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Do you have your ‘ideal client avatar’ (ICA)? If you own a business, you should know who your ICA is. These can be demographics, psychographics, someone you love to work with and who needs and wants your services, etc.
You can totally have more than one avatar but one of my favorite ideal avatars is someone who is self-employed/has their own business and their spouse is a W-2 employee. Why? Because it opens up SO.MUCH.OPPORTUNITY. for tax savings. One of my new clients this year was my ICA. She makes good money as a 1099 independent contractor and her husband is a W-2 employee. She was a new client as of January so I didn’t work with her all of last year. It was PAINFUL to tell her how much she owed in taxes and I’m sure it is painful for her to write those checks. On top of that, she was going to have to pay a ton in estimated taxes in 2020. So I suggested a tax strategy session. We chatted through all of the tax strategies that would apply to her and her family and we came up with 4 strategies that would save her AT LEAST $27,000 per year in tax savings. That is over $125,000 of tax savings over the next 5 years. WOAH! I love my job. I love educating families, I love empowering them with this knowledge, and I love that they can use that money to go on vacation, pay for kids college, save for retirement, etc.
I only have room for 2 more tax strategy sessions in May, let's chat and see if you’re leaving any money on the table.
My clients have received more than $3.4 MILLION in PPP loan funds. These funds will keep them open and thriving when all of this is over and I am so grateful to have helped get this money to them. But now comes the tricky part - getting it forgiven. If you’ve gotten PPP loan funds, let’s chat on the best way to track and monitor these funds, and come up with an impact statement to give to the banks to get it forgiven! If you know friends or family that have gotten these funds, don’t let them think it’ll just magically be forgiven - the banks are going to want to make money. I chatted with a client last week that thought if he just paid his employees with the $300k he got, all would be fine and dandy.
Let's Talk Budgeting!
You all LOVED my budget tips on instagram (@yourtaxcoach) and I’ll provide more but here is a recap: 1. On the first of every month - well, ideally this is done the last week of the prior month - dump alllll of your expenses onto an excel spreadsheet so you know where your money is going. Knowledge is power. Guessing is, well, guessing. 2. Save first, pay bills later. There will always be more bills. For me, when I was $100,000 in debt my mindset was that all of my money had to go towards paying off the debt, but then when an emergency came up, I had to put it back on credit cards - see the vicious cycle? So make sure you have an EMERGENCY FUND. 3. Write down 2 non-negotiables that you won’t cut out of your budget. This keeps your budget sustainable (kind of like a diet, they all work but which one works for you?). For us, we don’t keep a budget for groceries (3 growing boys in the house make for an expensive grocery bill - yes, I included my husband in that number) and we make sure we travel. 4. Write down 2 things you can cut back on - maybe you cut a subscription or 2 - do you really need Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, AppleTV, and HBO? Maybe you cut back on your $8 cold brew and get drip coffee. Maybe you refi your student loans so the rate and payment is lower. I just refi’d mine for 3.23%. If you use this link, I think we both get a gift card http://refer.credible.com/GPErdk As always, please let me know what questions you have, what you liked or didn't like in the newsletter, or what topics you'd like me to cover in the future. Grateful for each and every one of you!