EP 131 - The Biggest Tax & Wealth Lessons I Learned in 2025 - Most People Miss This

We share the biggest tax and business lessons of 2025 that create real value right now. From funding travel with points to dialing in W-2 withholding and designing charitable and estate plans, we map strategies to your goals and show how to execute them.

• turning payroll fees into non-taxable travel via points
• charitable structures that deliver immediate deductions and cut estate tax
• HRA workaround for real estate investors with high medical costs
• W-2 withholding adjustments to fund strategies mid-year
• solar credits that stack when business write-offs hit limits
• gift leaseback to shift income and trigger education credits
• launching nonprofits for impact, deductions, and Google Ad Grants
• setting expectations with teams and clients to ensure compliance
• choosing strategies based on what you want your cash to do
• exploiting low brackets with Roth conversions and timing income
• targeting credit and deduction sweet spots rather than chasing zero
• oil and gas options, risk tiers, and depletion benefits
• focus on one big move, then layer tactics
• adopt profit first and vacation first to protect time and outcomes

Go to https://prosperalcpa.com/opportunityreport for a personalized video on what may be possible with our tax strategies and how they align with your future
Go to our careers page if you or anyone you know is looking for a position in tax planning; we are aggressively recruiting talent

Chapters

• 0:00 Year-End Lessons And Mindset
• 2:50 Points, Payroll, And Tax-Free Travel
• 5:16 Estate Giving For Deductions And Shields
• 7:38 HRA Workarounds For Real Estate Investors
• 10:17 W-2 Withholding As Strategy Fuel
• 12:03 Solar Credits That Stack With W-2s
• 13:06 Gift Leaseback For College Kids
• 14:34 Nonprofits, Write-Offs, And Free Ads
• 16:14 Expectations As A Tax Strategy
• 18:02 Plan Starts With Cash Intent
• 20:35 Use Low Brackets And Roth Moves
• 22:16 Hitting Credit And Deduction Sweet Spots
• 23:55 When Paying Some Tax Is Optimal
• 25:04 Execution, Accountability, And Follow-Through
• 26:16 Oil And Gas Options And Depletion
• 28:08 Narrow Focus For Maximum Impact
• 30:31 One Big Move, Then Layer Tactics
• 32:00 Profit First And Vacation First
• 35:10 Final Takeaways And CTAs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

So, as we come to an end in 2025, we've learned some extraordinary things that are really going to create tremendous value for our clients and for myself personally as well. And one thing I love about what we do that is so fascinating is that when you're doing tax advisory and exploring all these concepts and investments and scenarios, there's endless things to learn. Just like if you were examining the solar system and outer space, there's just you never run out of things to learn. And what's really fun here is we've created a structure that allows us to continually add new procedures, new concepts, and strategies for our clients. So even if we've delivered some of those really significant strategies in year one, for instance, we've you know we've educated them on the short-term rental or whatever it is, there's no end to the relationship because we're always going to add a new layer as we learn new things, learn more about the client, and continue to further the relationship. So today we're gonna talk about what are some of the biggest things, what are the some of the key things that I have learned as an advisor in 2025? And what does this mean to you as a listener? Now, listen up because if you whether you're just starting off in tax planning or prep, or as a professional or as a client, as an investor, a high-income earner, or let's say you're you're a seasoned, knowledgeable person when it comes to the tax law, you're really gonna find this stuff value uh very valuable, and you'll I guarantee you'll learn something new that you can use with your finances. Alright, so let's get into it and talk about some of these things. First thing I want to talk to talk about, which I think is really cool here, is learning some advanced strategies when it comes to credit card points, travel and vacation. We'll talk a little bit about travel and vacation later on as well. But one thing that's really cool that I never knew existed as an opportunity. I always knew that you could use your points to create huge discounts on travel, and there's all these advantages in working the point systems, and you can exchange it for other points. And if you really work your magic, you can do some amazing things. But another idea that I think is really cool is you can use your credit card as an indirect way to write off your vacations for personal reasons. That may not sound like it makes sense, but hang in there with me. Imagine if I could find a way to make my travel, my vacation into Greece fully tax deductible, and I don't have to worry about manipulating the facts and saying, oh, this was a board of directors meeting and all that nonsense and try to lie my way through a deduction. Here's how it works. What you can do if you have payroll is you can run payroll indirectly through your credit cards. And their assistants will you do, they will do it. I'm working on a uh this Plastiq and Zill money or two of the resources. And what you can do is you can have your credit card cover your payroll costs indirectly. Now there are fees associated with this, it may be 2%, but if you know how the points work, you'll get more than whatever the fee is to pay your payroll out of your credit card. You'll get more than that as value towards your travel. And when you incur these fees, they are tax-deductible expenses. So imagine I incur$100,000, although it's probably not that much, but let's just say$100,000 of additional fees to run credit card to run payroll through my credit card indirectly. And then I use that$100,000 of fees turns into points, and that gives me$120,000 of value in the form of vacation. Well, I'm writing off those fees, so I'm getting a tax deduction, and then when I use the points to go on travel, those points are not taxable income. Anytime you get points, it's not taxable. So we don't even have to worry about making a tax-deductible event. In fact, we're not even spending our own money, we're using our points, so it wouldn't even give you a deduction. So that's a really cool thing to do. So listen to my podcast with Eli Facenda on that as well on credit card points. I thought that's a really cool idea. And even if you don't need the travel, and I'll be honest, I've kind of burnt myself out from travel for all the work travel. You can gift it to a key performing staff member, and then that's an untaxable benefit you're giving to that staff member, buy him a cruise with the points. Really awesome stuff there. Now let's talk about some other things that are really cool uh and new ideas that we are further exploring. One of them is gonna involve estate planning. So, you know, there are these lots of ways that we can create immediate tax deductions with our estate planning, and one of them will involve put pretty much saying that your your real estate or other assets are eventually gonna go to charity. You can get an immediate deduction, but at a certain point in time, that asset is gonna go to charity. And you can the really unique thing here is there are all different ways you could do it, but essentially you get a charitable deduction and you choose when the charity benefits from that asset. So one way would be you give all your profits from your asset to charity, but then it goes through a trust to your beneficiaries, or the reverse, where you get all the profit, you get to take part in all of the profitability of the asset, but at your date of death it goes to charity. These are ways where you can create immediate tax deductions, and then you're also shielding yourself from all these estate taxes in the future. So you're you're adding value, you're you're contributing to society, you're giving to a charity of your choice, and you are mitigating future estate taxes, which could be up to 40% of the assets. It could be really painful if you don't plan for this stuff. And in addition to that, you are planning for potentially enhancing the wealth of your family, all this at the same time. So there's some really exciting strategies that we're gonna be diving deeper into with our clients. And estate planning is one of those things that doesn't matter until it does. So uh if you guys have a net worth over five million in particular when it comes to your assets, because now we're at a point where you're starting to exceed the you're approaching that point where you'll exceed what you can exclude from your inheritance in the death tax, you really gotta start thinking about this stuff. Some of you guys, you know, our listeners have tens of millions in net worth and they don't know what's gonna happen with it. And not only is the taxation issue, but the probate can be a huge pain in the neck. So these are things we gotta start thinking about, and there's all sorts of really unique tax strategies that can align with it. Now, here's another neat thing that we're doing with our clients in the small segment. Um, we dive deeper into health care-related deductions and expenses and incentives. And one unique thing that isn't available to many types of companies, but is an HRA. And as an owner, you're not gonna see a ton of benefit unless you have a CAR corporation or if you have a sole proprietorship and you hire your spouse because this gives you a way to indirectly give these family health care benefits where you can turn your health care expenses into a into a business deduction. It's only gonna work through where you can turn your ordinary health care deductions into a business deduction if you pay yourself either indirectly through your spouse or through through a C Corp. Well, a lot of our higher income earners have S-corporations, and it doesn't really work very well for S-corps for your own personal medical expenses. And then if that's the case, then your medical expenses are as far as the deductibility, it's gonna be capped at a percentage of adjusted gross income. Most of you can't really see benefit in deducting your medical um expenses unless you have an HRA. But a really exciting workaround is with this health reimbursement arrangement. So again, the roadblock we face here is C Corps and Sole Props are the only ones that work, and most of you guys don't benefit from those. But if you invest in real estate and you are a Schedule E investor, and most of you are, you are actually a sole proprietorship. So for some of our clients that have significantly high amounts of health care expenses, we can create tax deductions against your real estate investments by hiring your spouse and offering your spouse a health reimbursement arrangement that reimburses your spouse for all their health care expenses of the family, including yourself. So it's a nice little workaround here that works well with real estate investors. I'm really excited to work to have this come into fruition for a handful of our real estate investor clients, especially if you have significant earnings. So we have uh significant medical expenses. So we do have one client who has significant medical expenses because he has a child with high needs, with uh special needs. Um, and then we have another client whose wife has high medical. So this is a really uh amazing opportunity where we've seen significant tax deductions that all that normally wouldn't even be able, you wouldn't normally be able to use them. Another thing here, and this may be one of the most this may be the single most powerful thing that we're doing since the end of 25 and going into 26 is adjusting the withholdings from W-2 paychecks. We also find we also we often find one of the biggest roadblocks for high W-2 earners is they don't have the liquidity to invest into their tax reduction strategies. Now, our entrepreneur clients they may not be making quarterly payments and they have a lot more liquidity. They get to decide what they do with their profits, so they'll have more cash to put into the things that will reduce their taxes. Now we get these W-2 folks to say, hey, this would be great. This would save me more than the cost to create it. If I had$100,000 to save me$140,000 in taxes, I would do it, but I don't have the cash. So I wish I just had the cash. Well, the way that we overcome this roadblock is by reducing the withholdings from their W-2 paychecks. So once we gain that relationship and establish an understanding of what's possible, now we start working on adjusting this withholding. So instead of the money going immediately to the government and you never see it again. So instead of giving$100,000 to the government, we reduce the withholdings, we adjust that amount from your W-2s, and now we have more cash to put into the things that'll ultimately reduce your taxes. And now we're not waiting also until the following year, we're not waiting until spring of next year for you to get your refund to see the benefit of your strategies. We're not giving it an interest-free loan to the government, we're just seeing the returns right away. So this is a really exciting strategy that's really putting gasoline on the fire in our wealth-building strategies for the W-2 earners out there. We're also finding that solar, even though it's being phased out, is making more and more sense as we align it with this strategy as well. Uh, in particular, because a lot of our clients may hit thresholds or walls where they can't create in any more business write-offs because of the limitations on what you can use as business write-offs against your W-2s. And then the solar comes in and gives you tax credits on top of the business losses. And, you know, it may not be as exciting as some of the other strategies where you can completely wipe out your taxes on a cost seg. Um, we often find that these solar strategies will turn a dollar into around$1.25 in tax savings. And that's tax savings, that's not profit. How where else will you find that type of return? Certainly not in the stock market or your alternative investments. That is very predictable because we know the tax law. So really powerful software solar that we're taking further with our clients, and it's been very exciting to see the wealth that we've created for our clients from it. Here's another little neat thing here that we're gonna introduce to our clients. We've done it a little bit in 25 and more in 26, and that is called the gift lease back. So, listen up, you business owners. If you have a client in college, if you want to switch income to your college student children, you could hire them, you could put them in the business. But another way that you can do this and create really fantastic write-offs is with a gift lease back. So, you for an example of this is let's say I buy a truck for$100,000. I write it off. Well, I can't really write off more of that truck, I can just write off the maintenance expenses after depreciating it. But here's how I can create additional write-offs. I can gift that truck now to my child in college and they rent it back to me. So now I have I'm paying my child rent payments. So I'm shifting the income from being taxed at my high bracket at 37%. So my child who doesn't pay any taxes. And the really exciting thing here is we're we're creating additional write-offs, but also now we're creating ordinary income that qualifies the child for um the uh the American opportunity tax credit. So the you can cover some of their college earnings now. So really exciting sub there when we pair that with all the other stuff we're doing for college planning and income shifting. Another cool thing we're doing um nonprofit tax strategies. We've talked about we've done this with a few of our clients now and explored it. What's really exciting about nonprofits is you can align this with your business objectives and goals and your mission. So what you can do is you start a nonprofit, and if you don't know where to put your cash, you can put into your charity and get a write-off. You also can qualify if you apply$10,000 of free Google ad space per month for your charity. So you can build your reputation and the reputation of your charity. That's a free$120,000 of ads for your charity. And one client of ours raises capital for oil and gas, and their charity is educational that they're building, and it will educate financial advisors on delivering and understanding and analyzing oil and gas deals. So amazing what you can do, and the resources that you open up with nonprofits here. And there may be ancillary benefits that help build your brand and grow your business. So, this is something that we're really excited to further explore with our entrepreneurial clients. And it doesn't have to be so related to your business. You could be giving money to foster kids, you could be giving money to the homeless, whatever it is for your nonprofit. But uh, it's you have this opportunity for the free ad space that can build this brand and help you create more impact for people, and you may find indirectly this creates other opportunities for you and your company. Now, let's talk about some other things that we've found. And I want you guys, you entrepreneurs and business owners, especially those of you with employees, pay attention to this. One of the things that I have found as a leader is one of the most important things that we want to do when it comes to hiring and leadering, leading, and also working with our clients is setting expectations, really, really becoming clear as far as the expectations on what you're gonna provide and what they're gonna provide, when it is provided, making sure we're all on the same page before we get started. So, what I've found really helped us out is setting expectations with the clients on what we need from them to do the tax returns compliantly, completely, and accurately. And also how we can work together to have this functional relationship. And then additionally, with my team, when do we need everything done by? What is the expectation? What if you don't meet the expectation? Defining success, but also defining failure, what we don't want this to look like. This really helps us align and really get on the same page before things get overhand, and we have all these excuses and reasonings on both sides for why things didn't go as well as we planned. Really setting expectations from day one, whether working with your clients, customers, or your stack is so incredibly important to build an enterprise and in particular to serve as a leader. Now, some of the things that we're thinking about here is one key question that keeps coming up. And I've realized that this is one of the most important things that we need to know to help you understand what's the best strategy for you when it comes to building your wealth and reducing your taxes. And that question is what do you want to do with your cash? If we were to create this savings, what would you do with it? And that gives us so much clarity into how we can help. Let me give you an example of this. So we have a client, they have a$100,000 capital gain that they're worried about the taxes on. Simple question is what do you want to do with the cash? If the cash is going to be used to pay off debt on their home mortgage, and that's what they want to do, they want to be debt-free on their home mortgage, we might find yourself in a little bit of a pickle because that's not going to reduce their taxes. So we got a plan and maybe use a higher leverage strategy, maybe a strategy where there's some sort of valuation procedure or debt elsewhere where we can use some of our cash to create a deduction in excess of the cost because we know that you're gonna have that hundred thousand dollars of gain, and you don't you don't really have anything to do that'll really that'll offset the gain. However, let's say they wanted to use the cash to buy real estate. Well, we may find that the problem fixes itself, that the real estate is gonna allow us to do a cost segregation study, accelerate the depreciation, and offset the cap gain. We also may want to know what are you gonna do with the refund? So when we do our tax strategies, are we creating a refund so you can put money back in an index fund or more real estate or oil and gas investments or more assets for your business? This gives us an understanding of what's the projected outcome long term that we're working towards with the client and what type of strategies are going to best align with that. So we have to understand the client better here. Are we going for a strategy that provides more liquidity? So you have more cash. Cash to put into your other project or a strategy that's going to reduce your taxes but also build passive income so you can phase out of your full-time work and into that passive income bucket. Knowing all these things, a lot of it can be rooted back to the question what do you want to do with your cash after we've done the create the tax savings or as a result of these activities and transactions? And then we develop the tax strategies that are going to align with that outcome that we're working together to achieve. Some other things that we want to think about here is here's a motto I've been saying more and more, which is never let a good tax bracket go to waste. And the reason why I'm going to say this again is because, especially with the changes in tax law in the ABBA, one big beautiful bill act, we really want to make sure we're maximizing all the available write-offs before we lose the opportunity to take them. Some new things that were introduced is that 30 extra$30,000 state and local tax deduction. And we're also becoming more cognizant, more aware of the qualified business income tax deduction and child tax credits. So we don't always want to bring it right down to zero because if we bring it down to zero, you lose your itemized deductions, standard deductions, child tax credits, salt deductions. There's all these other things that we wouldn't be able to use, and we may not be able to use them in the future. They're not going to carry forward a lot of the times. So one of the ways we could do this is we could pull some income into these lower taxed years. So let's say you have assets that bring you down to a low bracket or you're less profitable. This is an opportunity. So we had a client who had some excessive medical expenses, and the real estate went south this year. This is a planning opportunity. So we rolled funds from the traditional IRA to the Roth, and now it'll grow tax-free and compound and accumulate in this Roth IRA. And his future self will realize he saved up hundreds of thousands of dollars in a tax-free Roth account, and his future self will thank him for being proactive and taking advantage of this low tax bracket. Lots of cool stuff there when we work together with our clients and understand their situation and align it with their futures. We've really been paying attention, as I was kind of touching on, is these sweet spots in the tax law and these user to lose it deductions. So thinking to ourselves, what kind of income do we want to target to maximize all the incentives available for you in the tax law? Because there are certain credits and deductions where if you make too little, you get very little of it. And if you make too much, you're phased out. So you're either too poor or too rich to get these credits and deductions. And we want to put you right in the spot where you can get all the credits and deductions and not to pay too much in your taxes. So again, that's the standard, you know, that's so we're factoring in our qualified business income deduction, child tax credit, the standard deductions and itemized deductions, and also the state pass-through entity tax elections. All these things are looked at at the same time to give you the optimal results and the timing and considering the flexibility that we have here to take advantage best advantage of all these tax incentives and opportunities that are available for you this year. Now that also kind of leads me to another thought that we've really been resonating, that's been resonating with me, and that we've been communicating with our clients is it's okay to pay taxes at a certain rate. I mean, we have some clients where they they want to do capital gains planning, but I'm saying, hey, listen, you're in the 15% capital gains tax bracket. You're not paying state income tax to live in Tennessee or Texas or Florida. You're in a really favorable spot. Now I could eliminate your taxes, but that wouldn't mean spending more money on stuff that you don't need. You're better off just paying the taxes. You're in a good spot. We're at a good stopping place. Now, if you really want to, I could tell you to buy a G-Wagon and put money into this investment and that, we'd wipe out the taxes. But it's certainly just not worth it at a certain level. So we've been paying more attention to that. And while there are times where we can completely eliminate our clients' taxes, oftentimes, if we take things too far to eliminate the taxes, we're compromising their liquidity or their risk tolerance. Some other things that we're thinking about, and me in particular, is being more proactive with our clients to ensure that they're actually following through with these transactions. So we've hired lots of staff and we're training them and really staying on top of our clients. We try to touch them on a monthly basis now because a lot of times we share all these amazing ideas, they say that's great, and we assume that everything we want to happen will happen. But then as soon as they get off the phone with us, they have to take out they they got a family emergency, they gotta take out some fire here and there, and they're really relying on us more than I thought in the earlier years to make sure that they're doing what they have to do here. So we're really holding our clients accountable, holding us accountable for holding our clients accountable, really making sure we have our finger on the pulse that not only have we shared the ideas and made the intros, that we're but we're making sure that these strategies are really being taken through the finish line to make sure that our clients are seeing the return of investment into our services. Some other cool things that really get me excited are just exploring all the different varieties of ways that you can benefit from and invest into oil and gas. When I first learned about oil and gas, I said, hey, that's really awesome. You can write off anywhere from 70 to 100% of your year one investment into working interest, that's super cool. But then as you dive deeper, you realize there's all these different ways to invest into oil and gas. A lot of people are turned off that it's risky. So there are less risky ways to invest in oil and gas. There are ways to invest in oil and gas that ensure against a dry well. There are ways to invest across a portfolio of wells to hedge against the risk of one being unprofitable. There are all sorts of ways you can do this. There are ways you can drill into land that's already established and already operating and filled with oil, or maybe you want to take a more riskier investment where you're you're drilling into less developed land, and then you'll take more of a piece of the action in the profitability. So there's all different ways to do this. And what's best for you really depends on your investment criteria, personality, liquidity needs, investment needs, it's tax situation, etc. etc. Also paying attention to the fact that when the money comes in from oil and gas, it's tax advantaged. So you get a tax deduction, and when the money comes in, you have that depletion deduction to offset the cash flow. So you're not paying taxes on all the money that hits your account. So that's really exciting. And that depletion deduction is typically 15% of the revenue. So you got your revenue minus expenses, but it's also so you're likely gonna see more than 15% of the cash that hits your account, so the revenue net of expenses, more than 15% of the money that hits your account is gonna be deducted for depletion. So really exciting to see what's possible there. And it just makes us more confident that oil and gas is a really strong wealth-building vehicle for our clients, in particular when we pair it with oil with real estate. So and then another thing I want to share that's really led us to or led me to rethink things is just narrowing down and narrowing down our focus. So we've been able to find is that the the more narrow I can focus in on things, the more successful we'll be. So some way, a thought experiment is what's what's the biggest thing that you need to do in your business? So at one point I had an issue with driving revenue. So what's the what's the issue here? We need more revenue. Why don't we have more revenue? We need more leads. We need more leads, well, we we're not getting the right leads. How do we get more leads? Well, our best way is organic traffic in this YouTube page you may be watching right now. Well, what's wrong with the YouTube page? Well, not enough people listen. Well, not enough enough people are clicking. Well, how do we get maximized clicks? Well, maybe it's the title, maybe it's the YouTube. So why don't we dial in on what needs the greatest, not only through the greatest need, which is revenue, but then the greatest channel which has been YouTube, and then also how can we make the most of this channel, but also within YouTube, what particular skill within YouTube can I optimize to enhance the the profitability and the value and the outreach and the impact I can have with YouTube? Similarly, with with with now I'm trying to have more time on my hands, so focusing more on well, what do we need here? I need more help, I need more people to take on meetings, I need more staff, I need more qualified people, I need more recruits. What's the challenge here? Well, we actually got pretty good at evaluating talent, we're not getting enough talent, so we got to get stronger at posting job ads and our direct outreach and our LinkedIn strategies and our systems and processes and automation. So, really zeroing in on what's the top 20% of the 20% of the 20% of action items that we can take where we're directing our energy and focus that's gonna have the biggest impact on our ability to serve our clients. And for you, that's gonna also that way of thinking is gonna allow you to think about what's the greatest one thing I should be thinking about to move me forward, whether it's with my career, my taxes, my money, and my wealth. Where can we focus? And a lot of times when we take on new clients, we get overwhelmed with ideas. There's so many things we want to share with our clients, and it's really tempting to want to just throw 30 ideas at them because we're just so excited, and all these things are apply. We want them to know about everything possible. But what you're gonna find is that you don't have the mental capacity to learn 37 strategies in one call. So, again, what is the most impactful thing that we can do right now to move the needle for you? A lot of you are gonna find, especially if you signed with us late, is the big ticket items are gonna be charitable, really strong, advanced, charitable planning that we can execute fast. So we have a lot of clients where we've eliminated 50% of their taxes in them in a matter of days with charitable strategies, and we were able to preserve their liquidity and their wealth while doing it. So, what's that one thing for you? And then in the later sessions, as we continue to work together, we take the strategy further. We layer in some credit strategies, some write-off strategies, some withholding strategies, some wealth building strategies, retirement account strategies to add more and more on top of this, and also that initial savings can be the jet fuel that can give us the liquidity that we need to further invest into these other strategies. Really focusing on that one thing. Now, this last concept, and I've came across it before, but I'm paying more attention to it this year. Um, you may have heard of the concept of profit first, where essentially, and I'll get I'll I've I was on their podcast, I'll try to bring them on to mine, where essentially you prioritize profit. So the common way of looking at an income statement is revenue minus expenses is profits. But under the profit first way of thinking, which is really cool by the way, probably have some more conversations on this, is revenue minus profit is expenses. So essentially you're backing out your expenses to meet what you've set aside as profits in your business. So, for example, I make$100,000 this month and I want to have a profit of$30,000. So I've set aside$30,000 for profit. Now I only have$70,000 more in expenses to spend to hit to maintain that profit. So my expenses and my budget conform to what is necessary to maintain that profit. Now, this I mean, and this way of thinking has really helped business owners turn things around and be more resourceful and more in control of their finances and create incredible things. Read the book Profit First by Mike McCallowa, some really cool stuff. Well, here's another way you can be looking at this with your time. Maybe we should be saying vacation first. Hesant to say this as my staff are listening. But you should be, I mean, why are we doing this? Why are we doing all this work? I mean, a lot of times we lose track of why we work to begin with. And you know, our younger selves, our 10, 11-year cells, might have thought we were crazy to be pulling the hours we were just to work more hours in the future and just to add more and more work. So, you know, you should be thinking about what are those things on your bucket list. And for mine, I wanted to go skiing forever. And I always had an excuse. I was in grad school, I didn't have the money, didn't have the time, didn't have the money or the time. Always had a reason, especially for us. We're so busy as accountants trying to learn and study and serve our clients, and I never was able to make time. So this year, vacation, it was profit first, but also print vacation first. I want you guys to think about this as entrepreneurs. So a lot of you guys are time poor. Um, and I booked the vacation to go skiing in about July. We we already reserved the the house in Vermont. So I've already, and at that time, so we were going to be in Vermont from Tuesday night until Sunday morning. So we've already set aside the time in October. So the time was already blocked off, vacation was booked. There was so I've made it to the point where I ran out of excuses unless I wanted to forfeit the money I've set aside for this trip and already agreed to pay for the Airbnb. And this allowed us to plan in advance and really go on one of the most amazing ski trips. The weather was perfect, it was just so incredible to bring my fiance and future stepson and meet with my mom, my brother-in-law, and my sister. We had the most wonderful time because we realized what this is all about at the end of the day is creating a better life for yourself. And it's not just about accumulating money, but us also being able to enjoy your money. And so we were able to put vacation first and have a wonderful, amazing holiday uh celebration in Vermont up in this up in this mountains, go sledding and skiing. It was just incredible. Um, and I'll say this that tax planning, while it doesn't directly give you money, it does give you time, it does give you money. So tax planning is gonna allow you to free up liquidity and have more cash. And what you do with that cash is very important. Some of what you should do is to further build your wealth or reduce your taxes, but also invest into tools that will give you more time. So maybe hiring more staff, building automations and infrastructure, or putting more into your retirement savings so you can retire early. But really thinking about where what is the end result that you're doing and how can our tax planning strategies align with that so you can make the best of the most of your time on this planet, and maybe you should start thinking about vacation first as well. Alright, anyways, I hope you enjoyed this conversation of me geeking out on some of my greatest epiphanies on taxes and and a little bit on business and wealth. And of course, if you want to learn more uh on how any of this can apply to you, go to prosperalcpa.com slash opportunity report, and I personally will send you a video illustrating what may be possible for you with our tax strategies and how they can align with your future. Alright, also, by the way, just go to our careers page if you're if you or anyone you know is looking to for to for a position in tax money, we are aggressively recruiting talent. Have a wonderful day and happy tax savings and happy holidays.