Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Karen Powell, Founder of My Wealth 4 Life Discussing Tax Efficient Strategies for Lasting Wealth

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

As Founder of My Wealth 4 Life, Karen leads a firm dedicated to delivering comprehensive, high-level financial and estate planning designed to protect, preserve, and enhance our clients’ hard-earned wealth. Their approach is both strategic and practical—focused on identifying overlooked risks, uncovering hidden opportunities, and building durable financial structures that stand the test of time.They work closely with medical professionals and entrepreneurs who operate in complex financial environments. Many are highly successful, yet still exposed to inefficiencies within their tax strategies, cash flow systems, and overall financial architecture. Their role is to bring clarity and precision—helping them eliminate waste, improve liquidity, and align their resources with long-term wealth and legacy objectives.Karen’s perspective is shaped by a diverse international background in economics, business, and finance. She began my career in economic consulting with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna, Austria, followed by a role as a marketing executive at 3M Germany. She later transitioned into financial services with Prudential in Düsseldorf, Germany, where she developed a foundation in advanced financial planning.After returning to the United States, Karen earned her Certified Financial Planner™ designation and established My Wealth 4 Life to provide a more integrated and sophisticated level of advisory services. She has since pursued advanced certifications in profit acceleration, exit and succession planning, cash flow optimization, income structuring, and capital creation, along with extensive training in estate planning and retirement income strategies.This multidisciplinary expertise allows her to approach each client’s situation with a wide lens—connecting the often siloed areas of tax, business, investment, and legacy planning into one cohesive strategy. The result is not just a financial plan, but a structured path toward sustained wealth, greater control, and long-term financial confidence.Learn more: https://mywealth4life.comSecurities offered through Simplicity Group Investments, Member FINRA/SPIC, 475 Springfield Ave., Summit, N.J. 07901. Advisory Services offered through the Leaders Group Advisory, a Registered Investment Advisor. Orion Financial Associates, LLC is not affiliated with Simplicity Group Investments. CA Lic. No 0B77498.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-karen-powell-founder-of-my-wealth-4-life-discussing-tax-efficient-strategies-for-lasting-wealth

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 this Karen Powell, who's the founder of my wealth for life and we'll be talking about tax-efficient strategies for lasting wealth. Karen, welcome back to the program. Hello, Mike, and thank you for having me. You are welcome. You know, I love the concept here of what we're going to talk about lasting wealth, because that brings up in my mind, poof, a puff of smoke. Wealth is gone with,

you know, the wrong decisions or the wrong, you know, place you put it. So we definitely want to talk about keeping your wealth for a long lasting time and doing it tax efficient because we certainly don't want to lose money through the proverbial holes in the bucket to taxes if we can avoid it. We want to pay what we are supposed to pay, but we want to save where we can save. So let's dive right into how you work with your medical professionals and entrepreneurs. What are some of these tax-efficient strategies that are available? And maybe even let's talk about which ones are you working with that sometimes people would go, ooh, I had no clue. That's even available.

Yeah, so tax-efficient strategies are multiple and sometimes complicated, but especially folks with the substantial wealth need to be totally aware that those opportunities are there and they don't want to miss them for sure. And one of the ones we usually start out with in working with the medical professionals, especially our retirement planning. There are avenues with retirement planning that I recommend, especially maximizing your tax-free strategies, and if it applies to them or it will apply at some point, ways to convert tax-deferred funds into a Roth IRA. Unfortunately, in our tax law, we don't have limitations on wealthy people to have a Roth IRA or to convert to a Roth IRA or to convert to a Roth IRA or the other avenue that we use today as the backdoor Roth, which I won't

go into great detail, but you can make a contribution to what I call a taxable IRA and then immediately converted over. There are people who are neglecting to take advantage of these and really aren't even aware that those opportunities exist. But we all know with the amount of debt this country is indulging in, we are going to probably see higher tax rates down the road. And who are they already talking about is going after the people who have been wise enough to preserve their assets. So that's very important for us to focus on. Now, also, there are many tax advantage kinds of investments that provide tax efficiency for, especially those who have substantial amounts to put in.

That can be real estate investing because there are so many tax deductions in write-offs. There are other tax-advantaged investments where if you have a large tax event in one year, for instance, and you don't want to pay the taxes on that you can defer the taxes in certain specialized tax-free investments that you have to be willing to put those away for many years, maybe 10 years. And then when you take it out, you don't have the capital gains tax to pay that you would have had. But many other avenues exist through the estate planning possibilities. and even just the ordinary middle class person should make sure they have their estate plan in place. And revocable trust don't have to mean you're trying to avoid taxes, but avoiding probate.

And all the issues that that brings up are very important there. But the charitable gifting has multiple ways that folks who have discreet, income can set aside for future generations and at the same time benefit charity. But you know the thing that I find most often with folks who really have the funds to put there as the annual gifting. So in 2026 we have a $19,000 maximum gift where it will not, you can gift that to any one individual. and at the same time, it doesn't go against what's called your gifting life limitation. So as far as that goes, you have that ability every year to give a gift of approximately that value to any child or person that you wish.

And I suggest to folks, well, why don't you do that? because obviously that money then is going to go to them eventually, or maybe they're trying to save for a home or whatever they're trying to do, and that money is sitting in your tax bracket, and you can move that over into their tax bracket, and obviously that makes a big difference in their life as well. So folks who are not aware that that's available or don't take advantage of it, need to explore.

You know, that's such a great explanation you brought, up and it made me think of kind of like a broad topic. So it wants your thoughts on this. A lot of times people are looking at the future, but not far enough out. You know, like, oh, I need to get to retirement and have this much money. But they need to think about also getting all the way through retirement to a certain age. And then what about transferring wealth to their heirs to have something to leave for legacy. But then we need to do it in a tax beneficial way. So that's what you're talking about here. But when you are doing things tax efficient wise, It can also benefit you currently to have more wealth build up right now so that you've got more to transfer. And it's kind of similar to the concept that a lot of people think, oh, I don't need life insurance because I've got enough. And, oh, life insurance is when I die. I get some money for my, you know, my heirs get some money. But in reality, certain types of life insurance can benefit you right now and they've got some powerful living benefits. So talk about the contrast between setting up some of these tax efficient strategies.

for the medical professionals and entrepreneurs that could benefit them now, as well as the same strategies compound and benefit their family and their business long term. Well, thank you for that introduction, their concept, because so many people are not familiar with that. And actually, I have special certification in this area, and a number of entrepreneurs and medical professionals utilize it because it creates tax-free benefit for them and for their heirs, but at the same time, they have the flexibility and accessibility to their funds, as well as the ability to put pretty much as much as they're eligible to put in, and it's way more than what the retirement limitations are.

So this is not only a way to build up additional resources for their retirement by putting funds into a customized special type of life insurance that builds cash value, but you can access that through collateral capability on your policy, your life insurance policy, to excess some of that money for your use in your lifetime. And at the same time, down the road, when your heirs do receive the benefit of the life insurance policy, they get it tax-free. But while you're using this feature that cash value life insurance offers, you're also using the money tax-free.

So this is for people who want to put in substantial. for instance, I have one client. He put in for his wife over 150,000 each and they can do that each year and he can take it out and use it to invest on real estate.

He doesn't take the money out itself, but he takes it out in a collateral loan to utilize that temporarily to fund real estate. It's enhanced his net worth tremendously. So people who want to use that kind of concept where they're creating that fund or some people call it a bank within a cash value policy, it works very, very well.

You just have to be disciplined, understand how it works to utilize it for all the tax benefits. You know, and like I know we've touched on before, all of these things are starting to get a little bit more high level and intricate and complex. So it's definitely not something you can go out and Google and say, oh, set me up one of these things. So you need to get with a professional, but even what we're talking about here with tax laws and estate planning, even you would sit down with the client and say, let's talk 30,000 foot view,

but let's bring in this tax accountant. Let's bring in this estate planning attorney, whether the client has one or you have one, and just make sure everyone's on the same page. So talk about making sure that the tax laws are abided by and the estate planning laws, and then what kind of some common mistakes people make when they're doing this kind of setup so that they can, the listeners can avoid those

mistakes? Yeah. Well, you know, while you were talking about a mistake, I have one case where it was a huge mistake, but the client couldn't do anything about it. Had a client come into me and her husband was the beneficiary of an estate who, his grandmother died in New York, and this was a few decades ago. And the problem was this estate, which was $33 million, after all the taxes were paid, turned out to be $11 million. The family was devastated, you know, but either some limitations were met or deadlines or, you know, she wasn't eligible for life insurance or I don't know.

but that just shows you how much this can be impacted if you make mistakes. And if you think ahead enough and put some things into place like maybe explore charitable remainder kind of things ahead of time, maybe that gap could have been a little bit less. And you still got to pay your taxes, but suffice it to say that that $33 million might have been preserved a little bit better than what the result was. and looking back on it, you can't rewind, you know, to the past, but I bet they wish they could. Yeah, and, you know, she had the misfortune to die in the wrong state, the wrong city. They all had, right.

And then there was the federal tax, you know, it was compounded. But, yeah, another example was, in this case, a real estate investor came to me, and he was working with his estate attorney actively when we talked about it. He was working with his tax advisor. and he came to me and said, I have this very, very big tax bill that's going to happen next year. And I'm really dismayed about, you know, having to pay all the taxes.

It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I said, well, what did your tax guy say? He said, just pay the bill. You know, just write the check. And I said, well, you're working with your estate attorney. Go and ask for this kind of entity to be set up. And that will just take away that tax bill for you and then the attorney will set it up and he is so thrilled with that solution and

neither one of his other advisors had to have mentioned it so that's why we like to work very close with all the advisors and not have them work in silos because he only had like a month and a half to get that in place or otherwise he would have owed that tax bill so that was and in addition the result is that it established a million dollar a legacy for his heirs that was going to come to them in about 15 years. So it was a win-win in many ways. And I even spoke to him recently. And he said, yeah, I want to do that again. Well, it's so interesting when you hear examples like that because so many times people are so tunnel vision and they go, you know, I'm the accountant. I do your taxes. and they don't look at the big picture and say, oh, well, what if we could save this or bring in this expert or that expert?

And same with you. As in a financial advisor, you could say, I help you accumulate X for retirement so you can, you know, live for this many years. But if you don't bring this comprehensive financial system in place, it doesn't optimize that tax efficiency like what you're describing. And like I alluded to earlier with the holes in the bucket, it's like water's coming in. You know, you're getting money from your job, your business, your medical practice, your, your entrepreneurial ventures or Social Security in the time of retirement. It's, and you need to pinch every penny no matter how much that it is. And we certainly don't want to have leakage with taxes when they could be avoided.

And those examples you're bringing up are just so powerful. So let's wrap up with the thought about, talk about how a comprehensive financial system, not just a, you know, a little plan, but a whole system with some of these. tentacles and spokes and things really help to maximize and optimize this tax efficiency. Yeah, that is so true. And when people, you know, work with me on this comprehensive financial system that we put together, they're just so amazed because they got very complacent, like, well, that's just the taxes I have to pay. You know, this is my inevitability.

And if with this, by building a written, customized financial retirement and estate plan, it brings together all the pieces and aligns it with the client and family goals and addresses those tax things like the federal income tax, the federal estate tax. And if you are in a state with a state estate tax, which Georgia, we don't have an estate tax here. and that's good. But the key is it's not just that, but it brings it all there in a comprehensive way and it is a referable document. You can review it and depend on it as a guide. It's not meant to be tucked away and forgotten.

And it's also not meant to be just for one person to understand or to think about. So it's very important that the family or the, at least the spouse reviews as well. Also, within it, we recommend a year-round checklist to stay proactive in this because there may be adjustments. There may be a change in the tax law or whatever. And you have to stay up on that throughout the year because if you then go to your tax person at the end of the year at tax time and they say, well, here's what the bill is. There's nothing you could do. You had to do it last year.

So you have to, you know, monitor that throughout the year. That's why we make it a more or less a living document. But in addition, this whole thing we talked about is it helps optimize tax efficiency when all of your advisors are not working in silos. They're not all off on their own track. And you can bring it together and coordinate. So as the financial planner, I act as the financial director. and, you know, like I said, told him to go to his estate attorney, and we're going to, you know, discuss this and make sure that this is the most efficient outcome for you.

And it's funny because in that particular case I mentioned, I met with the CPA a month later, and he said to me, what was that thing you recommended? Now, this was a tax strategy, right? Wow, yeah, yeah. So I say. Sometimes things resonate in people's minds. and then they don't really get it. So tell me again.

And then maybe the third time it really hits and they're like, okay, we need to do that. So it's really great that you've got a educational approach to teaching your clients. And it's just so powerful. So let's wrap up with any final thoughts that you have. Yeah. So what I say is,

you know, first of all, put in place that written customized financial plan for retirement and for your estate and make sure that it fits, of course, with your family goals and what you're trying to achieve. But you also need to make sure that it touches all the bases on the taxes and the other things, the college planning or whatever aspects that are coming in the future.

And basically then make sure that the person you're working with to develop this plan is in the loop and stays with you and you do reviews. I mean, we suggest folks review at least their cash flow or any adjustments or changes in their family life two to three times a year. We would touch base on this to make sure and see if that document has to be adjusted in any way. And so also it's important to get the mindset that take charge of your taxes. Otherwise, the IRS will dictate what you pay. and that will be the max, whatever it is. So those are the areas, I think, that are most, you know, the tax efficiency strategies

that are most attractive for people of high net worth in the medical field and in other fields. Well, Karen, this has been really neat hearing this. If someone is interested in and kind of getting a second look or some guidance that way, what's the best way they can reach out and connect with you? Yeah, I think through my way. website is the way we have a lot of ways to contact us there and that is www. MyWealthforlife.com. That four is a number.

So my wealthforlife.com is the optimal way. You can also, you know, email, call us. And I have other areas of communication that we utilize, but that's usually. once you are a client of ours. So, yeah, and, you know, as you mentioned about the education, we are constantly offering educational events. And so that's available on our website too. So it's important to be informed to see how this fits for you or whatever.

And that's why we take the time to do that ahead of any kind of appointment, if that's what you desire. Love it. Well, Karen, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure, chatting. with you. I enjoyed it so much. Thanks, Mike. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www. influential entrepreneursradio.com.