In this episode of the Resilient Investors Podcast, hosts Victor Gaxiola, Carolyn Rowland, and Kim Gaxiola discuss the intricacies of tax planning and its critical role in financial management. They discuss the differences between tax preparation and tax planning, the importance of specialized tax strategies, and how technology aids in effective tax management. The conversation also highlights the significance of tax planning for business owners, high net worth clients, and the correlation between tax and estate planning, emphasizing the need for a proactive approach to retain wealth across generations
Here is the full transcript of the podcast
Victor Gaxiola:
All right. Well, thanks again, Matthew, for that introduction and joining us back on the Resilient Investors Podcast is Carolyn, because today we're talking about something that, well, she gets excited about, and I get excited about, and I hope you get excited about, and that is tax planning. Yeah, can hear people just, yeah, lock in, fasten that seatbelt. We're going to have a great conversation about tax planning. So welcome back, Carolyn and Kim.
Carolyn Rowland:
Thank you. Thank you.
Kim Gaxiola:
It's good to have you, Carolyn.
Victor Gaxiola:
I wanted to start here because I think part of it is just to establish a nice foundation and baseline. When you look at both of your names, you both have a CFP, and a lot of people may not know what that means, Certified Financial Planner. So it's a credential that both of you have earned through study and concentration.
Carolyn Rowland:
Yeah.
Victor Gaxiola:
But there's a new one, or not a new one, but one that's an additional one that Carolyn has, which is an EA, or an enrolled agent. So why don't we start there? Can you tell us a little bit about the differences between a CFP and an EA?
Carolyn Rowland:
No, those are great questions and I think we'll even tie it into like the difference between an EA and a CPA because I often get called a CPA a lot and I don't want to offend any CPAs out there and their hard work but it is not the same. They're a little different. Yep, so I have my CFP designation and my enrolled agent designation and the enrolled agent designation is really a IRS, know, federally recognized designation that allows me to not only prepare taxes for clients, but also represent them in front of the IRS if need be. So while yes, I tend to just primarily use it for like the tax planning and tax preparation piece, you know, I had to go through rigorous coursework for it and a lot of annual continuing education as well.
Kim Gaxiola:
So you have a lot of continuing education. Yay! It's a lot year by year.
Carolyn Rowland:
I do. It's not that I do it. I am, yeah, year by year. I put in a lot of hours, guys.
Victor Gaxiola:
I think a lot of industries have a continuing education. So obviously any professional with a credential has to do ongoing training and refreshers throughout the year in order to maintain the credential over time. And sometimes that can equate to hours of additional study. a lot of it is just refreshing some of the things that you might have learned early on and updates. every year I get so excited about learning about anti-money laundering.
Carolyn Rowland:
Yeah.
Kim Gaxiola:
I'm sorry, I think it's an added special continuing education when the IRS is redefining taxes on almost on an annual basis. So that makes it a little bit better.
Carolyn Rowland:
I don't know.
Victor Gaxiola:
Yeah.
Carolyn Rowland:
Yeah, I make sure that at the end of every calendar year, I do like an annual tax season prep. So it's about like 16 hours of continuing education, but it allows me to just kind of see what's upcoming for the new tax year. But I mean, this is gonna be a big one with the one beautiful bill and all that. So, yes. All right, Victor, take it away.
Victor Gaxiola:
Wow. Well, no, you've got to play full, you know, continue education and fun. And of course, tax season just around the corner, you know, in the beginning of the year. So I'm sure you got looking forward to that. So one of the reasons why, you know, we at Resilient Wealth Planning kind of came together as two teams. And one of the things I think that provides a lot of strength is having that tax background and understanding taxes from the perspective of being able to do the preparation and knowing what goes into it.
Victor Gaxiola:
Kim and I were thrilled when we came together that brought in that level of expertise, which Kim had through the CFP, but I think that this just makes us much stronger. But can you describe what is the tax planning and return preparation services that you offer and specifically what is your model?
Carolyn Rowland:
Yeah, so again, you kind of nailed it where we offer really like two arms where it's either the tax return preparation or the tax planning. At this point in time, those services are really just an add-on service for our comprehensive wealth management clients. So I will bring on tax only clients as an exception, but it's primarily a value add that we offer to our investment and financial planning clients.
Carolyn Rowland:
tax return preparation side of things is really broken into three different levels of service, or service tiers, I should say. they, you we have a pretty much like a starter service and then it just builds from there, you know, based on the level of support that somebody wants throughout the year. And the biggest thing being we bake in ongoing finance, excuse me, ongoing tax planning because we have the belief that, you know, tax planning really should be a proactive and strategic approach that we don't want this to just be one-time annual chore. We're not a churn and burn type tax practice. Again, it really is to tie into the tax planning with our advisory clients.
Victor Gaxiola:
Yeah, and obviously when it comes to the investment side, and we'll get into that a little bit later, how important that tax planning equation is in making decisions as to what we buy, but more importantly, what we sell. So what are some of the specialized tax strategies that you employ or that we employ now at Resilient Wealth Planning?
Carolyn Rowland:
Hmm, no, I love this question. Kim, you're welcome to piggyback off of it. this is kind of where the tax planning ties into the financial planning. And yes, I do love all things tax. I will nerd out on that all day. But the biggest things that we kind of offer are going to be tax diversification. So where are you putting your money as far as a taxation standpoint, right? So think Roth IRA versus pre-tax traditional or 401k, even that taxable bucket, right? So think non-qualified brokerage money. And then we do a lot of retirement tax planning. So income distribution plans, Roth conversion strategies. We're always taking into account estate tax considerations and then tax loss harvesting, which I know we'll kind of talk more about that later on. So it's not just, right? Like we think about it from an income standpoint too, but it ties into investments as well because it is all correlated.
Kim Gaxiola:
It's really interesting to see the different dynamics when you're talking about tax planning and really managing taxes over a lifetime. I think those are the conversations that we need to see our clients having more than how can I pay the government the minimum possible in 2025 or whatever the year is, right?
Carolyn Rowland:
Absolutely, that's a really good point, right? We don't necessarily want to just focus on saving the most amount on tax. That's not our value system per se here at Resilient Wealth Planning. We really wanna make sure that what we're doing from a tax planning standpoint still aligns with your longer term financial goals. So we're not necessarily going to say like, max out your 401k to get you the highest level of tax deduction. We're gonna make sure that aligns with your long term financial goals, especially if we're talking about early retirement.
Carolyn Rowland:
You know, we can kind of talk about, you know, individuals with equity compensation. Sometimes we have high concentration of stock. And so we do need to be strategic about kind of deferring income and, you know, playing strategy that way. But like Kim said, yeah, we got to look at long-term. It's not just kind of what's happening in this calendar year.
Kim Gaxiola:
Right. that plays along with our portfolios as well as how we allocate those different buckets as well, whether it be a trust or a non-qualified account, a Roth IRA or an IRA account is what kind of money do we put into those and what kind of investments do we put into those in order to maximize the...
Victor Gaxiola:
And we covered a lot of
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Kim Gaxiola:
leverage of a tax-free account in a Roth versus, you know, an IRA.
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Victor Gaxiola:
Okay, so in episode three of the podcast, we talked a lot about financial planning. And I know as part of the planning process is really looking at tax treatment and tax opportunities. So let's walk through a little bit about how tax planning does fit into that whole financial planning strategy.
Carolyn Rowland:
Yeah, Kim, do want me to start or do you want to start on that one? Okay. I think it always comes back to that. Like we are a very holistic, you know, like we take a very holistic approach, right? And truly like, I look at everything through the lens of like these tax planning goggles because I think every kind of decision we make will have a tax consequence. And so I think that's why it's incredibly important to consider it. So I mean, for an example, like we're very, aware of not triggering capital gains unnecessarily. We love buy low, sell high, but selling high might trigger a large amount of capital gains in a non-qualified account. And we want to harvest those gains, of course, but we could also be strategic as possible with that from a tax-signing standpoint.
Carolyn Rowland:
There's a lot of different ways I could go with this. I think the most important thing too is to state that tax planning is relevant for whether you're retirement planning or whether you're in those accumulation years. Especially from retirement ages, I'm thinking 65 and up. I'm very aware of your Medicare premiums and making sure that anything we do from a taxation standpoint isn't gonna trigger higher aromateers. And kind of similar from a standpoint of people in accumulation years, is your income high enough where we're gonna trigger that net investment income tax? We really don't want to erode your gains through taxation. again, just kind of showing how holistic that whole tax and financial planning and investment management really is.
Victor Gaxiola:
Wow. And then in just recently, we recorded a podcast where we talked about restricted stock units and high concentrated equity positions. You touched a little bit upon this, but one of the biggest things when it comes to the investment side and the tax treatment of the investments, and I often think that a lot of what we do is looking to grow, obviously, the portfolio value over time, especially when people are working because you're accumulating this massive, hopefully massive, Nest egg that you'll be drawing an income from later And in the planning process, we know that the tax the tax Considerations are important because the way I look at it It's not really what you make as much as what you keep that matters And so in looking at the investment side and Kim, I'll point to you Tell us how you know the tax comes into the tax treatment or the tax conversation comes into play Especially as it relates to very specifically like a restricted stock unit sell or vesting and then sell, or someone who might have a very large concentrated equity position because we see a lot of that here in Silicon Valley.
Kim Gaxiola:
Yeah, I will say it comes into play a lot. It's almost like people don't want to make a decision because of taxes. so and not making a decision, not acting upon what may be sound financial advice is a choice. And, you know, it can paralyze investors from making the right decision because they're so, so sick of paying taxes or because they're so worried about the tax consequence. And, you know, one of things is, is you, you can't manage what you don't see, don't understand, or what have you. So, just by providing that information to clients will help them in making, in actually having a decision that's not tax avoidance.
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Victor Gaxiola:
No, no. What I was going to say is we see this quite a bit, especially in trust accounts, you know, as people start accumulating assets, both individual investment assets, but also assets like homes or second homes and such. And it really does become, I'd say, almost like a dual exercise because you want to provide growth, but it's got to be a measured growth and consideration of exactly what that tax bill could look like. So I really do believe that We give so much attention in this business on the accumulation, on the growth, and on performance, and less about that retention and the protection, whether it's through insurance or whether it's through proper tax planning. And so that's why I think this conversation is so, so important. One other thing that I think that is important to note here when it comes to investment strategy, and that's the area that I focus quite a bit on.
Victor Gaxiola:
is that on individual accounts, on trust accounts, on those accounts that is taxable, we're also very mindful on exactly what we invest in. And so in many cases when it comes to equities, which is the growth driver of most portfolios, we specifically design models and portfolios built around individual stocks and exchange traded funds. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we can control more the capital gain treatment by owning individual stocks and ETFs, then if we were to put them into equity mutual funds, because we can get someone in an equity mutual fund may realize a capital gain, but they have no control over it because it's usually the fund manager of the mutual fund that's making the decisions on what to buy, but more importantly, what to sell. So I think that that's an important differentiator.
Victor Gaxiola:
Can you share, Caroline, because I know you have an extensive experience in this and you're doing taxes, like you said, year round for people, but I know you've got to have at least one or two great stories of how you helped someone really save a whole lot of money because they worked with you.
Carolyn Rowland:
Yeah, yeah, a couple of different ways. I just want to point out something you said though, you said control, right? So I think a really big part of tax planning and tying it to your investments is being able to have as much control as possible because we want to be able to control that narrative. And there's nothing I hate more than surprises or one of my tax plans being thrown out of whack because of something that was out of our control. And like you said, those capital gains distributions that mutual fund managers often kick out, like that's so difficult to manage. So it's kind of tying into like more practical use cases as, I'll always do year-end tax loss harvesting. And so if I have clients that do own mutual funds within these non-retirement types of accounts, you know, we can go in and kind of pretty, accurately estimate what that capital gain is gonna be. And then I can do some projections as to what that tax impact is gonna be. And with that and how we kind of strategize around that is if we can't avoid a capital gain distribution, right, because maybe selling that position, there's already a large embedded capital gain. So you either like hang on to the mutual fund and realize that large capital gains distribution or you sell it and trigger a capital gain, right? But we're gonna look for tax loss harvesting opportunities. And so this is a big one for clients. Now, on the flip side of that, we'll have some good years and maybe there aren't a lot of losses that we can harvest. I think we're kind of in a environment like that right now. And I will get back to your point, Victor, I promise, because this is tying into a real life example. I'm just remembering, you know, a client of mine a few years back inherited some land. And so this was going to be treated as, you know, essentially an investable asset when they sold it, right? So something that we would have to realize a capital gain on. However, in that year, he had, you know, a non-retirement brokerage account in their trust. And so there were actually some loss opportunities. And so, you know, what would have been a hundred thousand dollar capital long-term capital gain that he would have needed to have realized, you we were able to offset with losses and I did save him like $20,000 and it was amazing. And to this day we still like reminisce. So it's a lot, good amount of that. Like I've had a lot of situations where clients will have a second home, right? So typically you have to realize those gains. There's no main home exclusion. And so we can use your investable assets to kind of help.
Victor Gaxiola:
Ha ha ha.
Carolyn Rowland:
I don't want say manipulate, but be strategic. And I think this also kind of leads into why it's so important to diversify your investments among these different tax buckets. So if all your money is in pre-tax, we can only do so much. Or maybe down the line Roth conversions are something that we can help kind of reduce taxes. if we're trying to offset capital gains, I can't do anything about that if all the rest of your investments are really in that pre-tax bucket.
Carolyn Rowland:
That's why we like to see diversification among those different areas. And then I think another example we could talk about is like highly concentrated stock positions. And I know Kim, you and I have worked on cases like this together where you don't wanna just sell off a whole chunk of one single stock. Like you have that risk of being overly concentrated. However, markets have been favorable, right? And so the idea is you'd hopefully have a large embedded gain in the stock. And, you know, if we go and sell all of it all at once, you know, we have the potential to realize substantial capital gains. Or, you know, especially if somebody is 65 and up, again, those Medicare tiers, right? So this is where that tax planning comes into play. And we're kind of strategic about that. I'm going to take a breath and like see if either of you had anything to piggyback on that with.
Victor Gaxiola:
Well, I do want to piggyback because you mentioned, you know, sometimes and Kim, I'm going to give Carolyn a break here because there's a lot is is.
Victor Gaxiola:
I know that there's been instances, and I can't go into the details perhaps, but there have been instances where people do have concentrated equity positions, and yet there could be some strategies by working with an advisor, in this case, having worked with you, where there are certain investments that will allow you to delay or at least defer some of that capital gain over a number of different years. To the point, without going into too much detail, can you share a little bit about what those strategies look like and how you work with people when it comes to exploring those options?
Kim Gaxiola:
So, and you say exploring those options, that's a funny word to use because sometimes we do use options overlay, not to be confused with options as choices, but options as in the securities. We are starting to work in that area a lot because of trying to diversify a large single position stock when you have very low cost basis, which means you're going to have high capital gains. gains is really tough to do while you are also trying to protect from the downside. So, you know, if we have a situation where we can only sell, I don't know, 250, 500,000 of a five million dollar stock, concentrate high concentrated risk kind of position. You know, we're not going to be able to sell that all in one year. But at the same time, you really, if the market has done well, you really want to protect that gain because you don't want to see 5 million go to 2.5 million or 3 million, which easily can when the market's been as great performing in the tech basis as it has. So we can use strategies without going into a lot of detail because that's really hard for me to do.
Kim Gaxiola:
option overlay strategies that will allow us to protect some of your position so that we don't have to sell all of it this year, but we can sell some of it next year and still be able to sell it at like today's market prices. So we're having luck with that. What happens sometimes in that situation is the stock price continues to go up, which is great. That does, you know, kind of cap a little of the upside, but if the goal was to protect the downside, we're doing our job. And at the same time, with those options overlay strategies, sometimes we can manage to harvest more losses to offset the big gains that you have from the original position. So that's something that we've been working on in a lot of detail these days. And it's working out for that. And I want to go back and just talk a little bit about, because we talk about
Kim Gaxiola:
capital gains and mutual funds and maybe not everybody is aware of what's going on in their portfolio. We've had some, you know, quite a few good years lately that it may be easy to forget when the real big issue with capital gains in mutual funds typically happens in a negative year.
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Kim Gaxiola:
So the market goes down 20 % and your mutual fund company still gives you a large capital gain distribution at the end of the year. I can tell you clients hate that.
Carolyn Rowland:
Hahaha
Kim Gaxiola:
ridiculous, and how do you understand that you're getting this big capital gains distribution when you're actually showing losses in your account? That makes no sense to people. But it's essentially in those years where we have a big market loss that mutual fund managers love to change the holdings within their portfolio. And while that year may have suffered a loss, there are probably long-term embedded gains gains in that fund that they have to realize when they sell those positions. so mutual funds have to pass on that capital gains to the investor. That's the tax law that they fall under. so clients end up seeing losses on their statements and gains on taxes. It's a horrible position. But it's also a time where if you have an advisor like Carolyn or myself, we are going to for the losses in the portfolio in order to trim those and offset the capital gains distributions.
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm. I agree. My one, like, just final thought to that is make sure you're working with somebody that, you know, is, again, those tax goggles, right? We're, like, we're cognizant of the tax efficiency. that's why I love our portfolios, especially, you know, buying that individual, those individual stock positions where you are in control and we can do tax-efficient investing and tax loss harvesting and things like that.
Kim Gaxiola:
And a lot of times too, it's really interesting. I've seen situations where a new client comes into us and they do have large positions that, and they'd like to change the way their portfolio is invested, i.e. moving from the mutual funds where they have no control over to individual stocks. And it's hard to do upfront because because they're going to have to sell into capital gains and stuff. And so that's where it's funny. Sometimes in a down year is a great time to hire a new financial advisor because they are able to take advantage of those losses that have just come to offset, to reposition the portfolio and then be able to use losses for future gains.
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's a really good point, Kim, because I think about even just back in April, you know, with the, you know, tariff rollout and all of that, you know, we had a hit to our, the market, overall market, and, you know, clients saw dips in their portfolios. And so that was actually a really good opportunity to go in and look for loss opportunities. That doesn't mean we're not reinvesting your funds and capturing that upside. It's just being strategic, realizing those losses.
Carolyn Rowland:
investing it somewhere else so we can avoid wash sale rules. That's too granular for today's Yeah, but if you have a strategic team behind you, things like that should be going on in your portfolio.
Kim Gaxiola:
Right, and one of the things that we always look at, and I'm a big believer in following the trends when it comes to stocks, but it's important to stop your losses early. So if you buy, if you invest in five stocks, let's be honest, nobody is always going to get those five stocks perfectly all the time, right? You may have three or four that do well and one that just has a failure to launch.
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Kim Gaxiola:
Quitting that early sometimes is a strategy that we like to use because we can harvest that loss and reposition. So we've been talking a lot about, you know, obviously tax preparation, tax planning, and I know it can be extremely complicated from the standpoint that you were talking about the continuing education that you do every year. The fact is that tax laws change all the time, which means you need to be abreast of all those changes and more importantly, the impact that it has either on portfolios or on planning. But we're not alone when it comes to assisting us because one of the greatest developments in the last couple of years has been the technology.
Victor Gaxiola:
which helps assist us in reviewing these sometimes very thick tax returns. So I know Carolyn that you might flip through all these pages and such, but let's talk about some of the technology that we're using to help us kind of cut through the clutter and really get to the meat of the areas that we need to focus on.
Carolyn Rowland:
Wow, I just feel like you're spilling all my secrets. No, just kidding. I mean, I think we know and today I am page by page under each tax return. No, I do review tax returns and I, I mean, obviously I prepare them, so I see them. But when it comes to tax planning and running projections, yes, I lean on software. So whether that's my tax return preparation software, but I'm actually a big fan of Holistaplan, which is a more robust tax planning software. So that just allows me to like view tax reports from a client's, you know, overall tax returns. So can do it on like a recently completed tax return or I could do it on like a hypothetical tax return. So that's really where I can do my, you know, capital gains planning, my Medicare planning, you know, look at effective tax rates, things like that. Then I could also build out like scenario analysis. So if somebody wants to say, hey, Carolyn, I want to max out the 22 % tax bracket, you know,
Carolyn Rowland:
how much until I get there and we can look at, how much, or for example, like how much can I realize in capital gains this year without triggering that next, that 20 % capital gains tax bracket, I wanna say in the 15%, right? So that's just a really awesome tool that I lean on heavily to run those different tax fighting scenarios and also with Roth conversions, that's a big one too. Kevin, does anything come to your mind with technology?
Kim Gaxiola:
Well, just going to say that even though we use software and technology for everything we do, it's doesn't account for the fact that, mean, seriously, if you're getting a big tax return and you look at it, you know what the, like, there has to be sections that you're like, you know, highlighting this is big, right? And so I'm sure as you get to know somebody, they're a business owner, you're going straight to their, you know, if they're a Schedule S, you know, what their needs
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Kim Gaxiola:
are and what schedules are being used to really eyeball. You have the experience now to say, okay, these are the things where people are going to mess up, especially going to the RSUs. It's like, look at the cost basis on the capital gains schedule because there are huge errors that happen there.
Carolyn Rowland:
No.
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Carolyn Rowland:
my gosh, Yeah, yeah. And honestly, software is only as good as I think the person using it, right? Like, again, that experience and, you know, I've been doing this long enough where like, yes, they've changed the tax forms a little bit over the years. They're like, I know. So, well, yes, I lead on software. You know, there's a lot going up in here still. yeah. Yeah. You actually bring up a good point, because I don't think we talked, we touched much.
Kim Gaxiola:
Right.
Kim Gaxiola:
We love that.
Carolyn Rowland:
talked much about business owners and that is another area that we do serve. We love our business owners, but from a tax planning standpoint, I really want to shed some light on that and how we work with business owners from the tax fitting and tax prep side. So I love business owners. I love small business owners. We're small business owners. So we're always making sure that our clients are optimizing their business expenses. We do a lot with your
Carolyn Rowland:
entity structure. So we love and I say we, but it's like, it's me. Like I love looking at, okay, does your entity structure make the most sense? Right? Doesn't S-Corp election make sense for LLC? So those are different strategies that we can run. I do quarterly tax funding with a lot of my business owners as well. And that really kind of ties back to that being proactive and strategic, right? Because I don't want you to come to me and in April you owe like a $10,000 tax bill.
Carolyn Rowland:
Let's be strategic about it. I don't want you to pay the IRS more than you have to, and I especially don't want you to pay, you know, underpayment interest and penalties. But I think tax funding with my business owners looks a little different than our investors, our individual investors, but I mean, we still cover some of lot of the same things. But that one has like a special place in my heart.
Kim Gaxiola:
And I am going to add to that, you know, that strategy is not static is what I'm learning as, you know, Carolyn and I do more work together. The whole idea of why somebody may have an S-Corp while they're working is different than the idea of what they need to do when they're going to create their succession plan. And more and more as we get into this market where our business owners
Kim Gaxiola:
owner clients want to sell their business and move into the retirement phase. What I'm reading and learning is that so many business owners wish they had started the tax planning earlier rather than right before they're going to sell because I think a lot of things that they can do have to happen sooner rather than later.
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Carolyn Rowland:
Yeah, and it's not just about the tax winning piece. It's the succession piece too, right? The earlier you can start thinking and planning for it, the more beneficial it's gonna be, because we don't want you to be in a position where you're forced to sell or there's a huge tax hit. If we can be proactive, then we can be more strategic on the taxes and maximize the amount you're gonna get from your succession plan too.
Kim Gaxiola:
Right.
Kim Gaxiola:
And I think that all that is really important. So I'll say one more thing. I don't want to change the subject, but we'll get into more detail about business owners when we have our that podcast. But another area that, you know, we're looking at, and I think more and more families are starting to look at their wealth in multiple generations and instead of just thinking, for instance, you know, Victor and me looking at how
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Kim Gaxiola:
how do we position our wealth for us in our living years. But how do we structure this as a family wealth conversation, not just for us, but for the next generation? So starting to plan, I'm really like kind of wrapping my ears and my eyes around what that looks like from a long-term perspective, because some of these tax strategies aren't just to help you, but help your next generations and really leaving a legacy.
Carolyn Rowland:
Absolutely. mean, tax planning and estate planning are so correlated, right? And that's just another great point that if leaving a legacy is important or you want your wealth to live on into multiple generations, then tax planning and especially, and estate planning are huge, huge.
Victor Gaxiola:
It's a great setup for what will become our next podcast. Just to recap, if you think of it as like a four-legged stool, we talked about the baseline, is financial planning. It starts with that and creating that blueprint, that roadmap for the person's goals, wealth, and objectives. Then we talked about the investment management, which was the actual engine that drives that.
Victor Gaxiola:
in that financial plan to its destination. Today we talked about some of the road bumps or yeah, bumps in the road that you might face with tax planning and the importance of being able to have a strategy to retain more of what you've earned by not giving more to Uncle Sam than you need to. And then the fourth bit, which Kim just started to introduce, which will be our next podcast, is really talking about estate planning, legacy planning, and creating opportunities for generational wealth. So we hope you'll tune in for that. But I do wanna end, know, to see if you have any final thoughts on the value and the importance of tax plan. think in talking about this throughout, we know that we work with financial plans first and that tax planning is part of that. And so for those that are interested obviously in perhaps doing a deeper dive on the tax planning side, it starts with the financial plan. So please reach out to our team.
Victor Gaxiola:
We have all, you can schedule a discovery call through our website. But any final thoughts, we'll start with Kim and then we'll end with Carolyn.
Kim Gaxiola:
I'd say my final thought is I'm just happy to have you on the team. It's funny that as we work more and more integrated, I'm learning so much more about taxes too. The CFP makes us, you know, it's funny. I was so surprised how much the CFP was tax as opposed to investments. Maybe that's why I hated studying for it so much.
Carolyn Rowland:
Hehehehe
Carolyn Rowland:
Mm-hmm.
Kim Gaxiola:
and why I'm so happy that you are joining our team and have just an emphasis in that tax because it really does, I can see where a lot of times it really will paralyze people from making the right decisions and having a tax planner on our team like Carolyn is just gives clients the confidence they need in order to make the right decisions, not just for today or this year's
tax return but for all of their tax returns in the future. So, yeah.
Carolyn Rowland:
thanks Kim. My final thought is gonna come back to that, you know, being proactive. So again, it's not just an April 15 task, right? April 15th task. And it's even like not a January through April task. I want tax planning to occur like before calendar year ends.
Carolyn Rowland:
because a lot of times there's not much we can do after that December 31st timeline, right? So I'm kind of thinking for 2025 here, you we want to make sure we're doing tax planning before year end and not just waiting until we're actually preparing taxes, right? Like this is going to be ongoing just like financial planning is, and it's very integrated. So be proactive so we can be strategic.
Victor Gaxiola:
Great, and I want to echo what Kim just said. It's been a thrill, obviously, coming together the teams because each comes with its own strengths. And I think that we've become a much stronger group as a result, Carolyn, with your tax planning and EA credentials, which allows us, and I'm learning a whole lot too, just because I focus more on the investments. But now I'm approaching the actual investment situation. And as we meet as an investment committee, we are keeping that layer of thinking about it, you know, as far as the taxes and the tax implications when it comes even to the selection of what specific investments we are looking to add to our models. So we're already thinking about the cell, you know, the cell component or the treatment component, even when it comes to the portfolio construction. So I really appreciate having that additional perspective. So again, if you're interested in learning more about our team, how we work, our developed financial plans and investment strategy, the podcast is a great place to start.
Victor Gaxiola:
But if you'd like to talk to any one of us, we encourage you to go to our website at resilientplanning.com. There's plenty of opportunities there to schedule a discovery call at a time with our team. Reach out to us. As you can see, we're friendly people, more than happy to help and explore how we might be able to help you with your planning and taxes and legacy and all that good stuff. And for those of you that are small business owners or business owners,
Victor Gaxiola:
We can help you too, as well as those who work in tech or might have large concentrated equity positions like RSUs and things. So again, thank you for joining us on the Resilient Investors podcast. We hope you'll join us again in the future podcast, because stay tuned. The next one's going to be a good one, talking about estate planning, legacy planning, and more importantly, generational wealth. So thanks.
Carolyn Rowland:
Thank you.
Kim Gaxiola:
Thanks.
### End of Podcast
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