Hi, my name is Jason Bergquist. I am a Certified Financial Fiduciary. I have been helping people, educating people on their finances since the year 2000.
And today I have a video that I’ve prepared all about taxes. Everybody’s favorite subject, right?
Well, it happens to be one of my favorite subjects.
And why is it one of my favorite subjects?
Because it’s one of the most expensive things in your retirement.
It’s something that could cost you more than anything else if you’re unsure of what to do and how to understand the tax situation of your investments.
Now I’m not a CPA, I’m not an accountant.
So, this isn’t giving you tax advice, but this is just giving you a little bit of education about what taxes can do for and against you in your retirement.
I help people figure out,
How do I make sure that I don’t outlive my money in retirement?
How do I make sure, no matter how long I live, I’m going to have as much money as I need to, to take care of myself …
… to take care of my significant other …
… to take care of my family and do the things that I want to in retirement.
The number one thing that we’ve got to figure out is what those taxes look like.
Now, depending on when you’re watching this, taxes are going up and down all the time.
Right now, we have some tax breaks and we want to take advantage of any tax breaks that we can get.
When I talk about tax breaks, the phrase that I’m going to reference throughout this conversation, as well as in my webinar, when you get a chance to go through that …
… is called the Power of Zero.
And the Power of Zero is,
How can I be in a 0% tax bracket?
And when you’re retired, you want to be able to spend that money and do the things that you want.
So, the number one concern and conversation I have with people, every single day, is …
How do I NOT outlive my money?
Well, in order to figure that out, we’ve got to figure out …
If I have enough money and I’ve got to the point where I need to make sure that I’m ready to retire, that I have the structure that I need to retire …
… and that I want make sure that I can bring in and have the funds that I need to every single day in order to be able to accomplish the goals that I want to.
If I have enough money and I’ve got to the point where I need to make sure that I’m ready to retire, that I have the structure that I need to retire …
… and that I want make sure that I can bring in and have the funds that I need to every single day in order to be able to accomplish the goals that I want to.
Now you may be telling, you know, saying to yourself, well, that’s impossible, right?
You know, everybody knows that the two things guaranteed in this life or death and taxes, well, that’s true.
But what if we can figure out how to pay the least amount in taxes, legally, on all of our investments, on our income and expenses that go out …
… and how that works with our investments?
As you’ve been putting money away for your retirement, you’ve usually done it in two ways.
You’ve done it in tax deferred, right?
You’ve put off paying the taxes, right? You got the tax benefit today. And most people have done it that way.
Those fall in the 401ks and the IRAs, which is where most of the money in retirement comes from.
Well, one problem with that is you have deferred those taxes.
You got the tax break when you did it, which was probably the advice that you got either from your HR of your employment, or maybe even your CPA.
But one of the things that we need to figure out is what do your taxes look like in your retirement?
So, for example, if you put away a million dollars and you’re thinking,
If I have enough money and I’ve got to the point where I need to make sure that I’m ready to retire, that I have the structure that I need to retire …
… and that I want make sure that I can bring in and have the funds that I need to every single day in order to be able to accomplish the goals that I want to.
And maybe that’s an example from the past, right?
We used to use it all the time. I’m not sure that anybody can live off of a million dollars for very long anymore, but whatever, right?
A million, 2 million, 3 million, but for simple math, if you put away a million dollars … and let’s say that you fall into a 25% tax bracket.
Well, you don’t have a million dollars, right? Your net money, that’s coming to you is the money that you actually get to spend, you actually get to put towards your retirement and doing the things that you want.
Well, you’ve got to take 25% off or $250,000. So, now you only have $750,000 to actually take care of you in your retirement years, even though you put away a million.
Well, what if we just change things, right? What if we tweak things?
What if you have the ability to put money in after tax investments?
If you have the option of a Roth 401k or a Roth 403B, or if you’re a government worker and you have a TSP, you do have access to a Roth TSP.
Well, does that make sense?
Is that something you should do?
Well, that’s definitely a conversation we can have. I can tell you just on an educational basis for most people, it is more beneficial for you do contribute to a Roth IRA or a Roth 401k, or a Roth employer plan.
Whatever it is that your employer offers you, then we can go through those reasons and I can help you understand them.
And I can educate you on that. That way, if you had a million dollars put away into your Roth, 401k or your Roth options …
… that would give you the ability to have all $1 million coming to you in retirement.
Because inside of a Roth investment, there are no taxes.
There’s no taxes on the gains.
There’re no taxes on the mind that you’re pulling out or that you’re living on.
And as long as you wait until you’re at least 59 and a half to access any of the funds inside of that Roth account, there will be no fees, no costs, no taxes on them at all.
So, when you’re doing the math, right, you’re thinking to yourselves,
Okay, well, if I put away a million dollars in after tax dollars, I’ll pay the taxes on it now, right?
It comes to me as income. I pay the taxes.
The Power of Zero means that we’re NEVER going to pay taxes on that money ever again, as long as we live now.
That does a couple of things for you. If you believe that taxes are going up, which most people do and all signs point to that.
We have to raise taxes to cover the debt in this country.
Well, that means taxes double, just simple math, right?
If you’re in a 25% tax bracket now, and that doubles to 50. Well, guess what …
… 2 x 0 is still 0.
So, if it’s after-tax dollars, you know, we don’t care that taxes double (we’re always going to care, right?) on our retirement monies because it doesn’t cost us anything.
But if we take the tax defer, if we take that employer plan and we’re putting that in there.
And we’re getting the tax benefit today.
Well, we’re going to have to pay taxes on that money when we pull it out in the future.
So, I want to be able to go through that with you. I want to help you understand that’s just one piece of what the taxes can do.
There are other investments that work tax-free, like the ROTH does. I use it as an example because that’s one most people are familiar with, but there are others.
There’s cash value, life insurance. There are a couple others out there that have a couple of different things to them that allow you to get the benefit.
And I would love to go through the one last point and you start receiving your social security benefit.
They tax your social security benefit based on the other income you have coming outside of your social security.
Well, if you’re pulling money from a Roth type of an account, there is nothing to show as income coming in because the only way that you show income coming in is something that you owe taxes on.
So, you have the ability to possibly receive 100% of your social security benefits with no taxes, whatsoever.
But if you have X amount of dollars coming in per year, they have the ability to count 50% of your social security income into your adjusted, gross income and cost you taxes on that.
And if you make too much coming in outside of your social security, 85% of your social security benefit can be added to your income.
And you can be taxed on that, feels like double taxes, and really it is, right?
You paid your taxes, you put away your social security now and that social security benefit …
… because you paid your taxes and now, they’re taxing you on your social security.
Well, there are thresholds and I can help you figure those thresholds out. I can make sure that you’re under those thresholds and help you figure out how it is.
I’m going to do that last part on this.
If you’re in too high of an adjusted gross income, then it doesn’t allow you to even contribute to a Roth IRA.
And depending on what your income is, 86% of all taxes is paid by the top 25% of income earners in the US. And you may be thinking, good.
Those that make the top 25% of the income in this country should be paying the taxes. But do you know what that number is?
Well, as of 2020, if you had adjusted gross income, this is household gross income of $83,682 or more.
You might already be in that top 25% of income earners in the country. And then you’re in that bucket where you’re paying 86% of all the taxes.
So, there are things that we can do to help you figure out where you need to be and how to avoid as much taxes legally, as we possibly can.
In the links below, you’ll find access to a couple of documents that will help you figure out where you’re at, what income you have coming in, what income you’re going to want in your retirement.
If you have a pension, we have options to avoid the taxes with that pension and where we want to be.
So, fill those documents out, send those back to us. We’re going to put together a report for you that’s going to show you where you’re at and how we can help you avoid those.
And again, remember, this is just one piece of your total overall retirement picture.
And in order to help you create the Retirement of Your Dreams, you need to go through the webinar and understand each of the pieces, the parts before and after taxes.
This may be the most important part of what you need to learn about, but please go through the webinar because it gets you more information.
I’ve got many other videos out there as well. So, feel free to look at those videos to understand each of these different points.
I’m here to help you create the Retirement of Your Dreams.
So please click for the documents below, go through that information, click on the link to schedule the Retirement of Your Dreams Call so that we can help you figure out where you’re at.
I look forward to helping you and I look forward to helping you avoid as much taxes as possible. Thank you.
Next Steps:
1. Click here to download documents
2. Click here to register for our FREE Webinar
3. Click here to schedule your FREE Retirement of Your Dream Call
