Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Christopher Dixon Co-Founder of Oxford Advisory Group Discussing RMD and Estate Planning

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Christopher Dixon is the Co-Founder of Oxford Advisory Group. He is responsible for the company vision and business strategy. Chris focuses on tax efficient strategies for retirees and advanced tax planning.Chris received his Bachelor of Science. He graduated with Political Science Honors. He also studied through Harvard Business School and received his certificate in Sustainable Business Strategy.He is a Registered Financial Consultant focused on helping retirees develop tax efficient strategies and income planning. He is also responsible for securing banking relationships with some of the top banks on Wall Street.Christopher is a speaker at the firm’s informational seminars on Taxes in Retirement and Social Security.Christopher regularly trains other advisors from around the country on tax strategies for retirees.He is co-host of Reinventing Retirement TV on ABC 10, NBC 8 and Fox 13. Reinventing Retirement Radio on WFLA 93.1, Chris is co-author of Total Tax Free Retirement book. He has authored articles in Newsmax Finance and also been featured in Yahoo! News Nasdaq and US News.Chris sits on the board of the Advent Health Foundation.Learn More: https://oxfordadvisorygroup.com/This is prepared for informational purposes only. It does not address specific investment objectives, or the financial situation, and the particular needs of any person who may receive this report. The information herein was obtained from various sources. Oxford Advisory Group does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of information provided by third parties. The information in this report is given as of the date indicated and is believed to be reliable. Oxford Advisory Group assumes no obligation to update this information or to advise on further developments relating to it.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-christopher-dixon-co-founder-of-oxford-advisory-group-discussing-rmd-and-estate-planning

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us Christopher Dixon, who's the co-founder of Oxford Advisory Group, and we'll be talking about RMDs and estate planning. Christopher, welcome to the program.

Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me. Hey, I know this is a really interesting topic because I think that we could pick either one of these words, RMD's required minimum distribution or state planning and do a weekend seminar on each one of them because it's intricate. So we want to hit just a high level just to kind of hit some of the things to go, ooh, have you thought about this? I think that a lot of people have a misconception around the required minimum distribution. because maybe sometimes people go, you know what, I just sold my RV. I'm good for money. I don't need to pull money out. But if you don't pull it out at certain times, that could create some trouble, right?

Yeah, you know, RMDs is one of those things that just about everyone's going to have to go through, but almost nobody prepares for. In fact, people, you know, when they're in their even late 60s, they've never even heard the acronym RMD. Half of those don't know what it stands for. but they all will find out. And you don't want to find out when it's too late. There is a reason why they call RMDs also a ticking time bomb.

Right, it's a tax time bomb for you. And, you know, yeah, the IRS is waiting there hoping you get it, hoping actually you get it right, but don't get it right, right? Because then they can slap penalties. Either way they win. Yeah, any way they win. So doing that RMD planning is real planning. Right. That's what it requires strategy. You know, I've heard it said before, you know, the funny little saying that an IRA is an I owe is an IOU to the IRS.

Yeah. Because you've not paid money in. You've been building it over the years in your 401k or IRA or whatever. And the government is sitting there twiddling for the thumbs going, it's time to start paying. Yeah. Boom, boom, boom. And there's a way to do it strategically. And what are some of the initial thoughts that you. teach your clients just to be prepared for in putting that plan together. Again, it could be different

for everybody. Everybody's differently, but what are some of the things that you see that you are teaching people about this? Yeah, some of the common core principles is this, you know, first of all, before RMDs happened, any amount of your assets that are, you know, the 401k, the IRA, those assets there, any of those that can be converted to tax free, all right, pay the tax once, convert tax-free, those assets won't even have to go through RMDs, right? So on the front end, what we can do to help ourselves out is a little bit of tax planning, a little bit of tax-free conversions, and there's a whole art form and multiple strategies to do that.

So that can get you to that point. Now, once you're there and you are taking those mandatory distributions, you know, a lot of people think you have to take them from, you know, if you have five different IRAs, you have to take them from each IRA. Not necessarily the case. You can pull it from all from one. The IRS doesn't care. They just want you to pay, right? And so there's strategy on where we pull from, why, you know, how long are we going to pull from that asset? And then you got reinvestment tax with the RMDs. Yeah, a lot of strategy goes into it. You know, and let's think about something. When you talk about taxes, it could be a couple different horizons because you've got the

tax you have to pay and then you've got the tax that when you transfer to your heirs that they may or may not need to pay. But if you can defray as much as possible on the front end and the back end, that's a good thing. And, you know, we're never, no one ever says never pay taxes. We just want to pay as little as legally possible. So you can't eliminate, you just got to mitigate, right? Right. Yeah. You know, You don't want to leave a tax bomb to your errors if you don't have to, if you could have cut it in half at least. You know, when the errors, what happens is when they inherit that IRA, that 401K, whatever may be, they then will have 10 years to fully liquidate that account down to zero, as then they're going to have to pay tax on that. And here's the double whammy, not only paying tax, but where are they at in their life? Where are they at? They're most likely in their highest earning years, and you're going to add that on top of there.

And so if you were, let's say, in the 24% tax bracket, boom, you find yourself into 32 and you're like, how did I get here? Yeah. And like I said before, there's no one strategy that works for every single person every single time because everyone's different. So, you know, check it out, see what options there are. But the RMD's force income to be taxed because you're pulling it out. of that and now we got to tax it. Do we pull it out one lump sum? Do we go in sequence? That's where we got to put together a plan, right? But how do you have that happen if you were to look at doing something like that and having a maybe keeping taxable income down for your kids after you pass it onto them with that 10 year rule? And that 10 year rule is something that maybe some people are confused about, right? Yeah. So first, once again, any tax rate dollars that you convert on

the front end. That's also less taxes that your heirs will have to pay. So they won't have to go through the RMD burden either if you can convert some to tax-free. Now, you know, when it comes down to the 10 years, what happens is, look, you could pull it all out, all the money out of that IRA in year one. You could do it in year 10 or you could kind of do it even, you know, throughout the 10 years. it doesn't matter. You are going to want to figure that part out because it will have major tax implications. But they have 10 years, the windows 10 years, boom. And then the account's got to be to zero.

Yeah. Wow. And if you're not looking ahead and planning for this, then there could be some of those little tripwires. Because if you don't pull it out, the RMD's on time, trip wire tax penalty, all that. Same with the thing, the 10 year with the kids. know about these things up front so that you can at least prepare for it, right? Yeah. And if you, you know, if you don't pull out the exact percentage amount, we're talking about

there's like a decimal point in multiple numbers, all right? If you don't pull out, you know, X, Y, Z point X, Y, Z, then you're going to also get a penalty. You're going to find yourself in a hole all of a sudden. The penalties can be steep right now. You know, they were 50 percent. Right now they're at 25, you know, estimations out there are probably, go back to 50%.

So let's kind of roll into the estate planning type of thinking. A lot of times people think, I need to get a bunch of money so I can retire. But they don't really plan for getting through retirement. And then they don't think about the legacy passing on to the areas for the state planning. So they think that, oh, well, I'm going to do a will or a trust and that'll take care of it. Talk a little bit about some of those broad strokes that people assume, but then might not be the case. and you could give some guidance that way. Yeah, sure.

So estate planning really comes down to a couple main things. One of the main thing is you want to lower your taxes. The whole point of estate planning is to keep more of your own money. That's the object here. So if that's the object, right, how do we do that? Yeah, we can do trust work. You know, the complicated thing about that is there's multiple different types of trust and they all work differently and the devil's in the details.

So which one are we talking about, right? And so, you know, trust work can get there for you. Another misconception that I see quite often is people say, well, Chris, I got a will. I got a will so I'm okay, right? I don't have to go through probate. Well, if you don't have beneficiaries named on every single one of those accounts, anything that's not, even though you have. have a will, you will still have to go through probate.

Normally, like, 50% of the people when we're teaching these classes have heard that before. The other 50% is the first time that they've ever heard that. And so there's a lot that goes into estate planning, right? Not just a trust, but also, you know, how we're putting together our accounts. You know, and it's like the, I'm going to give a personal example to what you just said, because what you just said people misunderstand, I believe, like, oh, I've, got this so I'm fine. No, would you do Google that? You know, you need to get with something that really knows that's like an estate playing attorney that I'm sure you work with that would say,

let's put this plan into place. When my dad passed away a few years ago, he had many of his assets in a trust and that passed through probate. Didn't have to go through probate, but a couple of his accounts were not and we had to go through the probate. Now, fortunately, the house and the bigger ones were the trust that we moved forward. And then it was just that's dangling annoyance, We had to file this and do that and week this. And it was just an annoyance. And I couldn't imagine if everything had to go through that. You would be, and I've heard the horror stories of like the husband passes, the wife needs money, but it's all tied up and you can't even touch it.

So make sure you have it the right way ahead of time so that it's smooth sailing. Yeah. You know, that's that look, that's so true is we don't think about these things until they happen. And who wants to go through probate? I mean, I've not found one person yet that wants to go through probate and deal with, you know, lawyers and judges and a court and all that. You know, and that's after someone passes away. And so you're trying to deal with that, especially the emotional responses. Then you've got to deal with courts and stuff.

It's it's not fun, right? And secondly, whatever that estate number is, I know that, you know, a lot of the attorneys would never admit to this, but rumor has it that they'll just kind of drag it on a job. dragging on and they're chipping away at that amount because their fees are building up and it's taken the longer time. So you're preserving your estate that you can send through to your airs when you do it the right way as well as preserving the headache and the frustration. So all of these things are things that people should hear this and listen to this and go, you know what? Maybe just just give me the little, give me what it looks like on my side. What do I need to be on the lookout for for RMDs? What are some of the things I need to look out for estate planning?

So if someone is listening to this and going, man, give me my little roadmap, what's the best way they can learn a little bit more and reach out and connect with you in your office? Well, luckily, one thing that we do, do really well and that we're known for is the planning of all that, right? We don't just manage accounts. A lot of people just have their accounts manage. We put together full-fileged plans, RMD plans, tax plans. The tax plans we put together actually encompass all of that. They encompass taxes for you, but also taxes for your heirs, right? Allowing you to keep more of your own hard-earned money.

So if anyone wants to know more, wants to be educated a little bit more, find out some of these strategies or even start a plan. Oxford Advisory Group.com. That's Oxford Advisory Group.com or then call the number on our website. We'll be more than happy to have a chat with them. Excellent. Christopher, thank you so much for coming back on. It's really enlightening to chat through some of these. topics. Thanks, Mike. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more

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