John, very good to see you. Again, anybody who knows you, knows that you are always making sure you're staying up on the latest trends that are happening in the retirement world. And you just came back from a really important conference with America's IRA expert Ed Slot. What did you learn?

Yeah, I am a conference geek. I love knowledge, knowledge is important to the success of my practice and my clients and I got to hang out with Ed's Slot who's been on our podcast a couple of times. And of course, my good friend Tom O'Connell was there, and Dean and Derek so this is what I learned, folks. I learned that a lot can go wrong in your retirement. I knew that before. This is the third Ed Slot conference I've attended. But folks, you have to understand retirement is extremely complex. We make it simple for our clients. But on the back end, there's a lot of complexity, but here is it Erin, 400 pages of what can go wrong with just your IRA and your estate. We're not even talking about investments or other tax risks. We're just talking IRAs and Estate planning. So folks, if you're doing things yourself, the IRS, this is one key point Ed always hammers home, the IRS doesn’t care if you made a mistake, it's up to you to know the code.

Right. So speaking of that code John, you've walked away with some really great nuggets.

Yeah, and very relevant nuggets because I have helped a couple of families out this year that had unfortunately suffered spousal deaths. And I went back to these families. I said, Did you happen to file a Form 706? And they didn’t. Right. No one suggested they did. And what the form 706 is, it's DSUE for the deceased spouse's unused federal estate exemption. Now, listen, the estate exemption is $13 million. That's huge. I realized that for a lot of viewers, you may never get there. But what if they start chopping these exemptions down? They've done it in the past right? These are very high exemptions. So what the form 706 does, is it allows you to take the unused portion of your spouse's estate tax exemption and move it over to the spouse, so the spouse will have the full portability of the unused exemption to their estate. And folks, you really want to avoid estate taxes. So this is future planning, right? Even if they lower the estate tax, which I believe they will, why not file this form and get the unused exemption that your deceased spouse have? And you know, kind of reading the IRS revenue procedure 2022-32 that was issued on July 8th, said this, that the IRS is now providing a five-year extension on making the estate portability election allowable. So you have five years since 2022 to do this. Don't wait, do it as soon as possible. But you know, if you had, you know, a spouse that died, maybe in 2022, file that form 706 and you get the unused exemption from spouse. Again, what if they reduce the exception and they drop those levels down to $4 or $3 million, which will definitely be in the wheelhouse of a lot of my clients. Why not just move your deceased spouse's exemption over? It doesn't cost anything. You just have to file that form. And folks, if you think ordinary income tax is bad in retirement, estate tax exemptions are even worse. 40% and you blow through those brackets very very fast. So you want to avoid estate tax as the best you can and this is a free and easy way to do.

Right. This just goes to underscore that working with you John you get access to this team of experts, because Ed Slot and his gang, all they do is swim in these waters. Because how would the average person know about all these little changes that could save them $1000s.

Well, you know what, I’ll be very honest with you Erin. All the conferences I’ve attended, and the past Ed Slot conferences, right, this has never come up, because this is a 2022 revenue procedure. So I just learned about this a couple of weeks ago. And the laws of the IRS Internal Revenue Code, the laws of Congress are constantly changing the tax code changes every year. So if you're managing things by yourself, or you have an advisor, but you guys are just focused on investments, understand that you may potentially be putting a lot of your money at risk. And what's our famous quote that I stole from one of my tax mastermind groups? “Pay your taxes but do not tip the IRS, tip your serves instead”.

I love that one. Well John if somebody has questions about, again, managing their IRA, or whether they should be filling out really specific forms, what's the best way to reach you?

Well, I want to tell people, you know, subscribe to the channel first. We not only do these, but we do a lot of YouTube shorts that just have thoughtful nuggets. We really want to get our message out. We want people to be financially literate and we want to give non-biased great education. So subscribe to this channel, or visit our website www.gosecurus.com. From there you can again, we have a host of videos, and we have nearly 100 podcasts with a range of topics. And while you're on the website, you can visit the Contact Us Tab where you can either schedule a 15-minute phone call where we'll answer any general questions, or you can schedule a complimentary 60-minute vision and clarity consultation. Lastly, if you like to do things the old-fashioned way, give us a phone call at 858-935-6210. Ask to speak with Emily Wale, and she will get you on my schedule.

The most worthwhile call you will ever make. John, thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you, Erin.