Episode 9: The Hidden Tax Bill: How One Gifted Property Cost $120,000
A financial gift can feel generous, timely, and full of opportunity. But without the right guidance, even well-intentioned decisions can create unexpected tax consequences.
In this episode, Joyce Ruggeri, CPA at Reynolds Bone & Griesbeck, shares a client story involving a gifted property that resulted in a $120,000 tax bill. With two decades of experience in tax compliance and strategic planning, Joyce breaks down capital gains, cost basis, step-up in basis, and the common misconceptions that often lead families to make costly mistakes.
Listen in as she explains how one missed phone call changed the outcome of a major financial decision, what families should understand before gifting or inheriting property, and why coordination between your CPA and financial advisor can protect both your wealth and your peace of mind.
What You’ll Learn:
The difference between gifting property and inheriting property from a tax perspective.
What a step-up in basis is and why timing matters.
How capital gains are calculated on real estate sales.
Why the old “buy another house to avoid tax” rule no longer applies.
What qualifies as a home improvement that increases your cost basis.
Why communication between your CPA and investment advisor matters.
The long-term cost of withdrawing money early from a 401(k).
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“Capital gains… has such a negative connotation… People think of it as a penalty… It's a tax, but it can be lower than normal. Good news: you made money.” - Joyce Ruggeri
“In today's day and age, people trust what they hear from AI, and they Google things to get answers. Really, what you should do is call your CPA.” - Joyce Ruggeri
“Strong communication between your advisor and your CPA is going to really benefit all parties.” - Joyce Ruggeri
Resources:
Joyce Ruggeri: LinkedIn
About Our Guest:
Joyce Ruggeri is a CPA and Tax Principal at Reynolds Bone & Griesbeck, bringing more than 18 years of experience in tax compliance, strategic tax planning, and financial leadership. Based in Palm City, Florida, she works with closely held businesses, high-net-worth individuals, trusts, and estates, delivering thoughtful strategies that balance optimization with compliance. A summa cum laude graduate of Youngstown State University and an active member of the AICPA, FICPA, and TSCPA, Joyce combines technical expertise with practical guidance to help clients navigate complex financial decisions with clarity and confidence.
Connect with Us:
If you're ready to stop avoiding your finances and start building the future you deserve, schedule a free call with me at pelicanfinancialplanning.com and let’s create your personalized financial plan together.
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Read the Transcript:
Joyce Ruggeri: What should have happened? If she had called me, I would say, “Just wait. You inherit a property—dad passes away, and you inherit the property. Then you get what is called a step-up in basis.
Welcome to The Wealth Development Studio. I'm your host, Genevieve George, Senior Financial Advisor and Founder of Pelican Financial Planning & Wealth. Our goal for this episode is to provide clarity about today's financial topic, inspire you to be brave with your questions, and gain confidence in your financial future. So take a deep breath, grab your favorite cup of coffee, and step into the studio. Your dose of financial empowerment begins now.
Genevieve George: Today, we're talking about a situation that comes up more often than people realize, and it usually starts with some good news: a gift, an inheritance, a property that feels like a windfall, but without the right guidance, that good news can quietly turn into an unexpected and very expensive tax surprise.
My guest today, Joyce Ruggeri, a CPA with two decades of experience in tax compliance, tax strategic planning, and financial leadership. She'll be sharing a story with us about a client who made some costly mistakes that could have been avoided with some pre-planning. We're using this real-life story to break down capital gains in plain English and, more importantly, to talk about why coordinating with your professional team before a financial decision can make all the difference.
I know that that will resonate with you for sure. So Joyce, thank you so much for being here, and just maybe give us some background on what happened with your client.
Joyce Ruggeri: Okay, well, thank you for having me. So this was an unusual situation, and it's a little bit painful as a CPA when you have a client that you've had for a long time, and they don't consult you about big things.
But this happens more often than not because people trust what they hear from their neighbor. And in today's day and age, people trust what they hear from AI, and they Google things to get answers. And really what you should do is call your CPA. So what happened with my client was her father was elderly, and he was moving into assisted living, probably wasn't gonna be with us for much longer at the time.
And he had this very large property that he had had for many, many years, and had built a home on this property they had for maybe 50 years, and wanted to gift the property to his daughter before he passed away.
Genevieve George: Very generous.
Joyce Ruggeri: Very generous. And she was the only child, and it was a logical choice in their minds.
But the property was too big for her. It wasn't right for her family. So she was going to sell the property after it was gifted to her. Father was not needing the property anymore. She had no need of the property and was going to sell the property. So she sold the property and purchased another home.
And then two months later, when it was time to do her tax return, she came to talk to me. And so I said, I always say, “Hey, did anything different happen this year? Anything I need to know about?” And she's like, “Well, no, everything's pretty much the same. I work in the same place. My husband works in the same place. We haven't had any more children. Oh, by the way, my father gifted me his house, and I sold it, but no worries, because I bought another house. So that means there won't be any tax.”
So pause.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. That is not accurate, right?
Joyce Ruggeri: Yeah. My eyes get really big, and I say, “Okay, let's talk about this for a minute.”
Let's talk about the dollars and cents. So first of all, what she was thinking was there was a tax law 30 years ago, I think it expired in 1997. There was a tax law that said if you sold your home but then use that money to buy another home of equal or greater value, then you did not need to pay tax. So if you bought a home for $50,000, sold it for $150,000, as long as you bought a new home for $150,000, there was no tax on the game.
Genevieve George: But like you said, that ended in 1997. If you think that's the rule and you sell something, and you buy something new for the exact same price, you now no longer have money to pay your tax bill.
Joyce Ruggeri: Exactly. So for background, the rule now is if you sell your home, your personal residence, and you've lived in that home for two out of the five years, immediately preceding the sale, you can exclude gain. You don't have to pay tax on the gain, $250,000 for an individual, or $500,000 for a married couple.
And it doesn't matter what you spend the money on; you could sell a house for $500,000 if you're married and you can go on vacation, you do whatever you want, you're not gonna pay tax. So in this scenario, remember dad had bought the property 60 years ago, had built this home from scratch, and very little actual dollars invested in the home.
I think after she added up everything that she thought he'd spent, and it was really a difficult job for her to reconstruct this 'cause they built the home, but all in, he maybe had $200,000 in this property and home, which sold for $800,000.
Genevieve George: Okay.
Joyce Ruggeri: So there's a gain of $600,000.
And remember, she never lived in this home. This was not—well, she had lived in the home growing up, but not in the preceding five years.
Genevieve George: And that's like an important factor too, when something is gifted to you—not inherited, gifted to you, right? You assume that cost basis of whoever gifted it to you.
So if mom and dad spent $200,000 on that house, that's her basis in that household, right? Because it was a gift while dad was still living.
Joyce Ruggeri: Absolutely, and thank you for bringing that up. Yes. When there is a gift, your basis carries over. So she had dad's basis of $200,000, a gain of $600,000 and $120,000 in tax, but she didn't have the money because she spent it on a new home.
So big problem. Now, what should have happened if she had called me and said, “Here's the scenario, dad is failing, he's not gonna be around much longer. He wants to give me this property.” I would say, “Just wait. You inherit a property—dad passes away and you inherit the property. Then you get what is called a step-up in basis.”
So whatever that property costs doesn't matter anymore because on the day dad passes the basis according to the IRS rules becomes whatever the value is on that date of death. So her basis would've now been $800,000.
If she sold it for $800,000, she would have no gain, and it wouldn't matter if she bought another home, went on vacation, put it in her children's college funds, whatever; it doesn't matter.
It would've been zero tax.
Genevieve George: Yeah.
Joyce Ruggeri: So not making a phone call cost her $120,000 in tax.
Genevieve George: That wasn't readily available 'cause you didn't have all these proceeds sitting around.
Joyce Ruggeri: Yeah. So really such a difficult thing, such a difficult conversation and hard for me because I really don't like to disappoint people and there's a lot of things that you can find a loophole or find a way around it or remediate the situation, but this was something that there was just no coming back from.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. 'cause it was already done. And it is a difficult conversation, right? Because your client was the daughter, maybe not the dad in general, but even in that moment, having to say, “Listen, don't do that. Wait until he passes” can be a difficult discussion with any family member when you're talking about things, and we're talking about this in the context of a piece of property, but it applies to other items as well, like stocks and that kind of thing. Portfolio investments.
Joyce Ruggeri: Right. Could be jewelry, could be anything. Vehicles, land, real estate, definitely stocks, we see that happen quite a lot with stocks. For whatever reason, though, people generally know the rule as it relates to stocks and financial assets.
I think that information is more either readily available or common, but with real estate in particular, people seem to revert to the 30-year-old rule and think that that still exists, and it does not.
Genevieve George: Yeah, and that's difficult too because with the financial assets, it's right in your face. You can see what the cost basis is of the assets right on most statements and so you know.
And so you know if I gift these dollars to somebody right now and they don't get that step up in basis, 'cause I'm still living when I gift them, I know what that capital gain looks like. I know what that tax burden is when giving it, but it's different with a piece of property.
'cause you don't really know that. Like she probably—until she did that arduous exercise of figuring out what the cost basis was—had no idea.
Joyce Ruggeri: Exactly. And especially when you build a property. And so that's just another lesson too. You need to keep track of your costs, and if you have a home, and you didn't specifically buy the home, and it was already done, your costs would be your cost for your land, your cost to build any significant improvements you've made to the home. You added a pool later, you added a basketball court later. Things that improve the value of the home. All of those things can be rolled into what is considered the cost basis of your home. And so it's important to keep track of those things.
Genevieve George: What kind of documentation do you need for that? If you do a home remodel, and in the moment you're doing it, you're not thinking about that later sale.
So it's usually that exercise of, “Oh my God, what did we do 15 years ago?”
Joyce Ruggeri: I will say that with the filing of the tax return itself, you do not have to provide documentation.
You just have to provide a number, however. You need to get to that number somehow. And the IRS really just says here, any reasonable method. So I would say keep your invoices. These days, there’s financial software a lot of people use, even for their own personal use, and you can keep track of your expenditures that way.
It doesn't have to be perfect. But I would say definitely track the large dollar items, keep receipts. If you can keep a running list, you don't know how long you're gonna have that house. But all of those things really do add up, put a new roof on. I put new windows in, added a pool. Things like that.
Things that are just repairs and are gonna happen every few years, those are not considered to be improvements to your home. So those wouldn't be included.
Genevieve George: Okay. And I think it's interesting in your story. They had built that home, so that's an even tougher exercise to go figure out what that cost might've been.
But I think a lot of people focus in, “Okay, I bought this home, $250,000.” That's just in their mind, their basis. But you're saying that as you have that home and you're making large —not minor repairs or replacements or whatever the case may be—you need to be holding on to something to give you those numbers and that truly adds to your cost basis.
So if I bought the house for $250,000, but a couple years in, I put a new roof on, let's say it was $30,000, my basis is now $280,000. Is that correct?
Joyce Ruggeri: Correct. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And the longer you have a home, the larger the likelihood that you will need to add something to your home. Windows and roofs are very prevalent in this area.
At least, it seems like we're always replacing those items. Air conditioners is another one. major air condition expense.
Genevieve George: The one I get asked about sometimes is paint, right? And I'm thinking that falls into the category of things you have to do every few years, and that doesn't actually count towards your basis. Is that…?
Joyce Ruggeri: And it can be, I have seen some cases where, if you're just painting a room, that's not gonna count. But if say you purchased the home and it's a fixer-upper and you do a whole renovation and you paint the entire house, that may be included as part of the improvements.
Genevieve George: As a part of the overall improvements that you put in, okay.
Joyce Ruggeri: As part of the overall improvements.
You go in, you tear out the kitchen, that's always the first thing to go, and as part of that renovation, you take down the popcorn ceiling and you paint the whole house. I would include the cost. I would argue that is improving the cost. On the commercial side, if you have a business and we talk about what are things that are improvements to a building rather than just expenses.
The terminology they use in that scenario, if it's a betterment and adaptation or restoration.
Genevieve George: Okay.
Joyce Ruggeri: That language is specifically in the verbiage of the IRS rules as it relates to businesses, but I would argue that the same words apply to a personal residence. If you've bettered the home, if you've adapted it for other use or restored it, you bought it as a fixture and you had to restore it to a livable condition, all of those things would be considered improvements, and you would add those to your basis.
Genevieve George: And for you, in your role when you're working with clients, like you said that those receipts, they're not submitted with the tax return, right? You're just telling them, we need to have this number, so we need something to get us to that number. What do you see as far as mistakes people have made to not be able to give you that information?
Joyce Ruggeri: I've gotten this information in a number of different ways. I've gotten Macy's bags full of receipts, which you can no longer read by the way, because they're 40 years old. I've gotten notebooks full of written-down lists of everything that's been done. And then I have some clients that are really financially savvy.
They keep all their information in Quicken or QuickBooks, and they can give me a printout of everything they've ever done. And that's a beautiful thing. But it's rare. I will say it's rare, but it's lovely when it happens. But we can take it any which way. Generally a CPA, we trust in our clients.
We don’t work with clients that we don't trust to be truthful to us. So any way that they give us that information is acceptable to us.
Genevieve George: And have you run into any challenges? I had this come up with another client that I was talking to where a home is sold in the process of a divorce. And so let's say by the end of the year, home is already sold and the divorce is finalized.
So for December 31st, they're filing separate tax returns just as single individuals. How is that capital gain in the house treated in that situation, and how do you handle the communication?
Joyce Ruggeri: If they were still legally married at the end of the year, but just are filing separately, then they're not single. They're married filing separately.
But for purposes of the exclusion, it really is just split in half. It's like you're a single person. So you each would get a $250,000 exclusion. What's important in that scenario is making sure that the real estate lawyer that's doing the closing for the home knows to issue two separate forms, 1099, one to each of you, because the IRS will see that.
And they will expect that reporting to be done on the tax return.
Genevieve George: Yeah. That was the question I had is what is on the IRS side? Okay. You've got. Ex-husband and ex-wife filing single tax returns, hopefully with the same, both using half of the exclusion and the same cost basis amount.
What comparison is happening on the IRS side, so they should be getting two separate 1099s in that situation.
Joyce Ruggeri: Yes. Yes. Okay. Matching principle is what they call it, the IRS. They know. I've seen many situations where you have maybe have an elderly person. This often happens with maybe a client has a mom or a dad who doesn't file a tax return.
They don't need to. Social Security is their only income. They don't need to file a tax return. They've never filed before, and then they sell their home, and then they get a letter from the IRS. And the IRS says, “Why didn't you file a tax return?” And then the client always comes to me because their mom and dad don't file a tax return.
The issue is the 1099 that's issued when the home is sold. The IRS sees that, and if they don't have a tax return showing that's not a taxable sale, they will assume that a hundred percent of the sale price is a taxable event
Genevieve George: And then they'll send your elderly parent a very scary notice.
Joyce Ruggeri: Yes. That's exactly what happened.
Genevieve George: Under the assumption that the whole thing is taxable and that is not what anybody wants in that situation.
Joyce Ruggeri: And it's easily resolved. I've had this happen a number of times. You do have to file a tax return in that situation for the parent on their behalf, or help them with it, showing that it was a sale of the property and there will not be any tax. And so it will all work out well, but it will be scary.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. And I think all of that comes back to trying to have communication with your professional team in advance of these things happening. So even in that situation, elderly parents selling their home, it would be helpful for them if the kids, if they had talked to you before that happened, right?
To just say, “Hey, I'm working with my mom. I'm just trying to help her sell her house. There shouldn't be a gain, but what do we need to have?” I'm sure you have hundreds of examples of when somebody has not preplanned with you.
Joyce Ruggeri: Yes.
Genevieve George: Maybe speak to that communication with the team.
Joyce Ruggeri: Yeah. There's a lot of situations that come up with elderly parents. There may be a situation where you're now supporting that parent and is that parent then a dependent for your tax return if you're paying their medical expenses, can that be included as a deduction on your tax return? And the answer is it depends.
But maybe, and those dollars can be significant, so it's always something to talk about. What you are doing in your personal tax situation between a husband and spouse can also be affected by your parents, could be affected by your children. What gifts are you giving them? What expenses are you paying for them?
All of those can have different tax implications and should be discussed briefly.
Genevieve George: Yeah. And so let's say I'm a client of yours and hopefully I've called you in advance, but we're getting ready to sell our house. Maybe I'm calling you like in October, and it's just a quick call, but we're just connecting on Hey, this is what's happening.
Is that helpful to me as the client? Is that helpful to you as the tax professional? Maybe talk about what those benefits are.
Joyce Ruggeri: Absolutely. It's really helpful if we know those things. We do make notes of those things, 'cause sometimes there may be a disconnect. There may be a few months between when something happens and when you're talking to your tax professional.
For instance, I've made a note in my file that you are gonna be selling your home and moving, and then months go by. Maybe it's March or it's April, and you say, “I need to extend my tax return. I don't have time to bring you the documents now, but file an extension for me.” Well, if I don't know that you may have been moving, I'm gonna file an extension for you, which is gonna have maybe an incorrect address on it.
Or if you had sent me, I'm going to be moving then at least I know to ask that question. And at least I know to ask, Hey, is there gonna be how much do we expect the gain to be? Because that would affect your tax extension as well. So all of those things, the more we know ahead of time and we're making notes of, then the smoother your tax filing season will go and we can give you some guidance on maybe you need to make a payment.
Genevieve George: A different payment. Yeah. Or make a payment if you haven't been…
Joyce Ruggeri: You may think you have a payment, and then you find out that you don't.
Genevieve George: Yes.
Joyce Ruggeri: Because you didn't know. You didn't know that the improvements were included. You didn't know about the exclusion. There could be a number of things where we like to be the bearers of good news.
Genevieve George: Right. Yeah. In my practice, I always say I do not like tax surprises. Nobody likes tax surprises, and I certainly don't want them to be my fault. And so we're in this conversation of talking about capital gains on my side. I'm working more with people's in liquid investments, their accounts where it's very clear what those capital gains may be as we're making adjustments to the portfolio.
But I think it's important to have good communication about that because I don't want the client to be surprised. I don't want you to be surprised either. So generally speaking, I'm very tax efficient as much as I can be. But if there is a reason that's gonna trigger a pretty significant capital gain as the advisor, I am trying to make sure that you know that as well, because that may change part of their overall tax structure.
Is that accurate?
Joyce Ruggeri: It is, and it's funny when you talk about capital gains because it has such a negative connotation. Some people, I think, don't understand capital gains is a tax. Yes, that's true. However, it is a preferred rate. It is lower in most cases than your ordinary income tax rate. So people think of it as a penalty.
“Oh God, I don't wanna pay capital gains.” It's a tax, but it can be lower than normal. So for instance, if you were in the 24% tax bracket for your ordinary income being like your wages or interest income or rental income, that's ordinary income. If you paid a 24% rate for that, maybe your capital gains rate is only 15%.
So it doesn't mean 24 plus 15; it just means 15. So it's a good thing and it has a really negative connotation to it. I don't think people understand sometimes that rate is lower. Most cases it's lower.
Genevieve George: I love that you said that because it also means that you made money.
Joyce Ruggeri: Yes. And I always say that. “Good news, you made money.”
Genevieve George: Yeah. As much as possible, we try to be tax sensitive with our client's accounts, but at the same time. If you owned a particular stock and it just went through the roof and you're avoiding the capital gains for making that decision not to sell it because you don't wanna pay the capital gains, now you're holding more risk than you had originally signed on for either.
And you're also choosing to not take chips off the table and take that win. So we try to have that conversation, and that's where sometimes capital gains are necessary, even if the client doesn’t want them. We have to talk through, “Okay, you're making a choice now for this tax year versus a longer-term choice regarding your overall investment risk.”
So it's really important to have those conversations. Particularly, in the last few years we've seen markets go pretty much upward. It's been a rocky road there, but it's still gone upward. Most clients showing an increase in their portfolio, and that means that they're holding more risk than they were previously if they haven't adjusted their portfolio accordingly.
And having what I would consider like a capital gains budget so that you can make adjustments is helpful, and then having conversations with the professional team, which should include you, to make sure that we're all on the same page for the reporting purposes and that there aren't surprises. I think that's really what we try to encourage across the board.
Joyce Ruggeri: I do think it's really important for the CPA to be talking to the investment advisor. Many people don't know this, but there is a certain amount of capital gains that you can experience or realize each year, maybe without paying any tax at all.
Genevieve George: That's right.
Joyce Ruggeri: So it would behoove you to know what that number is.
And it's different for everybody depending on their situation. But there's a sliding scale. There's a certain amount of capital gains that are taxed at zero. So if you have no other gains other than your investments, you could—I think the number, don't quote me, but I think it's up to like maybe $50,000 that you can have in gains that you won't pay any tax on if you have little other income.
So that's something that really should be planned. And you should take advantage of that every year.
Genevieve George: And capital losses too, right? If there was a capital loss previously that was carried forward, that's something if you're new to the relationship and you maybe don't know that as on the investment side, we're trying to ask for the tax return, so we know that.
But if there's an open line of communication between the parties, then you definitely know that.
Joyce Ruggeri: It's so important for planning purposes and also just because we like to make our clients' lives easier. And a lot of this type of information is just if they can get outta the way and let the two advisors talk, then they really have a better overall scenario.
It just makes it easier for them. And that's always our goal is to make the lives of our clients easier.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Biggest thing I could take from that is strong communication with your CPA, and strong communication between your advisor and your CPA is gonna really benefit all parties.
Joyce Ruggeri: Yeah, very important. I agree.
Genevieve George: Now, one of the questions I like to ask people when we're chatting is something that we started with, we started with a mistake that you saw happening and how we could better avoid that mistake in our own financial lives. But is there maybe another example that you would be comfortable sharing that either yourself or somebody, one of your clients, or something that you've experienced that you'd like to help other people avoid?
Joyce Ruggeri: One thing that I see happen a lot is clients in a financial situation where they need cash for one reason or another. Maybe they lost a job and they're nervous. They don't have enough cash in their savings, and they are taking money outta their 401(k). They leave a job. Maybe I've got, “Oh, I only had five or $10,000 in there. I'm just gonna take it out when I leave.”
Don't do that. I imagine there are scenarios where there's absolutely no other option, but I would encourage you to look at all of the options before you prematurely take money out of an IRA or a 401(k) for a number of reasons. The biggest, which is you're losing growth over the years.
You take money out and your 25 years old and you left a job. And so you had five or $10,000 in there and you'd think, “Ah, I'm just gonna spend the money, or I need it to transition.” You're losing out on 40 years of growth of that money tax free, and you're probably never gonna put it back.
Genevieve George: Right.
Joyce Ruggeri: Especially when you're young. There's so many years of growth. So I would say look for any other alternative to taking money out of your 401(k). Sometimes people do it and they don't need it just because it's easy or they think they have to when they leave their employer. You don't always have to do that.
You have options. You can take a 401(k) from an old employer and roll it into an IRA. You can roll it into sometimes the 401(k) plan if your new employer. I 401(k). I had it from a job that I left 15 years ago and honestly it's still there. 'cause it growing well, the fees were very low. I just never really saw a reason to move it.
And it's growing. It's doing good things for me and I am just breathing. So it's like they pay you for breathing.
Genevieve George: Yeah. I love the way that you focused on that. 'cause you're focusing on the loss of growth long term by taking those dollars out. It's not there, not working in the markets long term. I think people, when they make that decision, they're focused on the short term for their short-term financial need, but also the penalties, right?
Oh, I'm gonna pay ordinary income tax on this, and then if you're not 59 and a half or older, you're also paying an extra 10% penalty on that, which is, that's where their focus is in the moment. “Oh, I need these dollars soft of a well on the 10% penalty and the taxes that I was deferring,” but it's really important to focus on that longer-term picture, and that's when I'm talking to people about their 401(k) or their IRA, their retirement dollars in general. We're calling those tomorrow dollars. Those are for later. Don't touch 'em.
Joyce Ruggeri: And there I've seen some extreme scenarios where a client really did need the money.
They really had nowhere else to get it from. In that scenario, sometimes you can take a loan from your 401(k). Which again, it's not ideal. You don't wanna take money outta the market if you don't have to, but if you have to, you could take a loan from your IRA or from your 401(k), then you pay it back with interest.
Just like you're paying a bank. Only now you're paying the interest to yourself. And so I would say, of the bad alternatives of taking money out of your 401(k), that's the least of the bad.
Genevieve George: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Anything else that you'd like to share with our group, particularly how can they work with you?
Joyce Ruggeri: So I'm a CPA with the firm Reynolds Bone & Griesbeck. We are headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, but I am sitting in Palm City, Florida, and I work with clients all over the country. I primarily work with individuals and families with a higher net worth or own a business. I do also some outsource controllership work, and so I assist those businesses with outsource controllership work as well as tax compliance and tax planning, which I think is the most key thing that you can do and should be talking to your CPA about regularly.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. And it's something that when somebody is a business owner, I'm always preaching that tax planning, tax planning, tax planning.
But I think in the course of this conversation, it's important on the individual level as well, particularly if you had triggering events, if you're selling a property, or you're making some major changes to your finances, or divorce, widow, anything along those lines like really triggering events that where I'm gonna sit with you and I'm not gonna say everything is exactly the same as it was last year because it's not.
Joyce Ruggeri: Right. I really love it when I have clients that bring their young adult children with them to an appointment.
They might say, for instance, I have a son who, my youngest just recently graduated from college and is starting his first professional career. That's a major milestone. That's a triggering event. And he may be in a very low tax bracket and taxes, maybe not a thing on his mind, but this happens a lot.
Client will bring the son in and say, “Can you just talk to them about what happens?” What do you need to be aware of, things like that. Start young, start planning young, putting money in your 401(k), especially if your employer has a match. You definitely wanna put in as much money as they're going to match.
Otherwise, you're just leaving money on the table. Think it's important to talk about those things from a very young age.
Genevieve George: Yeah, I absolutely agree. I'm so grateful for your time and for everything that you've shared with us today, and I'm excited for your clients who have a phenomenal expert to go to when they have all of these events in their lives and how they can handle them with you. So thank you so much.
Joyce Ruggeri: Thank you, Gen. You're so fine. Thank you so much for having me.
That's it for today's episode of The Wealth Development Studio. Remember, financial clarity is powerful. Do you need help with your financial plan? Go to pelicanfinancialplanning.com to schedule a call with me. Until next time.
