Smart Investing: How to be an Investor and Protect Your Assets

Transcript

Stephanie: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining me. Welcome back to Pink Mic Legal Confessions. I have a really good episode for you guys today. This is called Smart Investing: How to be an Investor and Protect Your Assets. Now, I know you guys usually have a lot of questions about how we can protect your wealth, but today we're gonna talk about mainly people that are looking to invest or are already investors, and basically, we have a lot of topics today to cover not just how to be an investor, but even how to work with the right tax professionals. How you can actually set up your corporations, make sure that all your assets are protected in the event of the unfortunate passing of yourself, or even just passing it down to your family. So, these are things to think about on top of just also just having good tax advice. Like I said, thank you for joining us today. We are talking here with some of my really awesome colleagues. One of which is a real estate professional, but also a tax expert, Jose Quiroz Jr. here. He'll be on just a second. But before I do that, I just wanted to let you guys know that today we are gonna be covering grand topics, like multiple things at one time. So if you guys have any comments you wanna add, feel free to do that. Thank you, Jose, for joining me. I just wanna get started. If you can just explain who you are and what you're doing here today. Jose: No, thank you. Thank you for inviting me.Of course. So, my name is Jose Quiroz I am a licensed real estate agent in the Chicagoland area, and I'm also an accountant. We do tax preparation, we help businesses from the ground up to start small businesses. That's our bread and butter. That's what we enjoy doing. This is a very good topic and anything we can do, hopefully, if you guys have your questions, we'll be happy to answer them. Stephanie: So, let's talk a little bit about the fundamentals of all this because the fundamentals of investing, I think the word investing is used in so many ways. In my opinion. It's used for like, Do I invest in the market? Do I invest in real estate? What do I invest in? What advice do you give individuals looking to actually invest in general, like on their journey? Like where should they start? For someone that wants to build wealth. Jose: It's not a one shoe fits all type of thing. Everybody is different. So, I guess the first step would definitely have to be to find a professional like myself or like yourself and see what the first step is that they advise you to do depending on your specific situation. Be honest with the person that you're reaching out to. I mean your goal is building wealth, but you also have to have something behind that. How are you gonna do it? And what are you gonna do to do it? And it has to be something fun. That's my thing. if it's something that you enjoy and it's something that's fun, it's not gonna feel like work and it's gonna get you to that goal of building that wealth. But it has to be something, whether it be in real estate, whether it be starting a business, whether it be investing in the stock market, whatever you wanna do, but always do it with the guidance of a professional that has already done it or that knows what path to take to make you become successful. Stephanie: So, when we talk about you should hire a professional, there's a lot of folks that say, I'm gonna do it myself. I don't actually have to do it the way a professional's gonna suggest. There's actually people that think that they can do it on their own, which I'm sure they can. But, in your experience, what is the results of someone doing it DIY and someone actually hiring someone like yourself or myself to actually protect their investment and really understand even like the tax advantages of certain investments, or tax disadvantages. Jose: Out of experience doing it in your own and doing it with a professional, it's very, very different. And when you do it on your own, you have your set of eyes, your set of ideas, and you kind of have one path and just simply talking with somebody or getting an advisor to bounce your ideas off of can open up so many other paths for you. For example, if you plan to buy real estate and build wealth based on real estate. There is not one way of doing things. There's conventional loans. There's non-conventional loans, there's investor loans, building loans. There's so many different loans to acquiring real estate that you may or may not know of if you're doing it on your own. But if you go with a professional and you ask questions and you talk about your needs and what your situation is, that's the most important thing, what your current situation is and how you want to get to the next step, then a professional can help you find those avenues that you wouldn't be able to find if you were doing it on your own. Stephanie: No, that makes sense. And then what about let's pretend someone's decided they're gonna invest, now they're thinking, okay, how do I actually protect the investment? Because a lot of people will say, I'm an investor. I've invested in multiple pieces of real estate, or I have different things in the market now. They're like, now I'm investing. But how do you go take it a step further, especially for real estate, which I think is what you deal with a lot, or even as a business owner, how do they protect their assets from like a tax perspective? Is there a way to have an effective strategy to that regard? Jose: This is something I tell all my clients, and I tell them the best thing about owning a business, whether it be in real estate or whether it be whatever business it is, is that you get to tell Uncle Sam how you wanna be taxed. And that's the best protection there is. No surprises. If you go with a professional and you, they tell the professional, this is what I want to do, then the professional's gonna be able to prepare you throughout the year. If you come to me, for example, if a business comes to me and they tell me in January, this is how much money I plan to make, but I don't wanna pay a lot of taxes, then I can set up a plan so that by the end of the year, you have just the profit enough to pay whatever taxes you're supposed to pay, not any extra on any extra money that you made. But that's only if you come to a professional before the year starts or at the beginning of the year when there's enough time to get those strategies set up. If you come to me in November and you tell me, Hey, I made a million dollars.How do I not pay taxes on the million dollars? I'm gonna say, well, tough luck. Unless you have a really good accounting system that you did, there's really not much we can do. So that's very important. And if you wanna protect your money, tax wise, it's definitely important that you set up a plan in the beginning and tell Uncle Sam how you wanna be taxed, not wait for Uncle Sam to tell you how much you owe him. Stephanie: So, when you say how you wanna be taxed, I know there's a lot of tax incentives and tax disadvantages depending on your situation and what you're actually doing. Creating, like,for example, LLCs, a lot of people throw that word out. Or do people go and create like a corporation? So, what are your thoughts on that? How do you actually determine how you can shield someone from having really crazy tax liability, but also preparing them for a successful tax journey, if that's, we can call it that. Jose: Oh, yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, of course. That's a tax journey. Definitely is setting up the right entities. And that should be something you do from the beginning of your journey. Your investor, your building wealth journey, whatever journey you're taking, know when you're gonna need the entities,and what entities you're gonna need. The purpose of building LLCs or corporations is not just for liability or tax purposes, but it's also to give you the tools that you need to be successful. So that's what you need to do from the beginning. But what we're talking about specifically, tax wise, the strategies that you can use is what deductions can we do? What marketing budget can we have in order to have enough deductions that produces money, but also gives you enough deductions so you can spend and have enough expenses. Are you paying yourself enough? Are you paying your employees enough? Do you have enough employees? Do you have too many employees? Those are things that you need to evaluate to know if the business is producing and how much taxes are you gonna pay at the end of the year. Stephanie: Yeah, that's a great point. And there's such a big can of worms that you can open up with that. I know, as a business owner myself and as yourself, there's so many things that you could do outside of just investing. There's even like HSAs that people create or like different things that you're only gonna find out unless you're working with a professional. Which is, I agree, I think it's like foundational for you to be able to do that to be able to have success in your business as you go. So, I know you touched on real estate investing, so what are some key considerations for individuals that are considering doing this? Investing in real estate. What are some key considerations they can consider as they think about it or potentially already in it and are looking to scale that part of their investment portfolio? Jose: Definitely the first thing to consider is the liability thing. How are you gonna protect those houses? Because when you talk about investing in real estate, it's either a fix and flip or it's a buy and hold, which is when you rent out properties, when you accumulate doors. So, it all depends on the liability. If you're gonna have renters in the house, or if you're gonna have people coming by doing work on the house, you need to protect in case something happens. The worst thing is if an accident happens and you lose your entire investment because you didn't either, didn't have the proper insurance or your insurance couldn't cover it. Or whatever happens and you end up having to pay for an accident, that's the worst thing. So, liability is always the number one priority when you're trying to set up a real estate business, again, whether it be, fix and flip or whether it be in, in investing in rentals. So, the other thing would be, how are you going to manage those properties. How are you gonna manage the projects? How are you gonna manage the movement? ‘Cause a lot of this can be passive if you have the right people on your team. It all depends how much work you're gonna wanna put in on your own. That's gonna determine how many people you're gonna need on your team. And again, it all depends on which route you wanna take. ‘Cause there's many routes that you can take, but there's two of the most popular ones are that. Stephanie: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think when you were talking about accidents and things like that, like I'm an attorney, I see this all the time. People will always ask me; how do I make sure that my asset is protected in case I were to get sued? And keep in mind, a lot of our viewers sometimes are business owners. Your entrepreneurs, you're worried about your own personal finances because it's tied to the business. So, there is ways to create a silo if you will. With, creating multiple, whether it's like an LLC series or perhaps even creating an estate plan to create some sort of window of protection because otherwise you don't really have anything. So that's a great, great point that you bring up. So, let's talk about taxes a little bit. How can, um, investors minimize tax efficiencies and liability? I know you talked a little bit about deductions, but what are some like major deductions that are kind of like low hanging fruit? Things that people should really consider if they haven't done so already? Jose: So, the big thing with deductions, there's a code that as accountants we need to follow, right? And there's a bunch of suggestions that they give us. These are things that we can deduce, but again, there's certain things that the IRS can question us on, and that's how audits happen. So, the big trick when you're talking about setting up a business is setting up for worst case scenario, setting up for an audit. That's kind of what you need to do. So as long as you can prove in your audit that what you're marking is true, then that's the point where you need to go off of. In regards to which deductions are big, a lot of people when they do real estate businesses, they forget about the admin cost, the employees that manage the project, the subcontractors that they have to hire, not just to do the project in the house, but your accountants, your insurance, everything that you need to do when you're administrating the business, those are all a lot of deductions that a lot of people forget when they're doing real estate business. They maybe they just put the mortgage, they just put the repairs to the business and all that, but they're forgetting that they also use their phone for this business. So they can deduce their phone, they can deduce wherever they run the business from. Wherever they sit down and make the calls to collect rents, to do all these things. They can also include those deductions. But again, you need to talk to a professional to know to what extent you can go without risking an, you know, missing an audit. Stephanie: That's a great question. I was actually thinking about when you said, like tax incentives as far as trying to get things, easy things like I call them low hanging fruit, like a cell phone or something. One of the things that came to mind too is, by the way, when we represent people creating their corporate structures or creating their estate plans, that's actually also a tax deduction as well, because it's considered a professional service. So, if you've hired an attorney to help you with creating protections, whether it's for basically lawsuits or liabilities and things like that, or even like leases. Plenty of people call us for leases or if you have some issues with tenants or something, there's always a way to, to also throw that in. Do you guys, do you see that a lot in your practice Jose, when you see people saying, Hey, I hired a professional to do X,Y,Z, whether it's an attorney or, I don't know, someone to landscape the property. Do they throw that in as well? Jose: Oh, of course. Of course. And I've gotten a lot of companies that were structured by a small tax preparing firm that, that knows how to open up a corporation, knows how to open up an LLC, but doesn't know how to manage them. They opened them up and they were trying to manage them and they keep forgetting those key things like, all the costs that you incur to open up an LLC that's a professional service you can also charge your accountant and you can deduce that. I mean the, sorry, the accountant charges you and you can deduce those costs that you incurred in order to open up the business. If you got an attorney to advise for you and they charge you an hour of their work, you can deduce that. Those are all expenses to the business. that's what I was talking about. It's not to the actual real estate. It's to the business, and a lot of people forget about those. And I've seen lots of clients come in here with companies and they're forgetting a lot of that stuff just because they were focused on one part of the business, and we all know that there's many parts to one business. Stephanie: Well, I think too, when you think about running a business, a lot of times people that are newer and investing are always worried about like, how am I gonna turn a profit? That's the number one question, how can I do my business better to turn a profit? You probably touched on this along the way here, but what you mentioned earlier was about getting things in order, like making sure that you actually are putting the right deductions. ‘Cause if you're not putting the right deductions, I mean, are people leaving money on the table, so to speak? Jose: Oh, of course, of course. Yeah. That's, and that's the whole thing I was saying, like, if you set things up and plan ahead, then you're gonna know what exactly is gonna be at the end of the year. But if you don't, then at the end of the year, you could have missed a bunch of the deductions that maybe it's too late to claim. Maybe you could have gotten a better phone plan that you would've enjoyed, not just for your business, but for yourself, but you did not spend that money because you didn't know that that was gonna be an expense to the business. So, there's many benefits that you and your company can have that a lot of people miss just for not planning. Stephanie: Right. And speaking of planning and obviously death and taxes are two things that are for certain in this world when we talk about estate planning and real estate, there's people that have really big portfolios. I'm sure you've seen this on your end as well, where they have such a big portfolio that it actually puts 'em above where they could be federally taxed if they were to pass. And so having an estate plan in place to protect those assets and actually minimize your tax liability, it's great because now your heirs aren't stuck having to pay X amount when they really could have just paid a fraction of that. So that's one of the things that we do with trusts that really minimizes tax liability and it also helps facilitate things for people that outlive you. And so, they can be a very effective way to manage your assets, on top of minimizing estate taxes, but also working from a tax perspective because when you pass away, you actually do have to file taxes or someone has to file taxes on your behalf. Unfortunately, people always say like, oh, you pass away. it's over. no, you still have to file taxes in case you're wondering about that. So, investors can actually create a pretty comprehensive plan not only would their tax professional, perhaps we've been with their realtor if their realtor is able to guide them also. And I think even having an attorney as well to help you to guide you, and it's not like you have to meet with them, you know, I don't think people meet with me every month or anything like that but every quarter or something or every year, people are always building. So, if you're looking to invest, Jose has provided some excellent insights. So, Jose, I wanted to ask you a little bit about retirement planning. I know it's not a super-hot topic, but it is something that comes up quite a bit. So, what role does investing play in securing a comfortable retirement in your opinion? Jose: It's a big role because whatever you invest in, that could be how much payoff you're gonna get after retirement. So definitely when you start a business, one of the goals is what's gonna happen after the business? What's your exit strategy? Are you gonna hire somebody to keep moving the business and draw a salary as a partner to the business, or are you gonna sell the business and then you're going to live off of that? There has to be some kind of plan towards retirement every time you start a venture. There has to be a start and a stop. Those are things that definitely as a professional we need to be an alert for. Whether you plan to be in the business for 20, 30 years, that's fine, but still there needs to be some kind of exit strategy that benefits you and benefits your family ‘cause that's the whole point of why we start businesses. Stephanie: Now what are your thoughts on people that have businesses? And this is just something that I come across. Right. People have really thriving businesses. They're doing really well like on paper. They're obviously turning a profit, but then there's no contributions early enough in their career to contribute to IRAs, 401ks, not because they don't want to, but I think it maybe it's a lack of knowledge and the guidance. How can individual benefits from that compounding growth in those retirement plans? Jose: You could definitely benefit while you're in the business because all those can become deductions. If it's a business with one employee, you can give that benefit and there's certain deductions that you can have when you give that benefit. When you're talking about businesses that have multiple employees, well then, the rule is what one employee has you have to give to all employees, right? So, if you're gonna offer like a 401K match or whatever, you can do that and it helps the business ‘cause again, it's a deduction, it's an expense, but it also helps you maintain a happy employee, and if you have a happy employee, they're gonna work that much harder for you. So, I mean, again, it's all a la carte. So, it's every business depending on their needs, but it definitely can benefit to invest in the 401k, invest in an IRA, as a benefit from the company so that you can definitely have something other than the business to fall back on when you retire. Stephanie: Yeah, and on top of that too, retirement planning from a legal perspective is a great way to lead assets to your family outside of life insurance, outside of what the business is valued at. Because keep in mind that people will say, oh, well this business is gonna be inherited by my family, but we also don't know what the market's gonna look like. Is your business even sellable? Assuming that you invest in something like that. And so one of the things that comes up quite a bit is IRAs and Roths and I actually have a handful of people that have been questioning me about that. And it's great. It's a great question to ask because if people can understand how to leave these assets to your family, how to properly leave them so that the whole family's protected, then that's the way to go. And you don't have to wait to do this. If you're watching this and you're like, I haven't even started retirement planning and thought about it, it's never too late to start. Would you agree with that? Jose: Oh yeah. It's never too late to start. The sooner the better, but even if you're planning retirement within a year or so, you can still do something. And again, it all depends. You need to look into how your finances are right now and see what you can do to better off your future. There's always things that you can move around. There's always expenses that you can move around in your business. And that's where a good bookkeeper and a good accounting advisor comes in because while we're doing your bookkeeping, we can see, hey, maybe you're spending too much money on this. Maybe it'd be good to spend a little bit of less on that and maybe open this or do that. There's companies that are owner operated and I'm like, okay, well it's time to start a payroll for yourself. Mm-hmm. Going back to what we were saying earlier about D I Y, if you’re doing it yourself, then unless you know your knowledge is in accounting, then you're not gonna know when it's time to make these changes. Stephanie: Absolutely. And one of the things I always talk about, when you are an investor, you're a owner of anything, even your own personal investments, when you're looking to scale you can only wear so many hats. Like I can't do with Jose does, right? And I don't know if Jose has a legal degree. I don't think he does. No, I don't. No, I'm kidding. But let's just say, you know, the point is, is that we don't have, which is impossible for us to wear so many hats, right? So, I think eventually you get to the point where you wanna delegate or scale, right? Because that's what will make sense, right? It makes sense to scale. If you're not scaling, that’s fine. If you're scaling to the point that you have maybe one employee, which is good, better than 10 employees, you can do that. But the point is, is that I think if you're investing, you wanna see your return on your investments. So, I've seen over time with the right professionals in your corner, all of a sudden it's like you naturally scale. And so there's only so much that you can do as a person. Maintaining your own books and all that stuff, and it gets exhausting. And so I think there is a burnout that comes to that so I always tell people, make sure you guys are recognizing that, and lean on the professionals that you know. Jose: I have a client that gave me a really awesome success story, and I always share it with all my first appointments that come and interview me to be their accountant. This one company that used to be at 1099, they work in siding. they work for a contractor, they're a subcontractor, and the subcontractor got audited and they were forced to now have them have a worker's comp. And in order to do that, they needed to open up a company. So they came to me. I used to do their taxes just as 10 99. And I was always telling them like, you make a lot of money. You need to think about maybe starting your LLC or something. And finally he says, well now I need the LLC because otherwise I can't keep working for the same person. So, we opened up the LLC, I explained everything that he needed to do, and he didn't understand one thing. He told me later on, he's like, I didn't understand what you said, but I trusted you. I just said, just do it. And he paid a lot of money to get the LLC started. We needed to start payroll ‘cause the LLC wasn't gonna be enough. We got the worker's comp policy and everything. We set it all up, and then he came back. Every year since he was 10 99. He owed the IRS money. He was always owing like 4,000, 5,000, $6,000 to the IRS. Yeah. Uh, when he did his personal taxes. So, this year he came back, and we did the math of after everything he paid me and everything he paid to the IRS during the year, he actually got a refund of $6,000, just for having the LLC. And he made the exact same money. And he tells me, he's like, if I knew I was gonna get a refund and not pay the IRS, I would've taken on more jobs, I would've grown my company. I let go of a lot of opportunities just ‘cause I was so afraid. I didn't understand what you were telling me, and I was so afraid of paying more money to the IRS. It's an awesome success story. He tells me, he's like, now happily I will take on more business. And he's been bringing in more business. He's been growing as a company, and he’s been enjoying doing it. He's not scared of growing that much. So, you know, it's just things like that, that, again, if you're doing a DIY, you have a limited point of view on which routes to take. But that's just an awesome way of looking at it, how a business can definitely change your life. Stephanie: Yeah, and it's funny that you said DIY because DIY is obviously an option. Not to say that it's bad if you do it, but I think there's just so much that you can scale in a day because you're wearing multiple hats. You can't be the expert of every single thing, every single minute. But speaking on like risk management, I kind of was thinking about that as you were talking about this. So, what are some tips to like, recap, risk management for people that don't really understand where it comes from, from a business perspective, as a tax perspective. I know a lot of the accounts will recommend, you should have, 3 to six months I think it is, of an emergency fund of your expenses if something goes sideways. Especially with Covid, it's a great example as to like how a lot of businesses unfortunately went under because there just wasn't enough reserves on hand and things like that. So, what are some fundamental risk management strategies that you would recommend? Jose: Every business is different. Some businesses can rely on maybe two months, three months reserves some business definitely need six months. If you're a business that has cost of goods, you're producing products and you have product there, maybe the product can become your safety net. Because if you have to stop producing, but you have enough to keep selling, then you'll still come afloat. But if you're a service-based business, then maybe you do need that extra six months, maybe a year of reserves, just in case something happens like covid, like you said. Mm-hmm. But definitely, protection wise and revenue, you need to know the different areas in your business, and you need to work all of them. I learned this in real estate. I mean, I've been a realtor for many years, and I learned this. If I'm working on one client and I get him to be under contract, I know that I'm gonna make a paycheck when that closes 30 to 45 days from the day we come under contract. But if I'm only focused on that contract and I'm not bringing in another client, then I know that at some point I'm gonna have one or two months that I'm not gonna make any money. So, it's always working for the next month, working for the next pay date. So, it's just setting yourself up in your company to know how much money comes in, how often it comes in, if you're a commission-based business then you need to know how often you get commissions, how many sales you need to do each month, and work towards those commissions in advance, and work all the areas. You have to work the marketing, you have to work your accounting, you have to work your backbone of your company and work your Salesforce, not just one area at a time. Stephanie: So, what are some common mistakes that you see? Not just real estate, I mean, I guess it could be anyone running a business, but particularly real estate is where a lot of the people wanna invest, or even in their own business doing their other work. But what are some of the biggest common mistakes that you see, especially for beginners when it comes to investing? Whether that's from a tax perspective or running a business? Like what is the biggest mistake do you think? Jose: Well, the biggest thing, for example, for people that wanna own rentals is not allowing a property management company. We have a property management company that we offer to all our investors, and the biggest mistake is when they don't either hire me or some other property management and then they have a bad experience. I think that's the worst thing, to go to something that you think it's gonna be good for you, and then having a bad experience. It just kills the mood. It makes you not wanna do anything. So I think that's the biggest mistake. But other than that, it's just not doing numbers right, for example. When you buy a house, basing the base value off of whatever the listing agent put in. I mean, we don't know the experience of whoever put the price in. Not doing your own homework, not running your numbers, not knowing your strategies. Not having backup strategies to the property, like if you're buying a fix and flip, but mm-hmm. Hey, the market is going down. Okay, we're gonna hold it for a little bit, maybe rent it out and then sell it. There has to be other strategies that you'd have just in case the main one has issues. I think that's the biggest thing that people need to do when they have a real estate business. Stephanie: I love that you said that because I've had, people that I've known that have been clients that have gone in thinking I'm gonna be an investor, but the person that they're working with doesn't necessarily have the same, vision maybe is the right word. Or perhaps, if the person that you're working with doesn't understand numbers, and that I think really impacts kind of going back to the theme of this is like the theme is how to be the investor and how to protect your assets. Well, if the person doesn't know how to do that or perhaps doesn't understand the market as well as the next person, or you haven't vetted them correctly, I think that's also a big mistake that people make ‘cause vetting someone is much different than just like, oh, I was referred Jose, but I don't really know him. I'm just gonna throw my stuff at him. You have to vet the people that you work with, right? I think that's a good, good way. ‘Cause I know, Jose, and I've seen some horror stories of people working with individuals that you're almost wondering, did anyone vet this person? Have you ever been in that position? Jose: Oh yeah, and I've seen it. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people that like to take advantage and they seem like they know what they're doing or there's people that are really trying to learn. There's a lot of people that fake it until they make it. So never go just with one person. If you guys are gonna come see me, the first thing I'm gonna say is go interview two other people. Go get two other perspectives. Yeah. And the first thing I'm gonna ask you is what are your goals? It's funny because it feels like we're in a job interview whenever I'm talking to a prospect. Stephanie: It is because you are. Jose: Exactly, we are, yeah. Stephanie: We're competing all the time. Jose: Yeah. We're competing. And the first thing I tell 'em is, what are your goals? What is your goal with your business? Or what is your personal finance goal? Because I need to understand that in order for me to even think about what processes, what I can offer you. I can't offer you anything if I don't know where you're going, right? Unless I take command and I'm like, okay, you're gonna go here, here, and here, but that's not the point. Stephanie: I agree. Jose: The point is for you to tell me where you want to get to and how can I help you get there. Stephanie: Absolutely. And the thing with estate planning, we do a lot of estate planning, real estate as well, but estate planning's the same way. People will come in and say, I have all these properties and I'm married, or on my second marriage, or I have multiple children, or they have children from a different marriage. Everyone has a different scenario. And I think you're right Jose, I think you have to ask, what is your goal? For estate planning, especially for investors, even people that own a business, we're always wondering what is it that you're trying to do? Oh, I wanna protect my legacy. We understand that, but who is getting what and to what effect? And there's a lot of things that you can avoid from, at least from an estate planning perspective, probably for tax, the same, is that you have to think about the intention behind what you're doing. And the last thing we want is unintended consequences, which is why having a tax professional, realtor and attorney is always really good because you don't want to get into something where you're so far in that the consequences are basically unavoidable. Especially from a tax perspective, but also from estate planning. You don't want the wrong person to get your home. You don't want the wrong person to have authority to spend the money that you left for your grandchildren. Right? Jose: Right. Stephanie: So, there's a lot of things that happen, and one of the crazy questions that I always get is, can I protect my assets, whatever that is, from my future daughter-in-law, future son-in-law, my current one that I don't really like or my aunt that's a little crazy? And those are things that you have to have, again, the right person that you've vetted. And like you said, getting interviewed to different people is great because you can understand if the person that you're working with is gonna meet your goals or if they're just kind of like Jose was saying, like just boom, boom, boom. You need to do this ‘cause you can't apply the same thing each time. And I've learned that with real estate specifically, there are so many investments in passing down to heirs or even like, oh, can someone manage this if ever something ever happens to me? Can I have my sister-in-law live at this home while I'm incapacitated? Whatever. There's so many intentions behind creating your assets and protecting it. And even like when you're no longer on this earth, what does that look like? I think a lot of it has to do with the right professionals, and I'm glad that you're saying that there's, ways to vet, but also interviewing other people is a great tip. I didn't even think of that. That's really good. Jose: Yeah, that definitely has to be a thing. You can't just get one person, ‘cause whatever you tell me, I'm gonna have my advice based on my experience and there may be another accountant that's better suited for you that has a different vision that maybe matches with you more. So that's definitely, whatever professionals you're gonna help you need to understand your goals and need to understand your situation and, need to empathize with you in order to make you successful. ‘cause that's the whole point of this. It's making you successful. The better you are as an investor, the better you are as a business owner, the better I am. So that my goal is to help you. If my goal is to help you, then I need to help you reach your goals, not you reach my version of your goals. Stephanie: Right, right. No, that's a great way to put it. And where can anybody contact you if they're interested in hiring you for your services? Jose: Of course. So, I have two companies. One is my accounting company. It's called Millennial Tax and Accounting. We're in Palatine. My number is, 2 2 4 3 6 6 0 3 9 9, or people can send me an email to accounting@millennial-tax.com. And if you want real estate services, we help all kind of investors, first at home buyers. We also have a property management company under there that we assist investors to achieve their goal. We're trying to have a one stop shop for things. We have loan officers in-house. We have the whole deal to help you guys become either investors or become homeowners. And you guys can reach out at dreamcityteam@sellourhome.biz Stephanie: Great. Well thank you for that. I appreciate it. And you guys always have my information, obviously, you know, if you guys have any questions, follow up. Any more insights as to what we talked about today, I'm always welcome to hear your feedback, especially when it comes to things that we covered. ‘Cause I think there's so much to unpack here. So, you can always contact us as the number below or the email below. You can always text that line as well if you wanna set up a consultation. Now, Jose, before we wrap up, what are some final thoughts that are in your mind? Any tips for the audience based on what we talked about today? Jose: Definitely planning. Planning is key. You guys need to plan. Everybody needs to plan. Everybody has goals. Whether it's a small side gig that you guys wanna do, or you will full on wanna go into a business and start your own entrepreneur adventure. You need to get educated and know all the angles before you make decisions before you go all out there. So, reach out. Even if you have questions, I can set up an appointment with you guys virtually just to one time give you advice. We have that service as well, or if you guys really wanna hire me as your accountant, we have packages for those too. So, just knowing a different point of view would definitely help anybody with, like I said, it doesn't matter how small your business is. Stephanie: Yeah. That's great advice. I appreciate that. And also, just remembering to invest early, and it's not just like a get rich quick. That it's not a thing. You actually, it's a long-term investment and perspective. So, in case you're wondering. ‘Cause there's all these people, they're like, oh, if I do this, I'm gonna hit the lotto. We all wanna hit the lotto. Jose: You get rich overnight, within like, 30 years. Stephanie: Yeah, basically. And you know what? I think that's one of the biggest takeaways, right? If there's any tips to the audience, it's a long-term play, but like I said, if you have the right people in your corner, I think it'll be a good plan. So, thank you so much for the wonderful audience. Thank you, Jose, for joining me today. It was great having you. Remember, be a smart investor, go the extra mile to protect your assets and to meet with the right people. Don't be afraid to take the risks as long as they're calculated and with educated guess. So hopefully you've gained some information here to empower yourself, and if you have any questions about what we've talked about, please feel free to reach out. So thanks Jose, so much for your time. Jose: Oh, thank you for the invite. Thank you. Stephanie: Take care everyone.