121 The Ultimate Way To Reduce Your Taxes

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Topics and your questions answered on the show

• The ultimate way to reduce your taxes.
• Tyrone (San Francisco, CA) is trying to figure out if he should stop investing to save for a house down payment.
• Steve (IN) asks if America’s finances are going to collapse.
• Malia (Tonga) has no savings and needs help.
• Kelly (San Francisco, CA) has $90k in back taxes to pay.
• The dream list.

Links mentioned in the show

• Fidelity Powershares DB Precious Metals Fund
• BlackRock iShares Gold Trust

Read the Transcript

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The Ultimate Way To Reduce Your Taxes

Scott A. T.: Broadcasting from One Dallas Tower. It’s that freaking liar Scott Alan Turner again. Financial rockstar, high priest to the church of the financial truth. Going to help you get out of debt faster, save more money, and retire early or retire rich and early. In this video with is producer Katie who thinks Kobe beef is truly amazing, melt in your mouth delicious.

On the show today, I promise I’m going to finish up on taxes and I’ll be answering your questions about money, business, and life. If you have a question you would like answered on the show, visit goaskscott.com. Yeah, we’re wrapping up the tax series today. I promise, even though I promised the same thing yesterday, it just ran over. It just ran over. There was too much stuff to cover. I hope you’re getting a lot out of this. I hope you’re saving money. I hope you’re thinking about long-term tax planning. So many opportunities to save so much money.

Final wrap-up on this. The big one. The big one. We’re talking about CAT tax conversion. Converting personal expenses to business expenses. This is the huge one. It is huge. It has to follow the business purpose doctrine though, is what it’s called. You got to have a business to this. You got to be a freelancer, contractor, non-employee, non W2 employee, small business owner, maybe a bit of side hustle, something like that. Start a side hustle sometimes. It’s worth it to do that, whatever that might happen to be because there are so many opportunities to save money on taxes if you have a legitimate business.

What is the business purpose doctrine? It is a tax-related doctrine. This principle states that a transaction must serve a bona fide business purpose to qualify for beneficial tax treatment. If the transaction has no substantial business purpose other than the avoidance or reduction of tax, the tax law will not regard the transaction. That’s the fancy term for it. A business expense has to be legitimate. It has to be legitimate in order for it to count as a deduction.

I cannot go to PetSmart and expense Jaykin Reichert’s cat food. Can’t put it on the business card. Well I can but then CPA is going to say, what’s this? Eh, we’re not going to do that. I’m not going to sign my name to this. I can’t put a bag of cat treats on the credit card, unless I have this hare-brained idea where I wanted to make a business out of training my cats to do something, maybe sell some how-to videos on it. Then the treats can be deducted because I needed them as part of the training with the expectation I’m going to have this business generate a profit out of the how-to videos. Just an example.

When I travel somewhere for a conference or something, that is a legitimate business expense. Hotel, airfare, those are deductible expenses. I’m there already so if I go to the museum at night or see some sights in the afternoon, that’s fine. I cannot deduct the museum tickets, however. Katie, she works with me and pretty much our entire marriage she has worked with me on the businesses. Her plane ticket, deductible. Mother-in-law and the kids coming along, not deductible. Mother-in-law’s hotel room and plane ticket, not deductible. Two out of five of those, flying for business and being able to deduct those expenses, that ain’t bad.

There’s a bunch of detailed rules on this which is why you need a good tax planner. If you’ve got some type of hobby that you’re turning into a business, that is an example of a conversion. Just the other day, it was actually this past weekend, we were out at the lake driving around and our neighbor, a few rows down the street, he’s been building this massive, massive garage. I mean, it’s a big building. He had all the concrete poured in and you see this little smaller garage as well, and we started chatting with him and he’s got all this stuff in there. He says, “Yeah, I got laid off from my job recently. I’m going to flip cars.” He’s a big time auto mechanic and knows all about restoring classic cars and awesome, it was a Mustang SS out in the driveway. Then he had his engine which is hooked up to a chassis. Where did he say the engine was from? It was from Gone in 60 Seconds. It was one of the engines used in the movie Gone in 60 Seconds that had Angelina Jolie and Nicolas Cage in it.

It was weird. I had never seen an engine just standing by itself. I’ve always seen engines in the cars. He had it there and it was all hooked up and then he started it up for us and revved it up super loud. It was awesome. Business expense. Business expense. Now he’s got that side business. Katie and I own chickens. Not as cool as a revving engine, not at all. If we start selling eggs, all the chicken feed, the initial setup cost, the chicken coup, all tax deductible. My beehives. I can turn my hobby into a business by selling honey. Now all my costs on my equipment, tax deductible.

What’s the IRS looking for in all this stuff? Well first they want to see if you’re trying to make a profit. It was a profit test and as the name indicates, it requires you show you earn money on whatever activity you’re doing in three out of five years. Doesn’t have to be the first three. Just three out of five years because normally when you start a business, you’re not going to make money right off the bat, but you’re expected to three out of the first five years. They’re looking to see if you’re operating the business professionally. Are you keeping books? Are you keeping good books? Are you keeping records? Are you devoting some of your time to the enterprise doing it part time? Is some of your income coming from it to support your lifestyle? Do you have the knowledge and the background to run the business?

Some things they’ll look into if you get audited, but the most important one, are you trying to run a business? Trying to run a successful business? Note, note they’re not looking to see if you’re making huge gobs of profit on it. I mean, you can break even every year. I work with my cousin occasionally during college. He’s passed away but he had a part time landscaping business. I’ll just never forget this fact. He used to say, “Always want to show a loss. Always want to show a loss on your business.” That always stuck with me through the years. He wasn’t a tax expert nor am I but it’s just something that always stuck with me.

If you don’t think that is right, look no further than Amazon. That company posted losses … I don’t even know if they’re still making a profit over there. They started in 1999, maybe earlier than that. They posted losses for the first ten years, but they are massive because people just kept putting more and more money into their stock which allowed them to expand and grow. When it comes to your own business, you just gotta make a commitment to trying to make the business a success. If you don’t do that, the IRS is saying hey, you’re just trying to hide money. You’re trying to get away with the tax breaks. We don’t like that and we’re going to get you. Going to get you.

All right. Everything we’ve talked about, everything discussed in this series, long series on boring old taxes, what do they all have in common? What’s the big deciding factor, the overall arching theme? When tax rates are constant, it makes it really easy to figure this stuff out. If you’re in the 25% bracket now, in retirement you’re planning on being in the 15% bracket because you’re doing some planning even though it’s 20 years out. Well what’s the 15% bracket going to look like in 20 years compared to what it looks like today.

In general, the higher the tax rate, the higher savings you’ll get for tax deductions. $10,000 in itemized deductions is going to save a person more who is in the 25% tax bracket than someone who is in the 15% tax bracket. It’s important if you’ve got deductions, take them in your higher tax rate years. All of this planning, all of these things, the basis of them all is what is your tax bracket look currently? What is it going to look like in the future, and how can you do some tax shifting? How can you do some tax conversion? How can you do some deferrals of your income? Move stuff around, legally of course. All this stuff is legal, but how can you do that to minimize your tax burden over the rest of your life. It’s not just your working life, it’s your entire life until the day you die.

Beyond that, if you have even more money than that to leave heirs, how can you minimize their tax burden as well. It all fits together. Stick a fork in it. Stick a fork in it. It’s done. Yeah, we are done with taxes, for a while. I hope you’re inspired to spend a little more time tax planning, a little less time on Call of Duty or Pokemon Go, the real or deciding between 80/20 or 70/30 in your Roth IRA. There is more to be had in avoiding taxes. You work four months out of the year to pay taxes. Not exactly for everybody but just on average. Just a few hours of Google research on some of these topics, or picking up that book How to Pay Zero Taxes, reviewing these past few shows again, talking to your friends, coworkers, parents, family members and say hey, did you know it’s better to have bonds in a tax deferred account and stocks in a taxable account, because you know that now and you know the reasoning behind it. Hey, do you know if you put your child in daycare while you work, you might get a credit on your taxes? Or something else from the 200 some odd chapters in How to Pay Zero Taxes.

You, you’ve got the ammo, you’ve got the tools, you’ve got the arsenal. You can go to the CPA, the tax preparer and say what about this? What about this? What about this? What about that? You can get them thinking, because they’re not always open and being proactive in giving you this information. Now you know the questions to ask. Now you know the stuff to think about. Now you know the important stuff. Even if you’re living broker now, you get the seeds, they’ve been planted, they’re going to grow, they’re going to germinate, and they’re going to turn into oak trees and you’re going to save taxes on the oak trees.

Tyrone from San Francisco, California says,

Tyrone: My fiance and I want a safer house. We’ll be debt free by the end of the year. Our saving consist of a funded emergency fund and some money in a 401k. We’re considering stopping all contributions to retirement accounts for one year and divert the money into savings in order to help cover a 20% down payment on a house. What are your thoughts on this? Factors to consider if this makes financial sense. Would we weight the 401k compounding interest versus equity savings and appreciation. Lower loan interest, total interest, write off. Is there a calculator that can help?

Scott A. T.: Congrats on being almost debt free. You’re almost in the band man. I post a different question to start the conversation. How soon do you want to get into a house? How soon do you want to get into a house? Let’s get the financial side of it and then you’ve got the, “Hey babe, what do you want from the lifestyle” side of it. Sometimes that can be more important. I used Katie and I as an example. We completely stopped all investing for a period of one year, like you did, several years ago. We did that to save up for our lake house, but no 401k, no outside investments into our taxable accounts. We’re just going to put all the money towards this lake house that we want to build so that we can pay for the entire thing in cash. We didn’t have enough saved up at that point but we had stopped our investments. We said all right, let’s do this.

From a financial perspective, it was a loser but from a dealings perspective, you want to look at that, it was a winner because we didn’t have any debt when we got in the house. Let’s visit your numbers. You stop the 401k, that money’s going to be taxed at your marginal tax rate. Let’s just spend, all right, 20 grand in 401k contributions over the next year, 25% tax bracket, $5000 more in taxes that you’re going to pay on that next year. Plus, on top of that, you’re going to lose any company match, whatever that happens to be. Your compounding, can’t really even factor that in. Compounding over a year for investments could be zero. The market does nothing like it did last year. It could be plus 25%, it could lose 25% of your investment over the next 12 months. We don’t know. Let’s just ignore that. I wouldn’t even factor it in.

With mortgage, just using today’s numbers. Just using some averages so we can get an idea of what we’re talking about. They got a $250,000 loan, 20% down, 3.43%, it’ll cost you 1100 bucks a month in a mortgage payment, according to Bankrate. Paying $250,000 in a loan, 10% down, you’re going to pay 3.5%, slightly higher, not significant. You’re also going to pay 200 bucks a month in PMI on top of that, $2500 a year. Let’s see, your mortgage is going to be $1176 a month with that higher interest rate. $70 a month more, $840 a year more in interest. Add those together, 2500 PMI, 840 in interest, $3340 more per year, entire cost, by putting less than 20% down. That’s assuming you got a good credit rate and using those numbers.

You also have to figure in, that’s just year one that’s going to cost more. In year two you’ve got more PMI, slightly more in interest. Year three, more PMI, a little bit more in interest. Those costs are going to add up over time with that lower down payment. Hey, if we’re talking a year, 12 months you want to stop investing, maybe I’d just split the difference. Get the company match if there’s one there, it’s free money. Dial down the 401k to the company match, again if it’s there so you can get to that 20% down on the house. Really want to avoid that PMI. It’s a wasted money and you get a slightly better interest rate. If you want to get down on a house sooner, you dial the 401k down to zero for a year. You will pay the taxman more by not having the 401k, but you will get into the house sooner if that’s one of your goals that you want to shoot for.

I’m not aware of a specific calculator that does all that stuff for you, but when you start considering, all right we get this loan with this percent down, okay. Over here, a little bit less down, but what are we going to pay in PMI, it’s like a higher interest cost, that’s going to give you a yearly amount that you can use to make some decisions. Then you go back and look at your 401k. All right, we’re going to pay this much more in taxes if we just drop it down to zero. Use that and figure, all right, here’s what it’s going to cost us from that standpoint. Those will give you a couple numbers to start playing around with and along with those you say, how soon do we want to get into this house. You munge all those three things together and I think that will help you give you a well thought out and educated position. Thanks Tyrone for the question.

Steve in Indiana asks if America’s finances are going to collapse.

Steve: You’re right, no one talks about the national debt and the rampant printing of money. What concerns do you have about that? Are you sensing a catastrophic event in America’s future? Is buying gold a good idea? My son Nick is very skeptical about the market and predicts a coming crash. He does a lot of reading on the subject. Of course, his mom and dad’s grub stake is virtually all in the stock market. I’d be glad to have you have a peek at our holdings. We are looking for a counselor as you suggested. I’m talking to two of them right now, though both are tied to investment companies, but their services are a factor of our investments. I’m in the process of turning over a portion of my retirement to a long-time friend at Northwest Mutual.

Scott A. T.: Yes, the stock market is going to crash, again, someday. Is it today, or tomorrow, or next month, or next year? Nobody knows. It’s done if before and it’s going to do it again, but timing the market is a sucker’s bet. If you cashed out in 2008 before the 50% market decline that occurred over the following 18 months, you have never known when to jump back in and enjoy the seven year run up we’ve been on since. Over 18 months in 2008, 2009, yes you lost half your money. The last seven years though, the market’s nearly tripled. For younger people, a long-term horizon and riding out the lows is very smart. Young people should be praying for market crashes because it lets them buy cheaper investments.

If you’re young, just ask yourself, do you want to buy when the market is up or down? Down because in 20 or 30 years, you end up with more money. If you’re retired age 65, let’s say Steve, you look at your life expectancy, let’s pick 80. Well, that’s 15 years. Still a long time. Academic studies will show you still want to be in the market, just a lot less. How much? That depends on how much you need to pull out to live on. When? How long you might live, what your Social Security benefits are. That’s where the fee only advisors can help out and run the numbers for you.

Gold, that’s a hedge against inflation, nothing more. People who get afraid of stocks usually jump into gold when the stock market goes down. Then you get into a gold bubble which, what happens to bubbles? Eventually they burst, but if you’re in a well diversified portfolio, stocks, bonds, US, international, cash because you are retired. You don’t need gold. If you’re dying to buy gold, you can get into a gold exchange traded fund, and that behaves like a stock, but you don’t have to physically buy the gold and store it at your house.

Fidelity is a company, they have a power shares precious metals fund that allows you to buy into gold, and the iShares gold trust from BlackRock is another fund. Straight from the BlackRock website, what it says is use this to diversity your portfolio and help protect against inflation. That’s what their gold fund does. Gold, if you’re into it, should be a very small percent of a well diversified portfolio.

Now Online Advisor Firm by the name of personal capital, they examined over 150,000 users to investigate the costs from advisory and fund related fees across many brokerage firms like the ones that you’re referring to. Merrill Lynch, they had the highest expenses on investments, if you’re investing with them in their funds and the third highest advisory fees. If you’re going with one of these big brokerage houses, like Merrill Lynch, who have the big fees … What are their numbers here, let’s see.

According to this report on personal capital, if you had a $500,000 account, you would pay $936,000 in fees over 30 years of investing. Assuming annual returns of 7%. That’s a lot of fees. The fees seem small but they really, really add up over time when you’re talking 1%, percent and a half, 2%. That’s why I always get back to fee only financial advisors. They’re not trying to sell you anything and you’re not paying the big fees. It’s like this, say you had a group of doctors all across the country and they all worked for, say Merck. Merck is one of the big pharmaceutical companies. Or the doctors are contracted through them, or maybe the doctors are getting kickbacks and profit sharing for Merck. You go to the doctor, you need some medicine, and you find every time they prescribe you something, it’s a drug that Merck sells. Well what about all the other drugs out there from all the other pharmaceutical companies? What makes Merck the best? What if Pfizer had a better drug that’s cheaper but you don’t know about it because the doctor you go to is making money off of Merck. You would never know.

That’s why these fee only advisors, they’re the way to go because they’ll say, you know you can get the best deal over here from Merck or maybe you get the best over here from Pfizer. Since they’re not taking commissions, not taking kickbacks, not making a little money behind the scenes, not that they’re all doing that. Not that they’re all doing that. These commission sales people are saying you know when you’re going to a fee only advisor, they had a fiduciary duty, a legally bound obligation to do what is in your best interest, to get you in the products that are best for you and your situation and they don’t make money on those products by recommending them. You just pay them a flat fee or an hourly charge, and it’s really the best way to go.

Thanks Steve for the question.

Quick break. Back in a moment. You’re listening to Scott Allen Turner.

Hey nation. Scott Allen Turner here. Now for those of you that are my longtime listeners, you know I’m not one of those guys on the radio that promotes every product that shows up on their desk. You’re never going to hear me trying to get you to buy snowplowing service from some company in Florida, or recommending you buy neckties from some company in Little Rock, Arkansas. No. I have a name to hold to you, my wonderful listeners. If I were to recommend something to you, I would tell you about Helium. Helium, if you don’t remember from high school chemistry class, is a rare earth element. Number one and number two on the periodic table, I think, and we’re running out of it which means the price of helium is set to take off like a hot air balloon. Helium is going to be worth more per ounce than the price of gold. You can buy helium today at any flower shop or grocery store. Store it in the attic and those balloons they give you and watch your investment rise. Tell them Scott Allen Turner sent you.

Malia has no savings and needs help.

Malia: I have no money at all in the bank, meaning I have no savings. This is because I have a lot of stuff to spend money on. My allowance is only $200 a week and I have bills to spend the money on so can you please help me deal with this according to the country I live in?

Scott A. T.: Malia, when it comes to savings, we can only control two things. Our income and our outgo. Income, that’s how much you make. From your employment or any extra money that you might bring in on the side. Outgoes is where is it going? What are we spending our money on? If you end the month with zero, or worse negative, you got to start with a written spending plan in figuring out what am I spending my money on each month, where is it going, so you’d be able to track that because you cannot manage what you don’t measure.

You also got to get in on the cash budget. That’s taking out at the beginning of the month or the beginning of your paycheck, the cash that you’re going to spend on different categories. That keeps you from overspending and helps you find out where is the money going. For the majority of people who are in this situation, they don’t know. They don’t know. Now some people choose to bury their head in the sand. Some people, they’re just oblivious that they even need to do this at all. That was me in my younger days. I didn’t know I needed to track money. That is not one of the things I learned in school. Then there are a lot of people who think they know where the money is going, but they really have no clue.

It’s the writing down, planning ahead of time, and then getting on that cash budget that helps you get you to where you want to be. It’s kind of like dieting. You think, I should be losing weight, but I’m not. Well, do you track your calories? No, well there’s your problem. You think you’re eating health, but you’re probably not, or you think you’re eating so many calories a day but you’re probably eating twice that many. I know this because you can think you’re eating healthy or think you’re spending wisely but until you track it, that is the proof. Until you get the proof, you don’t really know.

If you spend it all, you’ve only got a couple choices. Increase your income, earn more money, or decreasing what is outgoing. Once you get that tracking of the outgoing, you’ll be able to find out if you have any margin to be able to do that. If you don’t, then you got to figure out ways to increase your income. That’s all we can do. Once you’ve got some cushion, meaning you’ve got a little bit of buffer there either by decreasing your costs, cutting your expenses, spending a little less each month, or increasing your income, working more, getting raises, getting a side job. Then you can make your progress on saving. Thanks Malia for the question. Get back to me in 60 days with an update. I want to hear how your progress is going.

Kelly in San Francisco, California has $90,000 in back taxes today. She says,

Kelly: I’ve been listening to your podcast over the last month, I totally love it and have learned a lot already. I’ve decided that I need to really take charge of my life and finances now and really need your help and advice with the following. My husband and I are both self-employed, although I closed my business mid-last year to care for my two babies temporarily, and recently filed our taxes and were hit with a $90,000 tax bill. Ouch. Embarrassingly enough, we didn’t save the money or pay the estimated quarterly taxes while we were clearing off the prior two years of back taxes. My question is what is the best way to go about tackling this and be able to pay the estimated taxes at the same time which might not be possible? Do we pay the back taxes and keep living one year behind or do we pay all our estimated taxes and then hopefully get on a payment plan for the 90,000 that we owe. We should be able to pay some of that now. Just trying to see what makes the most financial advice to not live in a hole anymore and get out of debt the most quickly. We are desperate for advice while I look for a new tax accountant who’s a little more savvy next year and will get the right strategy in place.

Scott A. T.: Well the good news is you’ve got it figured out that you need a new tax accountant. That guy or girl who may have caused this or contributed to it certainly needs to be replaced. It’s a bad situation you’re in but it looks like you have a plan, at least a start to get out of it. The IRS is one tough cookie. They don’t have to take you to court to seize your bank accounts or your pensions or your funds, which is why it’s super serious to deal with them. There’s different situations if you have less than $50,000 that is owed or more than $50,000 than is owed. Typically if you have less than $50,000 you can go through the computer prompts, fill out some forms online, and take care of all that yourself and get on a repayment plan. You’re over that, so there’s a lot of gotchas, a lot of forks in the road. We won’t call then gotchas. We won’t call them gotchas. It’s just a lot of things that you need to be aware of because the IRS, they have one goal. To get the money. They want to get the money and they want to do a lot of things that may not be beneficial to you in order to get that money like cash out your retirement accounts, if you have any.

There’s a book I want you to go out and buy off Amazon. You can get it for $30. It’s called Stand Up to the IRS. Stand Up to the IRS. It’s by Nolo. This is the book that outlines the different steps, the different things you need to watch out for when you’re in this situation whether you are above or below the $50,000 line. It’s certainly going to be beneficial to you though as compared to just calling up the IRS and saying hey, we owe a bunch of money because if you do that, you could likely end up in a worse situation.

This book, Stand Up to the IRS, it point out those pitfalls, things you should watch out for, things you should say and not say as you go through this. There’s so many things that I can’t go over quickly on the call. That’s why it’s important to get the book. Alternatively you can hire a good CPA or somebody that has dealt with this stuff in the past, but it’s going to be a little more costly because you’re going to have to pay them however many hundreds of dollar per hour they’re going to charge you or maybe a flat fee whereas the book’s 30 bucks, it’ll give you some background knowledge to at least get started in this. Then if you wanted to choose to go out and hire somebody else to work with you through the process, at least you’ll have the foundation knowledge in order to understand what your new CPA is going to be telling you.

Just in summary, if you owe more than 50 grand, you’re going to have to talk with a live person. You’re going to call up the IRS and you’re going to be on hold for a very long time, which is true no matter, any time you call the IRS, you’re going to be on hold for an hour. Make sure you have some snacks, something to read, the kids are out of the house, not taking a nap in case they wake up in the middle of it. You have to start all over again. Then in your particular situation you’re going to need all of your financial situations. They have a form that they’re going to be looking for you to fill out at some point during this process listing everything. Everything. Your salaries, your retirement accounts, your bank accounts, your checking accounts, your vehicles, your rent or mortgage or expenses, any other sources of income. They want to know everything about your finances so that they can determine whether you’re going to be able to pay or how much you’re going to be able to pay, and how quickly.

You’ll most likely end up on a payment plan if you can’t pay the amount in full, which is why again this book is important. It walks you through that because the IRS, they’re going to try to get you to pay as much as possible as quickly as possible. You want to be able to defend paying a lower amount or negotiating a lower amount to give you more time to pay that and be comfortable doing it so that you can continue paying your monthly expenses.

You’re in for a little bit of a battle. This book is going to give you some ammunition, give you some guidelines as what you can expect. At the end of the day, it’s just money. You’re going to be able to work yourself through it in a reasonable amount of time so try not to lose any sleep over it. You’ll get it straightened out. Thanks Kelly for the question.

Do you have a dreams list written down? If you had unlimited time, talent, money, ability, self-confidence, and support from your family, what would you do? This is from a book, I’ll give you the title once I finish telling you about it. Relax and let the ideas pour from both your conscious and subconscious. Don’t evaluate potential or achieving each out when you write. What you will write will excite you, motivate you, inspire you, make you laugh, and most of all, define desires and dreams that all too often are ready to surface, but are held back by the complexities of daily living. Write it all down no matter how silly it seems, no matter what it costs. The ideas will come slowly at first, gaining speed as you leave behind the realities and the limits in your life.

All of us at any age have dreams and the first step of turning dreams into reality is to get those dreams out in front of you where you can see them and feel them. Having taught my students this dreams list strategy for over 12 years, I have seen some truly wonderful things happen that might never have occurred otherwise such as a 66 year old PhD spent his birthday hang gliding with me off the huge sand dunes at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A 14 year old boy started his own successful business. A 45 year old recently separated housewife with no previous sense of adventure rappelled straight down a 200 foot cliff, then rode zip line 60 feet in the air 300 yards across a valley at 40 miles per hour hanging from only risk straps resulting in more self-confidence in two days than she had achieved in her entire lifetime.

Through the dreams list strategy a 35 year old mother swam and played with the dolphins at King’s Dominion Park in Virginia, a dream she had had since she was a child. A 28 year old European immigrant who barely spoke English built a $5 million fortune in five years starting with a $6 an hour job. I will never forget the tears of joy in his eyes as he sat in my office in Orlando telling me the story of his success and the part of my strategies had played in his life.

Once you’ve made your list with no limits, choose those objectives which are the most important to you. Some will be individual objectives, others will include and require the support of your family. Encourage your spouse and children, if you have them, to create their own lists. After you define your dreams, the things you want to do, the places you want to, what you want to be and accomplish, the next logical step is to build your roadmap, your strategies list. That comes from the book Wealth Without Risk. Bestseller in 1988. That was a long time ago. A lot of the stuff covered on the show is foundational elements that have been around for a very long time, just that nobody talks about them, people are aware of them, and that’s fine because nobody starts out knowing everything. We start where we start.

This show’s only been on a short period of time, this book, this guy already had 12 years under his belt when he wrote it to have those stories but I know, because I’ve got the emails from you guys, the successes and the wins that you had in your own lives, even in a short period of time. I want to encourage you, please continue to share them with me. Share what you got whenever you got it, no matter how big, no matter how small. If it’s swimming with the dolphins or if it’s building a $5 million business. People want to hear that stuff and they want to hear from you, and dare I say it, people are desperate, desperate to hear from you.

It’s that little word or encouragement, that little glimmer that says, that person has done it. They did it, so can I. It keeps them moving forward. Please, please send me your wins so that I can share them with everybody else. You’d be doing a great service to the nation.

Those are the words. That’s it for this episode. I’m your host, Scott Allen Turner. Rockstar Katie’s my producer. All the links mentioned in the show are available in the show notes on scottallenturner.com. If you have a question you would like answered on the show, visit goaskscott.com or find out how to drop me email and share your wins. Thanks for listening.

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