Reducing taxes and planning for your financial future?
 

(For the Americans:)
How many of you actually have a full system for structuring your business(es), legally minimizing your taxes, putting away pre-tax dollars for retirement, etc., providing yourself with health coverage, and providing insurance for your family (or your future family)?

I never really had any real sense of what I was just *giving away* to the government each year, until about eight years ago when I hooked up with financial and legal people who not only knew their stuff, but were industry-friendly.

I went from paying six figures annually in taxes to paying a LOT less in taxes - setting up tax-friendly health plans for myself and my then-gf, setting up life insurance plans in the event that by the time I got married and had kids I was uninsurable --- and putting a LOT more pre-tax money away before the goverment took it.

I was totally unaware of how much all of this would not only benefit me later, but benefit me immediately. And am wondering whether I'm the exception - or whether the "make it, spend it, make more" mentality that was so prevalent during the good times is still the way most people handle things.

Weekend warriors and beer-money moguls need not respond :winkwink:

I do not have everything in the first box, but more than the second. It has always been a high priority. Sort of became partially obsessed when I was about 10 and got a small book about the powers of compound interest. It was about 20-30 pages and it altered my perspective forever. From there I just learned more.
I do have some professionals in my life, like my wife's father is a CPA.

Professionals in the family definitely help --- of course, as long as they know what you for a living ;)

Wow - never mind the responses, 16 VIEWS in nine hours? Guess that answers the question even more than the poll would have :helpme

I've had most of that setup for a few years. Only thing not is family health care but just for myself.

After I quit my 9 to 5 about three years ago, I stopped contributing to my 401k.

So if I start again, will that money be pre-tax and will it lower my taxable income level for the year? Please excuse me if I sound retarded on these matters.

You can't contribute to the 401K that was set up through your previous employer, but there are ways to do similar things depending on the structure of your business (e.g. sole proprietorship, corporation, LLC) - a good accountant/lawyer/financial person can help.

Snap. I didn't realize that. Thnx.

I am LLC'ed, and I'll talk to my guy about it.

I got a finance degree so I could understand it all myself and not need 'people' to tell me shit. Turns out it's pretty simple you don't need a 4 year degree to do it just a brain and some common sense.

Understandable - I have an MBA so I get where you're coming from.
I also think there are lots of people who either just don't want to be bothered - or who have the "math anxiety" problem with it comes to finance. (Just think back to all of the "is this deductible?" threads here over the years.)

Yeah they know.

Pretty damn sure you need to convert that or roll it over into like a roth IRA. Damn sure all of the assorted brokers and such out there will do it for you for free. Even companies like ING and other cheap buy your own stock companies.

My retirement plan is to wait until my kids get older and move to a country where I'm getting a good exchange rate and plenty of land.

I assumed that yours do - I meant that for people in general.

True, I wasn't talking about rolling over his old 401K into something that he can contribute to - I was talking more about starting something new that would be "run" by his business (Solo 401K, SEP-IRA, etc.) and reaping all the benefits on the business side as well as on the personal side.

bump for finances

Guess I should have added "AND NUDE PICS!" to the title... :1orglaugh

My wife does our taxes for both businesses and is self taught. Her Dad is a retired CPA so that definetly helped out when she was learning. The first year we had a tax advisor that also made sure she was doing everything perfect. So that saves alot of money right there.

I handle our saving and as far as investments we dont formally have any, most money I invest back into our businesses which makes us grow much faster. Im 25 right now so in the next few years i'll most likely start pushing more towards investments for our future incase of a disaster.

Maybe im doing it all wrong but has worked well so far. :)

Views are not counted in real time. :2 cents:

Glad everyone's all set financially :winkwink:

I use an accountant to do my taxes, but I also do tax and financial planning myself, because I took some accounting courses in College. Sometimes in the past I wasted money on pleasurefull stuff that I didn't really need to buy. I need to change those money-reducing habits.

Don't we all? :1orglaugh

bump for weekend warriors :thumbsup

I use an accountant to do the taxes but I do very little tax planning. I have always owned a fair amount of real estate and that is the investment so nope I can't say i pay much attention to this stuff.

Another weekend bump.

bump for more responses...