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The Healthy Wealth Experience - Where Financial Success Meets Personal Wellbeing
Host Chris Hall combines 30+ years in finance with wellness expertise to help entrepreneurs and professionals build wealth without sacrificing their health. From investment strategies to money management, we offer advice to make financial success more sustainable.
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Business owners need and want proactive advice but most CPAs and accountants are simply they're they're they're doing your taxes. You give them the numbers you had for the year and they're calculating your they're not tax planners. They're they're preparers and there's a big difference between a preparer and a tax strategist and sometimes they're not the same people.
Chris Hall:Hello. This is Chris Hall with the Healthy Wealth podcast. And today, I have a very special guest, Matt Ruttenberg, and he is going to tell us all about how businesses can do a better job of saving for their retirement while incentivizing their employees to stick there with them. And I think you're really gonna enjoy the idea that he has some things that maybe you're not doing in your four zero one k plan that you probably should be doing in your four zero one k plan. So without further ado, let me go ahead and say thank you so much for being here, Matt.
Chris Hall:Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Chris. I really appreciate it. Yeah. My name is Matt Ruttenberg.
Matt Ruttenberg:I am a co owner of Life Inc Retirement Services. We are a custom four zero one k administration company. So all we do is build four zero one k's and something we call a retirement plan stack. So the retirement plan stack is basically an upside down three tiered wedding cake for everyone who's listening. And if you're watching, it's think think of it as a upside down pyramid kind of situation where, you know, the four one k, you're bit you're stacking one plan on top of the other, and being able to add those layers as your business becomes more and more profitable just enhances your contribution limits.
Chris Hall:Okay. So for those that don't understand, what is a TPA or a third party administrator? Because people, when they think of, like, they have a four zero one k, it's with Vanguard, it's with John Hancock, it's someone like that. They don't really maybe understand what the TPA's role is. So Yeah.
Chris Hall:Could you give us an idea more on what that looks like?
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. And and, you know, the the four zero one k world is vast. You know, or the retirement plan world is vast. There's so many different types of plan options, and and then inside of the four zero k, there's so many variables and and wheels turning at the same time. So kinda let's let's a good idea.
Matt Ruttenberg:Let's take take a step back. And there's basically three roles to every four zero one k plan. Right? So one is the TPA, the the administrator. The administrator is our primary role, and we are the ones who are building the plan document, which is kind of like the legal document, if you will, that you file with the IRS stating this is the design I'm going to go with, and we're the ones who keep you compliant.
Matt Ruttenberg:We're the ones who do all your filings, your 5,005 hundred's. We're the ones who do your annual testing behind the scenes, and then being able to pivot as your as your business evolves, we allow your your plan to evolve as well. The other layer is the investment fiduciary, the financial adviser, the other role there, and they're the ones who are managing and monitoring the investment lineup, the the menu of funds, if you will, for you and your employees. And then the third category is the custodian or the record keeper, as we call it, which is a little bit more of an advanced version. But this is where the money's being held.
Matt Ruttenberg:This is where the login is for your employees to see what the balance looks like. This is where the statements are produced. And all three of those layers are involved at all times. And just sometimes different people use those different roles. And sometimes they're put together to make it look like one company.
Matt Ruttenberg:In reality, there's actually a lot more things going on behind the scenes.
Chris Hall:Right. Okay. Yeah. I feel like, you know, as a financial adviser, you know, my job is to quarterback the deal and to, like, make sure that all the right parts are in place. And then I know specifically from doing this for over nine years now that if you don't have a good TPA, like, you're gonna you're gonna pay the price one way or the other.
Chris Hall:You're gonna pay the price in the form of, like, you're gonna pay more in taxes than you should. Or one of the things I noticed was, like, distributions. Like, a lot of TPAs when it comes time to take distributions out of the plan, man, it's like sometimes, like, pulling teeth to get them act. There was a business here locally, great business that was pulled that was basically bought out by a big company. And so the big company's rolling everybody into the new plan.
Chris Hall:So, of course, everybody had the option that they could pull out of the plan if they wanted to. And so we had several, you know, I'd say half a dozen clients who wanted to come over and, you know, do private, you know, retirement plans to roll out of their four zero one k's. And I remember, like, two or three of them, it took us three months to get a distribution. And I was just like, that's too long. And I actually ended up saying, like, I think you're violating some legal things
Matt Ruttenberg:The regulations there.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Yeah. Because, like, you know, these people are asking for their money and you're holding it. And that did not go over well, by the way. People don't really like you when you call them out.
Chris Hall:So tell me a little bit more about your background and how you got into this.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. Actually, I was a I'm a third generation financial professional. I did my grandfather, my dad, and I first started out straight out of college going working in more of a financial advisor role. Was a financial advisor for fifteen years. As you explain it, you're the quarterback, right?
Matt Ruttenberg:You're the one who is bringing all of the specialists in. And I wanted to be one of the specialists. So I did that for fifteen years. And then I was dabbling. I was doing four zero one ks's as part of my practice, but I was also working a lot with the, you know, I call it B2C, right?
Matt Ruttenberg:So we were working with a lot of retirees at the time. And I really wanted to get more in touch with my colleagues, which is entrepreneurs. I owned my own practice. I owned my own book of business. And ultimately, ended up selling that.
Matt Ruttenberg:And then and then merging my my four zero ks business with where, you know, now I'm a co owner of Life Inc. Retirement Services. So we expanded into and merged our companies together, and then we've expanded ever since then. This company has been in in, gosh, place for ten years, I think it is now. I've been with them for maybe seven years.
Matt Ruttenberg:But overall, I've been in the business for over twenty years in finance in general and working with entrepreneurs, but retirees for the first portion of that. And I decided that I wanted to work with the people that I really connected with because I own my own business. I love the tax strategies. I love talking about, you know, form business formations and things like that and how it all how it all put is put together. And I wanted to be I wanted to sit on the same side of the table as every other financial professional.
Matt Ruttenberg:So financial advisers, like the the accountants, the CPA, the tax strategist, the attorneys, to where we're all on the same team because every business owner needs to have a team. Yes. You you you have to DIY it a little bit in the beginning phases so you can, you know, reinvest back in the business. But having a team is where you really start to shine. So I wanted to be a part of that team and be brought in and sit on the same side of the
Chris Hall:table as everybody. Yeah. One of my favorite books of all time, still to this day, I read it probably thirty years ago, is Rich Dad Poor Dad.
Matt Ruttenberg:Oh, yeah.
Chris Hall:And one of the things that stuck in my mind from that book, there were several things, but one of the things that's really stuck in my mind was, like, pay for experience. Pay for someone to do the things that you're not good at. And so, like, as a financial adviser, you know, I I always find, like, you know, could people do what I do? Absolutely. If they spend enough time and and energy on it, they could definitely do it.
Chris Hall:In fact, I have some clients who, you know, they might spend more time watching the S and P 500 than I do. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But, you know, having that long term focus, having a planning mindset, a coaching mindset, you know, there's a lot that goes into that, and I feel like that's where my expertise is, and that's why people lean on me, especially, like, recently, the market's been so crazy. And so, you know, if you're in your own plan and you're doing your own thing and you don't have someone like me, it's a real nice place to make some huge mistakes.
Chris Hall:So so lots lots of times, that's what I do. So, like, in your business, you know, that's another thing that you're doing it, but you're sort of pre you're sort setting the table in advance for your your folks to not make those mistakes. So can you kinda tell us a little bit about, like, what a basic TPA plan document has? And then, you know, just, you know, just give people because I'm I'm I'm assuming that most people listening if they have a four if they're a business owner and they have four zero one k, they have the basic parts. Right?
Chris Hall:So they're thinking, I have this. I don't I don't really I don't really I'm not resonating with this. So if you could just spend a couple minutes on that, and then I'd like to dig a little deeper after that into, like, what are the things that people aren't doing that they should be doing? So so let's start with what what what does a simple plan document look like for most people?
Matt Ruttenberg:And and this is probably the biggest misconception out there in general. Business owners, a lot of CPAs and tax professionals, and, honestly, a lot of financial advisers too don't realize that not all four zero k's are created equal. They are absolutely not created equal. Think about it this way. There's there's really two kinds.
Matt Ruttenberg:There's a there's a prototype and non prototype or the actual verbiage out there in the four ks space. But prototype is like boilerplate. Okay. So think about going to legal Zoom and downloading your trust or downloading any legal document, and then you just fill in the blanks with your name and your information. What that is is the that's the prototype.
Matt Ruttenberg:That's the they actually file it only one time. The the company who's offering it is filing it one time, and then they just wash, rinse, repeat, and that's all they have to do, and you just fill in your name. There's some customization there, but very, very little. On the other side of it is the custom or non prototype. This is like you're hiring the actual attorney to create a custom legal document for your exact situation.
Matt Ruttenberg:And that's considered the non prototype. So two completely different models, because there's so much gray area in the four zero one ks space. Like I said, everyone thinks four zero ks's are all created equal. Four zero ks's four zero one ks, you can do this. No, there's so much more to it as far as like eligibility, plan design, the type of profit sharing that you're doing.
Matt Ruttenberg:And and how do we isolate these employees? Do we isolate these employees? Are you non high? There's so much more to it. And and going back to that upside down three tiered wedding cake I mentioned earlier, every layer is designed a very specific way to maximize the layer above it.
Matt Ruttenberg:And if you're not, you're literally throwing thousands of dollars away, whether it's in the form of improper plan design, like you're giving too much to your employees than you had to, or tax savings. Those are two biggest things that I've seen, and almost 90% of the time I see a in force four zero one ks plan or profit sharing or defined benefit. There's there's a tweak that we need to make because it's not purely efficient enough. Your business evolves daily. Daily, your every business is you don't you wake up as a business owner.
Matt Ruttenberg:Everyone knows this. You wake up and you're like, don't know what today's gonna look like, and it's stressful. Your ups are your highs are high and your lows are really low. But so if you need to be able to pivot and evolve on your plan document, that's what you need to do. You need to be able to make an amendment.
Matt Ruttenberg:You need to be able to say, hey, I need this new key employee in today, even though I have a a one year eligibility requirement. I need to be able to have a special enrollment period. Versus if you do the boilerplate version, you're stuck with what everyone else is doing at the same time for the most part, and you can't think outside the box. The biggest reason why that is the case is these companies who have these prototype boilerplate versions are, you know, they only want to stay inside their protocol, inside their process, because most of their staff who are working or connecting with their client, they only know so much. They're not twenty year veterans.
Matt Ruttenberg:They're not they're not thirty year veterans. They're they know their role, and they don't want them to think outside the box. They wanna keep it as streamlined so they can scale as fast as possible. So if you're really, really wanting something beyond that, non prototype custom is the way to go.
Chris Hall:Right. And I think, again, like just from my interactions with people is they don't they don't know what they don't know. And, you know, whereas and I would say that the and not always, but, you know, the TPAs in general, they're kinda getting paid the same amount of money whether they've, like, done the boilerplate or whether they've taken the time to customize it. And and it feels like the majority of people, TPA wise, are just kind of like you know, they're just kinda like, hey. This is what we do.
Chris Hall:We do it all day long. It's like, know, it's a can of corn. Put it in, shopping cart. Let's push it through. And I just feel like there's so much more to it.
Chris Hall:So just, again, kinda going into, like, the simple plan, like the one that we're talking about, the boilerplate stuff. How much money can a, like, a business owner put away? I mean, I know these answers, by the way, but I'm asking you for the people out there. But how much money can a business owner put away in a typical boilerplate four zero one k plan for themselves?
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. I mean, on the on the low end, you have not to get into how the sausage is made here because there's there's a lot to that question. But, you know, 23,500 is the that's the entry point. Right? I mean, I don't want say that's what you have to have and want to save to get into it.
Matt Ruttenberg:There's other reasons why we go into how much you or, you know, what which plan design are we going with. But it all comes down to how much do they want to save. And let me rephrase that actually a little bit to where when we're speaking with the business owner, we always ask two questions, and there are multiple choice. It's actually really simple. First one is what is the purpose?
Matt Ruttenberg:Like, why are you communicating? Why are you talking to us? Why are we having this conversation? Is it one, is this for you as the business owner? You wanna stockpile or save money on taxes?
Matt Ruttenberg:That's a. B, is is this for your employees? Because one, the state is telling you to do it. There's a lot of mandates going on right now. Or or your employees are bugging you?
Matt Ruttenberg:Or is it both? Or is it all of the above? Okay. So that's the answer. That's question one.
Matt Ruttenberg:Question two is, now how much do you as the business owner wanna save? Now this could come down to maybe what you as the financial adviser has said, I think you need to save this much for retirement, or is it more of I need I'm getting crushed on taxes and I need to save as much as humanly possible, and we need to do whatever I can to make to save as much taxes as I can. So when you put those two questions together, it narrows it down to what is the the ultimate plan design. If the second question, the answer is, I don't want to do anything, this is only for my employees, then maybe the four zero one ks isn't even the option. Maybe a simple IRA, maybe a SEP IRA.
Matt Ruttenberg:Or if someone says, I don't have any employees, I only want to save maybe $5 a year, do an IRA. Do an IRA. You don't have to go all in on the four zero one side. It's all dependent on what those answers are because going back to your original questions, how much can we save? You can go anywhere between a thousand dollars a year all the way up to we have some we have plans that we designed.
Matt Ruttenberg:They're putting in over $600 per year pretax. And you can imagine the tax savings on that.
Chris Hall:So so I want to interject right there. That's kind of what I was talking about. I think that if you were to ask the average business owner how much money can I put in my four zero one k, the answer would be 23,500 or if they're over 50, they get to do a little bit of upswing, you know, little a little bit of increased catch up? But, you know, I know that the the rules are are much better than that. And I think what's the new number for total comp total, Yeah.
Chris Hall:It's like 63,000 or something?
Matt Ruttenberg:Is it the $4.15 limit is what they call that, and that's this it's $70,000 for 2025. Right. And I think I think most people think it's $23.05 because maybe they've come from a day job if you were working for somebody else, and that's how much as an employee they could put in. But they're not considering the employer contributions, which is a is a combination of the match and profit sharing. And you are an employee of your own company.
Matt Ruttenberg:You are an employee of your own company, so you get to have both. And I always say this, the four zero one k task code, or I should probably back up and say four zero one a, because that kind of covers a lot more, is built for the business owner. You just have to take care of your employees to a minimal amount. Right. Every time we design something, that's why that first question is, is this for you as your or is this for your employees?
Matt Ruttenberg:Are we protecting your cash flow and your assets? Or are we saying we need to go all in on your money and let's figure out what we have to get to them first, and then and then you can go in.
Chris Hall:Yeah. So the whole idea of, like, 23,000, how do you get to 70,000 from there? How do you get to $70,000 from '20 for 23,500?
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. A lot of this has to do with your like, how your entity is built. So let's just say s corp s corporation, you're filing as an s corporation. So what you're allowed to do so the first $23.05 is you as an employee of your own company. That's gonna come out of your payroll, out of your your salary that you pay yourself.
Matt Ruttenberg:Okay? So if you pay yourself a 100,000, then you're gonna have the net difference of what is that? $76.05. Then the rest of it, which is the employer contribution is 25% of your salary. Everything is based, especially for an S corporation as an as an example.
Matt Ruttenberg:Everything is based on your salary. If you're an S Corp and you'll pay yourself a salary, first, you're not allowed to do that. But second, everything is based on that salary. So if you're paying yourself $100,000 as a salary and the rest is coming out as distributions, it's 25% of the 100,000 that is stacked on top of the 23,500. So 23,500 as an employee and then another 25,000 on top of that as an employer.
Matt Ruttenberg:So you can do that all the way up to $70,000. I see, I think it's around, what is that? A $184, I believe it is, to get you to that number for $20.25 is what you'd have to pay yourself as a salary.
Chris Hall:Okay. And then you could put 25% of it away through profit sharing. So that's the businesses that are making money on top of the $1.85 that you can
Matt Ruttenberg:pull pull that out. Yeah. That's gonna come out of your your profit, basically. That's not coming through your payroll. That's coming out of your your profit.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah.
Chris Hall:So, like, when it comes to when it comes to, like, you know, the 70,000, the 25%, do you guys help people with the I'm assuming you probably get their CPA involved and stuff like that, but do you help people with the design as far as, like, hey. Listen. You need to pay yourself x number of dollars to maximize your benefit because I think that the average business owner, including myself, we wanna pay the least amount of taxes. And so can you speak to the idea of, like, me paying myself a low salary so I don't have to pay taxes on it Yeah. Through the s corp or versus, like, I pay myself a greater salary, but I'm putting money away.
Chris Hall:Can you kinda, like, do some some easier math on that? I mean, it's really not easy math for sure.
Matt Ruttenberg:Honestly, you have to get your accountant involved. And I think this goes back to what you were saying earlier is most TPAs, third party administrators, are order takers. They say, okay, what do you want? Here's your menu of options. There's no really consultation going on there.
Matt Ruttenberg:You know, right now, we are building out a couple models right now with their current salary, what they've been paying themselves, and then we're modeling what the maximum is. So we're going to calculate how much do you need to pay yourself as a salary in order to maximize your contributions. That is an ongoing annual conversation that we have with clients. We'd like to have what I call an income planning meeting towards November, December at the end of the year for these business owners who are trying to maximize their contributions. And that is a conversation of back and forth.
Matt Ruttenberg:Hopefully, we just get on the phone call with their CPA and say, hey. What do we have? But a lot of times, you know, the business owner is the middleman there, and it's and it's more about what do you what do you need? How is your year? How's your year ending up?
Matt Ruttenberg:And do we need to increase your salary before the end of the year in order to do some more maximizing of these calculations? And and and then we have the business owner do a special payroll run, basically, at the end of the year. We we have business owners who put all 23.5 in on December 30 every year because they're like, I'm not going to pay myself a salary. I just give myself distribution throughout the year. They have to ante up to FICA.
Matt Ruttenberg:It's a conversation. Everything in business is about the net, right? Everything is about the net. It's what is your net tax savings if you increase your salary, but when you increase your salary, you're increasing your FICA taxes too, but you're able to put in more into the retirement plan stack, what is the net difference on your tax savings? And this is exactly why having a team of people who communicate is really, really important because there's a lot of variables going on.
Matt Ruttenberg:There's a lot of wheels turning at the same time, and you are running your business. You're you're good at what you do, and then you lean on the team that you trust to do what they do and tell you what is the best route. Do you
Chris Hall:feel that most CPAs are capable of doing those kinds of analysis?
Matt Ruttenberg:I think they're capable. I don't know if they're always doing it.
Chris Hall:Yeah. What's a good what's a good question to ask your CPA that would make them, like, just to let people, business owners know, hey, I'm looking for this kind of a CPA. Is this something you do?
Matt Ruttenberg:So a lot of time that's a really good question. And and honestly, I I see we talk to a lot of business owners, and most of them are unhappy with their CPAs right now. And there's a big and and the reason is is because well, this this is a this is a pretty big conversation, to be honest with you. I've had these conversations with CPAs because there's a few reasons why they asked it. One, they want proactive advice.
Matt Ruttenberg:Business owners need and want proactive advice. But most CPAs and accountants are simply they're doing your taxes. Right. You give them the numbers you had for the year and they're calculating your taxes. Right.
Matt Ruttenberg:They're not. Versus planning. They're not tax planners. They're they're preparers. And there's a big difference between a preparer and a tax strategist.
Matt Ruttenberg:And sometimes they're not the same people. They're not. I mean, I have conversations with business owners all the time like, okay. I need the four zero one k, but I'm also you know, this is for somebody who's got a million dollar profit or more, we have these conversations all the time. They're saying, okay, the four zero k, what can I get?
Matt Ruttenberg:Great. What other strategies that I have? And their CPA or their accountant is not giving them these these answers. Right.
Chris Hall:He's like,
Matt Ruttenberg:buy a new truck. That's like, that's a new device. Buy buy
Chris Hall:a deteriorating asset. What a terrible, terrible advice.
Matt Ruttenberg:Is like the default plan design for all CPAs for some reason. And this this goes back before secure one point o secure one point o prior to, let's see, 2019 when the SEP IRA was the only option after your filing date or after December 31. So I think it's the the conversation to have with your CPA is, you know, do you have the bandwidth to do planning meetings or proactive advice for me? Mhmm. Or do or is that is that something you do?
Matt Ruttenberg:And if not, I need to go find another person to plug in
Chris Hall:Mhmm.
Matt Ruttenberg:To that to that team because I've it's really hard to find one that does both. Right. It's really hard. And the reason is, one, they don't have the bandwidth because the amount of time it takes to do tax prep or tax, I guess, tax prep is is a lot. You need to have a lot of people.
Matt Ruttenberg:And then so you don't have the bandwidth to put in more hours. And a lot of them don't like to ask for more money. It's more expensive to do tax planning than it is to do tax prep. So I've I've seen $15,000 annual bills for tax planning. I've seen it less than that, of course, but that's like they're they're they can be expensive.
Matt Ruttenberg:But this is when you're really needing like, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax help because you have a high profit. Right. So
Chris Hall:I I I have a client who's a doctor, and she works as a w two wage earner, but she also has two where she's, like, the head of clinic here and she's, like, the head of assisted living here and things like that. You know, basically, she has $10.09 9 income as well. Mhmm. And so one of her things was, like, how do I maximize the amount of money that I don't have to pay in taxes? And so once again, like, you know, I have people that I recommend as CPAs, but, again, preparers.
Chris Hall:Right? So so we reached out to, someone here locally, which was nice. And, you know, they're they're gonna sit down and talk about structures of LLCs and, you know, all the things we're talking about. But, you know, like, I think a CPA, you know, around town here, and, again, it's different everywhere, but I think a CPA around here is gonna charge between 400 and $900 for a return. And and we're talking about this is tax planning, and I wanna say it's probably closer to, like, $5,000.
Chris Hall:Yeah. So and then that may not be one time too. That might be, like, you're saying, like, might be year round because you might be like, hey. We need to check-in and make sure we're bonusing ourselves enough money to, like, pay, you know, pay the least amount of taxes. So I think there's a lot goes into it.
Chris Hall:But, I mean, there's just a lot of business owners who are like, I'm not paying $5. It's like, okay. Well,
Matt Ruttenberg:it would be it would
Chris Hall:be so great if you could, like, make a deal with a CPA or a tax per planner, and you say, okay, listen, I wanna make back $4 for every dollar I give to you. Right? So in other words, like, you could charge me $5, but I better save $20,000 in taxes or or something to that effect.
Matt Ruttenberg:Sure. But you kinda like that's the real catch, I
Chris Hall:think, sometimes is just like a it's like you're putting the money out front and you're hoping that they're gonna do what they say they're gonna do. That's I think that's a real disconnect for a lot of business owners is they don't wanna fork out the money and then go, oh, that's not what I wanted.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. So You know, that that's going back to what I said. Everything's about net. Everything is in business is about the net. So Yeah.
Matt Ruttenberg:Sometimes you have to pay a consultant, which is basically a tax strategist. This is kind of consultant. Sometimes they're not even CPAs, they're just EAs, they're sometimes they're just business owners I've seen that know what they're doing and they're the ones implementing it. And it it's again, it's part of the team. It's a consultant.
Matt Ruttenberg:It's a net. You're going to save money on taxes, but I get it. Like, sometimes it's what if I don't what if you don't find anything?
Chris Hall:Yeah. One of my first one of my first guests on the podcast was Mark Lewis with his it's Mark's Money Matters. Mhmm. And you can find him on Instagram. He's got a really good social media presence on pretty much all of them.
Chris Hall:But, you know, like, he was a composer in Hollywood, and he has no background in accounting or anything like that. But he got kinda, like, put together in if you haven't seen the episode, it's episode I believe it's episode two. It's Mark Lewis. But he has got into a group of people who, like, literally wanted to, like, try to abolish the Fed and become sovereign nation. And it's, like, a very interesting story.
Chris Hall:But because of it, he learned how to use all these corporations and trusts and stuff like that to sort of kinda, like, you know, eliminate not eliminate, but really lower your taxes. And so that now he makes his living by giving that advice to other people.
Matt Ruttenberg:So Yeah. That's a great
Chris Hall:yeah. It's something that's super necessary. And again, like, you don't have like you said, like, I mentioned that because you had said, like, you don't have to be a CPA. You know, just Google tax strategists. So in fact, in my personal life, that's one of the things I've been sort of, you know, obviously, I have my full time practice, which is extremely busy and puts a lot of work on me, but I try to carve out time, to learn more about tax strategies so that I can be of more value to my clients as well.
Chris Hall:But, I mean, I'm really passionate about it because I'm I'm I'm in the same boat as a lot of my clients. I don't wanna pay taxes if I don't have to. And Mark had said something I thought was really cool, what she said, the tax code's, like, 6,000 pages or something like that, some ridiculous number. And and he said, like, all but, like, 30 of it is on how to save taxes. So so the the code is actually built for us to save taxes, but, like, we're not gonna read 5,970 pages.
Chris Hall:You know what I mean? So so that's that's kinda like the the the space where there's a lot of room for movement. People think, oh, I need to pay my fair share. Cool. Do it.
Chris Hall:Pay your fair share. But if they wrote 5,970 pages for me to say pay less in taxes, I believe the government wants me to pay less in taxes.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. They give you those those loopholes. They give them to you, and they're not closed for a reason. If they need them closed, they'll close them. But I I Mostly because congress still needs them.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. Exactly. That's that's exactly true. And the the four zero one k or four zero one a, that's one tax code out of out of the 5,000 pages or so. The whole everything is mass majority of tax codes are built for business owners.
Matt Ruttenberg:They it really is. And and and as long as you're taking care of your employees, you're fine. But this is one. I'm a specialist in one, and we have to bring in other people to help understand how it all connects. And I think the ones that I see who take advantage of it the most are the ones that they'll have a separate tax strategist, the tax strategist, or they've done their research honestly, too, is say, hey, what is this?
Matt Ruttenberg:And they talk to their accountants, say, can I do this? Does this make sense? And tax preparer says, yes, it fits into your puzzle. And then boom, that's it. And then you implement.
Matt Ruttenberg:And that's like, you know, cost segregation, opportunity zones, all these different types. So many out there. You have to be able to have a team around you to connect it all together.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Yeah. So so we talked a little bit about how to get to 70,000. You know, roughly, we're gonna import we're gonna m we're gonna bring in our CPA. We're gonna figure out our payroll.
Chris Hall:We're gonna do the different things structure wise. How does somebody go from $70,000 putting away $70,000 to, like, you had mentioned earlier? How do they go from that to $600,000?
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. Yep. So that's this is this is really customizable. This is where every business is different. Every plan is different.
Matt Ruttenberg:So the third layer. Right? So what we're doing so far, what you've talked about is the layer one and layer two. So that gets you to the $70,000. Now we're gonna introduce level three, which is a defined benefit plan.
Matt Ruttenberg:Okay. So it's a different category of plan that you're stacking on top of it. The bottom two layers are considered defined contribution. You're defining your contribution limit and that changes every year. It goes up like we were talking at 70,000 for 2025.
Matt Ruttenberg:It was 69,000 for 2024. So now we're going to define defined benefit because it's a basically a defined benefit plan is a pension is a pension plan. You're defining your future benefit. All right? And all the numbers are based on your age, your salary, your actuary comes in and starts calculating all these things.
Matt Ruttenberg:How many, what does your employee pool look like? And they say, this is what you need to put in so you can have this future defined benefit in the future. So those contribution limits per person go over $300,000 per year, per person. So here's a good example. I'm going to give you two examples on this exactly.
Matt Ruttenberg:So one is a husband wife team. They have no employees. Basically, he's a consultant and he hires her in for some admin work is what the situation was. And they make out maybe $1,200,000 profit. No overhead.
Matt Ruttenberg:It's a consultation firm. Sit at your home office and there's almost no write offs. So we were able to do all three layers and put between the two of them $675,000 I think it was, it was contributions, maybe it was $6.45. But the result was $275,000 in tax savings every single year because we've implemented all three of those. Part of that is inside of that defined benefit plan is where we'll start doing different kinds of investments to bump that number up a little bit.
Matt Ruttenberg:But basically when you increase that stack up to three layers, it's age based. So a 25 year old is not going to be able to put in the same amount. Even though if they have the same profit as a 60 year old, the 60 year old is going to be able to put in more contributions in a given year than the 25 year old simply because it's age based. It's calculated like an old school pension, although you have the liquidity. So what it's doing is saying, all right, a 25 year old has a lot longer than a 60 year old to save for retirement, so we're gonna give the benefit to the 60 year old.
Chris Hall:Mhmm. Right. So are we talking about so this is the part of the cake. Right? So we've got the first layer, which is like the four zero one k itself, and then like the second layer is like profit sharing.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yep.
Chris Hall:And then the third layer would be defined contribution.
Matt Ruttenberg:Exactly. Defined benefit. Yeah. Defined benefit plan exceeding. Yep.
Matt Ruttenberg:Exactly. Good. Yep. Okay. Great.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yep.
Chris Hall:Yeah. I think that's one of the things that I have noticed. So before I was a financial adviser, before I started doing this over nine years ago, the two two of the jobs that I had was, one, I was a pharmaceutical rep. I used to tell people that I that did I sold drugs, and my mom was real proud. And and so that was what I did for, like, ten years.
Chris Hall:And then I also did dental equipment and supplies for about three years total before I got into this, and then this is exactly what I've always wanted to do. So it was an easy transition for me. But with that being said was I called on dentists and doctors all the time. And I feel like most dentists and doctors should kind of fall under that third tier of the cake. Right?
Chris Hall:Especially dentists. Like, most of the dentists in this town are probably pulling in after paying all their wages and stuff. They're still probably pulling in for 500 to $800,000 in income for themselves. So, I mean, that to me is a person who should be in a defined benefit plan. How do you sort of convince business owners to to take that next step?
Chris Hall:Because it as much as people don't know about four zero one k's, they know even less about defined benefit. So can you speak to that a little bit, how that works?
Matt Ruttenberg:I think the third layer unlocks, if you will, is I want to say if you have like $250,000 of profit or higher, and that is also a moving target depending on how many employees you have. So, know, for example, we had a business that we designed a plan for, and there's 18 employees and two owners, and we were able to put a million dollars into a plan, $9.30 of it went to the employee or only 70 had
Chris Hall:to go
Matt Ruttenberg:to the employees. So that's a 93% efficiency rating. So it's running the numbers. It's simply what is the numbers and this is your net benefit.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Does that cost money for you guys to run those numbers for No.
Matt Ruttenberg:We do not charge to run numbers. It's basically we ask for a census report, which we have a template, which is just showing us the numbers. We don't need names. We don't need those security numbers. Just basic information.
Matt Ruttenberg:And then if you already have a plan in place and we ask for your plan document, like you mentioned earlier in conversation. So those will give us and then we run scenarios. We run multiple scenarios. The goal for us is to always get more of the money in the business owner's hands. And Dennis, great, great example, because we work with a lot of dentists.
Matt Ruttenberg:And I was on a podcast a while back, and I had a dentist reach out to me saying, Hey, my four zero one ks is only doing the twenty three five that we talked about. I want to max out to the 70. Okay. Right. So in that situation, we ran all the numbers.
Matt Ruttenberg:The goal is to get the money in the business owner's hands, not necessarily give them to the to the employer employees. In the most basic form,
Chris Hall:there's a lot
Matt Ruttenberg:of profit sharing options out there. The most basic form is pro rata. Whatever you give yourself, you have to give your employees. We don't ever run pro rata ever, ever, ever, because the pro rata means that you're giving it whatever you give yourself, you give yourself 25%, you're going to give everybody else 25%. We don't do that.
Matt Ruttenberg:So the efficiency rating climbs even greater Cause a lot of people say, you know, we'll run the profit sharing numbers. And they say, yeah, it's not worth it. I'm gonna go put my money elsewhere. I understand that because your contributions max is $70,000. The efficiency rating is going to be less if you have employees.
Matt Ruttenberg:If you have no employees, it's a 100% efficiency rating, of course. But Sure. Once you bump up those contribution limits to upwards of $300, you're not giving $300 to your employees. You're giving, like, a thousand, 1,200, 1,400 to your employees each. So it's the the the greater success of efficiency is when you add that third layer, to be honest with you.
Chris Hall:Right. So so it's the defined benefit where you can usually maximize the efficiency ratings. Is that what you're saying?
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. You're you're shooting for over 90% when you get to that. So
Chris Hall:Yeah. So realistically speaking, if you're a decent decently productive dentist, right, you're doing good production and you've got, let's say, 12 or less employees and you've got a four zero one k, like step two is immediately let's go to let's go to defined benefit.
Matt Ruttenberg:You're gonna you we're we use the profit sharing as a tool. Right? So every layer is designed a certain way. Okay? So you actually will be using some profit sharing in in when you go you don't jump step to step three.
Matt Ruttenberg:You do include the profit sharing, but we minimize it. Minimize it to only about 6% of your profit. Excuse me, of your salary. Then because the mass majority we want in the defined benefit plan and the version we use a lot is called the cash balance plan. And the cash balance plan, we use that because of the flexibility of it.
Matt Ruttenberg:It's calculated like an old school Ford GM pension plan, but we're not giving you a future salary. It's a balance. It's a cash balance. There's a lot more flexibility to it, meaning if you have a bad year, we can pause it, we can freeze it, or we can minimize the amount that you put into it. And then when you're done with it, you roll it into your four zero one k.
Matt Ruttenberg:You shut it down and roll it in your four zero k. The average lifespan is like maybe five, seven years. So it's a longevity thing.
Chris Hall:And use the example that you used before, which again was just the husband wife combination, but that was where you were able to put away 645,000. I mean, realistically, they're in the highest tax brackets. We're talking about people who are paying 50% plus in taxes. Correct?
Matt Ruttenberg:Absolutely. Yeah. So everything you put in there is coming off the top. Right.
Chris Hall:Yep. Is the defined benefit at all tied to their salary, or is it kind of like Very much. Does it come out of the corporate corporate proceeds?
Matt Ruttenberg:It's it it comes out of there it's it's considered employer contribution. So it is it's not coming out of your salary. But, again, if you are an s corp or even a c corp, everything is based on your salary. So we are we'll run efficiency ratings based on bumping up the salary to we're we're doing one where they were doing a $100 a year. We're doing as we speak today
Chris Hall:Mhmm.
Matt Ruttenberg:A $100,000 salary. I think their profit was close to 900, and we ran the efficiency ratings on a 100, but we also did two eighty. So we bumped it up to the maximum, and there's going to be a massive, you know, difference there on how much they can put into it, how much you have to give to your employees. Again, this is how the sausage is made. Not to go too far into it, but there's a reason why you bring an actuary in.
Matt Ruttenberg:It's because there's a lot of tool, a lot of things going on and how long have they been with the company and how old is each employee and how much you paying each employee and how much And if you're using a order taker mentality on your administrator and actuaries, they're not going to give you advice. Right. You need to have a consultative approach to it because we took on one from there's a monster administrator out there that all the big boys use, and I won't mention their name, but it they were giving $50,000 just in contributions, too much to their employees because those the four
Chris Hall:zero one
Matt Ruttenberg:k was improperly designed. The first layer was improperly designed. And then they were given 50,000 because they paid very well. It was an IT company. Everyone was getting paid very well.
Matt Ruttenberg:And there's so many more things you can do to it. And just begin the design is one part of it. And since your employee pool changes all the time, people are hired, people leave, they become eligible. They're you know, you have to be able to pivot on the end, on the back end. And Right.
Matt Ruttenberg:And the interesting thing is, is, you know, we talked about employer contributions versus employee. Everything is done. This profit sharing and defined benefit is all done after the end of the year. We need the numbers of the end of the year. Okay?
Chris Hall:Right.
Matt Ruttenberg:So those aren't due until the day you file including extension. We're still working on 2024. Right? If you file an extension for 2024, we're still running numbers and doing implementing plans for you have all the way up until if you're an s corp, September. Yeah.
Chris Hall:I think that's really important for people to understand is if if they're listening to this right now and you have filed your extension, like, you should absolutely get ahold of Matt and see if there's a way that you can save more money. Yeah. Because again, like, again, if you're making what what do you think the the the low profit margin is before you can become, like, super helpful? Is it, like, $200,000 in profit, $100,000 in profit?
Matt Ruttenberg:You know, it's it's I like to say a 100,000 in profit. Mhmm. There's an we don't have minimums because they're the customization part of it is really key. That and so but I'd say, you know, when you start hitting a $100,000 Mhmm. It's it's like you're gonna use TurboTax, you're gonna use an actual accountant.
Matt Ruttenberg:You know, it's the CPA who knows your situation. Same thing there. So at some point, you need to upgrade your plan. Right. So about a 100,000, I think.
Matt Ruttenberg:Tax.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Yeah. If you're making a $100,000 in profit, you should probably get off a TurboTax. Yeah. I I agree.
Chris Hall:That's good advice.
Matt Ruttenberg:There are robo four zero one k's out there. There's a lot of them. The ones you see the most of are robo's. And they and they tout integration as the most important part of a four zero one k plan, and that is that is so far from the truth. It's it's not
Chris Hall:So you're referring to if I'm correct, you're referring to these, like, payroll people who come in and they set up your payroll, but they also set up your four zero one k. And is that kinda what I'm talking about? Like, it's all integrated, so it's, like, ease of use, but then after they set it all up, you never hear from them again?
Matt Ruttenberg:A 100%. Yeah. So the payroll companies will offer four zero one k plans, but you'll also see kind of the newer age payroll providers are out there. They're they're cheap. They're online.
Matt Ruttenberg:They the integration is between payroll and four zero one k, and they don't have to be the same company. It's just as long most companies integrate even those big boy payroll companies that I think you and I both know what we're talking about, they integrate with all the other companies. They integrate. So the story that they're telling is integration is because the small business owner is wearing too many hats and we're gonna help you because it connects. I understand that.
Matt Ruttenberg:That is important, but it's also doable outside of that payroll company. The integration, and this is where people have this misconception. So one, what I said was everyone thinks all four zero ks's are created equal, might as well go with the make sure the integration is set up properly. Totally understand that. That makes sense.
Matt Ruttenberg:However, the other part of it is four zero one ks is a tool for the business owner and the business. It's not just an employee benefit. Right. It is not just employee benefit. It is a tax tool.
Matt Ruttenberg:It is a retention tool and is a it is a diversification tool because are you going to reinvest in most? Most of our clients are the ones who are looking down for twenty years, growing their business and working their rear ends off to reinvest back in their company. They look up and they're like, I got a profit at 40 some years old, 45 years old. And they're like, I don't have a plan at all, and I need to save taxes. Right.
Matt Ruttenberg:Are the ones that we help a lot because they've been looking down for twenty years, for ten years, and all of sudden they look up and like, wait a minute, I don't have a team. Don't have a financial advisor. Don't have the proper CPA strategist or tax strategist. I definitely don't have a TPA. So that's our biggest two things on this.
Matt Ruttenberg:The message here is not all four zero ks's are created equal and you need to use it as a tool, not just an employee benefit.
Chris Hall:That's awesome. So I just really enjoy this. I could super geek out on this for a long time. This is really to me, I feel like this is part of the value that I provide as a financial adviser is connecting people with those, you know, correct people, correct tools, etcetera. And I do feel like, you know, a lot of financial advisors are kinda like the one size fits all method of four zero one k's.
Chris Hall:Right? We're just gonna integrate it. It's gonna be fine. We're gonna go. It's like, well, what I mean, what about me?
Chris Hall:I'm a I'm a human. So Mhmm. Like, I have my own things and my own goals. And I always tell people that, like, the most important thing to me is to find out what's most important to them because I really want their goals to be ahead of whatever I think I might be doing for them. And, you know, I think you you're basically in the exact same vein.
Chris Hall:Right? It's not about, like, just putting together a plan and then administrating the plan. It's about putting together a plan so they can maximize efficiencies. And and, again, we're we're not against paying taxes. We want roads and fire departments and things like that.
Chris Hall:But, like, the code is set up so that we can minimize our taxes, and we wanna use it to full advantage.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. Yeah. The IRS is not doing webinars. The IRS is not doing webinars on these strategies. Right.
Matt Ruttenberg:It's up to the team
Chris Hall:to interpret it. What's a what's a what I mean, can I I'd love to help you out? Is there any sort of thing that's sort of like an ideal client for you? Like, that's like, you're like, this is the guy this is like, do you have an avatar for the perfect client for you?
Matt Ruttenberg:You know, we we again, we said we don't work with we don't have minimums. And the reason is is we wanna grow with the client. That we want to add a layer when we need to add a layer, if you will, on top of that upside down wedding cake. But at the end of the day, you know, a 100,000 profit, whether it's you by yourself, or if it's with no employees, or if it's you with, you know, hundreds of employees, the profit is important to understand because that's where you have more room to implement strategies to save money on your taxes. So 100,000 is where you kind of really need to start looking at.
Matt Ruttenberg:And, you know, we work with people, companies with thousands of employees, but you can't get that creative with them. It's important to work with them. We work with companies that are $10,000,000 companies, but there's only 15 employees. So then you implement certain types of plans. We didn't get into that.
Matt Ruttenberg:A fourth layer on top of that where you're getting the executive benefits, but where you can target people, not the whole the whole company, target individuals even further. And I'd say let's we
Chris Hall:dig into that a little bit. We dig into that. I think, you know, one of the things you had said, like, with defined benefit is I think people think that they to open a defined benefit plan, that they're gonna have to give the same things to their employees as they do for themselves. Yeah. They feel the same way about profit sharing.
Chris Hall:Hey. If I'm doing 25% profit sharing, I gotta do it for everybody. And now you've got executive benefits. And I really do feel like the average person thinks that whatever they do for themselves, they're gonna have to do for the other person. So because of that, they're like, why am I even saving any money?
Chris Hall:Right? If I have to give every employee a 25% profit sharing bonus, like, I mean, why don't I just pay the taxes and then I don't have hassle with it. You know? Yeah. Or maybe they're even paying more than they would if they paid in taxes.
Chris Hall:Or once again, the accountant jumps in and says, we'll just go buy a new truck. Yeah. So you know what I mean? Like, so that's the mentality I think is out there. So if you could speak to the executive benefits as well as, like, kind of, like, you know, just drilling down the idea of, like, why why can they do this?
Chris Hall:Is it legal for them to give themselves more than anybody else gets? Because I feel like people think it's not gonna be legal. That's gonna be, like, you're somehow, like, wink, wink, nod, nod. We're not really gonna give them what we're getting. And I just like you to speak to that if you could.
Matt Ruttenberg:Yeah. So the the the answer is never. Have I I mean, we never use that's called pro rata. And that is where those boilerplate plan designs go for. They use pro rata.
Matt Ruttenberg:If you give yourself 25%, gonna give your employees 25% of their salary as well. So if if you pay your if you pay your employees a higher salary than yourself, in some growth methods, they they do that, then you're gonna give them more than you gave yourself. That's not how you do it. That is possibly the worst way to do it, and I don't remember the last time we did that. Let's talk about, use that one example, 18 employees, two owners, so 20 people total.
Matt Ruttenberg:We gave 930 of a million dollars to the two owners and then 70 to the employees. So that that that was a $450,000 tax savings minus the 70. Right? So they netted they netted $380 in in that tax strategy in that strategy there. So you win.
Matt Ruttenberg:Are you in the right place?
Chris Hall:I I think that just sounds like monopoly money. You know?
Matt Ruttenberg:Like, I
Chris Hall:have $380,000 of money that I didn't put in my pocket. It's like, no. You did put it in your pocket. You put it in your pocket and your pants. It's I always put it to the idea of, like, when you go and grab a jacket out of the closet, you put your hands in, you're like, oh my gosh.
Chris Hall:There's, a $50 bill in here. Yeah. That's kinda how I feel, like, when you put money away for retirement is that you've you've preloaded all your jackets so that when you go to grab them later on, they got money in them.
Matt Ruttenberg:You got money in them. That's a really, really good analogy. I love that. Yeah. It it's really it's all about running it's are again, in business, everything's a net.
Matt Ruttenberg:Are you in the red or you in the black? Right. And and how far can we get you into the black to to increase that efficiency rating? And that's all there is to it. It's it's that simple.
Matt Ruttenberg:But we run the numbers, and there's more there's multiple equations that we use in scenarios. Go back and forth like, Nope, that one didn't work. Nope, this one we can tweak. What if we target this individual versus this individual because they're younger and they make less money, so it's not going to make any difference, but we target that person so we can get more in this pocket. That's what we're doing.
Matt Ruttenberg:We're doing all those scenarios for you because everything we do is open ended and we need to be able to pivot because your employees pool changes every single year. It changes whether they're eligible or not. Someone's gonna become eligible or someone leaves or you hire somebody. But let's say the numbers don't work out. Let's just say it doesn't work, right?
Matt Ruttenberg:And you have a team that are leaders or executives that you're like, I need to still take care of these people. They're higher paid. And I won't go into This goes into a little bit more. The IRS looks at these highly compensated employees like they're an owner, so they're going to test it like an owner. But but you want to take care of them, and you implement an executive plan.
Matt Ruttenberg:An executive plan is where you can target just those people. Okay? So what I mean by that is let's say you have let's go back to that 20 employee company, right? Two of them are owners and 18 employees. Let's say five of those 18 are your leadership team executives and they all make $200 a year, and they are mission critical to your business.
Matt Ruttenberg:If they leave, it's going to be a nightmare to replace them. So you say, I need to do something above and beyond a four percent match on the 400 k to give them something, but I don't wanna give it to everybody else. Okay? Everything we talked about up until this point, those bottom three layers are considered qualified plans. Qualified plans mean fairness rules, annual testing.
Matt Ruttenberg:You have to give something to them. It's minimal, but you have to give them something. But if the numbers don't work, then we pivot over to the fourth layer on top and say, let's go with an executive benefit. It's considered a non qualified plan and you can target them. So you'll say, alright, I want to give an extra 10% bonus to these four or five people.
Matt Ruttenberg:I can't remember the number I said. I think I said five. I want to give them an extra 10% of their salary every year, but they can't touch it for ten years. So this is like an elongated vesting schedule and you only give it to them. And there's multiple ways to do that all the way from maybe a lot of people have heard of deferred compensation.
Matt Ruttenberg:Okay, that's one version that's on the high end all the way down to something called an LTIP, long term incentive plan, where it's just like, Hey, if you're with me five years, I'll give you 50% of your salary. If you're with me for ten years, I'll give you another 50% and you save it and you just save it on your balance sheet and keep it on your ledger or however you want to do it. Depends on the business. And there's a lot of stuff in between there. But that's if you say, I only wanna target these people.
Matt Ruttenberg:And that's it. And that's an executive benefit.
Chris Hall:Okay. Yeah. I think I is a rabbi trust in that same?
Matt Ruttenberg:That's part of that's part of it. There's part of it. Yeah. It's it's it's it's a lot of it is has to do with, like, how are we gonna bonus it to them? When is it getting when is it being pushed over?
Matt Ruttenberg:So the the ones are, like, section one sixty two bonus plan, executive bonus plan, LTIP, deferred compensation. Phantom stock is another one, which is Yeah. Really neat strategy. That's for maybe $10,000,000 in of profit of revenue and higher is where those make sense because they're expensive to implement. But those are really interesting models and they're really good for, I'd say, I don't wanna say a million dollars and profit it up, but it's pushing that, right?
Matt Ruttenberg:Because you need to to you need to be able to afford that 10% extra bonus on top of what everything else you're giving them.
Chris Hall:Right. Yeah. Right.
Matt Ruttenberg:10% is kind of like the
Chris Hall:So there's like five layers of the cake now. Is that what
Matt Ruttenberg:I'm hearing? Oh, you can you can keep going. You can keep going. There's a lot of That's great. The third and fourth layer is complex.
Matt Ruttenberg:See. The third and the defined benefit plan. We didn't talk about this before, but there's something called a split funded defined benefit plan where you can invest in the life insurance inside of that where you get pretax contributions and then you get a tax free death benefit on top of it. So it increases your contribution limits even further. So there's a lot of fun.
Matt Ruttenberg:Lot of fun with How do
Chris Hall:do you how do you choose for people? Like, is it the census that kinda helps you, like, direct traffic? Because I mean, like, how do you choose, like, who gets that and who doesn't?
Matt Ruttenberg:Well, so those two questions help us a lot. In the beginning, I said that, you know, it's one, what why are you here? Why are talking to us? And two, how much do you wanna contribute? And usually, if they say, I got enough I got I got plenty of room to deal with here, that's that's there.
Matt Ruttenberg:But and then the census does help because, you know, those two answers help us with the concept. And then the two and then the census and running the numbers are how we refine it, the concept. And because the concept is is one, like, we know we need to add one, two, three, four layers based on those two answers, but now how do we implement those layers is is where the census and the numbers drop. Like, how do we get these three layers to become more efficient?
Chris Hall:Right.
Matt Ruttenberg:Efficiency is the key.
Chris Hall:Yeah. That's I mean, I think if you're a business owner and you listen to this, you should probably listen to it one more time. Or you just need to get a hold of me or Matt and let us quarterback this for you because, like, that's the thing. You're a busy business owner. You don't wanna do this stuff.
Chris Hall:You want us to quarterback it for you. So with that being said, I wanna definitely be respectful of your time, Matt, and I thank you so much for being here. Is there anything else that you wanna talk about before we sign off?
Matt Ruttenberg:The only thing I like you just said, I'll I'll I'll double double up on that is just, you know, reach out to you. Reach out to have if you're a business owner, reach out to Chris. He'll connect you with me. It's all about just having a conversation because we didn't talk about deadlines. We did a little bit, but not much.
Matt Ruttenberg:Every conversation is a little bit different and understanding it might not be this year, it might be next year. It could be three years to where you're like, now I know what I'm going to implement, but I need to know. Because if you try to research this, a lot of the stuff we talked about is not it's not out there because most of the stuff out there is is being shot out to the masses. If you're a highly successful business owner, you need a you need a professional to really show you the roads and then say, this make sense? Then you can do the research on those strategies on that.
Matt Ruttenberg:It's a combination of of of of hearing hearing the strategy and then also researching on your own.
Chris Hall:Awesome. Awesome. Well, I will definitely put the link to your website in the in the description so people can click on it and go right to your page and get a hold of you. And I just wanna say thanks again for your time. It's been extremely interesting for me.
Chris Hall:I'm I just enjoy this stuff so much, and I really took away as a business owner, I took away things like, hey, man. I need to do this for myself. I need to I need to get to the point where, you know, I've again, maybe I'm not ready to implement a plan, but I would be definitely ready to, like, talk about a plan and maybe at the end of this year implement, maybe beginning of next year. You know? But I love the idea of, like, getting that out in the open.
Chris Hall:So you say, when I reach this much profitability or I get this much, you know, employees or whatever, I'm gonna do these things. So I do I do I enjoyed it very much. I hope the people who are listening to it enjoyed it. If you know a business owner that's doing really good business, making good money, please shoot them this podcast and open their eyes to the world of major, major tax savings. So once again, Matt, thank you so much for your time.
Chris Hall:I appreciate you, and we'll have to have you back on and see if we can talk about more fun stuff like this down
Matt Ruttenberg:the road. Sounds good. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Hall:Appreciate it. Alright. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate you.