We are so excited to finally be discussing ADVANCED STRATEGIES FOR COLLEGE FINANCING with our clients this year! Join me and Ron Caruthers on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16TH at 7:15 pm EST to discuss how you can win the tax and financial planning game for your children's college educations! In this webinar we will discuss:
- Why 529 Plans Maynot be the Best Strategy to Save for College
- Why Your Asset Ownership and Entity Structure Matter
- Lessor Known Factors that Impact How Much Assistance You May Receive from Universities
- Actions You Can Take to Save Thousands in College Tuition
Register to Attend HERE and BRING YOUR QUESTIONS!
About Ron:
Ron Caruthers is the nation’s foremost expert on college planning and college funding. He’s loved by hundreds of parents for finding creative and effective ways to fund their children’s college dreams while keeping them on track for retirement. Many know Ron as their Financial Fixer.
Ron was born and raised in Santa Monica, California—right up the street from the Santa Monica Pier. His parents later moved inland where Ron graduated from Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, CA in 1985 as valedictorian – ranked 1st of 419 seniors. However, Ron and his family found themselves unable to pay for college – a situation many of our clients understand all too well.
This setback forced him to take a hard look at how unprepared most students are for college, career, and managing their money after college.
Since then, he has worked with over 4600 families to help make their children’s dreams a reality, while providing sound financial guidance along the way!
Ron Caruthers was an adjunct instructor at Palomar and Mira Costa Colleges in San Diego, California, and a regular on San Diego’s morning news programs. He has been interviewed on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX. He has also been quoted in Newsweek, Inc. Magazine, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
He currently enjoys life in Carlsbad Village, a town on the water about 35 miles north of downtown San Diego with his wife Sylvia, 15 chickens, and a purse dog named Star. He is dad to three children, Jessika, Brennan and Lexi,–all who went to college for free. Jessika went to USC and Brennan graduated from Northeastern in May of 2018.
We are so excited to finally be discussing ADVANCED STRATEGIES FOR COLLEGE FINANCING with our clients this year! Join me and Ron Caruthers on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16TH at 7:15 pm EST to discuss how you can win the tax and financial planning game for your children's college educations! In this webinar we will discuss:
- Why 529 Plans Maynot be the Best Strategy to Save for College
- Why Your Asset Ownership and Entity Structure Matter
- Lessor Known Factors that Impact How Much Assistance You May Receive from Universities
- Actions You Can Take to Save Thousands in College Tuition
Register to Attend HERE and BRING YOUR QUESTIONS!
About Ron:
Ron Caruthers is the nation’s foremost expert on college planning and college funding. He’s loved by hundreds of parents for finding creative and effective ways to fund their children’s college dreams while keeping them on track for retirement. Many know Ron as their Financial Fixer.
Ron was born and raised in Santa Monica, California—right up the street from the Santa Monica Pier. His parents later moved inland where Ron graduated from Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, CA in 1985 as valedictorian – ranked 1st of 419 seniors. However, Ron and his family found themselves unable to pay for college – a situation many of our clients understand all too well.
This setback forced him to take a hard look at how unprepared most students are for college, career, and managing their money after college.
Since then, he has worked with over 4600 families to help make their children’s dreams a reality, while providing sound financial guidance along the way!
Ron Caruthers was an adjunct instructor at Palomar and Mira Costa Colleges in San Diego, California, and a regular on San Diego’s morning news programs. He has been interviewed on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX. He has also been quoted in Newsweek, Inc. Magazine, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
He currently enjoys life in Carlsbad Village, a town on the water about 35 miles north of downtown San Diego with his wife Sylvia, 15 chickens, and a purse dog named Star. He is dad to three children, Jessika, Brennan and Lexi,–all who went to college for free. Jessika went to USC and Brennan graduated from Northeastern in May of 2018.
WEBVTT
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So welcome everybody.
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Mark Perlberg: I am so excited to you here to have a most anticipated guest, Speaker Ron Carruthers. I've been listening to Ron for some time now, and he knows this stuff when it comes to college financial planning, and you'd be surprised by all of the myths out there, and all of the
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Mark Perlberg: missed opportunities that people miss out on.
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Mark Perlberg: because they just don't understand how this system works and run is taking the time to really dive into the nitty gritty, and he's going to give us some wonderful insight on on Co. Planning for financing your children's college. So, Ron, take it away. Can you introduce yourself in 60 s or less to the audience.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Yeah, so real easily.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I was 30. Well, we wouldn't even get into how many years ago, because it's depressing. I was my high school valedictorian in California. I'm native California.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and we didn't have any money for me to get a college, so I didn't go right away, but I was number one in my class. So I went later to be a Cpa as well as a certified financial planner, and about midway through those programs I tripped over the college roles.
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and I've kind of been lecturing on these ever since. So really the premise of what you guys are going to learn in that is as fast as I can get it to you, and then you can reach out to Markov questions afterwards is
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how to pay the least amount of money possible
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Ronnie Caruthers: for college
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Ronnie Caruthers: to the best school your kids can get into with the most amount of grants and scholarships, free money.
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Ronnie Caruthers: not loans, although the sometimes part of the equation, no matter how much money you make, how good of a student you have, or what you've already saved for college. That's really the formula. That kind of goes along with. That is what we're going to be talking about, and I got slides. I can share Mark. I can just chat through it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: whatever you guys want, Man, i'm a man of the but let's
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Mark Perlberg: what I would like you to do. Go through the slides, and i'm gonna chime in here and there, and talk about how this kind of fits into what some of our clients are doing. Most of our clients are real seeing investors. The people that we have. We got a lot of folks?
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Ronnie Caruthers: Well, some of the folks are not my clients, but a lot of people that we get our people with W. Two's in real estate investments, or
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And then just so, you guys know. this is a presentation that I give live.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and it's a little easier to do live than online. So i'm gonna skip some screens that just aren't necessarily relevant to you guys. So keep this thing moving right along.
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Ronnie Caruthers: We jokingly. Call this one. We get this to work how to get money for college without going broke selling kidneys, any of those sorts of things, and then I i'll tell you guys, what this is right. Now.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I'm going to give you guys a framework for how the system works.
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Ronnie Caruthers: What I can't give you is how it works for you, and when you're done, just reach out to mark. So you guys should already have his contact information. And just to be clear with the Oprah. We are talking about free stuff, not loans, although again they are part of the equation.
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Ronnie Caruthers: And if you guys are clients of Mark, I'll sit here for a moment and let you guys just screenshot this. And, by the way, you guys can take pictures of anything.
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Ronnie Caruthers: you know. Just make sure if you post it like Don't, get me looking weird, you know, with one I like that. Come on, be cool, but but feel free to take pictures of any of this.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and here's the reality. Just if you guys are like we didn't really save that much for college. This is a Cnbc number from a few years ago that the average family has enough, save for one of their kids, to go for half of a year
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Ronnie Caruthers: and the dead clock. Have you ever shown these guys the debt clock before, Mark?
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Ronnie Caruthers: I know I haven't this is cool. So if you go, if you go to us debt clock.org it tracks the national debt. By the way, this is from like 3 years ago the national debt was 20,000. I mean 20 trillion. It's 31 trillion now, but
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Ronnie Caruthers: they track on there. They took it away for a while, and then they brought it back college dead as well as credit, card debt and mortgage debt, and at the time again back, when the debt was
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Ronnie Caruthers: to a third less student, one was about 1.6 trillion with a T. And credit card debt was only a only quote on quarter trillion.
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Ronnie Caruthers: And just to give you guys some perspective of that, because Congress throws around numbers, you know, and throws this stuff around like it's water.
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Ronnie Caruthers: If you spent a dollar a second.
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Ronnie Caruthers: you know, like 1 2 3 4 24 7 in a day
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Ronnie Caruthers: you would spend $86,400. That's how many seconds there are in a day
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Ronnie Caruthers: in a year you would spend 31 million dollars.
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I'll give you guys a second to see if you can guess you're welcome to post in the chat.
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Ronnie Caruthers: How far back would you have to go before you spent one trillion dollars. Not 31, not 1.6, just one.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You guys want to take a guess on that
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Ronnie Caruthers: it's 29,000 years before Christ.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So I got one person playing along, Michael. That's a really common answers like, yeah, like I don't know a couple of 100 years.
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Ronnie Caruthers: That's why, when they throw this math around it, does that mean anything to us? And yet it's it's kind of a big deal
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senior citizens, or a bunch of money. Others
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Ronnie Caruthers: pardon
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Mark Perlberg: they they're the worst. Now, this is me going a little off topic here, but we're probably going to do a separate discussion on financial planning of children for their baby boomer parents who didn't save up for their retirement, because that is a huge issue that not a lot of people are talking about, and there are going to be some funny solutions and life insurance products where we can actually still take advantage of some strategy here to support our parents
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Ronnie Caruthers: as they reach retirement. But sorry. Let's continue. No, please inter interrupt. So what we're gonna talk about is basically one thing it's a formula it's 5 steps and a half to the formula.
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actually 5 steps and 2 ha!
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Ronnie Caruthers: And
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Ronnie Caruthers: i'm gonna blast through this in like 45 min only out of respect for Mar being a New Yorker. And this is hard to d0 0nline than it is, you know, in a thing. But basically what we're going to show you is, how do you get that great education, top school, and pay less than what your neighbors did, which means you can blow the money. You can be thrifty and save it for retirement. And then just so, you know that's the baby giant that's my middle kid. That's his little sister right there he grabbed.
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I graduated Northeastern in 2,018, totally got free.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and he's at ut law right now in his second semester of his first year basically debt free. They're paying for almost everything now, the for, by the way, the formulas are different between
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Ronnie Caruthers: undergraduate and graduate, we're going to focus on undergraduate. But there is a different formula for graduate school. My oldest went to human Usc. For basically just the cost of room and board. That's her husband. That's her actual award there and then the baby got just graduated, Berkeley
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Ronnie Caruthers: and the little asterisk there. She went for the cost of the food, because she's a vegan, and somehow that cost more than the other kids did.
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I can't figure that out. So we're gonna g0 0ver this formula. I already told you guys who I was.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I've been. They do a bunch of new stuff they always put me with the skinniest person they can find which always makes me mad. Alright here's what we're going to be covering.
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Ronnie Caruthers: We're going to focus 100 0n college. We're not going to be talking about life, and we're not going to be talking about anything. We're not going to be talking about generic financial planning except in the very abstract. And 1 point
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Ronnie Caruthers: what we are going to show you is, what steps should you be taking right now to pay the least for college? And the reason this is a big deal
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Ronnie Caruthers: is number one, despite what the Biden Administration tried to do last year with forgiving some of the student loan that
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Ronnie Caruthers: I think that's dead in the water. The Supreme court is going to decide it. So it doesn't really matter what I think.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But at the end of the day a lot of the planning that people are taught doesn't help the situation. The loans get really expensive, although there are different formulas for paying them back. That can be advantageous.
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529 can often hurt you more than they help you.
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Ronnie Caruthers: And so what we're gonna try to walk you through is, how do you actually do this? So it benefits your kid, and we don't need this. This is what we need, and these are the 5 steps, and i'll cover the 2 half steps before we finish.
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Ronnie Caruthers: We are going to be discussing what the financial aid is that you need to know, and where you find it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: We're going to talk about the 3 questions that you have to get answered from every school.
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Ronnie Caruthers: We are going to show you the one financial planning step that you need to take in the middle of all this. then we'll talk about filing the forms, which is where most people start, and we will define what does it mean to follow them accurately. What does it mean to follow them on time? And then we'll talk about how to negotiate with schools when it's appropriate, and we just have someone do it against advice
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Ronnie Caruthers: in appropriately, and it costs them money
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Ronnie Caruthers: so. And by the way, i'll give you one last thing. Step number one takes all the time for me to explain. So if we're sitting here and you're like, oh, my God! He's been going on for like ever on this! Are we ever going to get out of here? 100 you are.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but this one takes a little longer. So here's what you need to know. Congress made these roles.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Now, if you guys are red or blue, or kind of hate everybody.
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Ronnie Caruthers: we we can all agree like Congress is fairly dysfunctional. So they created this this guide. It's 847 pages long, which, of course, if you say it with cpa, they laugh they're like.
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Ronnie Caruthers: get out of here. That's like the Intro to the tax code, which is, you know, a 100 times that wall.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But it's still confusing with with or choose. And here fors, and you know if subsection B applies, go to subsection. D. If it doesn't go to subsection, You just like all kinds of crazy stop.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But what they've come up with is a formula
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Ronnie Caruthers: that they use to determine what you can afford as a parent. And if you print that formula out actually need to update this, it's now 30 pages long. They got rid of 6 pages.
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Ronnie Caruthers: It's not 30 pages of calculations, but it's 30 pages of stuff that doesn't always make a lot of sense like.
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Ronnie Caruthers: If you put money in the 529 we're going to come over here and count it against you. And we're going to reward the person that didn't put the money there and punish you because you did it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Does that make any sense? No. But if you understand this, then you can apply the formula to your situation and I liken it to tax planning.
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Ronnie Caruthers: If you sit down and you read a couple of articles on the Internet, and you're like great. I'm going to do these couple of things.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You can save yourself some money. You get a pro involved or do a bunch of research. You can save a lot of money, and i'll make it really clear that we're doing this Warren buffett's way. And what I mean is Warren Buffett famously said, I pay a lower tax rate then, my secretary.
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Ronnie Caruthers: you know. I think he said something like that. Just doesn't seem right, which No, Warren Buffett.
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Ronnie Caruthers: It goes and learns the code and has an army of Cpas. You don't need an army, but the point is, there's a legitimate way. N0 0ne is like he can't do that. He's doing something illegal. It's more like, hey? How can I be like him and do that?
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So when we get into this.
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Ronnie Caruthers: What we are looking for is
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Ronnie Caruthers: your expected family contribution. That's what the magic 3 letters stand for. And basically what happens is when you fill out this paperwork it it gets
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shot out in the cyberspace to each of the schools that you've applied to, and then they applied their formula to it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: where they take the Co. A, which is the full cost of attendance one year, tuition and fees, room and board, walking around money. all of that subtract your family contribution. And the difference, if there is one, is your need
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Ronnie Caruthers: Doesn't mean that's what you're getting. but it just means that's what the Federal Government is like, okay, this is what you can afford. So if you lay out a public school, for instance, and this is not to say anything about about public schools.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but a lot of us are like man. We can't afford a private school like those suckers are expensive. What happens is the public school. if you have any of of 20,000. They subtract that from there again, not just the tuition, but the total cost of attendance.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You have a need of $10,000, but a private school that's 70 0r 80,000 might feel like you have.
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Ronnie Caruthers: you know, the same $20,000. So now your need gets higher
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Ronnie Caruthers: again. That is not a guarantee that these guys are gonna help you with this any more than these guys are going to help you with this, but this is what they're doing internally.
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Ronnie Caruthers: S0 0f course, the first step is, what can we do to get this sucker as low as humanly possible, because it's going to apply across the board. If that's where that handbook comes in, and that's where sitting down with someone like Mark to chat about. It
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Ronnie Caruthers: is like, okay, here's what's going on, and then he can at least give you some guidance on that. And that's one that, like everybody's situation is different. But I will tell you I have real estate investors, client clients to, and in some cases we have portfolios upwards of 1015 20000000
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Ronnie Caruthers: that we were able to exempt from the formula, legally.
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Ronnie Caruthers: morally, ethically, so it didn't count against them.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So don't assume like, oh, I have too much money, or I have. You know this stuff, and Don't necessarily be shy about picking a school that is more expensive, because often
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Ronnie Caruthers: once you understand the formula and figure out how it applies to you. That private school won't necessarily cost you more doesn't mean it's better. It doesn't mean you shouldn't look at public schools. It just means we can remove a lot of the math differential out of it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Mr. Perlbert, Did you want to throw anything in?
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Mark Perlberg: No, I think that we're good right. Now, what what's interesting here is that this is like. It's just like how we can do certain things. We're incentivized to do certain things, to reduce our taxable income. If there's this whole other formula here that we're looking at
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Mark Perlberg: for to calculate the expected family contribution, and there are actions that you can take when you understand how the system works, just like how you understand the things that we're doing for our clients, how we understand how the internal revenue code works that can really set people up for success. So lots of very similar concepts, and some of them, you know, some of our planning is going to focus on aligning this with all sorts of other strategies for reducing taxes, and also potentially some entity structuring as separate
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Ronnie Caruthers: and in the State, planning and wealth building all coming together. It all comes together.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and if you spend less on college it's more money to spend on real estate again. Fast cars. You can do whatever you want to blow your cash on. So here's an example.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You know I live in Southern California. I'm 30 miles north of San Diego. We have.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but we have a client there.
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Ronnie Caruthers: All our kids are grown. In fact, she sent me a card recently. That's her.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Anyway. They owned a 2 million dollar home and remind you. This was a few years ago. Now everything's 2 million here. but they also had a 2 million dollar beach, front condo, and obviously they made more than 6 figures.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So all 3 0f her kids went to private universities.
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Ronnie Caruthers: They averaged $43,000 a year in free money. They were all top 100 ranked, no matter who ranked them.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So again, these weren't like Bob's School of Liberal arts it was well i'll show you.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Wesleyan was where one kid went. One of the other kids went to Boston University.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Yeah, Boston University. Her word letters like packed in storage.
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but she got about the same amount. So again
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Ronnie Caruthers: you met her. You'd be like, no way. Are you getting money? And she's like, yeah, actually, I am. And here it is. And, by the way, the younger kid.
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Ronnie Caruthers: he went to Washington University in St. Louis. He got 43 9,
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Ronnie Caruthers: so you may be like, yeah, there's no way a school is going to give me that kind of money, but the answer is, they actually can. And if you do the oh, Kyle, you know what I like to you. I'm one more town north. I'm in Carl's about some technically 3 towns, nor so I and I, if you know Carl's not at all. I used to live in La Costa with all this city people. Now I live in the village so like, walk to all the restaurants. You can see the ocean from my house, you know. So
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Ronnie Caruthers: technically, yeah, in in Sydney this. So a lot of each card is technically and sneeze, and then it's still mar some 3 towns up.
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anyway.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Glad to. I didn't know somebody knows where it's going to be, and calls that are. Here's the summary for one kit.
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Ronnie Caruthers: And most importantly, we avoided this payment. Now the payment isn't as bad as it may sound, which i'll explain to you. It's one of the half things of the 5.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But if we go back that was step number one. That's the part that takes me the longest to explain. 2 3 4 5 half half will take
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Ronnie Caruthers: super fast. But understand, the the most important thing that I can beat into your head is.
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Ronnie Caruthers: i'm upper middle class. I don't come from money, but I work for my money. I had things. My kids were able to go essentially for free. This lady, definitely upper middle class.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Her kids were able to essentially go for free, 3 0f them.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and we didn't do anything but what i'm showing you now, Obviously, there's some subtleties to it. But this is worth money to you to pay attention.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Okay, moving along to step number 2 know which schools have money. So there's 3 questions we want to ask about every school.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So you remember we had our formula. We got cost of attendance.
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Ronnie Caruthers: family contribution need, and then we subtract it down and we went. Okay, me. Now we got to find out what percentage of need do they mean how much of it is free money?
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Ronnie Caruthers: And for the average student, how long are they actually going to be going to college here? So here's the tale of 2 schools. I took the same 2 that we already saw. By the way, these are real numbers. I just rounded them
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Ronnie Caruthers: so the public school might meet. You have a need of 10,000, and they might be like right. We'll help you with half of that, so we'll help you with 5000 0f it. That's the answer to question Number one.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Now
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Ronnie Caruthers: who pays the 5,000 that they didn't help you with. The answer is, you
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Ronnie Caruthers: for the kid somebody pays them, or grandma
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Ronnie Caruthers: of the half they helped you with in this example. This is the answer to question Number 2, and here's number 3.
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Ronnie Caruthers: They help half and free money. So in a year we get 2,500 free, which is better than nothing. because a lot of parents that don't mess with any of this would have got nothing. But
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Ronnie Caruthers: you're still coming out with the majority of it out of pocket. Now we compare that to a private school
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Ronnie Caruthers: that
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Ronnie Caruthers: a lot of them need. A 100 0f me now, does every public school meet this little? No, so me a lot more. Does every private school meet this much? No something that meet a lot less? It depends.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But there are schools that will need (808) 590-9298% in free money.
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Ronnie Caruthers: And a lot of those schools will get all but guarantee that your kid graduates in 4 years. So what the end result is is, the school gives the way 46 0f the 50 the parent out of pocket piece about 2,300, and I mean 23,000. If you're like Ron.
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Ronnie Caruthers: that's impossible. They like. Wait. I just showed you a lady, 2 0f her kids where she was getting about that much money.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and you're like Well, no way would the private school be cheaper than the public school, and it isn't always.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but it is often enough, or even when it's not less, it's close enough that you don't necessarily want to rule out the private scrolls.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Does that make sense to you guys? You just not, or type? Yes. So again, we can broaden the search to include private schools. Once we figured out what your family contribution is. Then we can go research to make sure how much schools have money. Now i'll tell you something that happened this week.
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Ronnie Caruthers: one somebody that I, trained in business was one of her to you know, to do this. One of her students was getting like 48,000 a year from Northeastern.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but 71,000 a year from Cornell. Now
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Ronnie Caruthers: they turned around, and the Kid wants to get in Northeastern. My kid went to Northeastern, but if he'd have gotten into Cornell or got more money. His house would have been going to Cornell, and so we're like again. I could have told him that upfront based on research. Right here. I think
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Ronnie Caruthers: my my my person actually told them that they just didn't listen because they want their kid to row, and what I would be trying to explain them is, you're paying 25,000 a year essentially to row. I'll give you 5 to not row, and you go to court now.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So that's why we researched this right on the front end.
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moving right along
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Ronnie Caruthers: by the way, this just does the math. It's like. By the way, if you figure 6 years at a higher amount versus 4 years of the lower amount, the difference can be very disparate, and for a lot of you all that are real estate investors kind of middle class up for middle class. This is the rule, not the exception of the world. I.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Hundreds of clients that it's worked out this way for
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Ronnie Caruthers: that never would have thought to even apply how they not known what we taught them.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So yeah, I can work out. Here's your first 2 steps
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Ronnie Caruthers: Now the third step is is kind of like for a lot of people. It's a reality check because they really don't know where they are for retirement. They really don't know they didn't save for college. So I Won't bore you guys with this, but there's a very important phrase that i'll give you.
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Ronnie Caruthers: which is, you want to make sure that you fund
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Ronnie Caruthers: with cash your future.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and if money is tied to that first. then finance their education so get will get as much a as can. But there's always going to be a gap left over, and if we need to finance it. It's not as that, as you might think, because
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Ronnie Caruthers: the formula is very favorable to you Where you're allowed, you can make good money.
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Ronnie Caruthers: borrow a lot, and then make a very small payment for a certain number of years, and the government forgives the rest. It's another way of helping pay for college.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and, unlike kind of what Biden did last summer where they were like up. We're just gonna forgive this 10 0r 20,000. This has been passed by Congress. It's been around a while. Most people don't even know there's one formula let alone 7.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So you always want to take care of your retirement stuff. First, because n0 0ne's going to lend you money for that.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Take care of your investments, your wealth, strategies, your trust, and then finance the education, and and like, I said, we mark. If you want, we'll do a whole other class just on all the different ways that you can legally minimize what you pay on these loans, and then eventually have them just canceled out
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Ronnie Caruthers: again. We we recommend that you go the borrowing strategy for the difference rather than burning income or assets unless they're 5 29, which you may, you know, depending on your situation. May not even want to keep, even if you have a tax hit, but don't do that on your own. Get some advice on that.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and I just. This was an example of where we cash for some money and got some tax savings ended up saving the family about a 100 grand.
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Ronnie Caruthers: just an interest in fees and taxes, and then we're like, hey? They were able to put that aside, and it'd be very low interest rate. It would have grown t0 300000 because they were fairly young family.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So a lot of people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to skip that. Now, this is a really important part of the stuff. Okay. Step Number 4. I told you that steps 2 3, and 4 go fast.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You want to fill your paperwork out accurately and on time. So let's define those
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Ronnie Caruthers: First of all accurately means that we're not lying to them. Okay, these are Federal formulas. The penalties can be severe for straight up line.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but the government gives us goofy definitions. So if we plan ahead the way Warren Buffett would do
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Ronnie Caruthers: to exempt real estate, exempt business, cash, exempt, personal cash, exempt certain things lower income. Then we end up with a much lower efc. But we're playing within the rules. We're not trying to cheat the system like Felicity Huffman and Lori Waffling did which is why I put their pictures up there.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So that's what it means. We're not lying. We're just planning ahead so that our burden is the least amount possible, and we give the colleges an excuse to give us the most amount of money. And this is a huge area that parents don't strategize for.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But then, when they actually sit down to fill up the forums, not only do they not strategize, they screw up the paperwork
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Ronnie Caruthers: which the main one is called the Fafsa, the free application for Federal student aid 4 t0 5 0f those go in with major errors on them. The second one is the Css profile that some of the private schools want.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and that has even more room for error. The 3 biggest mistakes Whoops! We'll go right back. There are, if you roll money over.
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Ronnie Caruthers: If you're not careful they'll count that as income. If you were in a divorced or were never married situation which happens.
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Ronnie Caruthers: there's specific rules on who you count in, who you don't count often that can be used to your favor, and by far the biggest one is, People write stuff down that they weren't supposed to include.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So their assets get all screwed up. They list home. Equity, retirement accounts none of those count for the
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Ronnie Caruthers: So just be really really careful there. And, by the way, if any of you are listening to this. and you're like, I think I made a mistake. You can go in and download the paperwork. Get it over to Mark. He'll review it for you.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Get it to me. If Mark's busy i'll review it for you, and then, if you made a mistake, it's super easy to go in. It effects. The problem is, if you never check it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: then it becomes a big deal. Are you guys learning stuff? Because enjoying this?
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If you have questions, please drop them in.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You know i'm going through. I'm shotgunning through this. But if you guys have questions or want me to back up on some more than happy to do it. Oh.
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Ronnie Caruthers: then we'll chat about. What does. Okay, Michael still is loving it, Kid. I'm glad to hear it, Michael. I'm mark note that he like he loved it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So you're gonna the answer that i'm going to give you is different than what you guys think, because what you all think I'm going to say as soon as possible, and that is absolutely not true.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So Here is your answer. By the way, scratch that
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Ronnie Caruthers: totally
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Ronnie Caruthers: no later than the end of January of the year that your student goes to college. So if you guys have juniors right now. You'd be filing it next to January at the latest. If you have seniors, you're late.
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Ronnie Caruthers: or
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Ronnie Caruthers: the next time is
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Ronnie Caruthers: whenever the school tells you it's, too. So some schools have earlier deadlines. What you don't want to do is file it on October first, when the form goes live. And let me tell you why
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Ronnie Caruthers: the Obama Administration, back in the early 2,010 got frustrated actually, because not enough People were taking student loans. Not enough people were getting hell grants, and the Government, when you pay interest on those student debts. Granted, they can forgive them.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but they will also turn around and they will. They're the ones collecting the interest on it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So they came in and solved a problem, a real problem, but also a fake problem at the same time. So what they did is they went well. The reason we think more people are filling these out. It never occurred to the form sucks. It's a really hard form to do. They're like, oh, people don't have their taxes done yet, so we use the year before this information while we're at it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: We'll let everybody we'll open up the form 3 months earlier, so they can follow in on that. So first.
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Ronnie Caruthers: the problem is, it's the Federal government, and they don't like to allocate money to the Department of Education, and they certainly don't like to allocate it to the computer programmers. So what they do is
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Ronnie Caruthers: they push the system, live every October first with minimal data testing, and it changes every year.
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So what they do instead is watch it break in real time.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and then try to go in and fix it so to us, unless we have a student. That's an athlete or an early decision, or something where it has to be done. In October we consider October amateur month. We're going to sit that whole thing out.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and then we start filling out our clients farm forms on November. So there's actually an advantage, because you can submit information in October. It can track wrong, because the system's broken, and you have no idea unless you're like. Wait! I knew my he was supposed to be
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Ronnie Caruthers: 10,000, and it's 30. What happened? Oh, the system rerouted your data into the wrong column. So be really careful on that.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Again. We want to lower the Efc. Pick schools that have money. Have a plan to pay your share, turnaround and
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fill the forms accurately and on time. And then, lastly.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Oh, here's a simple, this guy wasn't even the winner. Here's a case study. They're making quarter of a 1 million. This was the great kind of I don't know what we called it back in 2,008, so like the great recession, and I don't know.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but they made a mistake and counted home equity and retirement plans and a business they hadn't even started yet. So they told the school
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Ronnie Caruthers: they had 800,000 more, and remember, this was back in 2,008. That was worth a little bit more than it is now, but as soon as we fix the paperwork they got money immediately, and then they got more money the following year.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So it worked out. So again. Even some of you guys that might have kids in school. You could pay attention to this and take a look at that. So hold up. Just so we're talking about 12,000 a year in savings. Correct?
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Ronnie Caruthers: Yeah, and they were to. I don't mean to minimize it. They were going to San Diego state. So San Diego State worked for 2 15 years ago wasn't super expensive, that covered
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Ronnie Caruthers: about all of the tuition and about two-thirds of the kids living expenses, and I mean Dude straight up, cried in my office.
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Mark Perlberg: He was like $2,000 of savings. Yeah.
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Ronnie Caruthers: yeah, I mean he he was just like.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Oh, my God! Do you like? I want to hug it. I'm like, please don't like, really we're we're good. You can just tell me, and he's like he's choked up because he's like I was ready to pull my kid home. I'm like No, no, no, no, no! I like dude. You made it honest, like easy mistake to make, because people were socks.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and i'm like, let's fix it right here.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Change that change that go home and tell me what happens. I don't think my computer was working that day or something, so we couldn't log in and do it for me to call them the next things like they gave me like I called them up, fix the paperwork, told them what happened. They give me that 5,800 right on the spot.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Bo, right here, and then our State has a grant to pay for tuition. He'd miss the cut off for it.
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It was totally on him before we'd ever met, but we were able to get it for the kid for the following year.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So again, like this stuff's real. So I've tried to like, I said, kind of beat you guys up with these examples.
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Ronnie Caruthers: because I know it's easy to be like right, Whatever we make too much money, it's not going to work for us.
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We.
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Ronnie Caruthers: a buddy of mine, died a few years ago. He left his wife a bunch of life insurance. Actually, i'm doing a case like this right now with another widow, and they have 2 girls at Stanford. We got 50 something 1,000 a year. She has
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Ronnie Caruthers: a really nice house, a cond0 0n the beach.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Not it wasn't the first lady that I showed you and her and her husband took his life a couple of years ago.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Well, there's a plenty of assets, but we were able to work with the school to not count those legally again. Warren buffett way, and so whether it's my buddy's wife right here, this new lady that i'm helping this guy's kids didn't go to Stanford. They went to the Local State School and another State school.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and but her kids are going to Stanford.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and we're getting a 100,000 a year. She's got twins. We're getting for them again. All of a boards so different circumstances calls for different applications in the world, same with taxes.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But the point is that it can be done.
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Mark Perlberg: Oh, i'm going to just chime in
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Mark Perlberg: Yeah. And in some strategies here where you know, we may, you know, especially as we start looking at unique entity structures, and maybe some trust for some of our clients. This is just another example where we can we can take. We don't have to report assets on the fast on
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Mark Perlberg: on the fas, but and we can. Sorry, Fafsa, I've seen fas, but with the counting, but the fafsa
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Ronnie Caruthers: 100, which, by the way, Mark goes to Dave's question about what man I got these little kids, Dave. Good for you for being early. By the way, most of my people come to my classes. They really can. My kids a senior. I have a lot of time to work on this right like No.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I would. The last place that I would put money is the 529,
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Ronnie Caruthers: and again I know it's like
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Ronnie Caruthers: Yes, Congress says if you don't use it, you can turn around and use it, for you can make a Roth I a out of it. But if you read the rules, it has to be there so many years you can only convert a portion of your typical Congress, hey? Rather than be like
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Ronnie Caruthers: everybody can switch it. They're like Well, we don't want people putting money that can't contribute t0 529 I mean to Roth diaries putting the money in here. So we're going to put all these stupid rules with it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I would look at trust strategies. I would look at Roth Ires for your kids
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Ronnie Caruthers: because they don't count against you in the formula, and they can withdraw the principle and then leave the interest behind. I would look at. This is going to sound weird, but Mark already said it, it's not my fault playing him
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Ronnie Caruthers: if you set it up properly. Cash value life insurance. Don't hang up watch, Steve, to make sure it doesn't hang up.
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They let it out
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Ronnie Caruthers: it it. There are some advantages, and as they talks professional myself. When that concept was introduced to me, I thought the guys who introduced it to me for 3 years i'm like no, it's scam. Everybody knows it's scam after 3 years. I'm like you guys are right. I'm wrong. I have to alter my practice.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Trust strategies are great, so there are it'd be more of an individual question, Dave, for Mark. But just know that there's strategies that are better available. What should we do? Also
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Mark Perlberg: we'll talk at the end about the procedures to to further evaluate, and in how we can.
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And and if you know the area I live like, I said, right off 78, and 5, but on the crawls outside of my office is the 5 freeways right there in Palmer Airport Road is right there. I'm like just west of this to the oceans right there.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Kyle, if you have fairly sizable 5 29, I actually have a ninja trick for those
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Ronnie Caruthers: that I have not taught marked yet. So you work out a time to get with Mark. I'll work out of time to get Mark what to do. We tested it on a buddy of mine 2 years ago, and i'm like holy shit at work.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Oh, hey, man, I need to know what's fairly sizable. I don't know. I'm animal that you guys can compare that later.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I don't know, man, you'll have to dave You'll have to ask. I think you could private message, Kyle, if he wants to know, he can tell you, but it's all man. I'm. I'm out of that conversation. I just closing the chats down. But you guys have like clients competing on the sizes of their 4 2520,
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Ronnie Caruthers: 5 29. This could be intense
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Ronnie Caruthers: title list
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Ronnie Caruthers: Calaway Wang, or Ping Ashworth. All those guys right here, so I have a ton of their golf executives as clients.
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Ronnie Caruthers: which is hilarious because i'm in finance
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Ronnie Caruthers: tax, and I don't play golf.
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Ronnie Caruthers: so they're always coming at me like, hey, man, you want a discount on clubs, and i'm like oh, no, i'm good.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But so all these guys get paid like 150 t0 200000. It just depends on their commissions. So this guy had, you know, big Agi stocks over a 100, a rental property that had equity with making money. Gonzaga gave him 18,000. You can see the free money right here, but check this out.
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They gave his other Kid
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Ronnie Caruthers: and Usc. More than they gave my shit. which made me all 7 kinds of that. They give her 40,000 and gift aid, and there's the Usc. Thing right there. So again, this is real
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Ronnie Caruthers: Don't. Dismiss this. There's a whole bunch of special circumstances that you should just chat with Mark about.
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Ronnie Caruthers: including your very sizable manly 5 29, Kyle, and then the last step here, and they're absolutely bigger than dave's 5 29. But his kids are smaller. So anyway. Last thing here. Well, before the 2 half things is you can appeal an award.
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Ronnie Caruthers: so remember it's a formula, right a process. We got our Efc. As well as possible. We did our research, so we knew what they were supposed to give us, we of the forms out, but they were based on 2 years back.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So now, if the school just straight up stiffs you you could ask like, hey? You know, before we even applied we we did some research, and this isn't what the research showed us.
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Ronnie Caruthers: They make mistakes
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Ronnie Caruthers: sometimes. I mean, the truth may be brutal sometimes.
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Ronnie Caruthers: or another school gives more, so you can appeal on Cornell's award letter. They were like.
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Ronnie Caruthers: If you get a higher award from an Ivy League school. please let us know they're giving them 73000 71000something like that They're like. Let us know we'll change that, and we'll see what we can do and see if we can understand their formula and match it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Or if you had a change in circumstances, you know, business gets messy, particularly for people in real estate, right? You guys know, that can get ugly fast. Sometimes.
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Loss of a job. You get married, you get divorced.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You get a one-time spike in income, you, you know, got an inheritance with a lawyer once when some massive, you know personal injury case his kids, what was it? Not today? And what was it? A fancy private school out here, and we just explained to him like, Look, this is a one time, Spike.
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Ronnie Caruthers: you know. My client worked on this case for years, had tons of expenses. So yeah, he's got the spike to his income, but it has to pay back a lot of the debt that he racked up that doesn't really show on the return, and both schools left his reward alone.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So you can negotiate that.
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Ronnie Caruthers: And that lady right from the start, had a great year where her income went up a couple few 100,000 from real estate.
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Ronnie Caruthers: We just documented. So the school like. Look this this for early part of the year. We're like dying here. Yeah, we had a great year.
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Ronnie Caruthers: both schools.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Wesleyan and Washington University in St. Louis. We're like we get it.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I think it was laying to like a 1,000 bucks away. They're like locally. We have to take something away, but we get it. you know we'll give you all the money for you
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Ronnie Caruthers: 2,000 instead of 43, and wash universities like we don't even care don't bother, you know, we get what happened.
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Ronnie Caruthers: so just know that it can be done
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Ronnie Caruthers: so anyway. Duke
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Ronnie Caruthers: Duke has this weird fetish with property, so he, if you've got property, they think well, you can afford the whole thing.
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So we had a guy who was a doctor.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and his wife was a teacher at my kids high school, and he on the building that his practice was in, but it was leveraged out, you know he didn't have any equity in it. He just inherited his mom's house. It was in Laguna, but like in a bad part of Laguna like the inland. And it was this dumpy community, you know, not like his mom, lived in the slum or anything. But there was just an old community that the values didn't stay high.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and then he at the house he lived in. So they were like, No, you have all this real estate. We went back and documented what each piece was actually worth check. This out
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Ronnie Caruthers: they went from giving the kids 6,000 a year
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Ronnie Caruthers: t0 26000 a year. Now they give them a 100 bucks. So technically it was a $19,900 a year increase for us.
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Ronnie Caruthers: and explaining and properly documenting what solved.
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So that's really kind of.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You know what I wanted to talk to you guys about. Now this is the half step and mark your guys, this is going to apply to a lot of your clients. where, if they're showing more than $180,000 of income. Some of the credits that they might get
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Ronnie Caruthers: are taken away from them. There is a workaround that's legit
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Ronnie Caruthers: that you can use to write off college, so it saves the average parent about 10 0r $12,000 a year. That's the 5, fifth and a half step.
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Ronnie Caruthers: the fifth and 3 quarter step, which is the other half step. But we'll call it a quarter step
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is.
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Ronnie Caruthers: if you're well above that, you know, above 180.
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Ronnie Caruthers: The other thing to keep in mind is your need based. State begins to go down, but your Meredith goes up. If your kids take the board scores.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So we've kind of gone through this revolution where for the last years everyone's like the sat and act, you know, are not going to take for whatever reason they're discriminatory. The racist they're able is because, you know they suit here in California to have them excluded
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during the pandemic, because someone with a health condition can go, which is kind of funny because they kept canceling, and so really nobody could go get up.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But this is an area, particularly Dave. You got younger kids like when they're in the end of middle school, beginning a high school Start
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Ronnie Caruthers: having your kids prep 15 min a day, 3 0r 4 days a week. because it is a test that can be taught the skills as well as the taking of the test.
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Ronnie Caruthers: And we have clients that make 456-80-0000 at 1.2 a year, where we're saving about 12 t0 15000 a year in on their toxes. By the way, we pay for college, and then we're getting another 10 t0 20 in free money from merit Aid!
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Ronnie Caruthers: Will you have that up? That's net money? So a guy, making 1.2 0r 800 0r 500,000. If you live in a high tax state, like I to you, get to make double what you want to give the college, because the tax guys are going to eat it. So you get, you know, $15,000 a year in tax savings, and another 20 and free merit money
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Ronnie Caruthers: that's like having to go work and make another 60 0r 70 to pay for this.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So those are kind of your 2 bonus stops. Pardon. Okay, let me show you. This is kind of your recap
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Ronnie Caruthers: right here.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Just what we covered. Oh, last one new at the business is, be prepared for them to just make you document stuff. If you're getting the need based date, not merit.
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Ronnie Caruthers: not the tax stuff. But if they are giving you the base state. They may want to document. They call it an audit, but it's not like a real lot. It's like, Fill out this form. Give us a tax form. We're all good.
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Ronnie Caruthers: This is the reason that I would tell you to talk to Mark
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Ronnie Caruthers: if you go into the Google and I did this 3 years ago. But it makes the point. You just Google how to pay for call.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You get 3.4 billionresults in half a second. Now, if I did it now, it'd probably be more like 10,000,000,015I don't know.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So if you turn around and do that you the differences we live in an information age you can find information endlessly.
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Ronnie Caruthers: What is unique is insight, because the question is of these 3.4 billionpages. What are the 3 0r 4 5 that tell you what you need to be doing in your situation? And that's where we can shave a lot of that time off for you
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Ronnie Caruthers: by you, just sitting down and explaining your situation, and then us expanding on the workshop, You know Dave or Kyle, or anybody else that's looking at this, and be like right
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Ronnie Caruthers: these sizable 529
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Ronnie Caruthers: they they're in your situation. You're one of the few they won't count against you. Leave them alone or no, they are gonna hurt you, Kyle. Let's do this here's option number one. Here's option number 2. Here's option Number 3, Dave.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You got these 2 2 little kids right, and they're still cute at 3 and 5 years old, less cute when they're 14 and 15, and then they're great again when they're adults, by the way.
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Ronnie Caruthers: But hey, let's not keep bouncing money into these 529, for all of these reasons, let's do this or this and that. So the insight to know what applies to your situation
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Ronnie Caruthers: is really invaluable. So, Kyle, for every client that I have move of 529. I have another one to leave it alone, you know, but occasionally we'll take a tax hit.
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Ronnie Caruthers: because I genuinely believe we will get substantially more dollars by doing that, and I have yet to be wrong on that. So again, and i'll just claim all the while. Zoom i'll be like with, and I can't guarantee you anything. But let me show you what these schools normally do, and let me show you why this piece is in the way. So yeah, we give a couple of grant to the irs that we wouldn't have to. But we get 15 grand or 12 grand or 9 grand a year over here that's tax free. We come out way ahead.
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Ronnie Caruthers: That's the difference, and that's what you want to reach out to mark on this. I'll let you lay down the house rules market a second. But this correct me all. So this guy's chat. It's actually kind of sad. So you guys can look this up His name's Chat Albright. Have you ever seen this before? Mark?
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Ronnie Caruthers: Yeah, I remember you talking about it. Actually. Yeah, we can chat all. But if Chad didn't make bad decisions, Chad would make new decisions, because Chad for the country back in 2,019. Actually, I think you've gone a couple of years earlier.
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Ronnie Caruthers: You guys ready for this. I swear to God to look this up. It's in there. He fled the country and went to China
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Ronnie Caruthers: to avoid a student debt. Remember early 2020. What happened in China then? He left China. You can't even make this all.
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Ronnie Caruthers: He went to Ukraine he was free to avoid paying on a student loans.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So first of all, chat doesn't even know that much channels like less than a you know, Junky car practically now. He probably owes more because he hasn't been paid for a long time. The original debt wasn't that much
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Ronnie Caruthers: don't do this. Don't put your kids in this situation, you know. Just reach out to mark.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Message them in the portal.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Pop them in email if you stump him. I know. The answer
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Ronnie Caruthers: can't stop me, although actually the clients told me yesterday with some. But it was kind of technical, so i'm still working on the answer for them. but definitely like, reach out, and if your kids are in college great.
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Ronnie Caruthers: bring what you did. Show them what you did. We'll see if you did it right. The odds are you didn't? And that's great, because we can fix it and get you more money hopefully. If you've got a kid that's in high school. You're kind of in the Red Zone. You want to get started right away. And for guys like you, Dave, where you got the little kids come in. I do a quick console. If you're already working with them on some other stuff. Great keep at it, and then we'll make sure you're not putting money in a place that that could potentially penalize you later.
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Is there in Col? You're very welcome. By the way.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Mark, is there anything else you wanted to share tonight. Yeah, absolutely. So
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Mark Perlberg: there's also.
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Ronnie Caruthers: you know, when you dive deeper into this, because we don't have enough time to go into all the different in the All the different
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Mark Perlberg: I got you. Thanks. You know. There's all these actions that you can perform. For instance, if both the kids are going to school. At the same time it reduces your ef seeing it gets you to qualify for Maureen a when you evaluate when there's multiple parents that could.
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Mark Perlberg: And so you have custody. You can create some opportunities. There's so many ways just like with our tax planning. There's so many ways we we can look at this t0 0ptimize the situation for the children. And you know, in addition to that, you know one of the wonderful strategies we talked about earlier. H. The kids give the kids the Roth. How about this? You put your kid in the business, and you make them do something that they're actually going to build upon their greatest strengths.
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Mark Perlberg: So you, you capital, If they're great at photography, you have them, do photographs of your portfolios, and you can word this in a way, in your college essay, so maybe, and get them some some more favorable conditions in the college applications.
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Mark Perlberg: So there's this. There's a lot to this here. And when we, when we started considering these strategies and and where we're taking the firm, we decided that instead of mass producing tax planes and talking about cost irrigation until our head spell off.
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Mark Perlberg: We decided to expand and incorporate all these opportunities because our clients can really use this stuff.
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Mark Perlberg: And here's a way that we can really provide so much valuable valuable insight to so many of our clients in a way that other people can't and align this with your tax strategy, asset protection, strategy, and potentially your State playing. So it's just such a wonderful opportunity. I'm: I'm really grateful for you, Ron.
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Mark Perlberg: Tons and tons of business. So we I had the bandwidth to build out this side of our consulting.
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Mark Perlberg: and as far as next steps. As Ron said, we're gonna prioritize our clients. And it's gonna be basically a person first out for our current clients and the longest lasting clients. We're also helping out some of our internal staff on these strategies. And then, if you are approaching us just for the strategies, we're gonna have an intake form as well. In the first step you just message me. Fill out that intake form for us as soon as you can, so we can evaluate everything and get back to you and start
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Mark Perlberg: for start putting together a plan
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Ronnie Caruthers: 100%. What? He said. And again I tried to just hammer you guys with example after example. So because I teach these live, and I can see people coming in like, yeah, this is, you know, like this doesn't apply to me. I make too much money, or I own too much real estate, and the truth is, no, the people the mess here your situation is.
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Ronnie Caruthers: you know, the the more complicated the better we can do so.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I say you reach out to the man as far as it depends on me. That's what I do. But, anyway, is there anything? Do we have any other questions here.
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Ronnie Caruthers: I don't see any. So so mark if i'm Good. I'm gonna. Oh, Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Kyle Power sliding in on 2 wheels at the last second.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So it really gi. Benefits are great, and again, it's probably a little better of a one on one conversation depending on what gi benefits you have. So i'd be like Kyle. Just reach out.
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Ronnie Caruthers: but they can. So we get in California. We get less. G. I those we get more Calvets, which is a disability benefit like you can get dis discharged from military with a 0% disability. And that counts. You like. Say, you worked on an aircraft carrier, and
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Ronnie Caruthers: they thought it might impact your future hearing because you were exposed to high decibels over a long period of time, and
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Ronnie Caruthers: anyway. we so you can. We can often use those benefits and then get other benefits to wrap around them if they're not covering the whole thing. So that's where it's really worth having a strategy, and depending on how old your kids are looking at, which schools get what and how all that work.
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Ronnie Caruthers: So I would be like again. I'm sorry to give you the politicians like I can't really answer, but it really is like
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Ronnie Caruthers: in the tax world, I mean. Mark how many times a day do you go when a client asks you a question You're like, it depends because you know. What can I do. This Well, it depends s0 0n this.
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Ronnie Caruthers: It's just worth reaching out, particularly because you have those very masculine.
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Ronnie Caruthers: 5 29, both. They work out. They lifted weights. They went to the gym. They play rocky music, anyway. I want to get up.
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Mark Perlberg: Mark. Yeah, Well, it's like, oh, you know what I do. By the way, I did that to a client today where I I was like she's like, i'm a day. And i'm like, yeah, okay, yeah, I can see that All right. Just give me a couple of times. I apologize for Miss Gender and your 5 29.
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Mark Perlberg: I yeah, and you know this is a good. I think this is a good stopping point as well. Thank you so much, Ron, for all the insight you've been providing me and my team to to learn more about this stuff in.
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Mark Perlberg: We, you guys know what to do. I'm sending the recording to anybody. We had about 30 people register. I'll send them the recordings, and also do what'll be on my Youtube site podcast in case you want to re-list some of these concepts, and really looking forward to sharing this with as many people as we can, so thank you again for your time.
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Ronnie Caruthers: Take care you guys have funny birthday party, Mark, and let me know when you want to do it again and chat about the other side of the equation, which is the student loans stuff. We will do that. They will do that after tax season, or some
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Mark Perlberg: that would be good. Take care of you guys.