Ft Worth CPAs On Best Ways to Preserve Wealth

Making money is only half of it. Keeping it is the other half. However, if you read financial advice columns, far more than 50 percent of them are about ways to generate income. Saving money doesn’t make for splashy headlines, but it’s critical to your long-term success. With that in mind, let’s talk about a few important ways that can help preserve your wealth.

Create an estate plan and establish a trust

Find a good attorney who specializes in estate planning. There are many reasons to establish a family trust, some of which are asset protection, a plan and guide to continue your legacy after your death, to provide for your family, tax benefits, supporting your favorite cause, avoiding probate court (which is a lengthy process for your family to go through to get your assets), and many more.

Set up an SPE (Single Purpose Entity) for each investment

Are you protected against liability? In our litigious society, it’s quite easy for somebody to maliciously file a lawsuit against you. How you hold ownership in each of your assets is crucial; you don’t want them all to be under your trust. You should work with your estate planner and CPA to determine what suits you the best.

Diversify

Diversification helps you spread your money around over more and less risky ventures. So you’ll want to have a percentage of your assets in the stock market, which should be diversified into several different products, such as fixed income, emerging markets, tech stocks, bonds, etc. You’ll also want a percentage of your assets in cash so you have the liquidity to take advantage of any opportunities that present themselves. And you should have a percentage of your assets invested in real estate. Here, too, you can diversify in the different classes of real estate, such as industrial, office, retail strip malls, and apartments buildings.

Find a good CPA and listen to them

A good tax adviser will stay on top of the latest changes in tax laws and find legal ways to minimize your tax bill to fit your specific situation. Just make sure whomever you’re working with is credible and has a good reputation. Bad tax advice or trying to hide money from the government in offshore accounts isn’t advisable.

Real estate is one way to invest and preserve your wealth.

Seek good legal advice

Good legal advice is essential in preserving your wealth. Face it, when you make it to the top, you can become a target, so you need to protect your assets against predators. Lawyers should also review all business contracts, even those among family and friends with whom you’re doing business. And if there’s a dispute, ask the lawyer for some advice before saying, or doing, something you may regret.

Stick to what has been working for you — don’t go chasing the next hot investment

The problem with the latest money-making trends is that they don’t have a track record — there’s no success to look back on. Plus, the newest trends tend to draw too many people all looking to cash in on the same opportunities. There’s nothing wrong with dabbling in something new, but look for something that’s not so oversaturated that it’s impossible for everyone to profit.

When it comes to significant funding, you shouldn’t venture too far out of your wheelhouse whether you’re investing or expanding your business — unless you have a lot of money and the risk tolerance to make some risky investments. Many businesses have tried to expand outside of their fields, but few have succeeded.

Get insured

This is probably one of the most important tips of all. Many businesspeople are under-insured, or not insured at all for certain catastrophes such as hurricanes, high winds, hail, flooding, etc. Make sure you have an experienced, reputable insurance broker who can tailor policies that best suit you and your investments.

Invest in real estate

Real estate has always been the basis of enormous wealth. If you want to have a financially free life, get your real estate license, educate yourself, and become a real estate agent/investor — even if you’re not going to do sales or transactions, but just to understand what it means to invest in real estate.

No matter how you make money, real estate is the best way to preserve it because, for one thing, it is inflation proof, if you invest for the long haul. There are also several tax advantages with real estate, and your CPA will help you take full advantage of them.

While a stock or mutual fund will simply move up or down, unless you have a small dividend coming due regularly, your stock market investment can only show you a profit when you sell it. Until then, your profits are a paper gain and not yet a realized gain. Real estate, however, can make money for you while you own it by leasing it and collecting rent.

Preserving your money is all about keeping it safe. This can sometimes mean minimizing your tax bills, taking precautions against those who want a piece of your money through litigation, maintaining your principle, and even profiting along the way, if possible. The goal of money preservation is to have something on which to retire and also to be able to pass something on to your children and even your grandchildren.

Call Scott A. Kunkel, CPA PC today in North Richland Hills at 817-498-1040 to have a chat about your real estate business health.

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Source: Entrepreneur