Brett Wysopal 00:00
A lot of these people, they're inside, right? We're not inside. So they're standing by the water cooler, having that conversation. They're in the kitchen, right? Talking about things that are happening at the company. Those are things that, as a planner, again, you just have to empathize with, because I'm not there, right? And so again, we just try to tie it back to what's going to matter most. I

Joey Loss 00:31
Brett Wysopal, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Joey, have to be here. So for people who may not know your name, how do you come to do what you do right now, and what is it that you do?

Brett Wysopal 00:41
Yeah, it's a bit of a bit of a long journey. I'm one of those, I guess you can call career changers. Prior to getting into the financial planning world, I was fortunate enough to to play minor professional hockey. So people always assume, hey, you must be ultra wealthy, not even close. Playing in the minors is a about a 15 to $20,000 a year gig. So I was fortunate enough to do that in North America and in Europe for about five years before some injuries took their course. And so I was able to find my way into the financial planning industry through some back doors of knowing some folks. And fortunately, my twin sister was in the industry as well, and so she was actually a real guiding light to get me to where I'm at today. That

Joey Loss 01:25
is awesome. And, yeah, I mean, I think when people think career changers, they're assuming you're an engineer or, you know, I used to work for a doctor that became a financial planner, but Pearl hockey is probably not the first assumption. That's pretty cool.

Brett Wysopal 01:39
Yeah, it's a bit unique. I mean, it's definitely been a bit of like a passion, right? That kind of led me to this. But it is definitely unique. I don't bump into too many people that were kind of like ex athlete career changers.

Joey Loss 01:52
Sure. Do you think, you know, I know the minor league journey. I love baseball was never offered an opportunity to play minor league ball. But you know, it's known, especially in the minor league baseball world, just how tough that is financially for those guys. And do you think that played a role in your appreciation for good financial planning? I

Brett Wysopal 02:15
do. I would say, I wish, even then, I knew what I know now, right? I think that's, like, the, the easiest thing for a lot of people to say, you know, when we meet people all the time to talk about their finances, it's like, I wish I would have known this 10 years ago. I think when I started my journey of playing, I didn't even know about, like, using Roth IRAs, right? Like, I thought a lot of, like, what we did in this industry was just pick stocks, right? And so I spent a lot of time, like, just reading the journal and Wall Street Journal and things like that, thinking that was going to be my future. And boy, was that completely the wrong thing. But yeah, I would say it definitely led me to a lot of, like, the money beliefs I have, right? I think I always talk to people about that in general, not to get too far off a tangent, but I'm a big believer, like in life planning right and really understanding what this money is for, for folks, and that helps give you a lens, right when we're doing financial planning, how we make decisions, I think being what you would consider low income, even though You're playing professional sports, definitely had, like, it's, it's impact on, like, what I can do with my money, right? It was, it was very handicapping in nature, and so I still battle a lot of like, what you would call, like, tight money habits, even today, yeah,

Joey Loss 03:35
I'm in the same boat for for way less cool reasons, but still, the journey from working at a comfortable salary, and, you know, seeing that salary grow for eight years, and then jumping starting a firm where you basically go to negative, you know, whatever it was negative five digit income to make that start. I mean, it changes how you feel about money and and now, you know, in my case, things are kind of getting out of that valley and getting to enjoy things again. Thank God, because the daycare bills are, are coming, but, but, yeah, you feel that, and it becomes more than just a thought. You know, there's a deep engraving that happens, and it takes pretty, pretty strong intention to undo that. So I, I love the life planning process too, for that reason. You know, so many people have so many different experiences around money that aren't necessarily about money, but they leave a mark that has a lot to do with money and and starts to foretell some of their future behaviors. Yeah. And ultimately, you know, whether we like it or not, money is that tool that is how we interact with so much of what's possible in our lives? So, yeah,

Brett Wysopal 04:46
yeah. I always, I always tell people, right? Like money is just an exchange mechanism, and so I know, like our journeys are a little bit different how we got into these industries, right? But I think where we're at right are very similar, right? And things we're kind of going through right now. But I would just tell people, hey, you know, money is an exchange mechanism, right? And so, yes, you can't take it with you when you go and so what are we really just exchanging these dollars for? And I think that really helps set, like, the perspective for folks as we go on, like the life planning and the financial planning journey.

Joey Loss 05:16
Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I've been listening to a lot about just the cons, the spiritual element of like, athletes that really ascend to that high level, right? Like, there's something that happens that makes them different, and I would say it's anywhere in a professional realm, there's obviously something that has separated them into the 1% that gets to keep playing the game they love above everybody else, and I think it has a lot to do with things that are not super objective. Like, there's a spiritual element to and I'm saying this as a guy who didn't get to do it, so it's turning into a question, but like, do you see a lot of parallels in the kind of routine and behaviors and beliefs that you had to basically the system of life and living and growth that you had to build as an athlete that translates into guidance around money. Yeah,

Brett Wysopal 06:05
I do, and I actually find it unique that I ended up going down this life planning journey. Because when I first started in the industry, right? Like, I thought I started at a broker dealer, I thought, really, I was just going to be like, selling stocks to folks and going down that route. And like I said, I quickly realized that that was just not going to be my future, to the point where I thought I was just going to flat out exit the industry before being lucky enough to stumble upon an raa that really changed, like my mindset on all of this. But as I got into it, right, and I got into I'm a big fan of George kinder and his life planning techniques, and so as I went down that path, and I look back now at hockey, I mean, back when I was playing, there's, there's a book called hockey tough, and it was written by a sports psychologist, right? And a lot of that is very much how we like think through our finances and the fact that we we have to process things right? We have to build on little wins. We have to be able to see what is going to happen. So back when you were playing hockey, like you would do a lot of visualization right of what you foresee the future being right. And that could be immediate, like doing visualizations going into a game that could be in the summer, visualizing the impact you're going to have down the road. And I think we do that in life, planning with our finances, right? Our future desires can change, right, but in the immediate term, we all have things that we want to strive for, right? And so I think when we're able to take the time to let ourselves actually sit with those thoughts and visualize that, it really helps build the financial planning process right, because it really gives us clear outlooks at like, what are we going to do immediately? How are we going to make that impact? What could go wrong? Right? Like, when we visualize and think about sports, mistakes are going to happen. That happens in our finances too, right? Like, we'll make the wrong money move, but that's okay. That doesn't mean the game's over or your financial journey is done, right? You just have to keep innovating around that and building different strategies that get you right back on course, right? And so I think there definitely is, like, the element of both of those things that flow and from hockey into finance or sports in general, baseball,

Joey Loss 08:16
yeah. And what I'm hearing from what you say is, you know, it's just not, it's not just about what's objectively best. It's about how many different angles can you color the meaning and add depth and color to it so that it becomes a more natural choice, that just becomes part of a habit, that's part of a system that is your way of living,

Brett Wysopal 08:35
yep, yep, and we're gonna go off course, right? And that's okay, that's part of life, right? Life comes at you quick. And for most of the folks I deal with right there, they're developing families and things like that, life hits you quick. You know, you mentioned daycare, right? I mean, it's a I have two little ones in there in daycare. My oldest, it's a birthday today, so it's our fifth birthday. So we are well, in the mix of daycare, right? And those are, really, I don't want to call them traumatizing money moves, but they can really shock the system, right? There could be a lot of money that's going into those things, and so, yeah, just have to be able to iterate through them. Yeah. I

Joey Loss 09:12
mean, I know exactly what ours costs. That's how, you know, I'll tell you it's 1500 a month. I mean, that is a mortgage on a decent condo somewhere.

Brett Wysopal 09:24
I can tell you, too, every Thursday it is 380 a week out of the bank account, right? So like you said, Those are, those are money really strong beliefs, right? You can hear it from both of us, like, yeah, man, yeah, they're amazing people who run these things, don't get me wrong, but they're big expenses, right? It's definitely one of the biggest, if not the biggest, expense for us on a monthly basis, right? And that's for most of the people I work with, with kids,

Joey Loss 09:48
yeah. Well, this is an interesting bedrock for the conversation we aim to have, which is around equity compensation. You have founded a firm recently, thought. Hear about that process too, and your your specialty is helping people navigate equity compensation and and just based on my experience with it, I know that having sort of a pre a preset system for how to deal with different events is a huge part of navigating that, just because, especially with companies like Nvidia, especially the last few weeks the volatility around those shares. You know that it really tests how prepared you are.

Brett Wysopal 10:27
Yeah, I fell into kind of the niche of equity comp. And like I said, I started a broker dealer, and I was able to get to a big RIA where the footprint and equity comp was was very well in, very well established, I would say, and so I was able to jump really into that feet first and not just dip my toe in. And I had some great mentors who who took me in at that firm and taught me a lot of great things. And so I knew, as we, as we talk about the life planning thing, I kind of always go back to that, because it drives a lot of the decisions you know, me and my family make, when my first born was was born, it was pre COVID. And so about three weeks after she was born, we went into lockdown. And really, at that time, everything in my life changed, right? I think there was a really in looking experience for me to say, you know, a lot of times we think we need to just build our careers and then spend our time with our kids as we build our career. And for me, I can't remember who there's another planner in the industry who talked about this, you know, he was like, what if we flip this on its head? And really, I focus on intentionality around building a firm and having all this time now with my kids when they're young, and as they grow and they want to be around me less that that will just allow the time for me to build my business. And so that was about five years ago now that I went started on this journey of thinking like I'm going to run my own firm. And so as I continue to build up the experience around equity, it finally led to the opportunity now to launch my firm voice local wealth planning, where the idea is really equity stressful. And so our tagline, I would say, is really like, we want to maximize your equity while minimizing your stress, and that is through a lot of things, right? We do three things extremely well. We plan around your equity into your financial life. We do very good investment management to include your equity, because it's usually such a large percentage of people's net worth, and then we do really in depth tax planning. And I think those three things combined structured really help folks minimize their stress and help move the needle to build the life that they want.

Joey Loss 12:39
Yeah, and for listeners who this conversation is mostly going to be helpful to people that have equity compensation. Know exactly what Brett's talking about, but for those who are just curious and just tuning in equity compensation, when you hear that, you might also hear stock options at work. But really, equity compensation is a better all encompassing term. What it's talking about is workers at Amazon or workers at Nvidia. You've probably heard over the last 10 years, a huge part of their net worth ends up being these stock options that they're given as part of their compensation package at work. And it's an amazing blessing to have. It can be an incredible source of stress just because of how concentrated wealth can become in that situation. Now, as a listener, you might say, Okay, that sounds like a really good problem to have. I don't feel bad for them, sure, but there's still some problem solving and some work to be done, and working with someone like Brett is a way to really dig into the tax and the life planning ramifications and really tap into what I like to think of as a regret minimization framework. Is really kind of how I focused on it when I've worked with this?

Brett Wysopal 13:41
Yeah, I love that you said that, because that is usually what I tell people, is my job is to take you on the path of least regret around this. And I would also say you a lot of times, you know, I work with folks that are mostly at public companies, but also private companies too. Those are really, especially for those at private companies. Those are really complex situations, and I would say that because oftentimes there's the juggling of wanting to invest in your company, trying to still invest in your day to day financial plan, right and get that going, all while having this real, real risk that folks that are at public companies don't have, of the fact that you may never get a liquidity event. And so I would say all of my clients definitely understand that they are fortunate to have the equity packages that they have. Oftentimes, people can lose sight of the fact of how lucky they are, because everybody they know in their sphere has equity, right? Everybody they work with has equity at these companies, and so they forget that a lot of people don't have these opportunities. But what I would say with the private the people at private companies, is that, again, there's this real risk of how much money do I put into my company, right into like an option to buy when I'm ill, liquid. Right? And so it really creates a need to be thinking outside the box when you're planning, especially for folks that are at private companies. Absolutely,

Joey Loss 15:11
I love the private company example, because I think 99.9% of the attention is on the public companies. The tickers we all know because they exist, right? Private companies don't have them. I had a friend I talked to last week who was at a company that everybody knows, but it's not public yet, and he has been feeling meh about his job for a period of time, and ended up getting laid off last year. But before he did that, he put in a lot of money into the private share offering that he was given access to, and at the time, as we talked about it, didn't really seem like a good idea, because didn't really align with anything that he cared about, but he was caught up in the religious fervor that is a private company, thinking that an IPO is down there somewhere in the distance, and so we just kind of missed the ball in terms of, you know, staying on target, which was like building liquidity, building the ability to do, creating runway for these different things that are actually material or experience based, things in his life that were going to improve it, and just kind of getting a little over obsessed with the potential of a windfall. But it has really no constraints on it other than the potential that it could happen. And as you said, a lot of times it doesn't. And so what do you do with that? You don't want to miss out on it. How do you handle those conversations?

Brett Wysopal 16:31
Yeah, so I will always tell people up front, I am always going to advocate for you to get liquidity from your company as you can because it can be a rarity, especially at the private companies, right? It can definitely be a rarity. There may be one chance to do this, even if your company tells you, like, Hey, we're going to do this every year. They don't have to, right? They don't, they don't have to do that. I would say, in my experience, I'm almost always telling people, you should probably try to take some chips off the table, okay, and reward yourself, okay, with a little bit of something that you know, that we talk about, that you desire. Okay, it could be saving money for a house. Could be saving money to buy an investment property. It could be vacations. It can also be using proceeds to buy more equity. Right? Most of these people at startups, they have bunches of equity, and because of the illiquidity and maybe some of the tax implications that can come with options around those things, you you really do need cash, okay? And so a lot of the planning, I would say that, I think, through with private employees, is outside the box, right? Like, one of the biggest things I would say, is oftentimes folks are just hammered in their brain, like, hey, I need to max 401. Ks, I need to be maxing these things. Well, that's tough to do if you're at a private company, for a couple of reasons. Usually folks are taking a pay cut to to be there, right? They are taking more equity in exchange for salary. That does come at an expense, right? Because we have to view your financial life as if this company actually goes to zero, right? And so when we think about your financial plan, you mentioned Nvidia earlier, you can't have everything in your net worth banking on the fact that you're going to own the next Nvidia, right? Because it just may not happen. And if that's your retirement plan, that's shaky ground to be on, right? And so I think when we think about that, we have to think outside the box. And so for a lot of folks, instead of taking that maybe pre tax, you know, tax advantaged, uh, aspect in their financial plan for a year, we're shoving money into maybe a high yield savings account knowing like, hey, we need a strike when we have an opportunity to buy some equity this year, right? We need liquidity to buy it. We need liquidity to pay tax on it. So I think there is some outside the box planning that happens with those folks, right? And so, like I said, ideally for most of my clients, they are on what you could call the grind, right? They're very much in the grind of things. And they don't all want financial independence, is what I would say, but they want flexibility. And so for most of them, they don't see themselves in retiring at 50, but they do see themselves having the ability to pick the job that they want, right at that time or at 55 and so you have to think outside the box for that, right? And so when you think about liquidity, I often tell people, let's think about it in net numbers, right? Let's take out the taxes of everything. Let's run some analysis. Take out the taxes of what this means to you. Oftentimes it's like a sabbatical. Like I said that they want that liquidity. They get it. They want to take a sabbatical. It's you got to be careful using the word guarantee. But if we have fine numbers, you can tell them, like, hey, if, if this can essentially guarantee you get a year sabbatical. Do you want to? You should think about taking this right? If you choose not to, maybe it goes up and you get yourself an 18 month. But. Maybe the company gets devalued next time, and you get eight months. Are you okay with that? Right? And we have to to play that out in those scenarios with folks, yeah.

Joey Loss 20:08
Well, when you say the word guarantee, it kind of makes me think about employee stock purchase plans where it's not perfectly a guarantee, but they get to buy these shares at a discount, and then you get into the you get into the, you know, if people are participating in their 401, K, and they're participating in their employee stock purchase plan, they've got three kids in daycare, they can get to a point where it's like, there's just not enough cash flow to shuck all the oysters of this benefit package. And so it goes back to the beginning of what, what you started with, which is, how do we figure out what's the most impactful? And it really all revolves around moments of liquidity when you need it in that situation. And so I love that emphasis, yeah, and that liquidity issue is something that I'm experiencing as an owner. I mean, it's, I've always transparent about what this experience is like building a business and being a financial planner. You know, I've just merged my firm into another firm in town. It's going great. I love the partner that I'm partnering with. He's been a friend for a long time, but one of the reasons I did it is it was going to free like I've been building this enterprise value by building a business with clients, and it's cash flowing, but I keep reinvesting the cash flow in tools that help me do the job better and help me grow the business. And liquidity is something you feel, right? It's like, I keep telling my wife, the business is getting bigger. We're doing so well. And she's like, cool, can we do this? And I'm like, Nope, not yet. And she's like, well, then what is the point? Right? And so the merger was one of those decisions for me that's not that dissimilar from, I think the considerations people have as they look at their equity comp packages, it's like what, you know, I could do this and maximize the potential to have a ton later, right? So my case that would have been just staying solo, and, you know, I would be maxing enterprise value of complete control over everything that happens. You know. And then the alternative was, well, maybe I hedge a little bit, and instead of just trying to go fast alone, I want to go farther with the team, grant myself a little bit of liquidity and extra cash flow along the way, so that I can enjoy these years while my kids, my daughter's young. It's those kinds of thoughts that really influence things. It doesn't seem that dissimilar, yeah,

Brett Wysopal 22:27
I would say that's really similar. And what I also hear in there is, is the emotion, right? Of like, yeah, this, this business, is part of me too, right? And part of what I really value, right? That's why you're doing it. And so there's this constant reinvestment that goes into it that's very similar to folks at both private and public companies, right? Folks at public companies, I often hear, especially around RSUs, like, you know, I don't want to sell it because I think it's going to go to the moon, right? That's a very common joke, but, you know, I think it's going to go to the moon, or I feel like I'm giving up on my company, right? Because these people have done a lot of leg work. They don't own the company, but most of them are fairly high up right their middle career to later career professionals. And you know, they are compensated well for their knowledge, and they've, they've owned projects, right? And they have a very strong love for what they do, and so it's very hard to one of the big exercises you have to do is, is try to disassociate your emotion of your company to the reality of what the equity in a worst case scenario going down can do to your financial life. And that that's really, really hard. And so it has to be approached with a lot of empathy, right? Because it's a it is a tough, tough decision, even, like I said, when you're selling at public companies to just when you're buying in, right? Like you said, just reinvesting into the business, buying your shares, it is a very hard thing, because nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody knows where this is going to go, right? So while everybody hopes, you know, you have a great merger and a great business continuing to go, things happen right? And things happen out of our control, and so you just have to be aware of that. And like you did, you got to hedge it, right? And so that's what we're trying to do with folks with equity, is, let's try to hedge this right. And I'm not saying you only need to hold 5% of your company. You just got to hedge the chance that this totally derails everything you want your life, right?

Joey Loss 24:25
Right? And, and FOMO. You know, one of the heuristics that definitely plays a role is FOMO. Because people are talking about this stuff at work by the water cooler, yeah, they're saying like, Oh, I held on all my shares. And it's like, I can only imagine what that conversation is like at Nvidia or at Amazon 10 years ago, you know, like,

Brett Wysopal 24:43
for sure, yeah. I mean, you know, to help hedge that, right? You always tell people, like, Hey, if you're still at the company, you're going to continue to get RSUs right, and if you're a part of the growth, you're going to be a part of that, and you're going to get compensated with your RSUs through that. And so that tries to help. But again, yeah, I mean, they, you know, a lot of the. People, they're inside, right? We're not inside. So they're standing by the water cooler, having that conversation. They're in the kitchen, right? Talking about things that are happening at the company. Those are things that, as a planner, again, you just have to empathize with, because I I'm not there, right? And so again, we just try to tie it back to what's going to matter most. And hopefully that moves the needle enough, right? And for some people, it doesn't right. Some people hang on, and others, others don't, and they diversify. You just don't want to see a worst case scenario where, where people really get hit hard, right? And I know, like Nvidia got hit hard last week, but, I mean, I've seen worse examples. I won't name companies, but I've definitely, I've worked with some folks at companies, you know, during COVID that were very high flyers that nobody thought could go down in a stock price, and people would hold on to those shares. And some of those stocks now are single digit numbers, right when they were triple digits. And so I feel like

Joey Loss 25:57
I know what you're talking about. We have one in our house. Yeah, it becomes the person. But we'll

Brett Wysopal 26:04
just say it becomes a hanger. Is a very common, yeah, around it

Joey Loss 26:08
for mostly a clothes hanger.

Brett Wysopal 26:11
But unfortunately, you're seeing a lot of wealth evaporate right now. I always tell you know, I did work with a client a while back at a prior firm who exercise some of their equity at that company. And they, I'll never forget, they basically, they had, like, a million dollar tax bill because it was extremely high, that the stock price was extremely high, and that stock price fell pretty quickly. And they, they came to us just saying, like, I don't feel like I have a million bucks, even though my tax return says that, and it's like, because you don't right, because you opted not to get liquid right? Like buying your shares is only one step in the process. You have to be able to have an exit strategy that goes with it, or these things can happen and your wealth can evaporate, right? And so protecting, protecting that with a sales strategy is really important,

Joey Loss 27:01
yeah, and there's all kinds of different thought patterns and and ways to create that framework for getting out of shares or buying more shares. Dollar cost averaging is sort of an element of that, but it's interesting. It definitely seems to me, I'm curious for your thoughts on this, it seems to me like, if I just take my paycheck, it's sitting in my checking account, and I'm buying spy, right? It's the S, p5, 100 index. It's a lot easier for me to dollar cost index that automatically not think about it than it is to do my my shares at work. Why? Why is it harder psychologically?

Brett Wysopal 27:37
That's a great question. Again, I think there's probably a lot of like, FOMO that happens. If we're talking about the sales side of things, on the buy side, I would say, like, when we think of the equity types, right? Like we have like restricted stock units and restricted stock awards, oftentimes those are like, vest dependent, meaning they just come to you, right? They come to you on time based fasting, and there's no control there, right? You really just need to, you need to plan around that in taxes, which we can talk about, but that's really what you're doing there, right? But when it comes to options, it's not as easy to just think about buying them, because there is the optionality of, what do you want to do with it, right? And so I would say when you're having options and things like that, you don't have to necessarily DCA into it. You can really strategize around them, because you are actually able to, I don't want to say you are able to use the best tax strategies available to you, right, and optimize buying your equity. And that's because with non qualified stock options, you could have an ordinary income event, and with incentive stock options, you can have an alternative minimum tax event, which is a whole different wormhole to go down, right? But you can create what works best in each tax year. And so when we think about buying options specifically, we're always talking to people about, hey, we don't want to waste the tax year here, right? So maybe there's, you know, unfortunately, it's common in industries I work with is that somebody might get laid off, right? Maybe a spouse is laid off. That could be a great year to really drive some income, right, because your spouse's income is down. So maybe we look to exercise more non qualified stock options in that year, with incentive stock options to go not too deep into the tax, right? But there's, there's always going to be a little bit of space between your regular tax and your AMT. Ultimately, you pay the higher of the two taxes. Okay, a tax time incentive stock options, when you exercise them, will start driving that AMT up. Okay? They don't go into your regular tax and so sooner or later, you hit this break even, if you don't want to pay AMT, there's that space there while you're driving AMT up to hit the break even, where you can actually exercise for just the cost to buy, right? And there's no tax implication. And so oftentimes, around those kind of events, that's not a DCA, right? That's very. Uh, fine tune tax planning, right? Whether you're working with a CFP who can do it, or a CPA who can do it, or an EA, you want to be really fine tuned with that, because there's a lot of opportunity. And I can't tell you the amount of times, you know, people have never bought an incentive stock option. They come to me with, you know, a year or two until that thing expires. They've, I don't want to say they've wasted, but they kind of have. They've wasted the ability to slowly buy them without any tax implication, right? And so not to say they could have owned them all, but they could have owned some, right? And it could have been a lot better of a situation if they did that for sure, than where they sit when expiration is coming.

Joey Loss 30:39
Yeah. And ultimately, no matter what kind of situation you're talking about, what matters at the end of the day is the net amount you get to take home. And and these pockets of tax opportunity you're pointing to are the only guaranteed game in town with a lot of these things. And so harvesting those for all that they're worth is an effort worth pursuing if you're if you find yourself in the situation with this kind of benefit?

Brett Wysopal 31:03
Yeah, and I would say there's, thankfully, there's a lot of good CFPs that are starting to do equity comp planning and doing a lot of tax projections around that. And I would say there's the tide is turning as well on like the CPA front and on the EA front, of being a lot more proactive and helping folks do this, right? Because the worst case scenario is you get through a tax year and you realize you just really didn't optimize for any of that. So it is nice to see that the tide seems to be turning to the positive for folks with equity. Calm,

Joey Loss 31:35
yeah, it is definitely getting more popular for listeners. You know, obviously each of us have experience with it. Brett's whole firm is focused on this, x, y, p n is a good resource to find a lot of advisors that are doing this kind of stuff. So you have options out there. And from a tax law perspective, kind of changing tune a little bit. You know, year to year, a good financial planner is thinking about what's coming up around the corner. So for example, last year, before we knew the outcome of the election and how it was going to look for the White House and for Congress, we thought there was a much higher chance that tax brackets were going to revert to what they were in 2017 in the preceding years, which were smaller brackets with higher tax rates. And so when you're thinking about taxation of equity comp plans over time, that's a huge piece of consideration. It's a huge part of estate planning, right? Especially for business owners, if they're trying to figure out, how do I get assets out of my estate now, because it's going to be too big and subject to estate tax this kind of year to year, tax planning matters, and it helps to have somebody who's watching what's going on in Washington?

Brett Wysopal 32:43
Yeah, that's a great point, I would say, watching what's going on, right? Most of the folks that I work with, they're highly intelligent people, right? To be honest, if they had the time, they could do it themselves, but most of them don't have the time, and so they delegate for that reason, and keeping an eye on things is super important around the tax laws. You know, we're while we do have a change in the White House, we could still have a change in the tax landscape, right? And so we don't know, right? And for a lot of my clients, you know, alternative minimum taxes, we talked about and exemptions around the alternate minimum tax, not to go too far into the weeds, but a lot of that is on the table still, of potentially getting changed, right? And so proactively this year, a big thing we're doing is showing, fortunately, there's some great softwares out there on tax planning now that can kind of help us, you know, with sunset happening or not, and we can show like, Hey, here's what happens in these scenarios as we look out into the future, dependent upon tax law, okay, changing the way we know it is today, and that really allows us to work really in depth with folks on these things, because, you know, you're stuck in a rock and a hard place when you don't know what's going to happen, but at least being able to see the opposite sides is really powerful. And so for some folks, they might want to get aggressive based on that information, or they might want to be more conservative based on that information. Ultimately, it's their money, right? And we give our recommendations their money, and they get to make that decision, but being able to see that for them is just super powerful. So I'm very grateful for a lot of the great tax planning softwares that are out there today, they're incredible.

Joey Loss 34:24
What has changed? And they're realizing they're incredible because their cost is going especially the one that everybody loves. Don't hurt me. You're hurting me with that. People were far too praising of it in public places. No, it is incredible software and, yeah, I mean, these tools, these conversations, they're really important. And I think one of the things I've come to appreciate more about planning over time is it's not just about finding the optimal answer, because a lot of times that isn't even the path that's taken. It's about eliminating. All of the noise of all these other things you might would like, Should I do this? What if I did that? Blah, blah, blah, just sitting down and having a little bit of discipline to look through what is true and what's possible in selecting a path and understanding the trade offs quiet so much of the financial noise in your head, even down to the most simple financial retirement plan, just getting clear on what's possible, what a few of the trade offs are, but that things are generally going to be okay if we do X, Y or Z, which one looks best?

Brett Wysopal 35:28
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with you, yeah. I mean, I think that's a big part of our job, right? Is to cut out the noise, and so we have to be able to get to a place where we can do that for clients, and show them really just what is important based on what you've told us. And so we're cutting out where the stock could go. You know, what the future price is on Yahoo Finance or whatever website it is. Ultimately, that's not going to be the biggest decision or driver of decision in this process, right? It's really going to be, what do we need this equity comp for? Or what do we need anything in our financial life for, right? What do we need, anything that comes through in a surplus of cash flow for? And we need to just build from there, right? And so it's really helpful to be able to cut out the noise

Joey Loss 36:15
Absolutely. Well, I know we can go super deep, and maybe in the future, we do a segment where we focus, you know, on ISOs, and then a segment on RSUs, or something. In the future, I see you putting out great content about that, but I think this is a great introduction for listeners to just some of the softer elements that play into considerations around equity compensation and all the different forms that it can

Brett Wysopal 36:41
take. Yeah,

Joey Loss 36:43
so let's halt there for now. Brett, how can people catch up with you and follow more pointed conversations about equity compensation? Yeah,

Brett Wysopal 36:54
yeah, I would say as you mentioned. So I do post content on LinkedIn. I'm on X I'm even a little bit on tick tock, doing some some short form videos. Now on equity compensation. You know, I'm a real believer in education around this for folks. So I think that is step one. You have to be educated around your equity and so we definitely lead with equity comp education here at Weiss Opal wealth planning. You can find me there, or you can find me at why soap wealth.com and you can dive through anything in the the articles on blogs that we write around equity, or you can just book a call to chat and see if we could be a good fit together.

Joey Loss 37:31
Awesome. Brett, I'm going to post your, your LinkedIn link and your, your website in the show notes for everybody. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for coming on, man. I appreciate it. Appreciate the time. All right. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed the podcast, please consider sharing it with your friends or family. This is the best way to spread the word, and we want to keep churning out great content for you guys. Show Notes and episode transcripts are available on our website at strivous wealth.com/podcast Special Thanks to both leesons for the intro outro music and to the podcast man for producing the show. Until next time,

Disclaimer 38:12
the wealth unplugged podcast is sponsored by strivus wealth partners Joey and Adams SEC registered investment advisory offering Financial Planning and Investment Management services to clients across the United States. The opinions voiced in this episode are for general informational purposes only. Nothing any host or guest says on the podcast is meant to serve as advice or recommendations for any individual security to determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. This information is not intended to substitute for individualized tax insurance or estate planning advice. Please, consult your tax advisor, insurance agent or estate advisor regarding your specific situation you.