Wealth Formula Podcast Podcast Por Buck Joffrey arte de portada

Wealth Formula Podcast

Wealth Formula Podcast

De: Buck Joffrey
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Financial Education and Entrepreneurship for Professionals Economía Finanzas Personales
Episodios
  • 546: A Review of Retirement Account Strategies

    546: A Review of Retirement Account Strategies
    Feb 15 2026
    At some point in a successful career, taxes quietly become your largest expense. Not housing. Not lifestyle. Not investing losses. Taxes. And unlike most expenses, they grow automatically as your income rises — unless you deliberately structure around them. You know that my favorite means of tax mitigation is through investing in real assets like real estate and operating businesses. That approach has been the backbone of my own strategy for years — taking active income and redirecting it into assets that generate cash flow while providing meaningful tax advantages. I've also recently explained how you can use Wealth Accelerator in conjunction with charitable pledges to potentially create a future stream of retirement income — essentially at no net cost — while also establishing a death benefit. It's a powerful framework when structured properly. That said, there are also more traditional tools in the tax code that are important to understand. They may not be flashy, but when layered together they can meaningfully reduce lifetime tax burden. I wanted to put together a simple overview — not exhaustive — just a practical framework for thinking about what's available. Let's start with the basics. A Roth IRA remains one of the most elegant structures in the tax system. You contribute after-tax dollars, but the growth is tax-free, and withdrawals are tax-free. That's incredibly powerful compounding over decades. The challenge is that most high earners exceed the income limits for direct contributions. Fortunately, the tax code provides a workaround. The Backdoor Roth is simply the process of contributing to a non-deductible traditional IRA and then converting those funds into Roth status. It's not massive in annual dollar amount, but over a long horizon it's meaningful — especially when tax-free growth is involved. For those with access through certain employer retirement plans, the opportunity expands further through what's commonly called the Mega Backdoor Roth. Some plans allow substantial after-tax contributions followed by immediate conversion into Roth treatment. Instead of moving a few thousand dollars per year into tax-free territory, you may be able to move tens of thousands. It's one of the most underutilized opportunities I see among high earners. From there, we move into more aggressive tax mitigation territory with Defined Benefit or Cash Balance plans. These structures were designed for business owners and high-income professionals and allow very large deductible contributions — often well into six figures annually, depending on age and income profile. They require actuarial design and administration, so they aren't simple, but they can significantly reduce taxable income during peak earning years while accelerating retirement accumulation. Many people assume pensions are relics of another era, but in reality, they've evolved. Structured properly, modern private plan approaches can create predictable future income streams while providing current tax advantages. For the right profile, this dimension of planning is often overlooked. Finally, charitable strategies sit at the intersection of planning and purpose. Whether through donor-advised funds, charitable remainder trusts, gifting appreciated assets, or more advanced leveraged structures, thoughtful design can reduce current taxes, avoid capital gains, support meaningful causes, and improve estate outcomes. In some cases, the real economic cost of giving is far lower than most people expect once tax effects are considered. The big picture is this: No single strategy solves the tax problem. But when retirement positioning, Roth strategies, defined benefit structures, charitable planning, and real asset investing are layered together, they form a system — one that can materially change long-term wealth outcomes. High earners don't just earn more. They structure more. This week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast reviews these concepts in detail with an expert in the field.
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    34 m
  • 545: Should You Invest in Hotels?

    545: Should You Invest in Hotels?
    Feb 8 2026
    For most of my career, I've been focused on two things: Operating businesses and Multifamily real estate. The strategy has been pretty simple. Take money generated from higher-risk, active businesses… and move it into more stable, long-term assets like apartment buildings. That shift—from risk to stability—is how I've tried to build durability over time. Now, to be fair, the sharp rise in interest rates a few years ago put a dent in that model. But zooming out, it's still worked well for me overall. So I'm sticking with it. That said, there are other ways to think about real estate. In some cases, the real opportunity is when you combine real estate with an operating business. We've done that before in the Wealth Formula Investor Club (Hyperlink) with self-storage, and the results were excellent. Storage is operationally simple, relatively boring—and that's exactly why it works. But there's another category that sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. Hotels. They're sexier. They're more volatile. And yes—they're riskier. But the upside can be dramatically higher. One of my closest friends here in Montecito has quietly built a fortune doing boutique hotels over the past few years. He started with a no-frills hotel in Texas serving the oil drilling industry. Over time, he combined his operational experience with his talent as a designer—and eventually created some of the highest-rated boutique hotels in the world. He's absolutely crushing it. Of course, most of us aren't world-class designers or architects. I'm certainly not. Still, his success made me curious. Hotels have been on my radar for a while now—not because I understand the business, but because I don't. When I asked him how he learned the hotel industry, his answer was honest: "I figured it out on the fly—starting with my first acquisition and a great broker." That's usually how real learning happens. So this week on the Wealth Formula Podcast, I brought on an expert in hospitality investing to educate both of us. We cover the basics: How hotel investing actually works Where the real risks are (and where they aren't) How returns differ from multifamily And what someone should understand before ever touching their first hotel deal If you've ever thought about buying or investing in hotels—but didn't know where to start—welcome to the club. You don't have to jump in tomorrow. But you do have to start somewhere. This episode is a good starting point.
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    34 m
  • 544: Why the Sahm Rule Matters — and Why the Big Picture Matters More

    544: Why the Sahm Rule Matters — and Why the Big Picture Matters More
    Feb 1 2026
    This week's episode of Wealth Formula features an interview with Claudia Sahm, and I want to share a quick takeaway before you listen — because she's often misunderstood in the headlines. First, a quick explanation of the Sahm Rule, in plain English. The rule looks at unemployment and asks a very simple question: Has the unemployment rate started rising meaningfully from its recent low? Specifically, if the three-month average unemployment rate rises by 0.5% or more above its lowest level over the past year, the Sahm Rule is triggered. Historically, that has happened early in every U.S. recession since World War II. That's why it gets cited so much. And to be clear — it's cited a lot. The Sahm Rule is tracked by the Federal Reserve, Treasury economists, Wall Street banks, macro funds, and economic research shops globally. When it triggers, it shows up everywhere. That's not by accident. Claudia built one of the cleanest early-warning indicators we have. But here's the part that often gets lost. The Sahm Rule is not a market-timing tool and it's not a prediction machine. Claudia emphasized this repeatedly. It was designed as a policy signal — a way to say, "Hey, if unemployment is rising this fast, waiting too long to respond makes things worse." In other words, it's a call to action for policymakers, not a command for investors to panic. What makes this cycle unusual — and why talking to Claudia directly was so helpful — is what's actually driving the data. We're not seeing mass layoffs. Layoffs remain low by historical standards. What we're seeing instead is very weak hiring. Companies aren't firing people — they're just not expanding. That distinction matters. And this is where I think the big picture comes in — not just for understanding the economy, but for investing in general. When you step back, the big picture includes a government with massive debt loads that needs interest rates to come down over time. It includes fiscal pressures that make prolonged high rates politically and economically painful. And it includes the reality that if the current Fed leadership won't ease fast enough, future leadership will. History tells us that governments eventually get the monetary conditions they need — even if it takes time, even if it takes new appointments, and even if it takes a shift toward a more dovish Federal Reserve. That doesn't mean reckless money printing tomorrow. But it does mean that structurally high rates are unlikely to be permanent. And when you combine that with investing, the question becomes less about this month's headline and more about what's positioned to benefit when the environment normalizes. That's why I continue to focus on real assets that are already deeply discounted — things like multifamily real estate — assets that were repriced brutally during the rate shock, but still sit at the center of a growing, rent-dependent economy. This conversation with Claudia reinforced something I've been talking about for a long time: The biggest investing mistakes usually happen when people zoom in too far and forget to zoom back out. I've made this mistake myself. If you want a thoughtful, non-sensational, data-driven discussion about where we actually are in this cycle — and what the indicators really mean — I think you'll get a lot out of this episode.
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    48 m
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