There's a lot of financial planning opportunities, but it's hard to keep track of it all.
Make sure you're not leaving any money on the table in 2023!
Here's the guide I mentioned in the episode: 2023 Year-End Checklist
Create Your Custom Early Retirement Strategy Here
Ari Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA is the Vice President of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients navigate the nuances of an early retirement.
PS: Before anyone decides to move forward with our services, I want to ensure we're the best fit to help you reach your goals and I personally have the first conversation with you.
There's a lot of financial planning opportunities, but it's hard to keep track of it all.
Make sure you're not leaving any money on the table in 2023!
Here's the guide I mentioned in the episode: 2023 Year-End Checklist
Create Your Custom Early Retirement Strategy Here
Ari Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA is the Vice President of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients navigate the nuances of an early retirement.
PS: Before anyone decides to move forward with our services, I want to ensure we're the best fit to help you reach your goals and I personally have the first conversation with you.
Here are the main things that you need to consider before 2023 comes to an end. It's been a little bit of a crazy year, but luckily, markets have performed versus last year, so a lot of you are hopefully a whole lot more relaxed, especially if an early retirement is on the horizon for you. Now, if you're watching this video and you're in your 30s or 40s, this is gonna be really helpful because you're gonna know what you need to do so that you, every single year, can have this checklist. So when you're in your 50s and 60s, you go hey, I already did a lot of this stuff. Now, if you're listening right now and you're 50s and 60s, going, hey, what should I do to optimize my retirement? It's still gonna be applicable. So I wanna make content that can help as many people as possible. Sometimes I will tell you hey, if you're not, you know, 50 or 55 or 60, this video could still be informative, but it might not be the most applicable to you. So here's a few other options if you're looking for some content, but today's video is going to be very helpful for everyone. It's just my year-end checklist that I personally go through with my clients, so today I'm gonna go through this. But please know, in the link of today's video, meaning in the description, you are going to be able to see the exact checklist and you can look at it. So if you wanna look at it while I'm going through this video, you're more than welcome to. If you wanna download it after, that's fine as well.
Speaker 1:So most of you are watching this right now on YouTube, but if you are listening to the podcast, of course I'm gonna continue to do the show on the podcast app. So some of you asked me are you now only doing it on YouTube? No, it's gonna continue on the podcast app. So iTunes, spotify, google wherever you listen to your podcast, you are going to continue to get this content there. So do not worry about that. I wanna make sure for a lot of you that are following along. If you wanna look at what I'm actually looking at, you can go ahead and see that on YouTube. So, with that being said, gonna go into a quick review of the week and I'm just looking here on my. If you're listening on the podcast app, I'm just looking down so you can't tell, but if you're watching right now on YouTube, you can tell. I'm just looking. This comes from Brent DeKalb, d-e-k-a-l-b, who's in Illinois, and he says Top Notch, truly one of my favorite financial podcasts, and that's it. So thank you, brent.
Speaker 1:My goal and all of you know this by now it's been a really fun year for me because the feedback I've got from all of you is that you've really enjoyed the show and it's making you take action, and I'm a podcast fan myself. I'm also a podcaster, but I wanna make content that makes you take action, because too often there's a million strategies with finances, people get overwhelmed and they don't take action. And the last thing I want is for you to go. I could have retired a few years earlier and not have worked this stressful job or spent time with family when I would have loved to, just because I didn't plan well enough. So I'm not saying that to be harsh. I'm saying that because if you plan well, you can retire earlier than you can expect. Or sometimes the feedback is nope, you have to work a little bit longer, but it's easier to go to work every day because you're doing it because you want to, not because you have to, and that's the difference.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, most of you know by now but I'm Ari Talbley, a certified financial planner, I love what I get to do, which is help people just like you optimize in early retirement. Now, I'm obsessed with an early retirement, but I love the idea that you could spend more time doing what you wanna do and not simply working or commuting or waking up early or all these things that you tell me when you download my content. So, with that being said, I'm gonna hop into the checklist and the first thing I'm gonna do is start with if you have any unrealized investment losses. Now, part of my job I view as a planner is to advise, but another part of my job is, say, here are things that you're gonna hear about from a neighbor or friend or coworker and they do not apply to you, so you do not worry about them. Okay, I call it head trash. I want that out of there. There's plenty of life to worry about. I don't need to worry about stuff that's just not applicable to you.
Speaker 1:So someone might say, hey, did you intentionally realize any losses this year? And people go right off the bat. Wait. Are you saying should I be intentionally selling something? Why would I buy something for 10 bucks and go sell it for five bucks? Like that's a bad thing. I'm losing money, and it is unless you're being intentional with tax strategy. So what I'm gonna tell you right now? This only applies if you have a superhero account. Now, some of you are long-time listeners of the show and you know what I'm talking about. Some of you go. I've never heard of that account, and that's because I made it up.
Speaker 1:The premise is if you wanna retire early, you wanna have a brokerage account that's gonna help you bridge that gap from the time you retire until 59 and a half. And in a perfect world, at 59 and a half, you don't even start touching your IRAs and Roth IRAs, even though you could if you wanted to with a 401k. You can, of course, tap in at 55 if you elect a rule of 55. But even if you can, I don't really love when you do, and the reason for it is it increases your income, which means we can't do as much of the fun tax strategy that I'm gonna talk about. So the first thing I'll ask clients I'll say do you have any unrealized investment losses in your taxable account? So, if you're listening, right now you've got a 401k and a Roth IRA, no brokerage account, no taxable account, no joint account, which, by the way, I'll mean the same exact thing.
Speaker 1:The financial industry just tries to make it as confusing as humanly possible, so don't let them get you. They all mean the same thing, which is it's an account you can put money in. There's no limit you don't have to worry about. Do I make too much money? Do I not make enough money? Is it only $30,000 as a maximum contribution? None of that. You don't get a tax benefit and as the money grows you can take it out and you pay taxes on the gains.
Speaker 1:So the most that you are able to offset against your income is $3,000. What on earth does that mean? What that means is let's assume you bought a stock for $10,000 and it's gone down in value and now it's worth $7,000. You could go ahead and sell that position so it's a $3,000 loss and essentially tell the IRS hey, I want to invest, I want the economy to grow and this was a loser that I had in my portfolio. But what I want you to know, government, is that I tried to stimulate the economy and so I have a $3,000 loss. So are you going to give me any benefit and they go yeah, we'll give you a benefit, but only up to $3,000. Anything beyond that you don't get to use this year. So what this means is $3,000 can be offset against other income that you have, and that's really cool because it's incentivizing you to invest. Now let's assume you bought something for $10,000 and it went down to $5,000. Well, now that's $5,000 of losses. You can only use $3,000 this year, but then you can use $2,000 in future years.
Speaker 1:So the first thing is do you have any unrealized investment losses After that? What I like to do is say let's take this to level two. So that's level one. Do you have any losses? That maybe there's a stock you don't love and so what you want to do is you want to go harvest that loss. Let's go intentionally sell it, but not just sell it and do nothing. Let's sell it and then maybe buy something else. That's going to still put us in a good position to grow over time. Too many people go sell it and then don't do anything, and that defeats the purpose in a lot of ways. So don't do that.
Speaker 1:The second thing is let's assume you have 100 positions, which most of you don't, but you might have a lot of positions. Let's assume you've got a lot of winners and all those winners add up to $20,000 of gains. But you also have a lot of losers and those losers have $20,000 of losses. What you can do is you can go sell all those losers, offset all those winners and now maybe you have $500,000 that you can go invest however you want. So why is this applicable to an early retirement?
Speaker 1:Here's why the reason I'm bringing this up for all of you and hopefully this does connect some dots is let's assume you've got Apple stock and you bought it for and this isn't real Apple stock numbers, but to keep it easy for your brain, let's assume you bought it for $1,000 and now it's worth $100,000. Okay, so it's a $99,000 gain. But now let's assume you also bought Coca-Cola for $100,000 and it's now worth $1,000. Well, those two offset each other and you have a $99,000 gain and a $99,000 loss. You can offset those and the benefit is now you have $200,000 that you can go do whatever you want with. You don't have to go put it into Apple stock, which could be an awesome company. It is an awesome company, but if you're using this income for the first few years of an early retirement, you don't want that brokerage account growing too much. That's not the goal. The goal is actually to have it fairly stable, to provide income and maybe help for some Roth conversion taxes during the first few years of retirement. So the benefit of that brokerage account using tax strategy like this this isn't even Roth conversions I'm talking about. This is just, if you have a brokerage account, go clean it up and prepare it for a retirement. So this is stuff that has to be done before the end of the year. Lastly, here are you subject to taking any RMDs, and that comes from inherited IRAs as well, which I will do a separate episode on in the future. A lot of you have requested that, so I assure you that is coming RMDs, and I'm just reading this off of the checklist. So if you're wondering where this is coming from right now, once again, go ahead and get this.
Speaker 1:The RMDs from multiple IRAs can be aggregated. What does that mean? I'll finish reading and then explain it in plain English. However, rmds from inherited IRAs can't be aggregated with traditional IRAs. So let's assume that you have an IRA and you are 73 years old today. You have to start pulling from that. You have to take a required minimum distribution. But now let's assume you also have an inherited IRA. What happens is you have to take two separate distributions so they're not on the same schedule. That's what that aggregation means. Now let's assume you have three traditional IRAs and you have an RMD requirement of $10,000. What you don't have to do is take $10,000 from every single one, it's just $10,000 across all of your IRAs. So think about it like depending on the account you have. If you have 10 IRA accounts, you should have to take one RMD, but if you have an IRA and an inherited IRA, you have to take two RMDs. So hopefully that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Lastly, not lastly, excuse me next. So that's on the asset and debt piece. I won't go through every single one because I don't wanna make you guys fall asleep here, but I will say it's gonna be a little bit of a longer episode Please. Of course, if you wanna do this in batches, that's fine with me. Some of my clients sent me a funny message the other day that like hey, I listen when I'm working out to the podcast and I felt like I should've taken a notepad and I saw someone else on a treadmill that was also taking notes and I didn't over-listen to the same podcast, so I was too nervous to go over to them Now? I highly doubt it, because there's lots of podcasts out there, but it was a funny thought that potentially two people were listening to this podcast while working out. Anyway, let's get back to the fun.
Speaker 1:So, tax planning issues this is a big one. Do you expect your income to increase in the future? I will ask my clients do you think you're gonna be a higher tax bracket in the future? If so, let's consider, but not implement, roth conversions. Roth conversions have to be done before your end. So, roth conversions you pay a little bit in taxes. You eat a little bit of cauliflower. If you know my cauliflower example, and if not, go listen to my other tax videos.
Speaker 1:Some of you go hey, I know this very well, but I'll give it to you real quick for a lot of you who don't, and feel free to, yeah, click, skip 15 or 30 seconds right now. If you already know my cauliflower example, because I am a podcast listener myself and I know when I'm listening to the show and they do the same example over and over, I'm like, hey, man, I know it. So I'm telling you this because some of you are new and new people are listening every single month. So thank you for the new listeners and for the long-term listeners.
Speaker 1:But the concept is I want you to eat a little bit of cauliflower, pay a little bit in taxes to avoid having your entire plate be cauliflower in the future, which is what those required minimum distributions might do to you. And I don't want you tax like crazy. I don't want you in your seventies going, hey, I want to eat steak and pasta, but I don't get to. I only have to eat cauliflower and, trust me, you don't want to only eat that. It could be a little piece of your plate, but not the whole thing, I assure you. And some people once again they're sending me like selfies eating cauliflower going, hey, this is a great vegetable while you're hating on it. No vendetta against cauliflower. Okay, let's get that out of the way.
Speaker 1:So do you expect your income to increase in the future? If so, make Roth IRA or Roth 4-on-K contributions and consider Roth conversions. That's before year end. Okay, now, if eligible. Now that's very rare. I've seen only two instances. But Roth employer matching we're gonna start to see more of this. So right now, if you do everything Roth to your 401K and you're over 50, you could put 30,000 bucks in, underneath 50, you could put 22,500. So what's gonna happen is you're gonna put that in and then you're gonna look on your statement and you're gonna go hey, wait a second, I thought I got an employer match. That employer match is always, as a default, gonna be pre-tax. You're like, why I put Roth? The reason is the company's contributing and they want a tax deduction. They don't care about you that much, okay, even if you think they do so. Because of that, what you're gonna start to see is there gonna be some more Roth employer contributions in coming years.
Speaker 1:Sometimes my feedback is don't do stuff before year end, okay. Too often some people come to me and they're really giddy. They're like hey, I saw this video on Roth conversion, I don't wanna miss out before year end, so I just went and did it. Don't do that, okay. So do you expect your income to decrease in the future? If so, maybe you're doing some IRA contributions or 401k contributions as a pre-tax, because RMDs aren't gonna be a big consideration for you in the future. Things to think through. And then, lastly, any capital losses for this year or carry forwards from prior years. So maybe you've got like I said at the very beginning of today's episode, some losses and maybe there's up to $3,000 of losses, or maybe you've got 10,000 of losses and we've got to factor that in when you're doing Roth conversions or any tax planning. So that's regarding the tax front and I'm gonna do a little bit more on taxes, not a ton.
Speaker 1:But I called this next concept. I made it up once again. So some of you have said, hey, try looking up some of the stuff you talk about and I'm like, and they're like I can't find it. So like, where's the link to it? And you know I'm not gonna say it with that much attitude, but I'll say there's no link to it. I'll email them, I'll say there's no link, I made it up. And they're like well then, what's the research based on? I'm like my clients, real people that I'm talking to. So you know I don't say it with that much attitude, I promise what I'm talking to the clients.
Speaker 1:But I call this next concept tax hugging. And on the real document that you all can probably see right now, it says are you on the threshold of a tax bracket? It's the upper right of the document I'm looking at and it says if so, consider strategies to defer your income or accelerate deductions and strategies to manage gains and losses to keep you in a lower bracket. What this really means is let's assume you're thinking about a Roth conversion and you are hugging a 12% bracket. I mean, you've already filled up the 10% bracket but you want to get really close to that 12% bracket, but you don't want to spill over it. That's called hugging, so I call it conversion hugging or Roth hugging or tax bracket planning. The whole premise is you want to get really close to certain brackets without falling over them, and that's the benefit of planning.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to take a quick pause, not on everything we're talking about here, but here's a big concept that a lot of you are going to ask me about. I'm going to ask it for you how do you actually do the Roth conversions for your clients? Because I know a lot of you are thinking this, and here's how I do it. I give them three simple numbers and I give them this really dumb example right now, and I'm going to cut this example and I'm going to put this as just a separate video. So, in case you're going to, I want to see this exact example later. You're going to see it. I give everyone three numbers. Okay, and it's silly, and I'm doing it in a silly way right now because it's going to make you guys remember it. So check this out All clients that I work with. They have three numbers and these numbers come from the following examples Number one NBB. What does that mean? What that means is no brainer bracket. Once again, I make this stuff up, so it's silly.
Speaker 1:The premise is this is the bracket that, no matter what, as long as you're on planet earth and you're on earth with me and my clients know these examples sorry clients, if you're here and I'm again, this is the bracket we have to fill up. It's a minimum, it's a no brainer. Many markets do this or markets do that. We are filling up. That's our no brainer. Then we need our what I call NBDB. Once again, silly, I get it, but it's our no brainer dynamic bracket. What that means is this is a no brainer, but it's dynamic, meaning it depends on if markets perform a certain way and depending on income that you withdraw and all these different factors, that's going to determine if we want to fill up X bracket. So I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:Client came to me. Their no brainer bracket was the 22% bracket this year, meaning they've got to fill that up. Why? Because the third number is called your TB, that's your tax bomb bracket. That means, for example and this is a real client case they came to me and I it's top of mind I'm going to tell you right now. They came to me, they're no brainer bracket. They already had a pension, very small pension. The rest was coming from their IRA for income. Their no brainer bracket was 22%, meaning that's what we have to fill up, no matter what.
Speaker 1:So we're going to fill it out through Roth conversions because their tax bomb bracket, which is the third number, well into the future, is 35%. I mean they saved, invested really well. They're going to be in a high tax bracket, higher than even when they were working, and then in the middle. So no brainer bracket 22,. Tax bomb bracket 35, their no brainer dynamic bracket, which means, once again, depending on if markets do well or don't do well. If markets do really well, we oftentimes won't do an additional conversion. If markets aren't doing so well, I'm telling my clients lick your lips, it's time for a Roth conversion. You're taking advantage of a downturn and then what's happening is that money is growing tax free forever and maybe we're going to fill up the 24% bracket or a partial 24% bracket. Now, all these brackets are going to change. So in 2026, everything I'm talking about right now not applicable. Okay, so the brackets might not seem low today, but they are, historically speaking.
Speaker 1:So that's my little quick sample on how do I do my Roth conversions for clients. That's how I do it. Hopefully that was helpful and didn't confuse it too much. Nbb no brainer bracket. Nbdb no brainer dynamic bracket. Tb that's your tax bomb. That's what? If you do nothing, where will you be in the future? Let's continue on here. Are you charitably inclined? If so, consider QCDs, which are qualified charitable distributions. Are you going to take a standard deduction? Are you going to itemize Already? Helpful to start thinking through this, because here's an example. I know I'm kind of the example guy. It's the only way you're going to learn. So check this out.
Speaker 1:Some of you are going yeah, I want to do some charitable giving, but I just don't know. Does it benefit me? I know there's a tax purpose, but I don't really know. Let's take a hypothetical, because I did this for a client literally like two days ago. So what happened is a client came to me like, hey, all right, I want to do charitable giving, but I'm not a huge giver. I'm not saying that because I'm a bad guy giving other ways or other volunteer my time and other things I say fine. They say here's what I want you to know, though. I want you to know that if there's a tax thing that I should be doing and I'm not doing it right now, I need you to tell me. I said okay, here's what I want you to think through.
Speaker 1:Let's assume that you're taking the standard deduction, which, by the way, is $29,200 if married, finally, jointly Okay, $14,600. If you're single but married, finally, jointly $29,200. That's your standard deduction. So, every single year, you can take a standard deduction or itemize. You want to itemize if that number is greater, so mortgage interest and other expenses and deductions and you ask yourself what is going to save me more in taxes to get to your taxable income? So the reason I'm giving you this example is let's pretend that you right now I want you to paint yourself in this picture.
Speaker 1:Let's assume you right now are giving $5,000 to the Red Cross. Okay, you're doing it every single year for 10 years. Okay, $5,000, 10 years. You just gave them $50,000 of your hard earned cash, but it's for a good cause and happy days. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1:The thing is, remember, why are you doing this? So $5,000, and you're taking the standard deduction, which means you're not actually getting a tax benefit. You're just being a nice guy and you're giving $5,000 excuse me to the Red Cross. No problem there. But what if you did this instead? What if, instead, you looked in your brokerage account and you saw you had Apple stock and Apple stock's done really well for you, and you bought it for $10,000, but now it's worth $50,000. Okay, it's a $40,000 gain.
Speaker 1:So now what you can do is, as opposed to taking $5,000 and giving it to the Red Cross every year for 10 years and getting a tax benefit, what you do instead is you take the $10,000 you bought Apple stock for, which grew to $50,000, you move that to a donor-advised fund. So now all you're doing is you're moving this position in your brokerage account a very highly appreciated position, which means it's done really well. $50,000 goes to this foundation and the benefit is it now goes to this donor-advised fund. That's like your own foundation, it's like your own giving fund and that can continue to grow for you, meaning you can keep investing in Apple stock or a different mutual fund or whatever you want, and that's going to keep growing and you can gift from there. So that means is you can take $50,000, you just remember, you took $50,000 from your brokerage account. It's now in your donor-advised fund. So already now has a donor-advised fund with $50,000.
Speaker 1:And now I'm going to give $5,000 every single year to the Red Cross. So let's assume my $50,000 grows by 5% Great, and the earnings are sent to Red Cross. And here's why it's good for you when you do that gift to the donor-advised fund, that's a one-year $50,000 deduction. So, as opposed to doing $5,000 every year for 10 years, do one big deduction so you get a $50,000 deduction in one year. That's great for your tax plan because you save a ton in taxes.
Speaker 1:Maybe at the same time you do a Roth conversion. You're like whoa, whoa, whoa, ari, what are you saying here? What I'm saying is you can do a big deduction in one year and do a big Roth conversion in one year and they could offset one another. So you have to pay a ton in tax on the Roth conversion because you have this big deduction. Now don't just go do this for the sake of doing it.
Speaker 1:But some of you are going, hey, is this like a tax brain or is this going to put more money in my pocket? And I'll say it depends. Let's quantify it for you how big of a gain do you have? But think about it like this it's better to do it this way because if you are going to take let's assume you were to sell Apple stock okay, and it's long-term capital gains 15% on that. I'm just doing this with you. You're just taking 15% on just the gains, okay, not on the principle.
Speaker 1:That's $6,000. So $6,000, so you have to pay in taxes. So now, at the end of the day, yep, you have your $50,000, but you just paid $6,000 in taxes. So really, $44,000 is what you have, and now you can go give that to the Red Cross or to whatever foundation you want, as opposed to moving that money to a donor advice funding, gifting from there, saving you $6,000 in taxes. You're not coming out of pocket, paying taxes and then gifting. You are directly moving the funds to a donor advice fund and that fund is gifting, so it benefits you for tax purposes and more goes to the charity, because if you did it the other way, you'd say well, apple stock, I've only got $44,000. Here's $44,000 versus do I give a certain amount every year? So hopefully you just saw the benefits of charitable planning.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's just one example and if you want to do any of this, end of the year is the time to do it. Okay, there's a whole lot more here. I know I've already gone 20 minutes plus. I told myself this would be a 15 minute video in podcast, so sorry about that to all of you listening, unless you're loving it, in which case please let me know. Feel like, hey, these longer episodes are helpful. Great, I won't do every episode like this, but end of year planning a lot going on, so I'm just gonna continue here and feel free to tune out if this is no longer of interest.
Speaker 1:But most of you are listening on. Yeah, I wanna optimize this. So most of you know those that reach out to me. It's people coming to me for custom guidance. They're not saying what's a 401K. They're saying help me optimize my 401K. They're not saying you know, should I do a Roth. They're not saying what's a Roth conversion. They're saying help me, make sure I implement this Roth conversion perfectly. So you get the point here.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about marital status. Have any changes occurred? If so, consider your tax liability is gonna be based on your marital status as of December 31st, so please know that. Insurance planning are you gonna have a balance in your FSA before the end of the year? Did you meet your health insurance deductible? If so, consider incurring and it sounds weird any additional medical expenses before the end of the year, after which point your annual deductible will reset. A lot of times my clients will forget that, so keep that in mind. Regarding cash flow can you save more and, if so, whether, if you have an HSA, you can go ahead and contribute towards that If you have a 529 account worth considering towards that, if you have additional dollars. Like when should we do this stuff? It's now, it's by year end. So HSAs, 401ks, 529s, transferring assets, all of that stuff this is the time to consider it.
Speaker 1:Some other estate planning stuff have there been any changes to your family heirs? Have you bought, sold any assets? Consider reviewing your estate plan. So I'll talk about that in the future. Are there any gifts that still need me done this year? Something to consider? So, by the end of the year, make sure that when you're looking at your planning.
Speaker 1:If you wanna gift effectively, you can gift up to 17,000 a year, just for this year. So if you wanna go gift 17,000, you can gift 17,000 to a child and your partner can gift 17,000, so they can have 34,000,. You don't have to report anything for tax Above that. You don't pay any taxes. You just have to tell the IRS hey, we're gonna do some more gifting, so we just want you to know. But you don't actually have to pay that right away. Okay, that gets added to your estate plan. Unified lifetime credit exemption amount. Don't worry about that for now. Too complicated for today. But the premise is you can do effective gifting.
Speaker 1:So let me pause. I'll ask clients okay, what's your estate plan? They go yeah, I have a trust and a will. I go no, no, no, that's not an estate plan. They go it sounds like an estate plan. I go no, an estate plan is telling you how much you can gift effectively to children without impacting your retirement. And a estate plan is saying how much can you gift and can you pair that with Roth conversions and are you being intentional about your retirement spending and making sure you're not a burden to future children? Okay, that's a estate planning. So I get a little heated when people say, yeah, I've got an estate plan, I have a trust. I'm like, well, that's like level one, okay.
Speaker 1:So next point, here are other issues. Do you have children in high school or younger who plan to attend college? If so, consider those strategies to, of course, whether it be a 529 or Coverdell or UTMA, ugma, but be aware of kiddie tax with those. So stuff going on with that. I'm just checking my list here. There's more, of course, that I wanna go through, but those are the big ones, okay. So that's the checklist. What should you consider before your end? Roth conversions, roth foreign aid contributions, foreign aid contributions. Do you need to do a big deferral to max out before the end of the year? Roth IRAs and IRAs? You have until April 15th, so don't worry about that April 18th, excuse me, of next year. So no hard deadline there. Just the foreign aid, the HSA, the Roth conversions, the RMDs. That's end of year stuff, okay.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna do another video like this what should you do to prepare for the new year? If it's helpful, I hope. It is my only request. I'm not gonna work with all of you and I realize that, but if you do wanna work with us. We love doing it. So, of course, reach out. In the link you'll see a description. Do so, but beyond that I'm not gonna work with all of you.
Speaker 1:I do all this content to be as helpful as humanly possible and I do love it to an unhealthy degree, and that's just the truth. I love this stuff so much. I wanna help as many people as I can retire early. So my only true ask is you leave a review, just like the review that was left today. So thank you very much. I'm just gonna give you another shout out. Thank you very much to Brent DeKalb from Illinois. Truly one of my favorite podcasts, top Notch. Thank you. Like. That does it for me. Okay, I just need to know this stuff is helpful and you wanna listen. So if you wanna tune out now, you're more than welcome to. If you wanna hear my last final story here, please continue, which. A lot of you know this, but I'm gonna give it to you anyway.
Speaker 1:A lot of you are saying, hey, why'd you start the early retirement podcast? I had three people ask me that last week and I said, to be honest, I really didn't know people would care about it. Okay, so I just started doing it and early on when I started the podcast, I was working at another company and the company was great and I learned a lot there, but I was learning how to create tax-free income and that's what this company specialized in. So that's my background. It was more on the tax side a little bit, yes, investment planning, but mainly tax. So I was learning how to help pensions and endowments and these big institutions create hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars tax-free. That's all I did all day, every day.
Speaker 1:So I went to my mentor at the time and hopefully my mentor's not seeing this, but even if they are, I'm actually gonna say thank you because you've now put my life in an amazing direction, so, truly. But I said, hey, what about when people retire early? I just have this thought like people are gonna be in a low tax bracket, so can they consider doing some of this stuff? And they literally said this. I had a few mentors, so they won't know who I'm talking about, and I quote Ari, don't worry about it, that's old, boring people. Okay, that's what they said to me, and they were saying it. I don't know if they were trying to be as mean as that just sounded, but the way they were saying it to me it did sound mean, but mainly I could tell they were trying to say no, ari, shouldn't you be excited?
Speaker 1:Look at the work you're doing here. Because it was the fancy Beverly Hills with the lights and the parking, and I was the only one who didn't have an Audi in the office and I brought my lunch to work because I just nothing wrong with nice cars. Let me be clear Okay, it's just that's not where I valued my assets. So the point is it just didn't work, okay. So I was going into work, I wasn't loving it and so I started the early retirement podcast going hey, I think people care, but I really don't know.
Speaker 1:So my partner of five years now gives me a lot of stick because she used to say Ari, why are you going to talk to the wall every Wednesday? I'm like what do you mean? I go. I actually I said first of all, it's Mondays. Okay, I do episodes on Mondays, not Wednesday. She's like whatever the premise is, no one was listening, okay, and the first year I got a thousand downloads and that told me enough people like you guys listening care, okay. So this kind of end of year checklist stuff. I love doing this stuff. I love doing this videos. Even if you weren't listening, I'd still be doing this. Okay, cause I just want to give. As long as someone's benefiting from it, I'm getting value. Okay, now, after time went on, the next year I got 10,000 downloads.
Speaker 1:I'm like hey, that's a lot of people that are listening, that actually care and want to improve and they're doing everything they can to optimize. That's my nickname here. It's optimized because you work too hard to not get the most out of it and sometimes optimizing is not doing the financial thing, and that's the difference. As I see it. A lot of people come into me and they just want to make sure they're optimizing to the point where it's dangerous. And they say are you like?
Speaker 1:I had a client say this and it's one of the best things they've ever said Are you starting really excited about this Roth conversion strategy? And I was like I am, isn't this pretty cool? They're like yeah, but you sound too excited. I'm like what do you mean? They're like I want to make sure that we're doing Roth conversions, but I don't want me to feel bad if I'm traveling just because we could have done a better Roth conversion if I didn't travel, I'm like great point, that's not the premise. The premise is not amazing Roth conversion, the premise is an awesome life. So I'm telling you this because the past few months, 40,000 plus downloads every month of the show and I love to do it. So that's it about 30 minutes for today's episode.
Speaker 1:Thank you, guys seriously for taking the time and I hope that this was helpful. If so, let me know. Thanks, guys, love you. Thank you for listening to another episode of the early retirement show. If you have a question that you want answered in a future episode, you can always go to my website, earlyretirementpodcastcom, and you can go ahead and submit a question that I'll look to answer in a future episode. Thank you all for listening. Please do rate it, review it and share it with someone who you think would benefit from this information. If there's anyone out there that you know, I certainly appreciate it and I will see you all each week. Hey guys, it's me again. Please be smart about this. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as financial, tax or legal advice. Consult with your tax preparer or financial advisor before taking the time to review the podcast.