In this episode I talk some recent market news and about the importance of tax planning. How to prepare and some ways to make sure your doing things in a tax efficient manor.

If you're looking for a trusted source to help you stay on top of the ever-changing financial world of investing, retirement and estate planning, and asset protection, whether it's for you and your family or your small business, you're in the right place. This is the 1715 Treasure Coast Financial Wellness Podcast, where we'll keep you up to speed with the latest market news and conditions every week. Now here's your host, Thomas Davies. Hello and welcome to another edition of the 1715 Treasure Coast Financial Wellness Podcast.

My name is Thomas Davies. I'm a wealth advisor here in Stewart, Florida. And welcome. Glad you're here.

A lot of things to talk about this week, and certainly it's not been a slow week as we head into the 4th of July weekend. I hope everybody is looking forward to that, and thank you to all our military veterans out there and all those that are currently serving, as freedom is not free. So thank you for your service. Me and my family certainly appreciate it.

So a couple things to talk about. Is recession coming? That is one of the hot topics in the financial markets right now, is we've had a nice little run here, getting back up to some of the earlier March highs, and are we headed towards recession? The Fed paused raising interest rates, but as of yesterday they came out, Jay Powell came out and said that basically they're going to continue raising interest rates, and need be, they can do it one after another, one month after another, just like they have.

And that certainly kind of hit the markets yesterday, with a little bit of a nice rebound today, although the NASDAQ was lagging. So are we going to see that back half of the year slow down? Notoriously, September and October are those months where we see those slowdowns. Have some cash in reserves.

That's going to be your best bet. I've talked about asset allocation last week, and certainly having a little bit of cash in the coffers, if we do get that slowdown, or mid-September, you know, rocky point there in October or September, we will have some cash to go after some of those stocks that have ran up, and maybe get them at a little lesser price. Other big news today, all 23 banks survive and pass the Fed's 2023 stress tests. That is important, as we've talked about in the past with SVB Bank failing.

We haven't heard too much talk in the financial news about banks failing, although believe it or not, banks fail every day. For the most part, there are certain banks that, just about every day, not every day, but there are banks that fail and they make bad decisions, but that's pretty good news that the big banks all pass those stress tests, and that's great to hear. A lot of the firms right now are bracing for a mild recession and a short-term downturn. You know, that seems to be the talk.

The recession fear is out there, certainly waiting to see as all these interest rate hikes hit the common marketplace. As I mentioned before, everything's expensive. Going out to eat, one of the large CEOs said that his recent polls are showing more people are eating at home. Listen, it's expensive.

Everything's expensive. To go out to eat, you know, chicken wings, unbelievable. More than $1.25, $1.50 a wing if you go out for one chicken wing. So anyway, as most people are going to probably eat a lot of chicken wings this weekend.

More news, BlackRock comes out and joins the AI mania, calls it a mega force. We've seen this big run in the technology sector really rallying around AI, NVIDIA to name just one of the few stocks that have really benefited from AI. BlackRock has gone overweight in AI, saying that companies can be sitting on gold mines of data, and the AI is going to be able to bring all that to the forefront. And so it's pretty positive and pretty exciting that the world's largest fund manager comes out and says that AI is going to be the way of the future.

When is Cyberdyne going to be built? That's the next question. Morgan Stanley comes out, says commercial real estate will crash harder than during the financial crisis. For those of you that either didn't know or don't remember, Morgan Stanley defaulted on three buildings out west during the financial crisis.

So they know all about it, and that's a pretty bold call. Although that work from home, I don't think it's going away. More people are happier working from home, whether it be two days a week, three days a week. Companies are seeing that employees are just as productive or even more productive by working from home, and certainly that's going to hurt the commercial real estate sector.

I would watch New York City. It's one of the number one cities in the world for commercial real estate. So those are some of the news and tidbits of the week. I hope you found that interesting, and if you have any questions on any of that stuff, please give me a call.

My news is on all day, so I listen to the broadcast, and that's probably one of the most things that I do here is listen to the news and take day in and day out what's going on so my clients don't have to. Moving forward, let's talk about tax planning. Yeah, tax planning. Tickets, right?

No, tax planning is today's subject, and it's probably one of the most important things that investors can do is plan for their taxes, whether it be through investing or any other medium, and it's just something that you really got to think about. So taxes actually are pretty simple and somewhat easy. It's either pay me now or pay me later. That's how taxes work.

You either pay them now or you're going to pay them later, and with that in mind, try to remember that, and when you're saying, is this a tax smart move, and am I paying the tax now, or is this something I can pay tax on later? So the first step that you want to do is organize your financial documents. Get everything in order from your personal to your business. Have everything in order.

Have a budget and have everything in order. That way you have a great financial picture of everything that is going on in your financial life, and you have basically just a clear picture of your financial situation. Once then, you can start exploring the various tax strategies. What are some of those tax strategies that I'm talking about?

First and foremost, take advantage of the tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs, 401Ks, annuities. Annuities are another way to take advantage of some of the tax-advantaged accounts. That money grows inside tax-deferred. Those are some of the easiest steps.

Fix out your 401K, talk to your financial advisor, and see if that makes sense, or at least do the free match. Contribute to that free match, whether it be 2%, 3%, 4%, and then if it makes sense and the investments are good inside that 401K, you may want to put more into it. When I was younger, I was told that if I got a 3% raise, to add that 1% of that raise into my 401K, so maybe that's something you can think about if you got a raise this year. Be nice, right?

To make sure you pay yourself and just take that 1% or 2% of your raise if you got a larger raise than, say, 3%, you're not going to miss it, but it'll certainly make an impact on your retirement planning and your retirement income later on. Timing of your income and your expenses is important. Just like timing and anything else, and depending on your income and your expenses, you might be able to delay those income until you're in a lower tax bracket. Maybe you're going to sell an investment and you can delay that another year into retirement.

When your income stops, when you're going to retire and you won't have to pay, you'll be in a much more lower tax bracket. This helps minimize your tax liabilities and maximizes your deductions and your returns and credits. That's another thing. You want to make sure that you're maximizing your deductions and your credits.

Identify them. What are your deductions and credits that you qualify for? Ensure that you take full advantage of them. This could be mortgage interest, medical expenses, student loan interest, educational credits, anything that you are qualified for.

Don't forget to check that box. It's very important to do this. Some of you may say, well, I don't know everything about taxes or I know nothing about taxes and what do I do? Seek advice.

Use the internet. Look. There's a lot of great resources on the internet for tax credits. There's tax software that will help file your taxes for you.

It's generally like $50 to $100. It's not that bad, whereas if you had to go to a CPA or a tax accountant, you're probably going to likely pay more than that. For those of you that can't afford a CPA or a tax accountant, that $50 to $100 may seem like a lot, but it can save you a lot of money come tax time when you go to file and you get a much nicer return. The nice thing about some of those software programs is that if you continue with the same one, they update from year to year and they also update the tax laws.

That's something probably you're not going to sit there and follow is every tax law and tax change that happens. Those are a couple of ways to do your taxes, to help with your taxes. Then lastly, what I do, which is investing and manage money, make sure you do it in a tax efficient manner. Consider tax loss harvesting.

You get that tax loss deduction every year, so maybe you have some losers. Sell those losers and then wait 30 days. If you really like it, you can buy it back, maybe even at a lower price, but you'll certainly be able to take advantage of that and take that deduction through tax loss harvesting. That can certainly help with your capital gains at the end of the year.

For those of you that have taxable accounts and maybe you're invested in some mutual funds, make sure they're tax advantaged and tax managed. Ask those questions and look to see are those funds tax managed because at the end of the year you're going to get hit with capital gains or you're going to get capital gains from those funds and you certainly have to pay taxes on that. Those are a couple of things that you certainly want to do and want to take advantage of. Lastly, start your tax planning early.

Don't wait until November, December, or January. As you get closer to April 15th, you start thinking about your taxes. Start thinking about your taxes as early as possible. A lot of you pay into your business owners, you're going to pay your quarterly taxes.

If you can pay more, pay more. You know you're going to have to pay taxes on it. Get it out of the way. Get it done.

Get it paid early. If that's something that you can do. And lastly, keep detailed records. You know, my CPA friends and accountant friends, I can't tell you the stories, countless stories I hear of their clients come in with a shoe box full of receipts or just boxes of letters and receipts and all this.

Don't do that. There are so many great apps on your phone where you snap a picture of that receipt, it will file it right into the appropriate program. It's something that once again, you can upload, it usually works with a lot of the tax software. Don't just rely on that shoe box of receipts.

You're going to drive an accountant crazy or a CPA and it will cost you. It's going to cost you more money. So like I said, there are some great apps if you're not familiar with them. Just search, you know, the stores, the online stores and like I said, you take a picture of the receipt, it's great, it files it right away and more than likely it will file right to your accountant.

Now something that I do is I use one card for everything in my business. So if it's for my business, I use one card. So that way I don't have to keep receipts. I can just look at the billing of the charges.

My accountant can look at that one particular statement and get all the charges right there. So that's another thing to do is just consolidate the accounts down to one account for your business if you have a business. And that way you can, you know, really consolidate everything and keep it simple. So hopefully you found today's broadcast, or podcast I should say, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast, as always, I hope you found it useful.

Like I said, some big news this week, you know, AI and ChatGPT just keeps on rolling and these companies are taking full advantage of it. Once again, I wish everybody a happy July 4th weekend. Thank you for listening. You can find me on Apple, Spotify, all the major social media outlets, you know, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

Love the comments. Keep them coming. If there's a particular subject you want to hear about, shoot me an email, shoot me a text, whatever, however you want to contact me, I'd love to hear from you. Don't forget to like and subscribe.

Once again, my name is Thomas Davies, a wealth advisor here in Stewart, Florida, and I am out. Thank you for listening to the 1715 Treasure Coast Financial Wellness Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend who might like it, and please rate, comment, and subscribe. If you'd like to contact us, find more information, or if you'd like to keep up with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, check out our website at www.tdwealth.net.

Have a great day, and we'll talk to you next week.