Grads, Goals, and Government Bills

Our 2 Cents – Episode #214

Grads, Goals, and Government Bills

Thanks for joining us for a new episode of Our 2 Cents! For today’s show, Steve and Gabriel continue their conversation about kids and finances, providing helpful tips for stepping into the financial world. They also share valuable tax prep insights, along with a quick look at the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Tune in now using the link below!

1. Financial Foundations for Recent Grads:

   • Dive into practical tips every recent grad needs to confidently manage money, build credit, and start investing for the future.

2. Getting to Know Steve and Gabriel:

   • How many hours do you get to the airport before a flight?

   • How well can you write in cursive?

3. Post-Tax Season Tips:

   • Check out these 5 essential tax strategies to optimize your refund and prep ahead for a stronger financial future.

4. The “Big, Beautiful Bill”:

   • The Lewits unpack the potential effects of proposed new legislature and what this might mean for your finances.

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847.499.3330

Podcast Transcript

Announcer: You’re listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial, Building Wealth for Life. Steve Lewit is the President of SGL Financial, and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news, trends, strategies and more.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Our 2 Cents. You’ve got Gabriel Lewit here, although I’m coming off of a slight cold, which how do you get a cold in May, late May? It doesn’t feel like you should.

Steve Lewit: It’s allergies.

Gabriel Lewit: No, it’s not allergies. This is an actual cold.

Steve Lewit: Oh, you sound great. It makes you voice like sonorous.

Gabriel Lewit: It seems like it shouldn’t be allowed. It shouldn’t be legal to get a cold in the summer or the spring.

Steve Lewit: It’s a beautiful voice. People will understand you if you have something to say.

Gabriel Lewit: I got plenty always to talk about here on the show.

Steve Lewit: I hope so. We don’t want to talk about your cold for 30 minutes.

Gabriel Lewit: No, no. I’d just like to share the lay of the land here. But yeah, hope you all are doing well out there, doing great actually, not just well.

Steve Lewit: I just want you to know I have a pain in my lower back.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, great.

Steve Lewit: I just want to share that too.

Gabriel Lewit: I’m glad to hear that.

Steve Lewit: It’s not a big pain.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, good, good, good. You have any more to say on that?

Steve Lewit: Nope. I’m done.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, let’s jump on in, everybody. Again, hope you’re doing terrific. Today, we’re going to just touch upon, we’ve been on this theme of late, of parents supporting kids, kids and what they should be saving for retirement. We’re going to do one last tiny little tidbit while we’re on this theme, which is key things for parents and grandparents to teach a new graduate because we are at that time of year where people are graduating. In fact, one of my neighbors’ sons just graduated law school. I thought that was pretty neat. We have, of course, lots of other people graduating high school, maybe heading off to college. So, yeah, lots of things here we can teach new graduates of various ages. Okay, so anything you’d want to say on that, Mr. Lewit?

Steve Lewit: Well, yeah, get a job. The first lesson, you graduate, you go to work.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Getting a job I think is important.

Steve Lewit: It’s hard.

Gabriel Lewit: But yes, that would be number one, right? Encourage them to go out there and get a job, and that’s going to be where we’re going to focus on here. Other ideas as well of what these new graduates can do.

Steve Lewit: I like it.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Now the next thing, obviously, you have to have a job to be able to do this next item here, but encourage them to start saving and investing early. I just had a client come in just a week ago. We had a planning meeting, a new client of mine, and he is very interested. He actually had an account set up for his grandson. I am still coming off of being sick. My brain’s not 100% here, folks, a little foggy. But yeah, his grandson had a UTMA account that he had set up for him, Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, which when the grandson turns 21, transfers from the custodian, which was the grandpa at this point, to the son or grandson. Geez. Like I said, everyone hopefully is following me here.

Steve Lewit: I’m not saying a word. I’m with you though.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, here’s what’s neat. He also said, “There’s a few thousand dollars in here. Nothing crazy.” He is like, “But I’m going to have a conversation with my grandson about how important it is not to spend this money once it transfers to his ownership.” So grandpa here, and this is what prompted me to talk about this because I’ve just had this conversation with a client of mine, is going to purposely sit down with his grandson and have a conversation with him about the ins and outs of financial planning and retirement saving at 21 years old. I thought that was terrific.

Steve Lewit: Terrific.

Gabriel Lewit: I said that to him. I said, “I think you’re doing a terrific thing because there is just a severe lack of guidance and training on this in school of course and by most parents. They just skip over this and they don’t talk about this with their kids.” Kids are left to figure this out on their own.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s harder the older they get. At 21, you have a lot of your habits formed already. So, we need to talk to graduates and it is great that he’s doing that, but it really has to start much earlier like we talked about.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, sure. I mean, if you start earlier, that’s great. But let’s say you get out of school and no one tells anything to you about this or shares any information to you about this. You get your first paycheck and you just go spend it all, right?

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, if someone said, “Hey, don’t spend that, save 10%, pretend it doesn’t exist,” and you take that to heart, my gosh, that habit might serve you millions and millions of dollars of more savings in the future just because you got started at that young age. The moment you have that money in your pocket though, and you try to change that later, if you can do that before they get their very first paycheck, which is a great rule of thumb, can you put away 10% of what you’re making in a given year? They’re going to be so far ahead of the curve.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, especially if you teach them about compounding interest and how money grows.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, I mean unrelated, but related. I had a client where I showed them the power of maxing out a Roth IRA every year. One if they earn 5% a year, another if they earn seven, and another if they earned 10% per year, and the differences to that in 30 years is just staggering. I don’t remember the numbers. There’s millions of dollars of difference between that. So, start young, be aggressive with their investments. We could talk more about that, but that’s the concept here. So, encourage them to start saving and investing early. Of course, as you said, encourage them to get a job. So, they can do that.

Steve Lewit: Got to get a job.

Gabriel Lewit: The next tip here is teach the importance of an emergency fund.

Steve Lewit: So, you teach them that you’ve got three different buckets, okay? You’ve got your savings bucket, your spending bucket, and your emergency fund bucket.

Gabriel Lewit: Emergency fund bucket.

Steve Lewit: So that’s the broad categories that these fall into and a lot of young people that I’ve talked to have really bought into that.

Gabriel Lewit: So, I think they just need some guidance there. The next is understanding debt management. It can be easy to get your first job, apply for your first credit card if you don’t already have one, and start spending away, right?

Steve Lewit: Don’t pay it off. I can buy more if I don’t pay it off.

Gabriel Lewit: And then you very quickly land yourself in this vicious debt spiral where all of a sudden, you charge a couple grand for some new flat screen TVs and a new computer or whatever else you put on there or maybe it’s a Coachella ticket or something for these youngsters. I’ve never been to Coachella. I just think it’s worth… Is that where the youngsters go for the music festivals?

Steve Lewit: Right, it’s great. Yeah. I’d love to go.

Gabriel Lewit: All of a sudden, they’re paying 300, 400 a month on their interest on these credit card debt, and then they realize-

Steve Lewit: On top of the debt they might have coming out of school.

Gabriel Lewit: For college and then this can become a vicious cycle. So, trying to teach them to avoid that from the outset.

Steve Lewit: Then you get the statement, oh, I can’t save any money because my expenses are too high.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, the problem is the moment you get into that debt cycle, and this applies to all ages, right? Then what little extra saving, you usually buy stuff on credit because you don’t have the money, and then if you have a little extra savings, you’re paying just the interest and then the next time something pops up, voila. You go deeper and deeper into debt and it creates this vicious cycle.

Steve Lewit: So, this is a little off-topic, but I want to ask you this. So, if your son was in debt, credit card debt trouble, would you bail him out?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I think that would be a separate conversation.

Steve Lewit: It is, yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Maybe, maybe not, right?

Steve Lewit: It depends. Yeah, maybe, maybe not. Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: You bail them out. They might just do it again.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Next is introduce something called a budget.

Steve Lewit: A budget. Is that where you list all your expenses?

Gabriel Lewit: I feel like before you graduate for college, they should force you to do an exit course. They do an intro course at college, how to navigate college. They should have an exit course, how to navigate life. One of those would be create your first budget right before you get out of college. So, they understand this concept. Okay. What do I think my first job’s going to pay me? Oh, $60,000. Here’s what it’s going to be after taxes. What are taxes, right? Here’s how much is left net, 45,000, which is 4,000 a month roughly. Here’s where that’s going to go. You got rent and you got housing and you got school loan repayments and you got food and you got Coachella tickets and whatever else you’re going to do and a car payment. All of a sudden, there’s nothing left.

Steve Lewit: So, when your sister graduated two years ago, and it’s so interesting because we think everybody knows what we know. It is like budget. Everybody knows what a budget is. She came to me and said, “Dad, help me put together a budget.” I was, “Do you know what a budget is?” I think so. She’s brilliant. She is very bright, but around money, and this is my fault. I’m just admitting a weakness that I didn’t teach my kids the details about money. I think because I assume, “Oh, they must know this,” because it’s so obvious.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s obvious to you.

Steve Lewit: It’s obvious to me. It wasn’t obvious to her.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, look, I was just at the chiropractor yesterday because I actually am dealing… I thought you were making fun of me earlier. I actually am dealing with a-

Steve Lewit: I was.

Gabriel Lewit: … painful lower back.

Steve Lewit: My back is actually fine.

Gabriel Lewit: But yeah, I was at the chiropractor and I’m like, “How do you make this look so easy? Are you just cracking spines and twisting necks and nothing breaks and it makes people magically feel better?” He’s like, “I don’t know. How do you manage money and pick investment portfolios? That’s like Greek to me.” It’s so easy. He’s like, “Well, that’s what it feels like to me for chiropractic work, right?” So it is. Yeah, it’s very interesting.

Steve Lewit: So maybe we assume that our kids are smarter than they are. Oh, my kids, they’ll figure that. I don’t have to talk to them about this.

Gabriel Lewit: If you’re listening to the show, you probably have some form of interest in personal finance improvement, but not everybody does yet at that age, right? They’re interested in-

Steve Lewit: Tickets.

Gabriel Lewit: … Coachella tickets, right, or whatever, where they’re going for vacation on spring break the next one with whatever, right? Okay. Last but not least, you could help give them a jumpstart. We talked about this UTMA account, Uniform Transfers to Minors Act. That’s usually done before somebody has graduated from college. But let’s say you have an interest in this, and I just had a client yesterday say, “Hey, how much can I gift to my grandkids?” Well, you can gift, I believe it’s $19,000 a year without impacting what’s called your lifetime exclusion, which is about $28 million per year for a couple.

Steve Lewit: For a couple, yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, 13.99 million per person. So, what does that mean? It means you won’t have to pay any gift tax or use your exclusion if you gift less than $19,000 per year or even file anything on your tax return. However your receiving giftee doesn’t have to pay any taxes either.

Steve Lewit: You need to say that again. A lot of people ask me, if I gift 50 grand to my son, what is his tax liability on that?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, the giftee does not have to pay anything.

Steve Lewit: No taxes.

Gabriel Lewit: Now, if you want to take the money out of a brokerage account, you might have to pay taxes to liquidate it. There are other more nuances to gifting that we could get into later if there are questions on that. But long story short, you gift money to your grandchild and then they could take that money and open up their first Roth IRA if they have earned income from their first job, which they should. The other option too is you could just pay the money directly to their Roth IRA for them. People ask me that, but normally, I suggest, “Nope, go to the kid for the paper trail. Don’t have it come from your bank account.”

Steve Lewit: To their bank account.

Gabriel Lewit: Go to their bank account.

Steve Lewit: Let them see the process of that.

Gabriel Lewit: Let them connect it to their investment account. Let them fund it. Obviously, if you have a good grandchild, they should take that money and invest it as you would like them to do as opposed to spending it.

Steve Lewit: What’s interesting, Gabriel, we see so many people and we see so many different parenting styles. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong, but some parents, they just want to do for their kids. Oh, I’m going to put it like magic, like helicopter financial moms.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, the reason I say Roth IRA is because it’s a great opportunity to teach them about what it is, why it’s 100% tax-free, and why is that advantageous.

Steve Lewit: Why taxes are a big deal.

Gabriel Lewit: You know how many people I get to retirement that I see or that are at retirement that don’t have a single dollar in a Roth IRA. It’s pretty crazy. Okay. All right. Last, you could also get them a subscription to a financial magazine or something. Sign them up on their email. Tell them they are so they don’t unsubscribe. Okay. You could send them this podcast and tell them to listen to it. Forward them and say, “Start listening to this every week. Just do it, right? You’re going to learn lots of good things.”

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Get familiar with the lingo, get familiar with the thinking. You may not agree or disagree.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s your homework, our amazing, awesome listeners out there. Take this email, forward it to your kids or grandkids.

Steve Lewit: You, great parents.

Gabriel Lewit: Great parents.

Steve Lewit: Who have sacrificed So much for your children.

Gabriel Lewit: I think this is good education for you. Please let me know if you want me to subscribe you or if here’s the link, subscribe yourself and start learning. Write some of this stuff.

Steve Lewit: They are great.

Gabriel Lewit: If you tell them you’re going to fund an IRA for them for a year, they’ll be pretty happy too. Here’s seven grand or eight. Yeah, seven grand. Go invest it in your Roth IRA. They’ll love that too.

Steve Lewit: They will.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. All right. Well, that’s pretty much all we wanted to cover on that topic. I think going forward, we’re going to take a little hiatus from helping kids, helping grandkids, kids spending, kids saving, but this has been a fun little journey down that path.

Steve Lewit: Well, we focus so much on retirees and people 50, 55, 60, yet there’s a whole world out there coming at us or that are the future of our country or of everything. They don’t know this part of the world for the most part, and they’ve got to learn it.

Gabriel Lewit: Indeed, indeed.

Steve Lewit: Indeed.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, if you’ve got questions on that or you need our guidance on how to set any of this up or maybe you need our help on how do I forward this to my kids, we can help with any and all of those questions or grandkids, right? (847)-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com, click Contact Us, or email us, of course, info@sglfinancial.com. We are here to assist with all your planning and email forwarding needs.

Steve Lewit: I wonder if we did a young people’s podcast that would have any legs. Do you think?

Gabriel Lewit: I like having just one podcast. I don’t think we have the time to do two. In fact, we didn’t do an episode last week because we ran out of time, right?

Steve Lewit: No, we ran out. I was away. That’s why.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, you were going to be away. We normally do it Thursday. We couldn’t get it done on a Wednesday. Yeah, off we went.

Steve Lewit: But if we had the time, do you think young people would listen to a financial podcast? That was really fun.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah, they probably would. They certainly probably would. Yup.

Steve Lewit: Just a thought.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s a good thought.

Steve Lewit: It is a great thought.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, I’m going to do a little interim hiatus here and I’m going to ask Steve here, Mr. Lewit, a quote of the month, or no, not quote of the month. I’m looking at my wrong heading here. That’s for next month. We’re almost to the next month. So, I’m planning ahead here, but it’s a getting to know you segment. Again, my brain’s not 100% there today. Okay.

Steve Lewit: I’m really enjoying this.

Gabriel Lewit: Getting to know you question number one is how many hours-

Steve Lewit: You are so perfect.

Gabriel Lewit: Thank you. I try.

Steve Lewit: This is like great.

Gabriel Lewit: How many hours do you get to the airport before a flight?

Steve Lewit: Hour and a half.

Gabriel Lewit: Hour and a half. So, you leave your house.

Steve Lewit: So, if I have an 11:00 flight, I leave my house at 9:15. I’m there at 9:30.

Gabriel Lewit: You want to be at the airport an hour and a half ahead of time?

Steve Lewit: Hour and a half.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. No matter what?

Steve Lewit: Well, usually that’s always worked for me. I’ve never been late. Sometimes it’s a little scary, but now I have clear… I’ve had no problems an hour and a half, and I don’t like being late to the airport because then I get really stressed out. Because if you miss your plane, there’s a whole linkage, especially if you have a connecting flight or people are meeting you at the airport. So, I get really stressed out if I am late for a flight.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, it’s an interesting question. If you’re at a party and you hear somebody talking about travel, is there a little tidbit for you? Oh, just out of curiosity.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I know people that go three hours. It’s like, “What do you do there for three hours?”

Gabriel Lewit: I do too.

Steve Lewit: Well, we don’t want to be late.

Gabriel Lewit: We don’t want to rush.

Steve Lewit: We don’t want to rush.

Gabriel Lewit: And then of course, there’s no traffic in the check-in lanes and in the security lanes and you’re there and it’s two hours and 30 minutes for you to wait.

Steve Lewit: Sitting in one of those. Yeah, I don’t want to do that.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now, look, I don’t do a lot of layovers. I usually do direct flights. So, I’m always like, “Why are all these people sitting here at these restaurants?” I mean, maybe they’re all that many delays or something that’s happening.

Steve Lewit: Or they’re in between flights. So, how early do you get there?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah. It depends if I’m by myself or with my kids.

Steve Lewit: Well, yeah, that’s a big deal.

Gabriel Lewit: With my kids, it’ll be closer to two hours, two hours ahead of time. If it’s just me, it’s like what you just said, an hour, 15 even. I’ll push it.

Steve Lewit: So, when we fly together, I think you always get there after I get there.

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know. Last time I was there ahead of you.

Steve Lewit: Were you?

Gabriel Lewit: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lewit: Oh, I don’t remember.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, with the clear thing which I use also, I try to squeeze some extra time.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Cool.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, next question. How well can you write in cursive?

Steve Lewit: Very well. Very well.

Gabriel Lewit: On a scale of 1 through 10?

Steve Lewit: Eight.

Gabriel Lewit: An eight.

Steve Lewit: Eight.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s pretty strong.

Steve Lewit: So here, this is really interesting because for a long time, I do crazy things. I was learning calligraphy.

Gabriel Lewit: You would do that?

Steve Lewit: I would do that. Why is everybody laughing because I want to learn calligraphy?

Gabriel Lewit: I just think that sounds like something you would learn.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it is.

Gabriel Lewit: Piano, calligraphy, and opera.

Steve Lewit: At the same time.

Gabriel Lewit: A Steve trifecta right there.

Steve Lewit: It was at the same time I was learning Sanskrit, which is even more interesting, but this is really true. So, that came over into my cursive. Kids today cannot write in cursive.

Gabriel Lewit: My son-

Steve Lewit: Can he write in cursive?

Gabriel Lewit: I was surprised to learn that he was indeed learning cursive because I thought I had heard that they weren’t teaching it anymore.

Steve Lewit: That’s what I heard.

Gabriel Lewit: But yeah, he was, and I was very pleased to see that. His cursive was actually very good. Man, mine’s like a three. It’s like a three out of 10. It’s not good. But yeah, it’s there. I can do it.

Steve Lewit: But I’ve been doing a lot of printing lately. I like block printing too.

Gabriel Lewit: My block print, just regular writing, 4 out of 10. It’s not good. It’s pretty ugly. When I go really slow, I can get it pretty good. I need the little kid paper with the dots right in between.

Steve Lewit: As a perfectionist, how does that play out inside yourself?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, it bothers me, but I’m too lazy to write slower. I just won’t do it.

Steve Lewit: All right.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, that was our interlude.

Steve Lewit: That was interesting.

Gabriel Lewit: Helpful and interesting for you there. We’d be curious to see how well you write in cursive if you wanted to let us know.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. When’s the last time you wrote a personal note, not a business note to a friend, a personal note with ink on paper?

Gabriel Lewit: Couldn’t tell you.

Steve Lewit: Couldn’t tell you. Yeah, me too.

Gabriel Lewit: I’ve written a happy birthday card.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I’ve done that too. But it’s so easy to sit at the computer and just type.

Gabriel Lewit: But I don’t write the happy birthday card in cursive. Maybe I will for the next one to really mix things up.

Steve Lewit: Nobody will know the difference, I promise you.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, let’s move on here, shall we? Okay. For the rest of our show, we’re going to circle back to a little bit. We wanted to do some lighter interlude here because the rest of our show here is a little technical. Okay?

Steve Lewit: And depressing.

Gabriel Lewit: Not depressing.

Steve Lewit: Well, yeah, that’s the wrong word. It’s not depressing, it’s complex.

Gabriel Lewit: A little more nitty-gritty finance stuff.

Steve Lewit: Complex.

Gabriel Lewit: The first thing here, we talked last time about-

Steve Lewit: A little depressing.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’re going to talk about tax planning tips first here.

Steve Lewit: Oh, that’s not depressing.

Gabriel Lewit: Two minutes, right?

Steve Lewit: It’s the other subject.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Then we’re going to talk about the new house bill that was passed.

Steve Lewit: The Big Beautiful Bill.

Gabriel Lewit: The Big Beautiful Tax Bill. That’s the official name of it.

Steve Lewit: Yup.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. But before we do that, a couple little post-tax season checklist items for you. Just five tips for now. Okay. So, you probably have put the tax preparation in the rear view mirror as you typically do once you get your refund or finalize your tax return. But what you should do, here are some tips from HoneyBook Tax Hub. The article we found is from HoneyBook Tax Hub. Okay, so very helpful.

Steve Lewit: Did we look this up? Is it a real deal?

Gabriel Lewit: I have no idea, but it’s a good article, right? Five tips to get a head start. Number one, immediately post-filing, organize and refine your finances and record-keeping system, right? If you had any struggle whatsoever finding your stuff, get yourself organized now so that next year, it’s even easier. So, you could just put a little Excel spreadsheet together of all the things that you compiled for last year, a little checklist for next year. That way, you’ll know exactly what to find. If you open or change any accounts over the year, you could just add that to your little Excel spreadsheet.

Steve Lewit: And if you need a financial checklist, just commercial.

Gabriel Lewit: What’s that?

Steve Lewit: Who do they call if they need a checklist?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I was saying a checklist of their accounts.

Steve Lewit: Oh, just of their accounts. Okay.

Gabriel Lewit: Just which accounts you had to pull forms for and 1099.

Steve Lewit: Oh, I was thinking of something else.

Gabriel Lewit: You could also create a folder if you don’t have a folder on your computer for tax prep, create that, put your tax return in there, put all your stuff in there, your items. Then you can also reference that.

Steve Lewit: You want to get everything into one location. That’s the deal.

Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. Okay, next thing here, right? Talk with a tax professional regarding next year’s taxes. Well, geez, Gabe, Steve, why would I do that? It’s not till next year. Well, that’s what we call tax planning. Okay? So if you owed money on your tax return or if you had a penalty from under withholding or your income’s going to change this year-

Steve Lewit: Or you’re going to sell a home, or you’re going to sell a business, anything like that.

Gabriel Lewit: Want to sell some stocks with gains? Start to plan this out. That’s called proactive tax planning. You could also review your tax return from the prior year to look for things that cost you taxes and how to eliminate or avoid those. Basically, it’s a really key service that we provide here at SGL that we recommend everybody does. Give yourself a jumpstart and make sure things are on track for next year’s taxes, because that’s where the true tax planning and tax savings can occur.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, folks, we hear so often, not from our clients thankfully, but from people say, “I had to pay 17 grand last year. I had no idea that was going to happen.” Well, we forgot we liquidated a bunch of stocks and how to pay capital gains.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. Now, if you owed money and you talk with your tax preparer, they might’ve given you a list of quarterly tax estimated payments to make over the course of the year. Don’t forget those. A lot of people get those in their tax returns. They promptly forget about them and then they owe taxes and penalties again the next year. Well, the reason those are being provided for you is to avoid the likelihood of you owing taxes and penalties the following year. So, make sure you make those estimated payments. If you want to eliminate those estimated payments, talk to your tax planner about how to increase your withholding. So, you don’t have to also do the estimated payments. Okay?

Gabriel Lewit: Number four, if you have a business, research and consider if an S-corporation election is right for you. Maybe start using a better accounting software. Lots of little things you can do as a business that can help you to save money on taxes again proactively. Very, very important there. Last but not least, number five, think ahead to tax deductions and credits and other things that you might qualify for the upcoming year. Again, part of tax planning. Can I contribute to a Roth? If yes, do it. Do I want to do a pre-tax deduction to lower my tax return? Taxes owed, get a pre-tax deduction there. Do that. If you have a business, are you going to contribute to a solo 401k or a SEP IRA? Lots of little things here that you can start to again, plan ahead for, make a game plan for the year, what to do with your finances and investments so that we know how that will impact your taxes.

Steve Lewit: The way you can set this up in your own mind by imagining what your experience would be like if you came into the tax year having all these things in place, instead of the scramble. You know the tax scramble, Gabriel?

Gabriel Lewit: I do. Yes.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Instead of the scramble, where’s this, where’s that? Oh, I missed that or I didn’t get that. Where did I park that piece of paper or how much did I spend? And having that panic at tax time, you can eliminate… Imagine how smoothly that would feel. The quality of those months that people don’t like would be far better.

Gabriel Lewit: Your life will just be gloriously improved.

Steve Lewit: Full of joy.

Gabriel Lewit: There you go.

Steve Lewit: Joyous.

Gabriel Lewit: You’re really amping that one up there.

Steve Lewit: I love it.

Gabriel Lewit: The benefits of saving your tax receipts, your life will change.

Steve Lewit: Well, it’s a motivator.

Gabriel Lewit: It might save you some time. Make life easy.

Steve Lewit: Well, why do anything if it doesn’t improve your life? But you got to think about that. It’s not a chore. It’s an improvement in your life.

Gabriel Lewit: All right.

Steve Lewit: You don’t want to talk about this anymore.

Gabriel Lewit: I want to move on to our Big Beautiful Tax Bill.

Steve Lewit: I got that feeling.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. So, yes, if you have any on that, but please take heart on that, right? If you’re an SGL client of ours, we will do a tax plan for you. We’re here to help you with that. Call us. You have a dedicated assigned tax planner on your team here. We typically start doing those over the summer months and into the fall. So, it is a great time to start doing those. Especially if you’re interested, of course, reach out to us anytime here and we’ll get that started on your behalf.

Gabriel Lewit: There’s many other things that we didn’t talk about here, but lots to be included in that tax planning. For a couple minutes here, we’re going to talk about the house that recently passed Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, and that is in fact the official name of it. We wanted to just touch upon basically the key elements of that for you. Of course, it is not yet law because it has to get passed by the Senate.

Steve Lewit: Which is in the guarantee.

Gabriel Lewit: It may have changes. So, yeah, we’ll of course give you a lot more detail when these changes are officially approved and this law is then enacted. But today, we wanted to just give a couple of highlights in case you’re wondering what’s in this Big Beautiful Bill. We have broken it down for you. Okay?

Steve Lewit: I do love the name. I really do like this name. I mean, it’s so much fun. If you’re going to put a tax bill through, what do you call it?

Gabriel Lewit: The Big Beautiful Tax Bill.

Steve Lewit: The Big Beautiful Bill. It’s great. I love it.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Yes. So, what’s in this Big Beautiful Bill here. Okay, it’s a thousand pages.

Steve Lewit: It is big. It is big.

Gabriel Lewit: There’s the big right there. Okay. Okay. A couple things here, right? Well, let me give you the quick recap here. Okay. There’s a permanent extension of the 2017 individual and estate tax cuts. Okay? That was the tax cuts in Jobs Act of 2017. So, yes, Big Beautiful Bill, a little different name than the TCJA of 2017. It will eliminate the taxes on tips and overtime pay. It will increase the standard deduction to 32,000 for joint filers. There’ll be an expansion of the child tax credit up now to $2,500 through the year 2028. There are now going to be or would be if it’s passed, Trump account, Trump savings accounts.

Steve Lewit: This is nice.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s the official name.

Steve Lewit: I like this.

Gabriel Lewit: Basically providing $1,000 for each child born between 2024 and 2028.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I like that.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, there’s definitely some things to know about it. Well, if we have some time, we’ll talk about it. It’s not the best savings account beyond the $1,000 free that I get.

Steve Lewit: You get a free 1,000 bucks.

Gabriel Lewit: But the free $1,000 part is okay. Most people wouldn’t complain about that.

Steve Lewit: If I adopt with that, I guess I could get it.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t read the 1,000 pages. I read the summary of it. There are going to be some spending cuts of reductions in Medicaid and SNAP, food assistance programs, including new work requirements. Then basically there’s some changes to immigration and border security, allocating $46.5 billion for border wall construction and deportation efforts. Implementation of a $1,000 fee for migrants seeking asylum. An increase of $150 billion in defense spending, including $25 billion for a missile defense initiative.

Gabriel Lewit: That might be the golden dome thing that Trump has put out there. Repeal of the methane tax and expansion of oil and gas development on federal lands, reversing previous conservation policies, education in student loans, restrictions on existing student loan repayment plans, increase taxes on certain university endowments, and a bunch of other things here, of course, there as well. This wasn’t on this summary, but I thought it was a really important one. They are planning on raising the SALT, state and local taxes.

Steve Lewit: The one-time exemption.

Gabriel Lewit: The $10,000 limit up to $40,000.

Steve Lewit: It won’t pass.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s a huge increase. So, that would be pretty crazy. But that would obviously be a massive change from a tax planning perspective and possibly an expanded standard deduction for seniors. So, wow, lots of stuff there. What’s going to pass officially? We don’t know yet.

Steve Lewit: We don’t know.

Gabriel Lewit: Is this good or bad or otherwise? We don’t want to go down the political aisle here. So, depending on who you support, you might find this great, or you might dislike a lot of it.

Steve Lewit: Well, forget politics. The bottom line is that it’s $4 trillion onto the national debt.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, they’re raising the debt ceiling by $4 trillion most likely because it’s expected to need this because of this bill.

Steve Lewit: The data absolutely shows that the bottom, I think poor people will lose about 4% of their resources while wealthier people will gain about 10% in their resources. I’m just reporting. Because the other side of it, there’s a lot of good stuff in here, but the other side of it is the other side of it. I’m not being political.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, obviously depending on who you follow, there’s different budget reports and estimates, but even some of the Republican house and Republican senators have concerns about this actually adding to the deficit when the goal really is to reduce it.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, those numbers came from the CBO.

Gabriel Lewit: So yeah, CBO is generally considered to be non-political, non-partisan. So, yeah, we’re trying to just report some facts here, but that’s what’s in the Big Beautiful Bill and stay tuned. We’ll report back when there’s more to report on whether or not this gets enacted as is or things will change. But certainly, we like to keep you apprised of news and updates and that was probably the biggest news and update of the past.

Steve Lewit: I think a lot of this will get passed, but it’s going to go slow through the Senate.

Gabriel Lewit: Yup. So, stay tuned on that front. Folks, if you have any questions, that’s our show for today.

Steve Lewit: Oh, no, no, the show’s not over.

Gabriel Lewit: No?

Steve Lewit: No. We have to wish you a-

Gabriel Lewit: No, we don’t.

Steve Lewit: … happy birthday.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Yes, yes. It’s my birthday tomorrow. Yeah. Yes.

Steve Lewit: For everybody, send cards.

Gabriel Lewit: No cards are needed.

Steve Lewit: Send money.

Gabriel Lewit: You don’t have to write in cursive. No money is needed either. Thank you though. But yes, have a wonderful rest of your day and weekends. We hope you’re doing a terrific, of course. If we can help you with any of these things, give us a call, 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com, click Contact Us, or email us most easily info@sglfinancial.com. That’s it. Have a wonderful day and we’ll talk to you on the next show.

Steve Lewit: Stay well, everybody. Bye.

Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at (847) 499-3330 or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.

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