Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Samuel J Dixon with Oxford Advisory Group Discussing RMDs & Retirement Plans

Episode Date: October 12, 2025

Samuel J. Dixon, RFC Co-Founder/ Managing PartnerAs a managing partner of Oxford Advisory Group, Samuel J. Dixon is focused on retirement planning, IRA legacy planning and investments for retirees, executives and small-business owners. He routinely offers educational classes on taxes in retirement and developing a steady and reliable retirement plan.Samuel, with his expertise as a RFC, also contributes articles that are featured in financial publications such as Kiplinger Financial, Newsmax, and The Street.Samuel has passed the Series 65 securities exam and also holds his insurance licenses in Florida and South Carolina. Samuel graduated from the College of Business at Florida State University with a degree in risk management and insurance with a focus in financial planning and wealth management.Samuel and his wife, Katie, are raising their three children, Clark, Callan, and Elowen. Samuel also enjoys coaching Clark in sports. He teaches youth at his church and enjoys boating on Lake Butler with his family.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-samuel-j-dixon-with-oxford-advisory-group-discussing-rmds-retirement-plans

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 with the Samuel J. Dixon with Oxford Advisory Group and we'll be talking about how RMDs change retirement plans. Samuel, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me on, Mike. Happy to be here.

Hey, so before we dive any deeper into RMDs and how they change retirement plans, let's define what is an RMD. All right. So it's this wonderful gift that you get in your 70s when you're a retiree, where you're forced to pull out some money, right? Hey. So you work hard, you put money into retirement accounts, and then Uncle Sam wants his cut,

so he forces to kind of pull it out at a certain percentage each year. And I wrote an article a few years ago. I called it a ticking. time bomb in people's retirements. They don't really know that it's counting down, but when it starts going off, it keeps actually going off each year. Okay. So it's not one thing.

It's going to continue to affect their entire retirement. And also, if you want to pass money on it, it could also affect your kids, their inheritance as well. Yeah. It's an interesting lot to unpack there. You know, it really is. And I've heard it said that it's kind of like a coyote sitting over a hole for a, you know, a groundhog, you know, and wait for their head to pop up to grab it.

it because the government has known your money has been sitting in those non-taxed, those pre-taxed accounts for decades. And you just been growing it. And they're sitting there tap of their fingers going, when are we going to get our cut? And these required minimum distributions are those triggers that you have to take out whatever percent at whatever age. And we don't need to get into those weeds. But suffice it to say, what you just said is ticking time bomb makes a whole lot of sense.

Absolutely. I see all the time where people have this idea when they start retirement, like, what tax bracket they're going to be. And they're like, hey, you know what? I'm not making all that big salary I used to make with all those income taxes. And it's not, my bracket's going to be lower. And initially it usually is. Like we see it all the time.

Like most of the time, that bracket's a lot lower. And it's manageable. And then they hit their 70s and their bracket jumps, right? And you're confused as to why that bracket jumps. Well, when you're forced to pull that money on that RMD, when you're forced to pull that out, it counts as income, just like you're worth. Right? And a lot of people don't do the math ahead of time because they're not even aware of them usually and realize not that you even need the money.

They force you to pull it out. It still counts as income whether you spend it or not. You can just put in your savings count. They don't care. On your tax return at the end of the year, it goes on top of your Social Security. If you have a pension, it goes on top of that as income as well. And we see this drastic shift where the bracket suddenly is much higher than they thought it would be when they first retired. Right.

So it's an adjustment. Yes. Our mission is make sure everybody knows about it. We want everyone to know about ahead of time, whether you do something better or not. We at least want you to be aware of it because we see impact it has on people. Because when you're aware of it, you can put a plan into place to deal with it. You can eliminate taxes you can mitigate and plan for. But to your point, you know, you need to realize that on certain years it's going to spike you up here and then your tax bracket is going to be different.

So how do we deal with that? Here's a question. What if somebody goes to you? Well, hey, you know, we sold our RV last month. month and we don't need to take any money out because we're good to go. We're flushed with cash. Talk a little bit about the R's part of the RMD. They're required. What happens if you don't take it out? Yep. So the requires a first word in there for a reason, right? They want you pulling that bad boy out. They want you taking that tax money out of there. And if people miss an R&D, and unfortunately,

we have people calling sometimes who have missed R&Ds because no one just told them about it. and then we'll have to educate them on the whole subject, right? There's penalties, right? And that penalty ranges, you know, 20 to 50 percent, depending on the clock person's age, 20 to 50 percent to 2-0 to 500. That's quite a large gap there, large percentage. So you don't want to be missing one of those, right? We don't want that extra penalty on top of the misdistribution there.

So being aware of them, like you said, we're big on planning, right? It's one thing to have it take you by surprise. that's where you get increased tax liability. That's where we get increased taxes. If you know about it and you want to work to mitigate it, you need to plan ahead for it. What I always kind of like to tell people is quit looking in the rear view mirror when it comes to taxes.

We want to look out the windshield. We don't want to look at you did last year. We want to look at what you're trying to do next year. How do you prevent them from being as high as they were? Right. So we call that looking out the windshield versus in the rear view mirror. Yeah, because if you look in the rear view, there's nothing you can do about it. It's done.

It's a deal. You already ran over the little kids, you know, blow up ball and it's already busted. So looking forward, you can have your foot ready to tap the break. So here's a question. And I always love when I have these conversations to think, you know, and go, oh, what if? So if we have now established the fact that you've got X number of dollars in one of these non-taxed account, we know that we got to have to pay them with these RMDs, at what point do you want to be talking to a pre-retiree to put a plan into place? to go, okay, you've got this X number of dollars.

How can we mitigate that as much as possible? So how soon before retirement do you want to have this conversation? And then is there anything that you guys recommend that can help limit and lower the amount in those non-taxed accounts so that it doesn't spike up as much? Yeah. So I think the best answer there is, you know, 10 years ago, right? We'd love to talk to them 10 years ago. But if the real conversation should start, you know, people I call the retirement,

red zone. It's five years prior to your retirement date that you've selected. All right. So if you're if you want to retire 65, which we see is very common because of Medicare reasons, you know, then 60 is a perfect age. All right. You know, anytime 59 and a half and after is usually pretty good because that's when you can actually do things with the money usually. So, you know, five years prior to retirement and five years after you retire are paramount. We call it retirement red zone. It's paramount years where we have to get our planning in our opinion done correctly to mitigate damages. from RMDs, damages from market volatility. That's an important red zone area right there.

But probably the broad answer would be anytime before you start RMDs, right? You know, we've had people come in a year before they start or six months before they start. Yeah, you know, obviously I'd like to have them five years before that. You can do a little bit better planning. But, you know, RMDs start and then they progressively, the percentage increases each year that you're in them. So even if somebody's been in on one or two years, there's still things you can do to mitigate through proper planning, right? And making adjustments on how that accounts tax and what type of account you actually hold at that is huge.

And I'm confident that there is not one solution for everybody that you cookie cutter and say, here's yours next. So you have to take it into consideration. Okay, well, what is your agent? What do you, you know, what does retirement look like and how much money do we have and what about and what about? So let's talk a little bit about some scenarios to help mitigate that. What if you've got that red zone? What if you're like, you're not even at the red zone. You're 10 years before RMDs, 15 years and people are like, hey, I heard this thing about

RMDs and I want to make sure I'm prepared. I've got a million dollars in an IRA or a 401k that's stop in taxed. What are some things that you would be talking to that person about to help mitigate those taxes? Hey, first of all, Mike, if you ever find that one side's all solution, solution. Let me know, buddy, right? Make my job much easier, right? That'd be wonderful. I love that, right? Yeah. I wish that would happen, you know. No, it's, it's planning from which we call them tax buckets, right? The tax deferred accounts are the ones which are typically your retirement, normal accounts that you get from your employer, 401k IRA, 430B, 457 TSB, all that beautiful stuff, right? All those acronyms, that mouthful right?

Those are ones that we call tax deferred, okay? The tax deferred accounts feel good, we're putting it in there when we're working because it's coming off for income tax and a lot of your friends will tell you to do that, right? That's the one that is enforced to pull out later that required distribution and pay tax on it later. So it's not like you're getting around the tax. There's no free lunch. They're going to get you somewhere. Okay. So what we like to say is, all right, if we're aware of that, you can still have money in that account and that type of account, but let's at least establish something in a tax-free account as well. And let's hedge our bets a little bit here, right? Let's say we don't want all over money to be R&B money. We want something over there.

And that can be as simple as, I mean, everybody's different, obviously. That can be as simple as a Roth account or something simple in the tax-free buck. It doesn't have to be complex. It doesn't have to be worded. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to be properly planned on how much you should be putting in there, how often, and what percentage of your portfolio should be in there to mitigate. So the solutions can be simple. It's how do we plan them and how do we implement that plan, right? 100% and just like there's not one plan that fits everybody in every situation. What about people that go, hey, I've heard about converting some of my non-tax IRA 401k into a Roth now. Like, let me trigger a certain chunk of that within reason and put into a Roth so it can grow tax-free.

What about that strategy? What are some of the highlights there that people should know about? We see that strategy all the time. That's a good one. It's a good basic strategy. We like it for a lot of people in different scenarios. areas. The first thing we look at there, well, what's your bracket that you're in now and how much room do you have left in that bracket? So we call that strategy filling the bracket, right?

So if I'm in the 22% bracket, I got, you know, $40,000 left in room in that bracket. Why wouldn't I maybe look at doing a conversion of $40,000 to fill that bracket up? Because it doesn't kick me up. But then let's say, all right, I get kicked up a break. Well, then I'm in the 24, right? It's not that high of a jump if we do the math. Now, a couple areas of a concern you want to look at. If you do that, we call that filling the bracket. You want to be aware of Irma because when you start converting money, there's something called Irma, which affects your Medicare. So I do want to caution people there and understand your Medicare premium could potentially change based on your income. Okay. So be aware of that. But yeah, that's a, that's a strategy

called filling the bracket. We love that. Obviously, you want to not jump up into the 32% bracket. You probably want to stay away from that one. So know your math, know how much room you have. And that's stuff we calculate for people all the time and help people with as well is. All right. How much room do you have left in your bracket? What does that look like to move money over there? And how much time do you have before that retirement red zone in that? Okay, what if you did that, triggered the tax, paid that now? And you put it into that Roth so it can grow tax free, yay, but it's only, I've only got three years for it to grow before I need it. Is that enough time? So again, seeing some of those scenarios like, hey, here's scenario A, B, and C, if we took this much out and hit this bracket and this much out and hit the next high,

What do you feel best with? So at least someone should realize I've got to deal with RMDs. What's the plan? Secondly, would a Roth IRA conversion strategy be beneficial? Let me look at those options. It may, it may not, but at least know that those kinds of things are out there and available. 100%.

I think it's just people understanding what are my options, right? I think we can, I think we can all agree. There's no shortage of absolute just data and knowledge out there in the world that you can find today, especially on the internet. Google can answer a lot of things for a lot of people, apparently, right? What we always caution people, there is a shortage of wisdom, right? Yeah. Shorders of knowledge is a shortage of wisdom. It's applying that knowledge and is it applicable to you in your case. Should you even look at it? It doesn't even make sense. If you do it, what do you get? What's the benefits? What do I get for doing this? Do I say the whole lot on taxes in the

future? Let's do the math, right? It's got to make sense for you to want to do it. And it's also got to fit, like you said, within your goals. What are we trying to do by what age? When do I need this money? Those are all components, but I always tell people, you don't know until you dig into it. I can have an idea when we sit down with somebody on what I think I'm going to recommend.

And then I start punching the numbers then. We start looking at all the different components, all the different. And it comes out completely different than we were thinking. We see that all the time. We always tell people, we love the measure twice cut once. We're firm believers in that. Right.

So you've got to know your data and run the reports, run the analytics, do the math. That's what it comes down to. Does it make sense for that person or not? A lot of times the math will be the one to tell you that. And then if the math works out and everyone feels comfortable and you put whatever plan in place, it is not set it and forget it because a lot of external factors can impact that plan. Maybe inflation rears its ugly head.

Maybe taxes change. Maybe whatever the case is. So you have to look at that plan every six to 12 months to make sure, okay, is everything the same? Do you need? What about the RMD? How about inflation? and let's make sure that that plan, maybe the bones of it are still going to be there. It's not like if you need to make a slight change that it was a wrong plan.

It just means we've got to tweak it a little bit. So how often are you recommending to your clients to revisit that plan? I mean, a plan is only as good as it's implemented, right? You can have the best plan in the world. If it's not checked up on and implemented, it's not going to do that great, especially the one that where you're actively moving money like that. So you want to be checking up on that thing, minimum at least once a year, okay? It should probably be doing it quarterly, but at least once a year because, like you said, life happens.

Incomes change. Spences change. Maybe you need to pull out more money to live on in retirement. Well, that might mean you need to convert less because you don't want to jump your bracket up, right? There's all these components. And then, of course, we can throw the big catalyst in there, which is Washington, D.C., right? Because they control tax laws. So what if they change the brackets?

Like, that's stuff that usually you need to work with somebody to stay up on top of, right? That's why we recommend plan it out and then update the plan each year to make sure it's still going according to plant. It's great to have a beautiful plan up front. It might look good and feel good. But are you implementing it each year? Are we making sure it's going according to plan? Right? That's paramount.

That's key. Love it. So Oxford, you guys have made a name for yourself with Inc. 5,000 in Florida favorites and best wealth management firms. What are you guys doing differently? Because it sure sounds to me like you're taking that knowledge and you have the wisdom to turn it into those good plans for your clients. What are some of the principles that you're doing to serve your clients and that are different

than other advisors? You know, I can ask that question a lot by clients and by people in the industry. It's hard for me to find an answer for a while because I don't know. We just kind of do what we do, right? But here, I kind of boil it down to this. Chris and I are brothers. We're a family-based firm, right? And we truly feel like that our employees and our clients truly feel like family does.

And as you know, you'll go above and beyond. on for a family member, especially one you like, right? Especially when you choose to work with, right? So we treat clients like family and we're always trying to innovate. We're always trying to push and become better as a company and better for our client. And who wins in the end? Everybody wins. The client wins. So then my employees win. We all win, right? So we're a family-based firm and we take that to heart. You know, we've seen up close what happens to our, I have extended family members, so I've seen what happens when bad financial advice comes from somebody who shouldn't be giving it. I've seen firsthand the effects when I was a kid that had on people, right?

So we take that personally, and we're all about educate, educate, educate, right? We're not the type of people just tell you to do something. We're going to educate you on your options. We're going to have a recommendation in there. We're going to educate you to where really you're making your own informed decisions based on our guidance, our education. and I have people tell me all the time like Sam, like, I've been somewhere else for so long

and I've learned more in five meetings here at Oxford than I did in 20 years at the other place. And to me, I'm like, I don't know why. We just love education, right? I always kind of joke, I guess Chris and I kind of have the heart of a teacher, right, at the end of the day, like want people to be informed on what they're in. And I think that stems from, that's how I am.

If I go somewhere and somebody just tells me to do something, I'm like, why? You push back. You got to explain it to me a little bit. Like, yeah, I don't know how a car engine works, man, but you know, you can explain why I need that part. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then I logically can follow what you're talking about, even though I'm not a mechanic and I can't fix it.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You know, it's been said that people like to buy, but they don't like to be sold. And I love the heart of a teacher concept because really in business today, content is king. You need to teach and educate and be that advocate for the same. success of your client. And sometimes that is at the expense of the firm. Maybe it's like, ooh, I could tell them to do this thing and it would benefit us. But in reality, this is better for them. I'm going to show them both, but let them make the choice. People want to understand. You know, that's a great point. And I try to stress that to our advisors. Like, first of all,

we can't help everybody comes in the door. You know, we have a lot of people come before. We can't help everybody. But you can take time out of your day to educate them. And maybe that client's not a right fit for our firm. So what? If we're going to take time to educate them, that could have a massive impact in their life. It can go out and change their life in a different way that we don't even know about. But I'm a firm believer. You do what's right and it'll come back to you at some point. Does that mean it's going to come back to you with that client?

Probably not. But, you know, a year or two from now, they talk to somebody. We've had that happen all the time where we help somebody with some small little problem. And they're not the right fit for our firm. But we help them with something small and we educate them. Man, I've had them send me two or three people who are very good clients now. Right. And that's a cool thing.

The other cool thing is when we get client referrals from our clients because that means a lot. That means they like what we're doing for them, right? But it also means a lot because when that referral comes in, they've been pretty well educated by my client. That means that our education to our clients is going well because they're able to then turn around and educate their friend a lot. And they sound like they work here sometimes.

I'm a little shocked. I mean, you know, a lot. It's only you work here, right? because we've had that client for someone going to educate them so well that they're able to then pass that education out of their friends. So it's a pretty cool chain of events to see of just a reaction. I call it kind of dropping a pebble in causes a ripple effect larger than I think we realize sometimes. And that's what I tell all of our employees here too. It's like, hey, you got to understand what business we're in.

We're in the business of changing lives, right? Yeah. You got physical health and you got financial health and retirement. Those are two key components. I can't do anything with physical health. Me and biology didn't mix, not a doctor, right? But the financial side, we can definitely help people out with that and enable them to go see their grandkids more.

We can allow them a travel budget that allows them to go see their grandkids across the country, maybe that they didn't do before. You know what kind of impact that is? Like, that's a big deal. Well, I know there's research out there to prove this, but when someone feels more comfortable about their retirement, their finances, they actually live longer because their heart rate slows, they're at peace, they're not worried about the markets, we put it in the right places. And so in a sense, that's where the money and the physical

actually do overlap. And so that's a powerful point. So yeah, you need to do the right thing for people because it's the right thing. It can have that ripple effect. That's huge. And I think that that's something that a lot of times people just really don't pick up on. And real is rare. And these days, you know, you hear about currency and Bitcoin and this and that. I was, will submit to you that the most important currency is trust and credibility. And when you have that as evidenced by your clients, sending you referrals that are already pre-educated, wow, that's showing you trust and credibility. And that's just powerful. Yeah, I think we strive to be pretty blunt with people here. You know, I'm a pretty blunt person. As you probably know, Mike,

I talk to you a couple of times. You know, if it comes in my head, it's going to come out of my mouth here. I don't have a lot of filter on there. My wife hates that in social settings, by the way. But it would work pretty great in business for me. So, but, you know, we wear a heart's on our sleep. We want what's best for people, period. And we believe educate, educates the way to do that. And plan, plan, plan is probably the thing I'd put into people's heads as well. Well, Sam, this has been really powerful. If someone is listening and thinking, hey, how can I get that, you know, insight, that wisdom and get some education on what retirement or RMDs or things like that would look like for me.

What's the best way they can learn a little bit more and reach out and connect with you guys? Yeah, so OxfordAdvisorgroup.com. Don't be shocked. You might see my face when it pops up on there. Sorry about that, right, when you Google that. But Oxfordvisorgroup.com. And there's even people that if you just want, hey, you know, I don't want to come into the office. We got reports and stuff that we can actually send to you.

You felt a couple little pieces of information. We can run an R&D analysis report and actually send it to you and give you kind of an outlook on maybe if RMDs are even a problem for you. And we have other reports, Social Security tax reports, all these little reports that people worry about. And probably the coolest thing I hear from people is Sam, you know, I'm not sure if I can retire. I want to retire in three years.

I'm just not sure if I can. That's my favorite plan to work on. Because then I love being able to show people that peace of mind that, hey, in three years, you're good. You can actually walk away next year if you really want to. Those people tend to like their jobs more when you can tell them they can really leave the next year. They don't even have to wait three years. Then they end up working three years because they enjoy the job, right? Right. So we run a whole bunch of reports and analytics on that stuff.

So yeah, you can always reach out oxfordvisorygroup.com. We should have some links for some reports and on there as well. Excellent. Well, Sam, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Always a pleasure, Mike. Have a good one. 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 entrepreneurs radio.com.