President Trump’s New Tax Plan – Episode 243

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[00:03] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler. Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, Kim Butler, are you there with me? Yes, I am, Spencer. Well, we are going to be talking about Trump’s new tax plan. Now, it depends on the type of listener you are. You’re either happy to hear about this or you’re fuming mad to hear about Trump’s tax plan. So we want to dive a little bit deeper into that. So I think before we get into details of the tax plan, it’s always important to understand the philosophy or the big picture. So, Kim, can you shed some light on that for us?

[00:58] Absolutely. One of my oft repeated sayings is to focus on what you can control and since we clearly cannot control the amount of tax we pay within reason. I mean, yes, there are some things we can do to control it. But then beyond that, we can’t control that. We also cannot control what Trump is doing or the various things that he’s signing or approving or what have you. We are so much better off focusing on other things. So literally spending our time on other things that we can control. One of the biggest is our mindset or our point of view or our frame of reference, whatever way you want to look at just really how you take things in mentally. And so it’s so critical at times like this when there’s economic changes that are occurring,

[01:56] whether it’s Trump signing the tax bill or an investment that’s going sideways or appearing to not do what it’s supposed to do or some other thing that is beyond our control. I believe it is absolutely paramount for us to get our mindset right. And so always if we can adopt a mode of learning, then we’re going to get through whatever it is better. So OK, Trump signed this thing. Well, what can we learn about it? And of course, there are, as we know, two sides of the coin in the perspective of the new tax law. And you could call them a political A and political B. I’ll just use those words to be really politically correct. So you have the A and the B. And so we have to understand that almost everything that we read is going to be slightly one sided.

[02:58] I mean, it’s almost impossible for somebody to speak of it in completely generic terms. We all are coming from our bias or our point of view, if you will. And so fine, learn, just learn and keep digging. It’s so easy to pick up your own main source of news and read the information or listen to it and then be done. And so I’m going to encourage something actually that Kate Phillips did actually when Trump was elected. So it was a year and a half ago, I guess, where she purposely she had political A in her mind. And that was her thinking. But she purposely listened to political B news, read political B papers and really just for an entire week, delved in to learning and trying to keep emotion out of it.

[03:53] And I thought it was a great strategy to really round out her knowledge, to see the other side of the coin, literally in this case, and to increase her abilities. Because if we just stick with our own main news source and our own main perspective on what this particular round of tax changes are going to do, we may actually miss out on something. And sorry, I’ll let you chat in here. Just I want to get one more thought out. And it’s so important that when we are coming at the information from our normal bias, that we open our minds to the fact that there is probably additional information and that we dig deep to get it. That’s really well said. And I think that that example of Kate of looking at both sides,

[04:49] it’s it’s actually a little bit uncomfortable to do. But it helps you get a new paradigm shift, a new view on it. That’s that’s a great idea. Absolutely. And you’re right. It’s very uncomfortable. I mean, I don’t like doing it either because it makes me mad. Right. But that’s the emotion that needs to be removed so that we can learn. And again, if we come at it from, OK, well, what can I learn about this? You know, this this particular signing, first of all, frankly, is not really going to impact that many people that much. And so so much time and effort gets, I think, wasted in figuring it out and jabbering about it and, you know, being upset and etc. When, frankly, it is absolutely not going to have that big of an impact.

[05:38] If you want a really, really good tech strategy that supersedes all other tech strategies, just go earn more money like that’s the best thing to do is just go earn more money. It’s driving me crazy these days to see some of the popular books coming out. Zero tax bracket, you know, retirement at zero, zero, zero, zero. No, that’s the wrong goal. Our goal, frankly, should be to pay while we strategize for efficiency. It should still be to pay as much tax as possible. That’s going to sound a little weird because that means we’re earning as much income as possible. And again, we we still want to take our mortgage interest deduction and, you know, define our business entities and move money properly so that we get the biggest tax benefits.

[06:28] Of course, of course, you want efficiency. But then once you’ve got all the efficiency things, then, frankly, pay as much tax as possible and earn more money and more money and more money so that you can even pay more tax because you earn more money, which probably meant because you learned more things. You know, that is that is such a good point. And I think people oftentimes are chasing those pennies and they’re forgetting about the dollars or the opportunities around them. And, you know, we could talk and we could go into detail and say, OK, well, Trump’s new tax plan, what it’s going to do is it’s going to change the estate taxes and it’s going to change the tax credits for children. And it’s going to simplify it for W-2 workers or whatever that is.

[07:10] The truth is, just as when Obama was in office, the other side would say, oh, no, everything is going to be totally ruined and our country is going to be destroyed. And then now that Trump’s in office, the other side is saying, oh, no, everything’s totally going to be ruined and destroyed. And guess what? In another few years, when we have a new president, things are going to change as well. So focusing on making more money, focusing on a prosperity mindset is truly the only way to really win the game. Absolutely. And that mindset point of view, perspective, whatever term works for you, attitude even is critical. And it is something that you can control and you can control it every single minute.

[07:58] And I guarantee you, if you’re upset and frustrated and mad, and I’ve been there, you’re not learning. And because you can control it and you can change it instantly, that’s a toughie. Like I go back to my days in college, I was a varsity soccer player. We had a very small school, but we were a pretty good team, mostly because we ran ourselves to death. And we would potentially still on occasion lose a game. It wasn’t very often, but when we did, one of my friends said, okay, five minutes. So she would give herself five minutes to be frustrated, mad, cry, whatever she wanted to do about the outcome of that game. And then she was done. Like she just flipped a switch at the end of five minutes.

[08:45] I’m done. It’s behind me. I can’t do anything about it now. And I’m going to go on about my life in the happy, learning, open-minded, positive point of view mode that I know is going to get me so much better results than if I sit here and stew about this for the next hour. You know, I think if our listeners are in that juxtaposition, we’re going to give you permission to take your five minutes to get it all out and then change that mindset to prosperity. I totally agree there. Absolutely. You know, there’s been some research with ducks that when they, I don’t know how they did this research, but apparently when a duck fights, like, you know, there’ll be two ducks on a lake and they do all the flapping of the feathers and the squawking

[09:31] and their feet are going like crazy underneath. Then when they turn away from the fight, they’re done. And I guess they can, you know, maybe measure by heart rate or maybe just how their body demeanor is or whatever. But it’s the same idea. It’s like, yeah, have the mental fight if you need to and then be done. And you truly can change your thinking that fast. And so get in to the web, get into Tom Willwright’s information, get into your own CPA’s, you know, summary of the tax changes. Of course, you know, make whatever record-keeping adjustments you need to make and then get on with it. There are so many other better things in life because it truly is not going to have that big of an impact on most people.

[10:21] I agree. And I think what we’ll do in the show notes is we’ll put a link to that interview with Tom where he’s going into the details about this tax plan. Tom’s an expert and he really put in the time to learn about this. But again, even if you get the details right, if you don’t get the mindset right, it’s going to be of no use and you’ll still be frustrated. So we want to help you overcome that. Absolutely. Because that’s something that we can have an impact on and that’s something that every single person listening can do something about. Thank you so much for sharing that with us today, Kim. And as always, we’re going to put some resources inside of the show notes. So make sure you click that button.

[11:06] Or if you’re on the website, take a look at the show notes for that episode with Tom. And as always, you can ask questions to the podcast. Hello at partnersforprosperity.com. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.