Transcript
Intro
Stephan Shipe: Welcome back to the Scholar Wealth Podcast. Today we’re covering two listener questions that highlight the tension between family, finances, and legacy.
First, we’ll look at how couples can navigate different visions for their wealth — whether to prioritize enjoying it now or leaving more behind for the next generation.
Then we’ll turn to a situation where someone’s net worth is tied up in their brother’s company, and the tough decision of whether to reinvest more or start diversifying.
And in our rotating special segment, I’ll be joined by David Dion, chair of Stein Sperling’s Tax Law Group with more than 45 years of experience. David is one of the country’s leading tax attorneys on IRS audits, so he’ll share the most common mistakes that trigger audits, how to prepare if you’re one of the lucky ones that are selected, and the proactive steps families can take to reduce their risk.
So let’s go ahead and get started with question one.
Question 1 – Differing Legacy Plans
Listener: My husband and I don’t see eye to eye on our legacy plans. He feels we should enjoy the wealth we’ve worked hard to build. While I’d like to leave more behind for our children, how can couples navigate such different visions for their financial legacy?
Stephan Shipe: What we have to be careful about is whether or not we’re dealing with a case of spending avoidance that’s just masking itself as legacy planning.
Because a lot of times what ends up happening, especially with couples looking at the opportunity to possibly spend a lot more than they’re used to, is this avoidance of doing any additional spending or consumption. And that is super common. I say most of the time when I’m working with clients personally, most of the time is spent around trying to convince people to spend more, not to save, spend less.
And that sounds funny when you think about it. That was something that threw me off even before I started advising and working with clients. I thought the hardest conversations were going to be, you’re going to have to cut back. And the reality is the hardest conversations are usually me trying to convince someone to go take a bigger vacation or spend a little bit more because we get in this pattern of saving.
You’re used to seeing your account values go up and up and up. And when you’re used to seeing that, you don’t like the idea of pulling from that account and seeing that drop for the first time or just not move up as much as it used to be.
So we want to be really careful, and I’d say before even getting into this question is to take a step back and say whether or not the desire to leave more for the kids — if that truly is a true legacy need. Or is that just a convenient out of saying, well, if we don’t spend it, then that’s just more for the kids, is sort of a justification for not spending today.
Now I’m not saying that you should go and just start spending all of your money on frivolous things whatsoever. What I am saying is how much do the kids actually need to meet the goals that you have for them and for your legacy goals.
The reason I say that is because it’s really common for someone to look and say, well, we want to have money for the kids. How much do they actually need? Because in many cases, if you’re going to be successful throughout retirement and self-funding a retirement in a big way, you likely have a significant amount that’s going to the kids anyway.
And if your financial plan is built correctly, you shouldn’t be having a financial plan that’s dropping over time where your accounts are just slowly depleting every year, and you’re playing this horrible game of figuring out whether or not you’re going to outlive your finances. If the plan has been built correctly, then you should have an account that is either still moving up over time or is moving up at a really slow rate and almost flatlining, which is a good thing. You’re maintaining your spending power over time or having an increase to catch up with inflation. That’s how it should be set up.
Now, in that case, if you look at it and say, well, what is your account value at now? Would you be happy with your kids receiving that level of account value? And if the answer is yes, that would be fantastic for them, then maybe you could spend a little bit more knowing that they would keep up with inflation at that point.
Now there are some ways that both of you could be on the same page. I don’t think that those are mutually exclusive things. In other words, I don’t think that it’s a one way or another scenario. I think both of those could coexist in that you could still spend more today and also provide higher amounts for your kids. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, so let me explain.
There’s a lot of things that you could spend on now that could both provide benefits to you and also to the kids. For instance, this could be a long vacation that you take the whole family on that allows you all to go on a bigger vacation, take the family, so you’re successfully spending. But what you’re also doing is essentially giving some of that value now to the kids so that way they have more money in their pocket that they can invest, which will lead to a higher amount later on in their portfolios.
So between that there’s different trust options as well. But I’d say the easiest thing for you to do to start off with is to start thinking about what does more spending look like and what does more legacy look like? So define those. What are we talking about more spending of? It’s just a small vacation every year and it’s maybe $5,000 or $10,000 spent on something extra, or it’s upgrading flights on the next trip from economy to business class. Those things are not likely going to destroy your financial portfolio, that’s not going to be a concern.
So I would put a dollar amount on that. I would have both of you sit down and say, what are the goals here? If you’re looking at spending more, what does spending more look like? How much would you have to increase that annual spend to say, you know what? I feel like we’re actually getting the value out of all the work we’ve put into saving over these years.
And what surprises a lot of people when I’ve had those conversations is it’s not much. It’s not like you’re going to double your spend. In many of the cases, you look at it and say, you know what, if I just had an extra $15,000 or $20,000 to spend during retirement, that’s going to make me feel like we saved for something. It’s going to be the little bit of the finer things when you’re going on trips or going out to eat or anything like that, or maybe it’s upgrading that vacation home that you’ve gone to every summer. It’s all those different little things that start to matter a lot more.
And the reality is that increased spend is not going to be something that generally lasts for a long time. If this is retirement spending that you’re doing, that increased spend typically happens earlier in retirement. You’re not going to spend as much at 95 as you did at 65. We’re going to have phases to the spending.
So if that’s the case, I’m leaning a little bit more toward spending a little bit more, but on things that are actually going to move the needle. I don’t recommend just going to spend for the sake of spending, and the reality is you two likely aren’t either, right? That’s a hard sell. I’ve never had anyone take me up on the option of going to spend for the sake of spending. No one wants to do that.
What they want to spend on are experiences. They want to spend on things that can benefit both them and their family. They want to spend on things that don’t drop in value. So they go pick up the classic cars or the watches or things along those lines, which, funny enough, are not things that actually move net worth. Same with things like you buy a second home or you have all of these changes that just really move money from the invested assets to another type of asset, and your kids still get that value too.
So maybe spending more is buying a vacation home. And by doing that, the kids still get value from that afterwards. But you get some of that value now. So there’s lots of ways to do that.
I would look at how much you want to leave to the kids, what is a good number that you’d say that’s a good legacy for them. And then I would look at how much more in spending would you have to do now to say, I feel like we’re spending a good amount that’s appropriate for how hard we saved. I don’t think either of those conversations are a bad thing to have.
And then I would look at the third one of saying, if you wanted to spend more, are there ways that you could spend more now that actually either impact the kids in a good way later? Or don’t impact the legacy. Things like a vacation home. Things like taking them on vacation with you. Being able to pay for education for grandkids. All of those things start to come into play where you’re able to spend and pull money out so you feel like it’s worth it from the savings perspective, which I think is to your husband’s point there. And the other is that you’re able to go through and actually save them some money now by paying for some of those things so that way they can put more money away for saving and get to experience those times with you as opposed to just receiving a bigger check later on.
Question 2 – Concentration in a Family Business
Listener: Around 40% of my net worth is tied up in my brother’s company. I invested early when he was just getting started, and it’s grown a lot since then. He’s done fantastic and I’m really proud of what he’s built. Now he’s asking me to put in more money to help expand, but I’m worried about the concentration risk of having so much tied to one business. At the same time, I don’t want to create tension in my relationship with him by saying no.
What would you do?
Stephan Shipe: This is such a bad idea. Don’t do this. This is bad news all over it. You’re 40% already tied up in one company. It’s with your brother. I don’t know your brother. He may be a fantastic person. You get 40% tied up in Procter & Gamble, I’d say it’s a bad idea. This is a horrible idea for many reasons, which we can get into.
So I’d say the first is that this is all made-up net worth. Right? So you’re saying 40% tied into a single company, but it’s not liquid, it’s not marketable. There’s no value that’s out there on this. So you have it all tied up in a single illiquid private business that actually has no value whatsoever until someone buys it, which may never happen.
So I’d be hesitant to even include this as part of your net worth. I would just include this as a sunk cost. It is a cost that you spent long ago and it’s not worth anything to you right now. It should not be taken into account for a financial plan or for any future cash flow or anything as of right now. That is made-up money. It’s monopoly money on one side. Now it doesn’t mean that it can’t have a good business tied to it, but that money doesn’t become real unless there are significant things that happen to your brother’s business. So for right now, I would treat this as monopoly money.
Now that goes into the question, should you add more real money and convert it into monopoly money? And that’s not a good idea. So we don’t want to do that. We want to keep your real money separate and not go convert it into fake money. So the concentration risk is a huge concern, like I said, that you’re tying this in there. You already have an illiquid investment in it. You should be focusing your time on putting money somewhere else.
Now the family dynamics piece is the problem. And, little dig against your brother here, but he shouldn’t really be going back to you again because he should know that you already invested in the first round, the friends and family round. My big red flag that’s going off is if you invested money with him and now the business is doing fantastic and everything’s working great, then why aren’t banks tripping over each other, trying to give him money to expand?
If the business is going well and finances look good, and it’s profitable, and it’s throwing off good cash flow, and it’s being run correctly, he should have no problem going to a bank, pulling out a line of credit, going to other investors. In fact, you should be encouraging him to go to other investors that provide other types of benefits to the business. Why can’t he go pick up an investor that has specialty in taking a company like his public? That’s who I’d be looking for. Those are the types of investors that I’d be wanting in his situation.
And this is not necessarily knocking on you, I don’t know your background. Maybe you are an expert at taking companies public, but it’s probably not the case. And if that’s the scenario, then what value are you providing to the company besides just adding cash? And if he’s just looking for cash, there are a lot of other ways to get cash out there besides going to you for any of that, especially on the investor side. If he’s looking for investors, go get investors that are going to actually provide value, that could take a board seat, that could actually help expand this business even further.
And if that’s the case, then your ownership already is going to increase. So you’re still participating in all of that future growth. You don’t need to add more to still participate.
Now, if you listen to all that and say, that’s great Stephan, but I’m still going to do it anyway, I’m going to ignore everything that you say, then we have to get into the due diligence. You still have to evaluate it as a company now. The fact that it’s grown significantly since the point that you added money in is completely irrelevant. I wouldn’t look at that at all. I would look at this as a new investment. Today, what are the growth prospects for this company?
Because what happens a lot is you’ll see companies grow a lot at the beginning through a friends and family round, and then they hit a stall. And when they get into the stall scenario, they go back to the friends and family to pull more money in because they can’t get investors to see anything that’s going to go further. I’m not saying that’s the situation here, but we want to be careful of that. We want to look at this as a new investment, new money going in type of scenario.
We need to make sure that you’re personally set first. Do you have enough money in your other accounts that the 60% that’s not mixed up in this business, is that sufficient to be your 100%? And how much of that can you actually take out of that in those investments to put toward your brother’s company again?
And if that’s all good, you have plenty of money sitting there, you have no need for cash, and you could go take some money and just have it disappear and you’d be fine with it, then maybe you’d be all right going to give your brother some more money in that case — assuming that he has a good reason for why no one else will give him money and he has to come back to you.
And for some reason you’ve got it. And we look at the diversification impacts, right? We have to start looking at how is this playing out in your portfolio. Maybe there is a clear exit strategy, maybe there’s some good opportunities here for you to diversify. I just am not seeing it.
This has so many problematic aspects to it, and so many red flags going off that it would take a lot to convince me that this company is doing so well that they need to go back to a sibling to get more money to invest without having any other options available.
But again, if you’re going forward with this, we’re going to do our due diligence. We also want to start taking the governance portions of this a little bit more seriously. So at first, you likely invested to help him out, get everything set up. The only problem now is it’s different. The company’s grown. This is a different company. So not only are you looking at it from a new due diligence lens, but you should also be looking at it as an investor.
In other words, I want you to look at things like what your ownership rights are. Are there any drag alongs, tag alongs, any of these scenarios that go along with being an investor? What are your distributions looking like? Are you getting distributions now? Is all the company being reinvested back in the business? If you’re not getting distributions, why not? This is an investment. You should be seeing some cash flow. If it’s all being reinvested, is that being reinvested in salaries where his salary could be inflated? Is it reasonable?
So we want to look at all of that. And then I’d have a hard conversation about exit strategies. What does this look like? Most companies, if you were a PE firm, you’d want your money back in five to seven years max. So you should do the same thing. You’re not interested in tying up money forever. If you’re putting money in, you want it as an investment, you want a return that’s either got to come from cash flow and distributions, or it’s got to come from some exit strategy. That’s what I’d be focused on.
Now, you could always go for the partial stuff of you can invest a little bit less. I wouldn’t look at that, I wouldn’t entertain that at all. I’d look at a scenario of you’re either investing more or you’re sticking with what you’ve got.
My recommendation: you’ve got to stick with what you’ve got. I just don’t see a scenario here. I’d be glad to be proven wrong. I hope you’re listening to this and saying, Stephan has no idea what he’s talking about. These are all so many good things about this company, and it becomes the next greatest IPO that happens. I’ll be happy to be wrong in that scenario. But many scenarios that look like this and start having these same types of aspects to it worry me a lot.
And I would look at this as saying, you’re already invested, you’re already participating in it. There’s no need for you to jump even further in, especially if you can’t meet any of those other requirements I was talking about — of having a good portfolio in place, making sure your family’s taken care of, making sure that you have a diversified portfolio, and you can afford to put more money into a private investment.
And that would go for any private investment. It just so happens that this private investment is your brother.
From the Field – Interview with David De Jong
Stephan Shipe: Today I’m joined by David De Jong, chair of Stein Sperling’s nationally recognized Tax Law Group. With over 45 years of experience, he’s represented high-net-worth clients in complex audits, tax controversies, and estate matters.
David, welcome to the show and please tell us a little bit about yourself. Give us a little bit of the background.
David De Jong: I’ve been in practice 50 years in December. My background is tax, estate planning, and business transactions generally for upper-income individuals. I’m also a CPA with a Master’s in Tax.
My first love is of course tax controversy and unfortunately, litigation when it takes us down that road.
Stephan Shipe: You also do some teaching as well at Washington and Lee?
David De Jong: Yes. I’m an adjunct professor of law at Washington and Lee Law School. I teach second-year students how to do a deal from letter of intent to closing.
Stephan Shipe: That’s great. Well, I’m really looking forward to this. This is a topic that regularly comes up — just the uncertainties around audit risk and what’s going on and what somebody should do. So why don’t we start there? Everyone worries about the audit. What are the most common mistakes that you see in your practice, in your experience, that increase that audit risk?
David De Jong: Well, there are probably two ways to answer the question. One way is mistakes by taxpayers, or their preparers, that trigger an IRS alert. And there are some other things that are done accurately, or at least in accordance with the information that’s been given, and they are audit triggers.
First of all, if a high-income individual with a complex return prepares their own 1040, that’s audit triggering in itself. Now, we don’t know exactly the secret formula that IRS uses to select returns for examination. What we do know is that there is a certain score on each return that is filed, and if you are above a certain score, then your return goes to an individual who eyeballs it and determines the likelihood of raising revenue by auditing the return.
And we do know statistically that about half of the returns that are pulled by the computer and are eyeballed go back in the hopper. The other half are those selected for examination. Now the hottest topic today is charitable gifts of property interests. This is the most publicized so-called tax shelter in almost 40 years, since the passive activity rules came into the tax law after the 1986 legislation. Tax shelters fell by the wayside, but they seemed to have had a resurgence in the last five to ten years, and the one that has gotten the most interest by prospective investors is conservation easement syndications.
Where you invest in a partnership that acquires attractive land and then the partnership agrees not to develop the land and claims a tax deduction. These are clogging the Tax Court, and they are looked at nonstop. Conservation easement investments, and frankly any substantial donation of property as opposed to cash, will be scrutinized.
And I’ve got a great story — it’s a true story — about 10 years ago. I represented a periodontist who, when he retired, came up with the idea of donating what were tens of thousands of slides of his patients that he had accumulated over the years. And he got a fellow dentist who was highly regarded to provide a statement as to how many dollars per slide it was worth. He claimed the deduction. He was audited. I came in and tried to salvage the deduction, but there were deficiencies in the presentation. On the tax return, you must fill out a form meticulously, and we did not have a result I would have liked, but probably the result that my client deserved.
Stephan Shipe: Well, now you got me curious. What was the value per slide there?
David De Jong: I don’t recall what it was, but the total value claimed was about $250,000. And they were clearly previous generation, if not two previous generations of technology.
Stephan Shipe: Is there a factor that comes into this, almost like an ROI for the IRS when they come in and they’re looking at this and saying, this person has a high audit risk, they’ve got some of the flags that you’ve been talking about. And then somebody starts eyeballing it and let’s say the majority of this person’s income is — maybe they’re a physician — they have a large income that’s at a hospital W2, and then they also have a portion of their income that is what’s throwing off the alerts, so to speak. That’s maybe they’re doing some consulting or something along those lines.
David De Jong: For high-income taxpayers, particularly those who receive a W2 and cannot readily write off any expenses, it’s very common — and there’s a lot of advice given out there — to set up your own business or practice and have a few dollars of gross income from consulting, and then write off all of your expenses on that Schedule C, the schedule for reporting self-employment income. And that is a major audit trigger.
High-income individuals who show losses. Now, the law changed a few years ago to limit ordinary losses that can be claimed in a year, but it’s $250,000 or $500,000 on a joint return. So that limit comes into play only so often.
A number of exams that I have handled have involved individuals with income deep into six figures, often from employment, attempting to offset it by all kinds of activities. Now, the one that draws the most attention is anything associated with horses. Is it an activity engaged in for profit? There are rare taxpayer victories when it goes into the courts.
About five years ago, I was successful with an IRS revenue agent on a client of mine. She was a physician, he was a consultant. Their combined income was about half a million dollars, and they offset several hundred thousand of it each year by their horse-raising activities and showing the horses and selling the offspring.
And I was able to show that the farm was run professionally, they had engaged consultants to advise them, and they were hoping to make a profit. I think my client was fortunate. By the time the audit came up, they decided they weren’t going to make money and were selling off the horses and discontinuing the activity. But that was an indication that they were in fact attempting to make a profit.
So things like that — any farm activity, or even carrying on in the same line of business, calling yourself a consultant and running up a lot of expenses with a few dollars of income — that’s about the most audit-triggering line on a return there can be.
Stephan Shipe: To stick with that consulting idea, another common thing that’ll come up that regularly gets asked of us are S-Corp salaries. When it comes to someone choosing to tax as a Subchapter S, now they have to come up with a reasonable salary, and I’m sure you see the gamut of what a reasonable salary is. Do you have any rules of thumb or advice?
David De Jong: That is about the only reason why someone starting a business or professional practice would make an S election today, and that is to minimize or hopefully minimize the payroll taxes. Because in an S corporation, only your salary is subject to Social Security and Medicare. But in an LLC, for example, every dollar that you make, including flow-through, is subject to Social Security and Medicare.
And there’s a saying that I have passed on to my clients: pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered. And I would apply that to this sort of situation.
For example, I represented for 30-plus years until he retired a periodontist — not the one who donated his slides, but a different periodontist. And years ago I set him up with a salary that was over the Social Security base. So that he couldn’t get the big savings of not hitting the maximum Social Security base, which today I believe is in the one-sixties. Back then it was far less. And he saved 3.8% on every dollar that he made in excess of that.
By the time he retired, he was making $700,000–$750,000 per year, and he was taking a salary in the upper $200,000s as I recall. So he wasn’t trying to get away with not contributing into the Social Security system, where most people look to receive the maximum benefit by age 70. But on the other hand, the contributions into the Medicare system were not giving him any kind of an added benefit. So on about half a million dollars, multiply that by 3.8% and you’ve got a savings of $19,000 per year.
So an S-Corp is terrific, but again, don’t get greedy in terms of the salary that is set. And this has been a very high audit area. It peaked about eight or nine years ago, and I think the audits have dropped off in this area, but they’re out there.
Stephan Shipe: What should someone do? They go through this and maybe they have some of these flags. Something has caused the IRS to now reach out and they’re going to get audited. What are the steps they should do? If I get a letter today, what would David recommend I start doing day one?
David De Jong: Well, the first thing that IRS looks at on any examination other than correspondence — now, a correspondence audit is one where IRS just wants you to prove one, two, or three items on your return, and that’s done by mail. But let’s assume we have a full-fledged audit, typically called a field examination.
And the first thing IRS is going to do — and it’s on their document request list — is they want to see bank statements. They want to add up all of the bank deposits on every account that you have, and compare it with the gross income that’s shown on your tax return. Now we know it isn’t going to tie in. Sometimes you receive a return of principal. Sometimes you borrow money. But you need to prepare for that because it’s going to be the first thing that IRS looks at on any field audit.
Take your bank statements and look for the checks that were deposited. Look for the electronic transfers in. Identify which ones were shown on the return in the form of salary or gross receipts from self-employment. And then most people will be left with some other items. Are they reimbursements, or perhaps gifts? And if you have that ready for the first day of the examination, things are going to come off very well.
In addition, when you get an audit notice, you should be prepared to recognize which items deducted are likely to be challenged. The use of automobiles by high-income individuals is typically looked at. You’re going to have to prove the 100% or the 80% business use. And any item on the return that seems inconsistent with the profession will get a long look.
Now, something else comes up surprisingly often: returns that have expense items, a high number of them ending in the number zero or to a lesser extent five. That makes it appear as if you are not keeping accurate books and you are estimating. I can think of a busy lawyer who I represented that for some reason did his own return, and he did it with estimates, which you are allowed to use if for some reason beyond your control you are unable to get actual numbers.
Now, there are some exceptions to that, but in general you can use estimates. But if every line has a number that ends in a zero, IRS is going to know you’re using estimates and that has become audit triggering. In the case of the individual I represented, he got a very good result. But it was a very tough examination.
Stephan Shipe: When someone goes through and let’s say they don’t have a good result with the IRS, how much negotiating room is there? Or is it, with the outcome of the audit, you just have now a dollar amount that you must pay? Because you hear advertisements, and you have all this of, you know, we can negotiate down the amount paid. How true is any of that?
David De Jong: Let’s answer that question in two parts. The first is examination, and the second part is collection once the amount due has been established.
In examination, the formal pronouncement of IRS as set forth in their Internal Revenue Manual is that revenue agents and auditors are not supposed to negotiate. They are to determine what is the proper liability. Now, what’s proper to one person isn’t necessarily proper to another. You give a lot of information to 10 good CPAs and tell them to prepare a return, you’re still going to have 10 different returns.
So taking this back to an IRS exam: particularly agents who have been around for a while will informally do trade-offs with you, notwithstanding that they are supposed to determine the proper liability.
The horse trading really occurs if you don’t agree with the revenue agent’s report and you take it to IRS appeals. They answer the phone saying, “We are the Independent Office of Appeals.” Independence means, well, they still work for the IRS, but they are to resolve issues.
The Tax Court is clogged, mostly by individuals who are lower income and want to handle small cases on their own. So the appeals officers are under pressure to resolve cases. They are told not to give in on any issue that they have greater than an 80% chance of winning, and they are supposed to concede on any matter that they believe the government has less than a 20% chance of winning.
So that big area of 60% is where there can be trading. And it often makes no sense to go to court. From a taxpayer’s point of view, the Tax Court is weighted in favor of the government. Taxpayers win outright no more than 4–5% of cases, and in another 5–10% there’s a split decision where the taxpayer wins on some points but not on every point. And you typically will get the best result in a settlement with appeals.
I believe that a good tax lawyer will try very few cases in Tax Court. And in the now almost 50 years that I’ve been in practice, I’ve tried no more than a half dozen, because the only ones that you should take to court are cases where there’s a large dollar amount in issue, because the cost of litigation is high, and you must have an IRS appeals officer who did not budge.
Now sometimes my cases have been resolved not in appeals, but it goes to the eve of trial. I represented an individual who I believed was an innocent spouse and should not be co-liable with her husband on a joint return. And I was on the eve of trial the night before when the government recognized finally that they didn’t have a case, and filed a motion to resolve it.
So you can settle up to the eve of trial. If you take it to trial, you typically will not get a good result, as those investors in the conservation easement shelters have been getting a rude awakening over the last year or two.
Stephan Shipe: Do you think that low success rate is due to the fact that many people try to represent themselves in the Tax Court?
David De Jong: Lower-income individuals tend to represent themselves, and statistically 85–90% of cases in the Tax Court are pro se. Interestingly, a number of upper-income individuals do represent themselves. The cases that are reported that involve higher-income people in court — a lot of those, the individuals are quite off the wall in seeking relief from an IRS assessment, and they do not get a good result.
The cases that form the precedent the tax lawyers and CPAs rely on are typically those that involve questions of law. And even though the Internal Revenue Code is thousands of pages, every fact situation varies from a previous one. And does it fall within the law, an exception, or outside of the law?
And there are still cases that remain out there, and there will always be new situations leaving the court trying to apply the facts to the particular law. That’s why tax has been so interesting to me over the years.
Stephan Shipe: This has been a fantastic conversation. This is such an opaque area for many people, and I think everyone will learn a lot from your experiences — I know I did. Thank you for coming onto the show.
David De Jong: It’s a pleasure.
Outro
Stephan Shipe: Hey, this is Stephan Shipe. Thanks for tuning in to the Scholar Wealth Podcast. If you have a question you’d like us to tackle on a future episode, share it with us at scholaradvising.com/podcast. We’d love to hear from you. Until next time.
Disclosures: The information provided in this podcast is for general informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended to constitute financial, investment, or other professional advice. The opinions expressed are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of any affiliated organizations. Investing in financial markets involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Before making any investment decisions, you should consult with a qualified financial advisor who can assess your individual financial situation, objectives, and risk tolerance.