month, you pay for it for the rest of your life. But anytime you die, there’s this policy that you get paid on as the skinny. I’m it right?

Unknown Speaker 1:13:16
Yeah. I would say in a nutshell, yes.

Justin Trosclair 1:13:19
Okay. But whole life can get really complicated. Like you can have death benefits you can have before you die, like Oh, you got cancer, a terminal illness, you got this, you got that you can take money you can borrow from it, you can think the next guy that’s on the show, he’s going to talk about using like, I don’t think he uses life insurance anymore. But they’re like, you put your money into some kind of vehicle, it guarantees you a certain amount per year, it always raises as follows the stock market, perhaps you can borrow from it. And a somewhat like low low low low interest rate. And then that way, it always grows. But when you buy that car for 20, grand or 50 grand, you just take it from your life insurance, and you just pay back your life insurance over the next five years instead of a bank. Okay, so he’s going to talk about all that kind of stuff. That should be the next episode, which I’m really excited about, because that’s a whole nother thing that I’ve never really been regressed completely. But um, but give us a short little, you know, what, what are we looking for as far as terms and whole life? And then we’ll kind of whole life should we sort of are generally for most people for like physicians, for instance, might be more of a better option than some of the others?

Unknown Speaker 1:14:21
Well, okay, so that that’s a complicated question for close, but we can, we can cut. So

Justin Trosclair 1:14:29
because maybe it might be better as we hear horror stories where somebody gets bought this policy. And then 10 years later, you find out that person who sold it bought a boat, but they really shouldn’t have bought that whole life insurance, like it only benefited themselves, but the person has been paying on it for like 10 years would have been it was just a horrible purchase.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:47
Well, so I guess speaking to those types, so what you’re what you’re talking about is more or less using, well, several things. One, using life insurance as a means of protection for your surviving family, if something happened to you. There’s also the component that you’re seeing, you’re talking about, of using life insurance to, to be able to access cash savings balance, as well. So maybe we can back up. And we kind of kind of go that a little bit step by step. So life insurance, I always caution people that life insurance should be viewed as just that life insurance. Life Insurance is really a first and foremost a way to protect your family or a survivor. If something were to happen to you this unexpected Term Life is generally a good fit for folks who maybe you’re trying to cover a short term need or a need with a specified time horizon. Or someone who doesn’t have the ability to afford a more coverage or longer, you know, covers is going to last your entire lifetime. So tomorrow typically is going to be a little less expensive, just typically, it can be a specified need for a specified time. Now what we would describe as permanent life insurance that can that’s kind of a giant umbrella term, that lots of different types of policies, under one of those you mentioned was a whole life policy. There’s also universal life, variable life or universal life, Oh, my gosh, it can get very complicated. And so we won’t go too far into the weeds on that. But generally speaking, a policy that’s called a permanent policy is designed to last your entire lifetime. That’s generally what they’re for. So it you mentioned earlier, you have a policy that pretty much no matter what you pay your premiums throughout your life. And when you die, even if you live at age 95. Or say lives into your 90s, you still got coverage, that’s what those types of policies are those types of policies also allow you to, it has a a cash value component. So these policies generally are going to be a little bit more expensive, in part because one, it’s going to cover your entire life. And they’re basically trying to get more money into the policy through your premium early on to allow that money to grow over your lifetime. So that as you get older, and the actual cost of providing you insurance goes up. So as you get older, it costs more for you to be insured naturally, because you know, the likelihood of you dying goes up as you get older. So what their insurance company is doing is they’re putting more money into this policy and advance than what the actual cost of insurance is for your age at that time. Let’s say just generally speaking, for example, let’s say it costs $10 a month for you to be insured, the the insurance company may have you paying $100 a month, and that’s just you know, numbers out of the

Justin Trosclair 1:17:59
they know they have covered is bill at the end, yeah, there’s no getting out of

Unknown Speaker 1:18:02
it, because they know at some point, you’re going to die at some point they’re going to pay out so they’re proactively having you put money in this policy and letting it sit aside and grow. So that when you’re 90, and it costs a tremendous amount of money for your actual cost of insurance. The idea is that you have put money in this whole time and there’s cash in this policy available to help cover that very, very high premium, or that very, very high cost of insurance. The idea would be though, that you’d be paying at least with whole life, you would be paying a little premium throughout your lifetime. Now, you were talking about borrowing from the cash value or taking cash value out of the policy to maybe buy a boat or something like that. Always caution people to be very careful when you do that. The reason why is that it’s it can be very easy to blow your policy up. So that money in your policy there needs to be if you do intend to have that life insurance, when you’re 90, then you need to be you need to have a set amount of money in your policy when you’re 90 to be covering that cost of insurance. And if your rating that that cash value is very easy to take out more than a sustainable for your policy to not laps eventually. And I’ve seen I’ve seen policies laps over the years where people did take money out or they didn’t pay enough into them, you know, it’s just something you really you need to need to talk to your advisor, before you start doing something like that you need to talk to your CPA, because under certain circumstances, they can have top tax consequences as well. In you need to be very well aware that your actions could possibly make your policy laughs And if insurance protection is important to your family, then you know, it may not be the best thing to do our best approach. That’s true, because there’s a legal amount of cash, you have to have like as a personal knowledge of the total value that you have something like

Justin Trosclair 1:20:03
well, it’s not illegal, and he can’t fall below a

Unknown Speaker 1:20:05
certain amount, it’s not a legal thing, it’s just that if you don’t have enough to cover the premium, unless you can cover the cost of insurance, you know, that month with it with a check, basically paying out of if you can’t send in the money and that premium is too high, which is when your idea is going to be extravagantly high. Just by virtue of your age, the policy is going to lapse, you want to make sure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. And I have seen where people have done that and either is just want to be informed and make an informed decision.

Justin Trosclair 1:20:36
Yeah. And so there’s variable and then there’s also you said universal whole,

Unknown Speaker 1:20:42
our whole life. Yeah, universal life,

Justin Trosclair 1:20:44
variable life they that different? Or they just set up for specific reasons. There’s,

Unknown Speaker 1:20:51
yeah, there’s they’re very different. They all they work differently. They have different different provisions. Very different I, we could go very far in the weeds, it’s probably more than anybody else would care to hear.

Justin Trosclair 1:21:04
Yeah, what’s the like the generic summary of the other ones that way people like oh, that’s okay. That’s the difference.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:10
So a whole life policy, I guess, just generically speaking, you’re going to have a set premium, over your lifetime with a pole, sorry, a universal life policy, your premium, you can dictate how much you pay into the policy, the issue is that you may not pay enough into the policy, and it could cause your policy to eventually lapse, because it might be too difficult catch up, while the premiums are making and bear in mind, there are other differences. But these are kind of the I guess, high level easiest to understand and recognize variable. And it will say variable universal life, and variable life, those types of policies, they have an investment component. And so with universal life, it’s you’ve got your earning interest. And with whole whole life, it’s just a if you’re earning interest, basically, with a variable life or variable universal life policy, you can choose certain investments that are offered through the insurance company in through your contract and maybe grow your money faster. But you can also, you know, if the market goes down, it may not you may actually lose money, it’s got more risk associated with it. Again, those are sold by prospectus which you really need to read the prospectus, ask for it, ask your you know, ask your advisor discuss at length, the pros and the cons of those. You may even talk with your CPA about that. But they are going to be more complicated, they have more moving parts. Again, it’s just really important to make sure that you understand what you’re getting into I have seen people that have not asked questions, and later on don’t necessarily understand what they own. Which policy has the like, there’s about four or five criteria, like if you if you have cancer, if you’re in a terminal, or like you know, you’re going to hospice type of thing. There’s a

Justin Trosclair 1:23:03
couple other provisions, I don’t remember what they are, those are the obvious ones to me. And it’s allowed to take, you’re allowed to like reduce your cash balance for some reason. But then there’s other policies were like, No, you can’t do that at all. I don’t know if that’s just something that’s, that was six years ago, 10 years ago, and they all allow you to have that pop that flexibility now, but it was like a, it was like a new thing at some point.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:25
So it depends on the insurance company that you’re working with. And the terms of your contract they have some companies may offer a writer, which is basically a an addition to your contract, where they let’s say in some cases, there are writers for disability, let’s say you become disabled, well, you know, you don’t have to pay a premium. If you’re disabled the insurance company basically, or covers it. There are situations where maybe you can take your debt part of your death benefit early, because you’re diagnosed with terminal illness. There are lots of different types of writers and and those are just I’m not saying that these are available with everyone, I’m just kind of giving you some general Yeah. That I’ve seen in the past you’ll you’ll want to talk with your you’ll really want to talk with your insurance professional about that and ask for the ins and outs of those specific riders, make sure you understand them. Read the little literature on that, because it really is specific to the company and specific to your contract companies. What they offer differ across the industry, and may even differ across the states because insurance companies actually have to abide by state rules.

Justin Trosclair 1:24:41
There’s probably literally podcast just on this topic probably are

going out for an hour interview and all kinds of people. Did you hear about this new product that came out this week? Oh, can we could really spend a lot of time on

Unknown Speaker 1:24:55
this. I’d hate to go too far into it with people because I think that was really plenty I could, I could talk about it forever. And then they still have to talk to find out the specifics to whatever it is they’re looking at.

Justin Trosclair 1:25:07
And this is what’s hard about like this interview is we’re trying to be general. And it’s like, well, I tell you, if you gave me a case, we could work through a case in an hour, you’d be like wow, this guy’s amazing. Look at all the stuff that he figured out but when it’s all general and like what is this it’s like well, every case is different. So if I say this then you can hold that to me because this case is different. So we understand that does it

Unknown Speaker 1:25:31
all because you again it’d be like asking a doctor should I take this specific prescription? Well, I really should know a lot more about your specific situation before I say yeah take whatever it is

Justin Trosclair 1:25:44
you know trigger several ways to remove a gallbladder but I don’t know. You know, I don’t know any of them. But I’m bad at you. There’s there’s several different techniques. There’s lots of ways to so you up? I don’t know. For sure. I’ve seen over here, they use a staple gun. I’m like, What happened to needle and thread? Can we just get a pretty scar? Like, come on. We don’t have to be this Genco

Unknown Speaker 1:26:08
and the glue when they glue people together with staples. I’m always afraid they’re gonna pop in the person’s guts are going to go.

Justin Trosclair 1:26:18
But it’s true. Why did I guess the skin tone keeps him that keeps them in places that are just kind of popping out? I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, people say you know what they staple would pieces together to though?

Unknown Speaker 1:26:29
Hi, gosh, yeah, so all my doctor friends don’t laugh.

Justin Trosclair 1:26:34
Like this dude. He says, stay in your lane. Chester, we’re all telling each other. That’s our model today. Hey, fun question. You ready? Yeah, you’re married? You got multiple children? You got your own clinic is gonna be a two for one right here. Okay, how are you able to take vacation? Because that’s an important aspect of life. And it’s hard to get away sometimes. And then how are you able to keep the love alive? So that you guys stay connected and not divorced?

Unknown Speaker 1:26:59
Well, yeah, we have our own practice the one taking vacation. That’s tricky. You know, when you when you have your own practice, you you’re kind of always on call. So they

Justin Trosclair 1:27:11
make this trade. I’m kind of in Hawaii today.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:15
Well, vacations typically consist of me bringing my laptop, ringing my phone, and taking stepping away several times to take phone calls, place trades, and and and send emails and answer questions, which isn’t a bad thing. But the really good thing for me is that Laura and I both work together. And she understands she knows pretty much all of our clients, if I do need to step away, then, you know, she understands she she knows the situation already. She knows the people. And she’s really helpful and understanding and allowing me to do that taking care of the kids. And then I hop back over, you know, we have some help locally to which helps as well, we have another member of our team, my sister in law, Lisa helps as well. And so, you know, we’ve got a little extra presence here. But really, I would say just understanding really, it makes a big difference. You know, because we’re both part of the practice. I don’t have to say, Oh, it was a client call and just be quiet and can’t can’t tell her anything about it. Because she’s part of the practices, I can actually say so and so needed. Excellent amount of money for XY and Z. And we can have that conversation and she can then provide perspective. So yeah, I wish I could say that when I do go on vacation that I’m I’m completely unplugged, but it just doesn’t really ever happen.

Justin Trosclair 1:28:38
But you could have someone cover you because you’re part of a bigger. Yeah, there’s an umbrella of people over you, in a sense.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:44
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there is some help. But I do prefer to provide really just a very concierge service and provide that personal touch to clients having a personal cell phone number. And so if they need something they call me, and they call me during the day, they call me at night, weekends. And that’s okay. Because as you get to know these people, they start to kind of become friends. And so you know it, I heard one time that if you enjoy what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. And I can I can honestly say that’s true about so doesn’t mean you don’t have a hard day. But it’s not like going to work. It’s you know, I have a meeting and I’m going to sit down have coffee with a friend of mine that I’ve known for X number of years and half of the meeting might just be catching up and talking about their family, you know what’s going on in their life? And then then we get to the money. And how do you keep them alive? Alive? babysitters? Yeah, we have a list of people that we we ask and we asked frequently to just keep an eye on our kids for a few hours here and there. And we go out. And it’s usually it’s going to be when clients are not going to be calling. So later in the evening, maybe starting our night at like eight or nine o’clock, having a babysitter, watch the kids and we’ll stay out till you know midnight one or two in the morning and go have dinner, go play pool, go bowling, go for a walk. Right now we’re talking planning our 15th wedding anniversary trying to go to DC so we’re planning a trip there where we can just break away for a couple days. And just be a couple for a little while. You know, it’s kind of hard. It’s cut kids are a huge blessing. And I mean, you know that

Justin Trosclair 1:30:23
but I don’t know how you have three.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:25
Yeah, I mean sometimes how you sign up for to

Unknown Speaker 1:30:30
God, it’s I don’t know what

Unknown Speaker 1:30:31
I’m getting into. And I’m just kind of like, man, I don’t know, Ruby you might be an only child I’ll I’ll invite your friends over.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:38
Love them. You know, we love our kids are huge blessing. But when when you have three people talking to you at the same time, it’s sometimes really difficult to actually have a conversation with a couple. So just getting away for a couple days, even if you have to take the odd client call here and there. It just makes a huge difference be able to stay connected, doing fun things together, you know.

Justin Trosclair 1:30:57
Yeah, I mean, you see on your Facebook and stuff. So it’s kind of fun to just gonna catch up and see like, Okay, wow, they’re really active, and they’re doing stuff with their kids. And then, you know, you know, being that, you know, just enjoying them from doing things that they enjoy. I mean, I think that’s a great idea to be a good mom. Good dad. Yeah. And then making time for each other as well. So I think doing it right on, on several fronts there. Yeah, thank you, says Justin, was my opinion matter? I don’t know. Sometimes I just like to say it. Well, how can people get in touch with you? Obviously, it’ll be in the show notes page. How can they reach out if they’re like, Man, this Jason Rainier, seems like he knows what he’s talking about. Maybe I should contact him?

Unknown Speaker 1:31:33
Well, they can reach out they can call me on my wall, they can call me on my office to 259538 to eight, six. You can call me. You can email me my email addresses Jason j s o n dot Rainier, our AI in AI, er, at L f g, like Lincoln Financial Group. com. Or you can also reach out to us. We’re on Facebook. We’re on Instagram. We’re on Twitter, and we’re on LinkedIn. And so you just look us up, reach out to us. And we were happy to

Justin Trosclair 1:32:08
help. And we’re near wealth.com.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:11
Rainier, wealth. com is our website. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess I forgot that. Yeah, you can also reach out to us there’s Well,

Justin Trosclair 1:32:18
I think some notes. I don’t come unprepared, everyone.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:22
A little bit. Apparently I did.

Justin Trosclair 1:32:27
But Jason, it’s been really fun. You know, just catching up with old friends. Really grilling you on different life path, you know, medical, the financial, everybody can get along has just been really great to just pick your brain and learn so much information. And I know people who stuck with us for this long, definitely have a better understanding of what they need to do. You know, next, talking to somebody calling somebody to get their financial life in order and many different

Unknown Speaker 1:32:50
topics. Never be afraid to ask questions. I always just tell people ask as many questions you can learn as much about it as you can make informed decisions.

Justin Trosclair 1:33:07
Another great interview has ended. As I always say, I hope you listened critically think and implement something so that your practice life, family life can improve this week, one hit you up with a few links today, if you’d like to know the top episodes of 2018 and 2017, were you just go to.net slash top 1718. And you can get a

PDF of all those episodes. It’s like 22 of them.

If you’re interested on any of the programs that I’ve actually been interviewed on, just go to net slash as heard on the play on as, as you know, you know, so as heard on, if you didn’t know, the needless acupuncture book sales page has been revamped. So it looks a lot better. You know, sometimes when you look at a web page, it doesn’t look like it’s put together will be like, Man, I’m not sure about this thing. But it’s been redone looks better. And also, if you have an Android device and you curious about it, you can actually download the same five protocols, blueprints, if you will, right there on phone at the newest acupuncture app in for less than $4, you can get the whole book on your phone from the Android Google Play Store. So just to check that out. The electric acupuncture pin is still available at a great rate, you can get it on its own or as a package. So you get the book, The E pin as well as the regular points. Now, some of the things that I’m recommending blueberry hosting, that’s who I use, I really like him a lot. I’m not gonna lie to you. Fiverr is where I get a lot of my music done my logos I don’t know if you noticed on Facebook, I believe my pictures now a face with a bunch of words and just saw that real quick, was cheap. Wanna, I’ll try that for a while it’s fun. Turtle pillow is a travel pillow, it actually is like an HP minute. So you can rest your neck and your chin on that. So you don’t get like the chicken Bob, where you you know, you sleep and you wake up really fast. And you know, those those U shaped ones, I just don’t think they work very well. So for me, it’s worked really well. I’ve traveled about 10 different countries with it across the pond, as they say really highly recommend that if you’re into instrument assisted soft tissue manipulation, two options, you got hot grip. So that’s that’s hot grips, and also net slash edge, you can get tools there as well. But they also have way more than just tools they’ve got how to get to use Google Apps as your EMR blood flow restriction cuffs, there’s a lot of research on that device and you can check that episode from the past, you can get an automatic 10% discount on all the products from the edge mobility equipment. One of the devices I use to to send out snippets of the podcast via picture and quotes from the text that I write on the show notes is missing letter, they just took all the last E and letter.com. Pretty much you know you can do a blast and two months and like five weeks or two months, I like to do nine emails over 12 months. So that person who was interviewed last month doesn’t just get lost, right? You know, so every day I have a new episode at a highlight and it’s all automated, really cool. Definitely check it out. If you need to record your screen like screen cast o Matic also j lab audio speakers, I’ve said it before, I love them. It’s a great company. And now I get to actually be an affiliate for them. So if you end up buying into their products, just like anything, I get a little piece probably have like three or four different products. I mean, they just the battery lasts longer sounds quality is amazing. And for the price that came live in a bun. And of course the show notes anytime you see a book link, buy it, it comes to me and net slash t shirts will help us out. And lastly, again, something I don’t talk about too much. But if you need coaching, whether it’s via the today’s choices, tomorrow’s health need some help with taking those small steps and accountability so that you can actually lose the weight or start exercising more or get your budget in order. Just let me know I can up with that. Also, if you just need some minor marketing coaching or things like that, I can help you out with that as well go to.net slash support. And of course on there you can also buy the close the cup of coffee, or even more than that there’s different options available. So thanks for tuning in. And we’ll see you next week on the Minnesota.

We just went hashtag behind

the curtain. I hope you will listen and integrate what some of these guests have said, by all means please share it across your social media. write a review. And if you go to the show notes page, you can find all the references

for today’s guests.

You’ve been listening to Dr. Justin shows Claire giving you a doctor’s perspective.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

About the Author
Dr. Justin Trosclair, D.C., an expert in Chiropractic Care, has been focusing on back and neck pain relief for over 12 years and has delivered treatment to more than 6000 patients. With advanced training in treating disc derangement conditions, you can count on him to keep up to date with the latest research in physical medicine for spinal pain. He has 5 years of hospital experience in China, is currently working in Germany, and had a private practice in Colorado for 6 years. Dr. Trosclair hosts a doctor to doctor interview podcast called ‘A Doctor’s Perspective‘ with over 220 episodes. During his free time he wrote 3 books. Today’s Choices Tomorrow’s Health (rebooting health in 4 categories), a Do-It- Yourself acupressure book for 40 common conditions called Needle-less Acupuncture, and a step by step guide to look like a local for Chinese dinner culture called Chinese Business Dinner Culture. If you have kids, you may be interested in his 6 series tri-lingual animal coloring book series (english, spanish and chinese).