During today’s HyperFast Wealth segment, host Dan Lesniak speaks with Scott Smith, CEO and Founder of Royal Legal Solutions. Learn why protecting your assets and preparing your estate plan is so important, some common mistakes and misconceptions people have about asset protection, and more.
Episode Highlights:
- Scott went to law school and bought a property with a business partner during law school, which allowed him to graduate with no debt.
- As a working attorney, he kept using his income to buy more real estate until he was earning more in real estate than as an attorney.
- Now Scott’s goal is helping as many people as possible achieve financial freedom.
- Most people forget about how much money they should be saving on their taxes as a real estate investor, so Scott recommends sitting down with a tax professional to prepare a strategy.
- Scott uses tax savings to invest in more real estate, building up his passive income over time to always improve his life.
- If you’re making under $50,000 per year, you don’t need to focus on tax savings yet.
- Once you’re making over $50,000, you should set up an LLC and an S-corp tax election.
- When you have an LLC, you can set up a solo 401k account as a personal retirement fund.
- You’re limited to around $55,000 for what you put into your solo 401k each year.
- Scott’s company does not offer tax expertise where they’ll go through someone’s tax return line by line, but they offer a $149 consultation to determine a strategy that includes taxes, asset protection, and estate planning.
- You won’t achieve financial freedom by thinking like a salesperson; you’ll only reach it thinking like a businessperson.
- Setting up an LLC to protect your assets takes about 1-2 hours and about $1,000.
- If you think about these things from the beginning, it sets you up to grow and scale correctly, which prevents major problems down the line.
- Scott recommends creating a living trust, especially if you have children, to avoid probate court should you die.
- You don’t have to set these things up perfectly in one go, you can revisit them to adjust things or make larger changes if your circumstances change.
- Scott’s biggest piece of advice for an agent or investor just starting out is to find the top 3 people whose life you want to emulate and figure out how you can bring them into your circle to learn from them.
- The most common mistake Scott sees people make is simply not taking action on these planning steps.
- When he’s not working on real estate deals, you’d find Scott rock climbing and mountain biking.
- In five years, Scott sees himself having a community of people he’s influencing and helping achieve financial freedom.
- Achieving financial freedom means really assessing what matters to you the most.
- Scott publishes a new book of tips and tricks every month in his Facebook group.
3 Key Points:
- Achieving financial freedom means taking stock of what matters to you and thinking more like a businessperson.
- Work with a tax professional to make sure you aren’t leaving money behind.
- The few hours, and relatively small amount of money that setting up these plans takes, is worth the thousands of dollars you save by having them.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “Think more tactically about what does it actually mean to have an ever-increasing and better lifestyle, that even if I stopped working, my lifestyle wouldn’t change?” –Scott Smith
- “What we have to ask ourselves as real estate agents am I just a salesperson, or am I running a business?” –Scott Smith
- “You don’t have to be great at everything. Be good at what you’re good at, but then recruit other people that specialize in those areas to plug those holes.” –Scott Smith
- “I find that most people get stalled into thinking that they have to understand a lot more than they really do. And just getting stuck in a process of confusion. And all they really have to do is start taking action.” –Scott Smith
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