Assets and Taxes - Why Everyone Needs an Estate Plan (Before It’s Too Late)

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

In this episode of Assets and Taxes, Kent Fitzpatrick sits down with attorney and founder of Legal Halp, Josh Halpern to break down everything you need to know about protecting your assets and securing your family’s future. They discuss why every family—regardless of wealth—needs an estate plan, the differences between wills and trusts, how to avoid probate, and upcoming estate tax changes that could impact your legacy.(0:00) Intro (0:51) Meet Josh Halpern (4:42) Most Americans Don't Have An Estate Plan (6:24) What Happens If You Pass Away Without An Estate Plan (7:23) Why Estate Planning Isn't Only For The Wealthy (8:00) The Difference Between Estate Tax & Probate (11:45) How Often Should You Review Your Estate Plan (12:50) How To Avoid The Probate Court (15:28) Intestate vs. Testate (16:30) Estate Plan Value System (19:36) Elements of an Estate Plan (22:32) Irrevocable Trust vs Revocable Trust (25:00) How The Gift Tax and Estate Tax Works Together (29:48) What Should You Do Now (33:00) How Important Is A Revocable Trust (34:20) Why The Younger Generation Needs To Consider Estate Planning (37:25) Conclusion Have Questions? 📞Book a FREE 15 Minute Discovery Call with us: www.assetstrategy.com/contact----Want more FREE resources? 📚Download some of our FREE Financial Guides!:https://assetstrategy.com/financial-g...----Found this video helpful? Be sure to hit the like button on this video and share it with someone who may find this helpful. Subscribe to our channel so we can keep helping you grow and create wealth.----Want to know where else you can find us?Click on this link → https://linktr.ee/assetstrategy--Check out Josh's website:https://www.legalhalplaw.com/

A staggering 55% of Americans have no estate documents at all. Your assets are going to become a matter of public record and your local probate court is going to determine what happens to your stuff. Michael Jackson did have a revocable living trust. The problem was he never transferred anything into it. So his entire estate was fully subject to the probate process. Time consuming. It's expensive. The longer your lawyer sits in that courthouse,

the more of a bill you're racking up. By having a simple trust or simple will, you avoid all of that. They may as well have just burned up that money because they don't have an estate plan. Welcome back, everyone, to Assets and Taxes. I'm Kent Fitzpatrick, Managing Director at Asset Strategy. And I'm thrilled today to have a friend and colleague, Josh Halpern from Legal Help, here to talk about estate planning. Now, don't turn the dial

because we're going to make this interesting and engaging. Josh, say hello and tell us a little bit about yourself. Josh Halpern Everybody, nice to meet you. Nice to be on the show. Thanks, Kent and team over at Asset Strategy. You know, you can take this a number of different ways. I think most videos online about estate planning, they put you right to sleep right away. So we're going to try to keep this spicy. My name is Josh Halpern, and I started a firm called Legal Help. That's H-A-L-P. And it was originally this whole thing started as a joke, I'll be honest with you. You know, I was working at a major corporate law firm, my buddies kept

calling me Legal Help, Legal Help, Legal Help. But what I found is that working at a big firm, man, they don't want to take on work from just the average client. They're looking for big firm fees, they're looking to overcharge people, they're billing you by the hour, by the minute. So if somebody approaches a big firm with an estate plan, they need a simple trust or well done or powers of attorney, chances are they're gonna get turned down by a big firm.

So, you know, we had this legal help thing develop and I was doing simple LLCs and trusts and wills for clients and buddies of mine and it just grew and grew and grew. And eventually I left the big firm life and started my own firm. And this was several years ago and now we've had exponential growth. We represent thousands of clients from social media influencers to family businesses to grandparents and grandchildren. It's really grown a lot and we've made the practice of law approachable. We don't engage in hourly billing. You know, when I worked at a big firm, you would see partners walking down the hallway and if they were talking with their buddies about your case after leaving

the bathroom, you know, you're getting billed for that. Sometimes it's five, six, seven, eight hundred dollars an hour. So we've completely left that model behind and we focus on basic day to day legal work that everybody needs. And one of those big needs is estate planning, which is what we're talking about today. Well, fantastic. I don't know that there's too many lawyers that have been recorded to say that they don't charge by the hour. So this might be a first here. Oh, fantastic. I don't know there's too many lawyers that have been recorded to say that they don't charge by the hour, so this might be a first here. I wanted to share with the audience, really, how we met. It was actually through a mutual colleague that is what I consider part of our tax team, who has a group of both enrolled agents and CPAs, that I think we all speak the same language.

I think that's somewhat unique. So our firm is really focused on financial services, wealth management, and overlap obviously with the state planning in your world and a number of other corporate structures. But that trifecta, if you will, between legal, tax, and financial services, I think, was really a common thread for us to come together.

Yeah, it's huge. I grew up with a longtime buddy in Cleveland, Ohio, and his name is Bobby, and that's how three of us met. And I went the legal route, he went the accounting route, and he started his own CPA accounting bookkeeping gig, and we just ran in tandem with one another referring clients to each other. And you know, a point on that it's it's tough to find good partners nowadays, you know, how many calls do you get when people are trying to pitch you a product or pitch you a long term

relationship, quote unquote, and at the end of the day, they just they really just want something from you just want to take business from you or opportunities from you. It's very rarely do you find that it's a reciprocal relationship. And, you know, our relationship, the relationship I have with Bobby has just been very genuine, and we've been able to help a tremendous amount of people. So thankful that we we've been thrilled, thrilled to find you in the introduction.

And, you know, maybe to kind of kind of get us started here, I'll start with some statistics. Yes, they say statistics don't lie, but liars do statistics. But in any case, a staggering 55% of Americans have no estate documents at all. They have no will. And I think you talked with me before we went to the studio that even people that have an estate plan,

if they haven't actually executed them or they haven't actually changed title, they may as well just burned up that money because they don't have an estate plan. So what is it with Americans and why aren't people affecting an estate plan? They love their children, they want the best thing for their business partners,

but why won't we as Americans kind of get this implemented? I mean, number one, people don't like to talk to lawyers. They know that this is something that a lawyer has to do. And people don't want to pick up the phone and call a lawyer. They don't want to spend thousands of dollars. So that's another thing. I think it's too expensive.

They don't want to go through legal assistance and secretaries and scheduling meetings and going into these big mahogany offices and dealing with it. It just sounds like a miserable thing to do, frankly. It's uncomfortable. People don't want to talk about death or passing away, especially our millennial clients or young clients. They think it's so far in the future. They want this gratification now approach.

They don't think it's important. And then life just gets busy. People don't prioritize this gratification now approach. So they don't think it's important. And then life just gets busy. You know, people don't prioritize this just generally speaking. So our job is to make this whole thing way more approachable in terms of cost, how we get it done, how we coordinate with the clients, we really specialize in bringing this type of work off the back burner and just getting it getting it completed. So then let me ask you a follow up question then. If someone dies without an estate plan, what happens?

And what can we do to help avoid whatever that chaos may be? It's a great question. I mean, simply put, if you don't have an estate plan, your assets are going to become a matter of public record, and your local probate court is going to determine what happens to your stuff. So you right off the bat lose control over where your digital assets are gonna go,

where your bank accounts are gonna go, your rental real estate, all of that is now up to the courts. Now, in many cases, it'll just be distributed to your next of kin, but people have disagreements between family members all the time. They may want to designate certain assets

to a charitable organization. They may want to go to a friend. If you don't spell that out in advance, you're leaving everything up to the courts. So, I mean, that's a huge problem, especially for high net worth individuals and even individuals that have a simple estate. So is estate planning only for the wealthy

or are you suggesting that it may be more accessible to all? A big misconception is that estate planning is only for the wealthy. It is absolutely for everyone at a very basic level and a state plan is gonna help you avoid the probate court. So whether your net worth is $50,000 or $50 million, you're going to avoid having all of your stuff become a matter of public record and distributed by somebody else who doesn't

know the particulars or ins and outs of your business, your assets, and your wishes. So it's for everybody and that needs to be made clear. So maybe for our listeners, let's clarify the difference between maybe a state tax versus probate, because I think there's some confusion. Someone says, well, listen, I'm not worth that much, so I don't really have a problem with a state tax. I think there's a misconception. Can you help clarify that?

Yeah. I mean, you've got to look at this. Are you looking at this financially, or are you looking at this in terms of protection of what you've built and protecting your legacy? I think at a basic level, a trust and a will together are gonna help you avoid the probate courts and ensure that everything you've built is distributed to your beneficiaries correctly.

So that's one bucket. How are we gonna protect what I've built and how are we gonna make sure it gets to where it needs to go? The other bucket would be financial concerns. Now, we have some clients that have large estates. They're going to be subject to an estate tax upon the death of both spouses or just themselves with their unmarried. And we want to make sure that their net worth is saved from hefty, hefty government imposed taxes. That's a separate issue.

I would focus more so on this being an accessible thing for everyone to protect their assets, to avoid the probate courts and focus on who gets what. Who are my beneficiaries? Who's gonna get everything I've built when I pass away? And there's really two levels of that because we talk about a state tax. There's the federal estate tax and possibly depending upon your state, I'm in Massachusetts,

which has a state tax, you're in Florida, which is a tax free state. Probate is privacy and speed of execution as opposed to getting tied up for months or longer in the probate court system versus whether the size of my estate at a federal level or if my state has a state tax in certain levels, two different items. Yeah, that's a separate analysis. It's very similar to a lot of requests we get about LLCs. So an LLC is a very basic request that most entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, business owners want to inquire about. And the most common question we get about LLCs is,

is this gonna help me from a tax saving standpoint? Generally speaking, an LLC provides no benefit in the tax realm. But what it does do is provide you with asset protection, liability protection, it can give you an element of privacy. So this is very similar to the concept of estate planning and a trust or a will. We want to focus primarily on asset protection, how things are distributed at death, and also privacy. That's the, you know, the main priority that we address with our clients when we're talking about a trust or a will.

Now, some clients have unique situations where we're examining this from a financial planning standpoint as asset strategy frequently does. But what we're trying to do is just get that base level completed of asset protection, privacy, et cetera, because most people just don't have these documents in place. Actually, if they do have them in place, they're most commonly, they're incorrect. So there's wrong people, incorrect people named, they're not signed, they're not notarized, they're not witnessed.

So effectively, like you've mentioned previously, they've thrown money down the drain. And one of the other big mistakes that lawyers make, especially big firm lawyers, when they set up a trust for a client, they don't fund the trust. So a trust is worthless if you don't put anything in it. You got to put your assets in it so that we know where they go at death. And most clients that have estate planning documents, especially a trust, it's not even funded. So there's nothing in it.

So all it is just a piece of paper that says, here's a trust, but it's not designating where anything goes because nothing's been assigned to it. So how often would you say makes sense to review someone's estate plan? So let's say someone went to the trouble five years ago, 10 years ago or longer. Maybe they changed title on some of their assets. Maybe they've had children since, maybe they've had divorces since. How frequently should they be reviewing their estate plan? I mean, if I was still a big firm lawyer, I would be telling them to call me once a month to ring up the hourly fees, you know, but that's not necessary. I think if you have a major life changing event, if you're buying a home,

you're acquiring rental properties, you get married, you have kids automatically, red flag, you need to call your attorney, your insurance agent, your financial advisor and make updates. If you're not having any major, having any major life changing events, I would say once every couple of years, the general rule of thumb is three to five years, but you just got to touch this stuff once in a while to make sure that it's current because you don't want something, God forbid, to happen. It gets submitted to the probate process and we'll get into that in a little bit. And it doesn't reflect your wishes. Well, you know, I think people, you know, hear about botched estate plans. I think a good example of that might be Michael Jackson. So, and we'll talk about some of the elements of an estate plan,

but so Michael Jackson did have a revocable living trust. As you said, the problem was he never transferred anything into it. So his entire estate, which I'm sure was very complicated, was fully subject to the probate process. So tell our audience more about what that probate process can look, maybe from a worst case or a best case scenario, because I think those delays in the expenses and the cost, people need to understand how simple it is to avoid that. Yeah, so there's two types of lawyers primarily. There's transactional lawyers and there's litigation attorneys.

And your litigation attorneys are gonna be the guys you see on shows like Suits who are going into court, they're making a big dramatic show and they're arguing on behalf of their clients. They got big briefcases full of paperwork. That's your litigator. A transactional attorney is a business attorney, someone who's dealing in contracts and negotiations, forming business entities, et cetera.

And one of the things that made me move towards the transactional route, because I'm a transactional attorney, is seeing how the court system works firsthand. So when you go to law school, you shadow a bunch of different attorneys, you go to the probate court, you go to the divorce court, you go to the criminal court, and you see how the court system works. And it's a mess. And it's a shame. I mean, things take a tremendous amount of time. Generally, it's a courthouse. It's not a fun place. It's a dark dingy place. There's papers everywhere. People are not too happy to be there. And so the probate process, you know, emulates that it's it's it's time consuming. It's expensive. The longer your lawyer sits in that courthouse, the more of a bill you're you're r be involved in that process. And by having a simple trust or simple will, you avoid all of that. Now, I want to be clear, though, that a will still gets submitted to the probate court. A trust is not. A will does.

So the probate courts, if you have a will, is going to get a copy of that will, and they're just going to follow exactly what that will says. Now that makes the process a lot faster, a lot less time consuming, a lot less expensive, but the will still does go through probate court. And that is why some clients, most clients, we advise considering having both a trust and a will because the trust stays completely removed from the probate process. It does not get submitted to probate. So for our audience, in test date versus test date?

Right. So dying with or without a will. Now, I want to make clear that there's a big, you know, a lot of clients ask us, do I need both a trust and a will? Now, a trust can be expensive to set up if you have a lot of assets, if you have a complicated estate. A will is much easier to administer. Couple differences though to keep in mind, a will is only effective at death.

A trust is effective immediately as soon as it's signed and put in force. So that's one big distinction. Now, the trust you're gonna have more control of during your lifetime, you can make changes if it's a revocable trust. A will you can make changes to as well, but again, it's only gonna be effective at death.

I don't think people should get so caught up with a trust being limited only to wealthy clients. I think having them both together can be a real advantage. All right, so let's go to the softer side of Josh then, because I don't want our audience to think it's all about time and money. Talk about how does an estate plan effectuate values, maybe from one generation to the next? Well, talk to me. I mean, values could be anything. Well, so meaning I worked hard, I was an entrepreneur,

I've made some money, I wanna take care of my kids and grandkids and generations. I wanna take care of my charities. So how can I instill, I'm dead, I have no controls, maybe I do from the grave, but I wanna instill values into those kids. So how can a well-crafted estate plan help me effectuate a value system?

So a cool story about that. One of our clients was actually an early investor slash partner with Mark Cuban in broadcast.com. And he has two kids who, uh, one's actually a semi-professional skateboarder, the other ones in social media. And he contacted our office and he wants to make sure that his kids are left with a portion of his legacy, but within reason. And the trust that we set up for him, a revocable trust, allowed him to do that, to not only preserve his legacy for his kids,

but also introduce certain stipulations and conditions as to when they receive certain distributions of money. He also carved out certain allocations towards his favorite charities, all of this to happen at death. So you can get very, very creative with a trust, because it gives you a tremendous amount of control. Now, contrast this with having nothing. And all of your assets go straight to the probate court, they're not going to know about your kids, they're not going to know about what their, what their goals are, what type of schooling programs they want to go to, how much it's going to cost, they're not going to know about your kids. They're not going to know about what their goals are, what type of schooling programs they want to go to, how much it's going to cost. They're just going to look at a list and they're just going to divvy up funds based on next of kin. So our client wouldn't have been able to do the things that he's going to do for his kids at death without having that estate plan in place. And maybe those controls from the grave could say that those distributions aren't gonna happen all at once. They're gonna be spread over, you know, age 25, 30, 35 type of thing,

or you have to start a business, or maybe I might have them handing out checks to the charitable trust that they created and seeing that through to help whatever their interests are from a nonprofit standpoint? Yeah, I think in this case, he put a stipulation that his son had to continue with his skateboarding endeavor until a certain age. He didn't hit certain milestones that he had to go back to school. So I mean, it was a lengthy provision.

I mean, we also put stuff in there for taking care of his mom, you know, giving distribution to his mom, if God forbid something happened to her. So all of this stuff can go into a trust. It's your roadmap as to how you want your assets distributed. So you talked about kind of, you know, two important elements, you know, having the trust itself, and maybe we should talk about revocable versus irrevocable, but then also the will, which is actually still is a probatable instrument. There's a lot of other elements that I'll just kind of fire some at you.

You hear about durable powers of attorney or healthcare proxies or guardianships or conservatorships. Talk a little bit about what are those elements and is there a standard set of core elements that come with this trust and will or is it all dependent upon people's unique situation? Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because when a client typically calls me or my office, the conversation goes a little bit like this. Hey, I've heard about this trust and will. I think maybe we did something a few years ago.

I can't remember. I know it's important. Can you help?" And that's really the extent of it. And it's kind of alarming because people are just floating around without this stuff. So what we do is, number one, we make this way more approachable. So as I mentioned, we don't get into hourly billing arrangements and overwhelming the client. We say, look, we have a standard set of items that you need to be aware of as a business owner, as a family, as a leader of a family, as an investor.

I mean, does it make sense for you to have to read through hundreds of pages of some document that was crafted 12 years ago and amended? Or is it saying, listen, let's start clean because you know the elements? Well, listen, let's, let's start clean because you know, you, you know, the elements. Well, legally we want to make sure that we're not undoing something that, you know, is critical to their estate plan.

Okay. So it's good. But aside from that, you know, I'll have clients that say, yeah, I've got this old binder, I gotta go find it. It's in the basement. You mind if I fed exit to you, you know, and in that situation, I say not, you know, we're good on that. Why don't we start, why don't we start?

So what we offer typically is, look, let's talk about a will, let's talk for each spouse, assuming a married couple, let's talk about a revocable trust. It can either be joint or single, depending on the structure of the family. And then let's talk about powers of attorney. We wanna have some documents in place

so that you guys can make decisions on each other's behalf in the event of a healthcare issue and in connection with any kind of property or financial decision-making situations. So, we've covered the will, we've got the trust, we've got the powers of attorney. Now, the big, big piece that most lawyers forget is the assignment of property piece to the trust.

So what we do at LegalHelp is we put together a nice clean letter and that letter talks about, here are some commonly held assets like bank accounts, life insurance, real estate, and here's how we're gonna get them into your trust. And we help the client get those assets into the trust. Most lawyers, they ring up a bill, they get the documents done,

they send them a PDF or a nice envelope, here you go. And these things are not funded. So that's the critical piece that we coach our clients on. So let me draw you out a little bit on revocable versus irrevocable, because am I going to be subject to triggering taxes if I make those those transfers or you know, how does that work? so Generally speaking and you know for the average client We try to keep this at a high level a revocable trust is not intended to provide you with any sort of tax Benefit very similar to an LLC LLC is not really intended to provide you with a tax benefit It's there for asset liability protection, similar to a trust, protecting our assets, giving us some element of privacy. So a revocable trust really shouldn't

be attached to any sort of tax discussion, maybe in certain situations, but for the most part, no. An irrevocable trust, that's a different story. In a revocable trust, you give up an element of control with an irrevocable trust. And what I mean by that is you assign a trustee other than yourself to manage that trust. Now, whenever you do that, whenever you detach something from yourself, you're triggering the opportunity to enjoy some tax benefits because you're removing assets, you're removing control from your own estate somewhere else. Therefore, we have this opportunity. Kind of like having a C-corp, which is, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, we want to cut strings. If you cut ownership strings, then the IRS starts to be a little bit easier on you with respect to tax obligations. So generally speaking, when we're talking to our clients, we let them know that an irrevocable trust is really left in this category for tax planning.

And that's when we bring in the asset strategy guys or CPA to coach and counsel the client on whether an irrevocable trust may be beneficial. But an irrevocable trust generally is a bit more complicated, a bit more time consuming. And most clients are just looking to get some form of foundation to their overall portfolio and that's accomplished through a revocable trust. So this foundational revocable, you know, you hear it revocable living trust, revocable trust is not a separate tax ID number. I'm not triggering tax by changing it from title in my name or myself and my spouse's

name to the trust. So that's important. Then there's no tax trigger. Irrevocable is a whole different animal. It's its own separate legal entity. That's a different type of transfer. Let's touch on, I guess we're touching on a little bit right now, but gifting because

there's an old expression, I don't know if it was Andrew Carnegie, or who said it, do your giving while you're living so you're knowing where it's going. If I am getting to the end of my time here on this planet, and I want to start making gifts, I'm doing that because I want to reduce my estate. I want to see where it's going while I'm still here. But so how does the gift tax and the estate tax kind of work hand in hand in layman's terms? Well, let's quiz you a bit. What's the current exemption that the IRS allows? I guess the 2024 limit so you can gift up to.

Yeah, it's just shy of 14 million. It's 13,900 and change. I know it's 27,980, wait, wait, wait, let's do that again. Oh, there we go. Yeah, 27 million, 27,980,000 as a married couple. So half that is the 13, nine and change. Right.

As of today, as of this recording, right? Because I think 2025 is a critical year, because there's a sunset provision that it's going to basically fall back to pre-tax cuts and jobs act of 5 million plus index for inflation. So I think it's roughly around $ million dollars after the phase out. Hey, if you're enjoying this podcast so far, do us a favor, hit that subscribe button on YouTube or give us a five star rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It helps us make more of these podcasts for you. All right, back to the podcast.

You mentioned the gift tax and then there's the estate tax. And both are mechanisms that a client can use to reduce their overall tax liability. Now the estate tax triggers at death. The gift tax is something you can do during your lifetime to reduce the size of your taxable estate. Talking about the estate tax specifically, we have a client who has a net worth of approximately $10 million. He's married, but you mentioned the sunset provision. And essentially what that provision is saying is that the federal government is going to lower the exemption amount. And in other words,

if your estate grows over a certain amount now, that amount in excess of the threshold amount is going to be subject to the estate tax, which is roughly 40%. So we talked earlier about building a legacy and preserving our assets. If you don't do some sort of planning to protect what you've built and your hard earned money, there's a possibility that a large chunk of your net worth would be subject to an almost 40% state tax by the federal government. So that's where it becomes critical to talk to guys at asset strategy or your advisors about, hey, what can I do to avoid this massive tax being levied against my state? Now granted,

this applies to a certain category of client, but nonetheless, it is a big, big problem. The gift tax is something we can use to alleviate some concerns, but the gift tax alone is not going to be enough in most cases to reduce the size of a taxable estate significantly. So we've got to get creative and one of those things could be an irrevocable trust. But wouldn't this be a lost opportunity? So let's say if we're going from roughly 14 million for the gift and estate tax exemption to, let's call it 7 million. So there's essentially a jump ball for $7 million that if I do nothing, I just wasted the opportunity to realign ownership without triggering

the gift tax while I'm alive. And certainly if I'm not going to use it after I'm dead, it was really a waste. So is there a critical moment in planning right now? Yeah, I mean, it's huge. I mean, you see it in the in the life insurance industry. You know, one of the things I didn't touch on is I inherited a 62 year old life insurance agency. After I left the law firm was a major corporate firm, I inherited my family year old life insurance agency after I left the law firm, was a major corporate firm. I inherited my family's life insurance practice. And one of the biggest, biggest things

that we're focusing on is how to navigate this sunset provision and this estate tax issue. And obviously life insurance is another topic but that's a very common tool that you can use to mitigate an estate tax problem. So this is a critical moment. I think the lifetime exemption is scheduled to be cut in half right after 2025, unless Trump and government does something to change it, Congress does something to change it. But this is a big,

big time for clients to be reaching out to their advisors and talking about estate planning within that context would be huge. So what would you say are the basic call to action maybe for our listeners in terms of, you know, either I don't have an estate plan, as I said, most Americans don't, or I do have an estate plan, but it hasn't been reviewed in years. I don't know if it has been updated. I don't know if all these things you're talking about are incorporated into it, guardianships and health proxies and so forth. So what would be an action step for our audience? Let's talk about different

members of our audience. So we have families out there and if you're overwhelmed with kids running around day to day, there's a million other priorities that typically fill up your to-do list. If that's the category you're in, we want you to know at Legal Health and Asset Strategy that we make this whole process way more approachable than you may be thinking. So you don't need to go down the street to a big fancy law firm. You don't need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. You don't need to sit and wonder, well, am I even worth anybody's time? I mean, I'm only making X amount of money per year.

Is this even something that I need that I qualify for? You've got to do your best to get that stigma out of your system. We're trying to modernize this whole service for clients, and we can help you move that item from the back burner to really prioritizing it and getting it done quickly. So from a family perspective, you know, think of it that way. On the flip side, if you're a younger client, if you're a millennial, if you're a social media influencer, if you're building a new business venture, and you're single, and you don't have kids, you don't have a family, and you think this stuff is just meaningless, it's not really applicable to you, I would encourage you to think again about it because one of the big things that younger clients talk to us about is maintaining their privacy, especially clients who are invested in cryptocurrency or digital

assets. The whole premise of the blockchain is to maintain your anonymity and privacy and a trust and a will and powers of attorney. They can all help you do that. Also, your beneficiaries likely aren't going to know how to operate your business or distribute your assets when you go away. So you've gotta lay out a set of instructions on what's going on with your stuff. I'm going to Europe in a couple months and my family's not gonna know how to run the law firm

or liquidate my Bitcoin. So I've gotta put together some sort of instructional package and a trust and a will can do that. So families, entrepreneurs, and then everybody in between, just I would urge them to realize that we can make this process a hell of a lot more approachable than we've been led to believe. Well, you know, the name of this podcast is Assets and Taxes. And I think the third leg of that stool is the legal aspect.

And certainly, that comes with privacy, comes with legacy. We do what we call an asset map, which is really your operations, your assets. But it all flows down into that revocable living trust. So that's really the core of all this great planning. Because you can set up the LLCs and your S corp elections in Wyoming and, you know, copes and all these other creative tools we have, but it all starts at this foundation.

Hey, if you've gotten this far, then hurry up and leave a comment saying a state plan. Now let's get back to the podcast. How do you describe to people the importance of a revocable trust at the foundation of that trifecta? I mean, besides what I've already mentioned, how do you instill urgency for someone to set that up in the plan? What do you tell them?

I mean, what are the benefits? Why should I care that that needs to be the piece of my portfolio? Why can't I just throw everything in a brokerage account and set up an LLC and just be done with it? Well, I mean, as you said, the revocable living trust, it's foundational, which means it doesn't have a separate tax ID number. So it is my 1040. So when I have all of

these assets and holdings and LLCs and S-Corp, pass-through entities, everything rolls back down to me. And I don't want it to roll back down to me. I want it to roll back down to my trust for the purposes that you stated earlier, which there's some privacy issues, there's some expediency for probate, but it's a pass through entity. I don't necessarily want to have my name and my spouse's name at the registry of deeds, I want to have it in a trust. It doesn't have the same level of anonymity as you know, as an irrevocable trust that maybe set up with a privacy address and a separate trustee or whatnot, but I think it is a foundational

pillar to an overall well-constructed financial plan. So some of your clients, some of our clients are younger, right? And they're just focused on generating as much cash as they can and doing it in the most efficient way possible. So when you're having a conversation with one of those guys, how do you get them off of that track of thinking and move them to an overall holistic planning piece? Is it just pushing on the privacy? Is it... Well, you know what? I'll actually use an example because, you know, I'm sure every state's different, but, you know what? I'll actually use an example because, you know, I'm sure every state's different, but, you know, we did this for our boys when they all went to college. When they turn 18, I lost control as the parent in terms of being able

to access things. So I had to have them, you know, create a document as part of my estate plan to allow me to intercede if they got hurt or they were in a health situation or whatnot. It doesn't have to be someone in their 20s or 30s. It could be someone as young as age 18 because now the parents don't have a legal say in how things are taken care of. I think you hit the nail on the head that a lot of people are put off that they have to spend 5,000, 10,000,

whatever it is for this big complex deal. And it's gonna be a massive homework assignment. I live a busy life, I can't dig it all up. But I think that in working with you and your team, you've made it a lot more accessible. As you said, it doesn't have to be a meter running at $850 an hour.

You guys make it so it's so approachable, where it's a set fee, you know exactly what you're getting for that. And maybe that's all I need. Maybe I don't need irrevocable life insurance trust or charitable trust. Those can all be elements of a well-crafted estate plan. But for someone who's just starting off, keep it simple, keep it cost effective, and make it so I can actually put it in place and then make sure,

as we said before, that you implement it and you change title on certain assets. There you go. Yeah, I mean, hit the nail on the head. Hit the nail on the head. Yeah, I think we struggle with some of our younger clients because, like I said, we're in the social media space, we've got young entrepreneurs and you've got to really instill urgency in them. And so I think some of the stories you've just mentioned would help. But we get confronted with a lot of guys who say,

look, I'm in index funds, I got my LLC, I got my paperwork, I got my Stripe account, I'm making a ton of cash. I'm good. Why do I need to sit down and do a will? I don't have kids, I don't have a family. Why do I need life insurance? And I think that's our biggest hurdle today is trying to educate and also instill urgency

at the same time. Well I think you and I both work with a lot of crypto partners, people that have made tremendous amount of wealth through crypto, and they're probably prime candidates for needing some of these basic tools and putting it in place. Privacy seems to work with people. People do not want their stuff out there, man. They do not want it out there. I want to thank you for taking the time today to join us.

I think this was a really good conversation. I would encourage our listening audience, we have a number of resources that we've developed with Josh. We have what we call our discovery call that we can kind of assess what your situation is, what your need is, and then make an introduction to Josh on our tax team.

So download some of the resources that we're making available. Josh, thank you for your time today and sharing. Thanks, guys, as always. Yeah, absolutely. Great to be with you, and thanks again for watching.