Latest / CrossPolitic Show / Populism, Vote-Buying, and Building Wealth for the Next Generation
Transcript
- Hey, all welcome to Cross Ball Tick 101 with Water Boy. And this week I have Justin Johnson in the show. If you guys know Justin Johnson, his company is a big part of what we do. And he's also going to be able to fight Latfice Conference with us and his team. Your team's going to be out there. And by the time the show drops, it will be about a week out-ish from our conference. So if you still want to come out to Fight Latfice Conference in Franklin, Tennessee, go to fightlatfice.com, click on events, and you'll be able to get there and all the stuff. We have a bunch of stuff happening like the pre-business conference. We have a business luncheon on Saturday. Make sure you sign up for that. The church leadership luncheon on Friday's full. And then we also have a kind of a meat and greet, business meat and greet at my friend's house. And we are publicizing his house just because people. And so email me waterbreakatcrosspaltick.com. Waterbreakatcrosspaltick.com. And I'll kick you the address. But that's a Wednesday night event from 6.37 o'clock to 9.30, 10 o'clock. The weather should be good at that time and everything. So I'd love to see you guys there. Great fellowship on Wednesday night. And then beer and psalms Thursday night. You'll be there. Barron Psalms is going to be at, and this is the first time I'm saying this, I think, live. Barron Psalms is going to be at the Nashville Fairgrounds. So if you guys know anything about Franklin, Tennessee, Franklin, Tennessee is limited. And what we can do there. And meeting no beer. Either everywhere either had a problem with the beer or the jumpy castle. So it was a weird thing to try to coordinate. So we end up just with the National Fairgrounds. So we could do it all at the same time. I know. That's what we were trying to do. But one place had a problem with the jumpy castle. One place had a problem. So we're at the Nashville Fairgrounds for Barron Psalms. So we can do it all there. Jumpy Castle, everything. Juice boxes for the kids, all that stuff. So I think that's the only, oh, I had another announcement. There's a church plant I needed to announce. I don't have to, I don't have to copy with me. But it's happening in California. I'll get that next show. Church plant stuff. Always, always fun to talk about. So, yeah. Justin is with Dominion Financial Planning. And you guys started in 2022 about. Yeah, about. Yeah. And he made some adjustments and changes and everything. And so, you know, maybe I should start here first. There's this whole standard disclosure stuff. You got to zoom in. You can read it. And that'll help with those descriptions. Yeah, we don't want to say that. Or it's just the, you know, I work with Westwood elements. We've talked to you about them. Yeah. And whenever we do a capital event, like we have our disclosures. We have a whole, yeah. It's there. We don't read through it all, but it's there on the screen. People have to be able to see it. Yeah. Unless the nature of investments, it's really. The financial we have to have. Yeah, exactly. So we have to have legal disclosures and stuff like that. So if you want a little boring read, check out the description. They zoom in, pause the screen. Yeah. Check out the description. And then you're also with high life. High life, I'm probably the, what, what. High calling fitness. High calling. Yeah, high calling. Yeah, it's a business. Yeah. And so you do a Dominion Financial Planning. High calling fitness. I don't know why I said high life. High calling fitness. I'm a brand that might not be legal in the state. Maybe, yeah. High calling fitness. And then one there kind of a third thing. I'm also a mother of 1689. And I'm a mother of ventures as well. Yeah. And you guys know, chance and those guys will be at the fight left. He's comfortable 1690 cars also and everything. So make sure you check them out. We're going to, we're going to get into some, I think, some financial conversation here. But the thing that I wanted to start off with is because it's really going to be actually big conversations last two weeks. And for me, it's just a constant conversation. The, you know, Trump, I think I got to just come to the conclusion better or just know that Trump is not a conservative. He's not a Berkian conservative. He's not a, you know, Walter Kern kind of conservative. I mean, he really is some sort of populist kind of, you know, fascist isn't the right word, but like, like willing to do government and business stuff to fix things. Yeah. And he's not trying to, he's probably enriching his friends too. I mean, department commerce, word on the street is the most corrupt institution in DC. I mean, I wouldn't know, but it wouldn't. Yeah. I mean, whatever. Love makes friends. Yeah. And that's from guys I have inside telling me. Yeah. So I'm not saying that, but I think Trump genuinely wants to fix things. And he has, and so he, the way he thinks about the economy is not like this principled kind of conservative, smaller government kind of kind of stuff. And so, yeah. And I keep wanting to hold him that standard. Yeah. So Trump, a couple weeks ago, was at his campaign rally and is Dallas. When it came to the campaign rally, he's actually at the Dallas Republican convention. Yeah. And he was talking about, if we won the November elections, he'd get everybody money. Let's go ahead and roll the clip and see it. Yeah. It's three politics. One of the House, the representatives, and the United States, have been called up because of our economic success. Like, if you're doing damage, anything like what's happening, but because of our tremendous strength and success, economic, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen at the United States of America for $5,000. I'll be calling. And then, JD Vance, at the same actually convention, I think it was what it was. He was talking about how taking all the daycare money, whether it's been a bunch of fraud in the daycare money, and repurposing it for basically stay-at-home moms. I think it was more opening it up, right, to also include stay-at-home moms. Yeah. So it wasn't just repurposing it. You could still go to some daycare stuff, but I'll be here. Yeah. And I'm sure more details would be shook out there. But a lot of conservatives cheered on Trump's $5,000, cheered on JD Vance's $9,000 fund. And then there's just a number of examples like this that we're talking about that have happened in the Trump administration. Now, the thing with the Trump thing that's important to note that he's talking about some sort of dividend, that we don't quite, which is a weird, we talked about. And by the way, this part of that conversation, not this is my opinion. Yeah. This is going back to disclosure. Well, yeah. This part of discussion is not financial advice or anything like that, really. This is us, our opinion. We'll get to the financial stuff later. We were just talking about this right before. The use of the word dividend is a very, I would say, politically used, right? Because in the past, we've heard this. What does it mean as a government giving dividends? Yeah. Yeah. A dividend usually means that like, you're getting something back for what you put in as far as an investment, monetarily, or something like that. Usually we would call this like a stimulus, or something like that, or support. Like, well, the way he kind of characterized it was like, hey, because the economy's doing so well, if we win in November, we'll give everyone $5,000. So it was like, economy's doing well. And here's your return. Here's your ROI. It's two weeks after we gave that speech, the Fed raises 25 basis points, which they should have, by the way, I'm not saying they shouldn't have. I've actually been saying for a while, I think they should have done it a long time ago. It should have been done like a year ago, probably. And that that primary was actually, it's not going to do anything really. It's more recognizing what the market's somebody adjusted to. So the primary is actually following. It's catching up to what you've got. It's catching up. And that's not a bad thing. I don't think for the Fed to do that. But my point is just that I think it was in my opinion, probably a bit overdue anyway. And probably would have promoted more stability this year. But you're totally right. And that this time, it's catching up. So what the market's have already been doing. It's ourselves. That's right. And so, kind of breaking down the Trump comments. So he's casting it as some sort of dividend, saying because the economy's doing well, everyone's getting $5,000 in November. He also tied it to if all the Republicans get reelected and we have the House and Senate. So they're, yeah, I mean, I don't know how you not tie that to some sort of vote buying scenario. That's the other thing too, right? So Republicans hated this when Democrats were doing it by busing homeless people and giving them vouchers for a free meal and some other stuff like that. Free pizza, whatever. Yeah, whatever they were doing, like in California, and stuff like that, which, yeah, bad. Don't do that. At least that was like, whatever, 20 bucks. Like, we're talking about basically buying votes for those orders. Yeah, it's a four-figure vote by basically, and based on an outcome of an election. Yeah. If we win in November, and the economy's doing well, you get this. Yeah, the other thing. And what defines economy doing well? Yeah. Because the last I checked. The Trump's a positive guy. He says, yeah, depending on who he's talking about. But yeah. Yeah. But how do you define what defines economy doing well? GDP, the unemployment. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to me, I think what's salient to your discussion is like, what's the long-term trajectory of incomes versus expenses for people? And I don't think anybody would really question that that has been the direction that we're not, nobody wants. It's harder right now for a 20-year-old who's starting a family to provide for their family by house. Yeah, I have all these things be financially even just comfortable compared to what it was 20 years ago, 34 years ago. Yeah, that's right. Dude, it's not one thing. It's housing, foods were expensive, get a lot of things happening. Yes, especially in Washington. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the other thing here is, because I'm hitting on some of these things. I've seen some of these things out in the discussions out there. But the 5,000 dividend, if the government genuinely owes me money and they pay me 5,000 dollars back, it's not in the same categories as stimulus. Yeah. You know, let's say I overpaid my taxes and the government paid me back there. There's no stimulus addition there. If the government says we're going to give everyone a dividend of 5,000 dollars and then they have to print the money to give everyone 5,000 dollars. Which is what happened. Yeah. Which is what happened during COVID and why we're doing inflation now. It's going to add way more inflation. If the government, I texted you these numbers. If the government gave everyone 5,000 dollars in November or December, whatever, a Christmas bonus. And they were printing that Christmas bonus. It would be add 1.3 trillion dollars about to the economy. Over 1 trillion dollars to give everyone 5,000 bucks in the economy. And that is that we thought, I mean, the government during COVID through all three stimulus is end up injecting 9 billion into the economy, printing the money and injecting 9 billion into the economy. So imagine if it's a trillion, how bad that would be. It's actually really bad. Yeah, like short term, that's kind of fun. Like you get some spending. But here we are, 2026. And we're talking about doing costs. Yeah. And the economy is not that great right now. Everything's tighter. All this stuff. So people are feeling it. So then the other thing I wanted to mention was the JD Vance thing. The JD Vance was basically talking about taking some form of the child care money. That's out there that had been defrauded. And retooling that or some of it, not all of it, some of it for incentivizing and paying stay-home mothers. So it sounds like you got to be married there. It sounds like there's some sort of standards for what it means to be married and stay at home. OK, and have a full-time job, whatever. So whatever. I think he said something about 35 hours or something like that. And that's another place. So there's two things I want to hit on there before we get into our broader discussion here. The first off, it kind of bums me out that when Trump says I'm going to give everyone $5,000, everyone cheers. Yeah, it's like, no, if you're a principled, conservative, you don't cheer. And you let the room fall flat, which is fine. And that kind of thing. And then the same thing with the JD Vance thing, JD Vance says I'm going to retool it. I say, oh, mom's going to get $9,000. And everyone cheers. Now, the proposal to me, as I was debating this online, you probably had the same proposal happen to you. Like, people online were saying, look, either we let that child care money goes to a bunch of small millions who are illegal immigrants and they're sending their money home back to Somalia. Or it goes to stay at home moms in North Idaho. Yeah. What are you going to do? What are you going to vote for? And of course, I vote for the stay at home mom to get the money. And not the Somalians. It's like, of course. But it's such a, I think part of this, I really love your thoughts here. I think part of this is conservatives have been losing so bad for so long that anything that incentivizes their niche, their group of people, they're just hungry for now. So it's not thinking so principally as like, hey, finally, our tax money is not going to go to illegal immigrants and it's going to go to me. And this is winning. We'd love to, actually, love your thoughts on that. Obviously, I'm reading into some things here, but like they clap their hands for Trump and the 5,000 or a thing and then 9,000. And it's every program that Trump is talking about, like conservatives are starting to cheer on government intervention in the past. Conservatives would, I don't know, what do you think? What do you think it's going to go on with the conservative movement as it's happy for these things? There seems to be cheering on these things. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's what you're saying. It's like, well, it's coming. Conservatives are making the same mistake that conservatives used to hate the left for, which was anything for my team will do it. And we're in this bipartisan world where it's like, well, if my team had the idea, then I will support it. There's like a loyalty to a brand, if you will. And it's not that principled. It's just where the brand leads itself based on how people feel in popularity and things like that, instead of really actually acting on principle. And I think that unfortunately, the reality of these types of programs is that they incentivize behaviors. And I agree with you. We shouldn't have them pretty much at all. I don't believe so. But if we're going to have them, if it's like, well, you're going to have it, then I would rather incentivize people who are behaving in ways that I morally agree with what they're doing. I'm rather. Yeah. Like I would rather us actually financially incentivize stay at home moms with a single income earner all day over incentivizing single motherhood over and taxing a heck out of dad. So it has to go to work too or over regulating. Yeah, it's almost a punishing industry. Yeah. Yeah, and I think, so I totally in my agreement, if it's this or that, then all for, like, tax money not going to home, tax money not going to home with sexuals, tax money not going to legal immigrants, tax money. It's like, yeah. But to leave it there, this is where I think it's Christians we need to be thinking far more critically. And far more with wisdom and prudence, that's like a free thinking, literally a free man kind of thinking. Because Toby wrote a blog post about all this and we had Walter Walt Williams on the show, economist Walt Williams on the show a long time ago, like six months before he died, is one of my favorite interviews he invited us into his house and we sat down and it was really cool. But he said, like he was known for this quote, he's like, what the welfare system did for the black family slavery couldn't do. And that was break up the black family. And so the same thing with the white family, stay at home mom starts getting money from the government, like the long term negative consequences of these kind of programs have been demonstrated again and again. With intervention at the arms control. Yes, that's right. And so that's part of the thing is now we're paying for your household based on its cost. And the thing is now we're paying for your household based on its composition and who's working. What's the next generation of that? Just like all government programs can with strings attached and those strings tend to multiply. So what other behaviors now we were manipulating at one level. What's the next iteration look like potentially? What are the risks? The next generation, iteration, next generation. Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's kind of like my, I said on Twitter multiple times, I was like, guys, this is socialism. And a number of people came after me and said, you just don't know how to win. And I'm like, yeah, I'm like, we want to think long term, I would say in the short term, would it be a win? I would say maybe for like two minutes. Well, I think we need to find winning too. So like I am all for there's a, there's a resurgence in this concept, because it's not a new concept. There's resurgence in the concept among conservatives and the right, if you will, that winning does look like being on the offensive and not just because conservatives have usually played defense and that's why you lose. Like that's a big part of why we've been playing defense for our lifetimes for sure. And in general, and that's just pumping the breaks on, you know, it's a system going downhill. So yes, some of the games that the left plays are games that we should be playing. You know, but I think this is not one of them. That's where I go, okay, no, no, no, no. We should be pulling back like the winning looks like pulling back on those programs entirely. And not incentivizing like, yes, I get their genuine needs for us of a real single mother of this stuff happens. Historically, the church took care of that in their own community and could also identify, this is a woman with a genuine need, because her husband's died or she had an unfaithful husband, it was a biblical divorce, whatever the totality of the situation can be examined by people in the community in a local church. That's why we have things like decon funds and stuff like that. We help people locally. When you have a government program, you can't have that kind of care nuance. And so you have to have broad stroke rules to make it work. That invites abuse that gets expensive, obviously, to run, we'll imagine the fraud that eventually comes from this way of distributing the money. Well, yeah, that's the right thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. Yeah, the child care thing turned into massive fraud and wait until that money gets into your house. Well, and I would be more okay with it even if they were just like, we're gonna set this program down and just have like a bigger child tax credit. Yep, and just be like, we're gonna have that. We're gonna have child tax credit. We do, we do. So like shut the program down, redistribute that same money, which we already overspend anyways. Yep. So that's not, that's not really conservative of us. Right. But like, if you're gonna spend it, then just okay, find the middle of the playing field. If you have a kid, then you get, you get a tax break. Well, in the other, in the other comment online against my pointing out, this is socialism. I don't know how to win. Yeah. Kind of thing was also the money's already there. Yeah. I just can't do anything about it because I'm already there. Come to find out the child. It's like 20%? The child, um, care act, what I forget what it's called. 30% is baked into the government case. Yeah, it's very small. It's very small. And 70% every year gets renewed through the Congress and Congress has to vote on it and approve the budget. Yeah. So actually, the next year you can get rid of 70% of the program. No problem. Without any legislation. Without getting rid of an any act or anything. Yes. I think it's kind of, you know, I think again, this goes back to like, I think conservatives want to win so bad or the new ride or whatever. And they don't even know the details on actually the program. But I want it. This is where I'm really. Honestly, I think the new right would just be like, can we just shut it all down? That's less, I don't know. I don't see much one way or the other. But yeah, I think that their approach is usually like, burn it all down. Let's just have none of this. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but what made me think about this, I was just thinking about, because this has been, it's like, it's like the Trump administration because he's not a genuine conservative. He doesn't think small government, all these things. Yeah. This keeps on happening. And so I want, I want my brother sisters to like, think clearly. But also not have strings attached to them. And this, so I was, I was kind of thinking, and I was like, just to be great, the, the, the perfect conversation with this. But like, how do we think about our money, our children, investing in the future in such a way where it's like, my kids are free. Like economically free. And they feel no tension to need that nine grand or something. Yeah. Or to, or to even think like, this is winning is like, but I've set them up so financially to be free in the future. Yeah. Where they aren't, the, the strings aren't there. And particularly the economic financial strings aren't there. So they could think clearer. Yeah. Without some of these temptations coming in. Yeah. Well, I mean, any thoughts there before we kind of get in, digging, digging deeper? Yeah. And I think it, there, there are a few prongs to that. I mean, obviously, so like, I work, this is more getting the investment side of the house and stuff like that. There are solutions there. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. Yeah. But the other thing is this does come down to the values you and part to your children. This doesn't part, this does come down to, are they financially literate? And do they have a good work ethic? And encouraging them to, from an early age, contribute to the household. Whether they're, that's directly, monetarily or not. But if your children are doing chores, for example, they're learning skills that on sub-level, we'll serve them well in adulthood. But they're also presently contributing to the economic well-being of the house. Because dad can be spending more time on his business or whatever it might be. That's more time when he's home to focus on family stuff that only he can do. And if there's a family business, can your children work in it? Like not all family businesses are necessarily conducive to it. But maybe they're ages where that's appropriate where you can. And that is, I think, a big component of this before we talk about how you can do this with the more, like, with what the financial services world has to offer. But I think that those things being in place and those considerations are probably something that should be considered. I don't want to say first and foremost, but in a certain sense, because if your children don't have work ethic and they're not financially literate, you can give them a million bucks when they're 18. You might just be harming them. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, I think, you know, it's like, I mean, part of this goes back to just like, I think covenantal thinking is, there's such a lack of covenantal thinking in the church, the word covenant. Yeah. Comes up in the scriptures like 300 times. But the church is, I mean, most evangelicals don't even know what the word covenant means. Unless there's some sort of application to the Lord's Supper specifically or something, you know, or marriage or marriage. Yeah, that's good. And so thinking covenantally is, I think really kind of deep in the way I think about my kids and my kids' future. You know, we, you know, we always see the bumper sticker on the RV saying, this is I'm spending my grandkids and herds and, you know, that kind of stuff. And it's very, it's actually very sad. I think they try to, they're trying to mean it lightheartedly, I think. Thank you. Yeah. It's a very sad joke. Yeah. And, but part of, part of what I think is happen is that America has become so individualistic that the idea of covenant, you know, the covenant of body. Is that the map just fall? You know, we can go there. I just thought it was good. I mean, I think, I think, you know, Presbyterians have contributed to it in one way in the back. I think we all did it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the Presbyterians have some sort of, I think everybody, fell asleep with the wheel. Yeah. At some level. Yeah. And so, but the way I was just giving you something. That's great. No, I, I, I, you did, you didn't set me up. I wasn't ready for that one. But it's, you know, the way I like to illustrate this, this two is, I mean, you're a dad. I mean, you're praying for your kids to be better than you. I think I just, intuitively, that's my prayer. Yeah. Like, be a better Christian than me, be a better son than me, be a better dad than me, be a better husband. Yeah. I just want my kids to do way better than I do. And that's a progative. I talk to my sons about from time to time is the concept of generational progress. Yeah. I think that what we experienced, especially probably like post World War II, was generational decline, as far as our morals and a lot of other things, right? Yeah. And principles. And it's incumbent on us for that, it to be the opposite. Yeah. That our children should strive to, and we should, we should look at our children. I think, I think that some previous generations almost would have felt offended at the thought that their children could be better than them. To me, that's a mark of success. Yeah. Oh, so much. Yeah. So much. And fruit, your fruit should be better than you, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I was like, this is like one of the reasons why I started the business makers network that you're actually a part of. Thank you. Yeah. It was because economically. So I crossed politics when it was started in 2016, we started it because like I grew up in a church era that didn't really disciple me on how to apply the Bible to politics. Yeah. And in the same way, I think, I think that the similar situation happened in business where I grew up also in a church where we weren't disciples on how to take dominion in business. Yeah. In fact, most of the encouragement broadly speaking, same, yeah, was, and there we go. So you're going to break your faith from your business. Well, I think there was, I think there was, you know, I think there was even an implication too that was often part of that messaging that like going out there, being aggressive and building a business that it's almost inherently greedy. If you go anything past being able to pay the bills and then pay chick, paycheck, you know, when the parable Matthew, Matthew 25, the parable of the talents is very clear that if God gives you, you know, let's say $10 million and there's more factors here, but just keep and think simple. If God gives you $10 million, then part of faithfulness looks like maybe for you's turning into $20 million versus, you know, you've made it to the top. You don't need to get any more money. You're just being greedy for money beyond that kind of thing where it's like God called men to take dominion before the fall and then did it again after the fall, same command before and after. And men should be the kind of set this on on business makers a couple of weeks ago, but men should be the kind of producers where fruit is just like falling all out of our pockets. And what I mean by that is like you're not only able to feed yourself, but you're now able to feed a family. That's fruit that you got to have. You can't, you have to produce more than just what you need for yourself to feed a family. You can start a business and now you're feeding 10 families or 100 families or 1000 families or that. Imagine that kind of fruit. Like now you're responsible and the kind of fruit you can bear as you now can, I don't know how many people you have it to many financial, but like you have let's say five, five, six and producers there and there. Now I'm going to provide for their own families. I mean, that's a lot of fruit. And then you think like Elon Musk or Bill Gates, like these guys, the secularists who are providing dinner table for hundreds of thousands. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, but that's the kind of, you know, 30, 60 hundred fold that I think God wants to see out of his out of his servants, but they're business. And I think part of the implication too of that is using that that I mean to like make the plan words, but using your talents, not talking about your money, right? The things that you're going to be coming aware of where you're gifted and exercising those gifts, not just in your home, not just in the church, but in the workplace. Yeah. And that doesn't mean everybody needs to start a business, but it means that everybody needs to be very engaged in their profession. Because God created work in the garden and bearing fruit in that profession. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. When God put Adam in the garden, he said, you're going to work like there's work to do. And the great thing Adam had was whatever work he did, it prospered, right? Because we didn't have this concept of like weeds and things like that, right? That was the, that was actually the curse was that our work wouldn't always be productive. But the point is you ought to, it behooves us all to have mastery over what we do. And to go as all in, as is responsible and to, that's part of the Dominion mandate. Yeah. I think that Christians have been encouraged to not engage in the workplace to do the bare minimum in the business and where their profession is and stuff like that. I think that's the opposite messaging is that we should be known for being good at what we do. We should be known for being tenacious, taking risks where it's appropriate and, and having mastery and achieving a, a level of mastery of what we do so that when, like, when people compensate us for our services, they, they feel that they're getting more out of it than they've ever paid. No. That's right. And I think of this like, you know, I want my kids obviously be spiritually off better than me. And then, yeah, economically, one of the reasons why I think we're, in the situation that we're in is because we're forty-twenty dollars. And that is like, there's so much going on where it's like, it's a legitimate question to ask. Yeah. Is our next generation be better off than us financially, economically, right? Taking on all this debt that we're handing down, stuff like that. And so this is where I want, this is where I want my kids to have real true freedom. Yeah. Because if, if we don't, as, if I can't get ahead of that as a parent, like you said, like a kid starting off 25 years old, trying to get married by house, by gas even. Like, yeah. Yeah. It's just financially way harder. And so I want to, and this is one of the reasons why we've kind of read disclosures and disclaimers here because the ear in the financial world and it's tied up with all sorts of, you know, can't say this, can't say that. You got to get approval for all sorts of stuff. And so we just, we need to make sure we're getting in trouble here with, with, you know, with, SCC, SCC, and what it really is. It's because, like, my daughter's 16, I got a 14, I got, and kind of part of what I'm thinking here is, you know, let's say my, my dad when he left the house, his parents were able to give him a bicycle to leave the house, you know, it's like, hey man, here's the best we can do. Here's a bike go. Yeah. So my dad now can ride his bike 10 miles to work or something or, you know, whatever. He can go get a better job, whatever. I leave the house. He gives me a car. Now, I, now I got a car. I'm that much better off than he was. Yeah. And have more potential because of how he's able to set me up. Same thing, you know, I'd love. I mean, this is, this is like one of my prayers. Me and my wife is like, I would love for my kids to be able to leave the house and I had buy a house for them. Yeah. Like, yeah. Imagine, you know, when you first got married and you have a mortgage payment or a rent payment, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. What you could do. Or if a chunk of it was paid off. Yeah. And so I guess that's what I want to get at with you is how, how should we be thinking as, as Christian parents who want our next generation to be freer, spiritually, physically, you know, economically, how should we be thinking about our next generation? And we would love to be able to walk through maybe some, like, some scenarios that were allowed to kind of walk through, you know, this and everything. So how can we be thinking like now? I mean, it's, you know, 2026, you know, what's, what should I be doing? Because I, like, I'm asking genuinely, because I just started talking to you about this couple weeks ago. I was like, man, I need to talk to you about my kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there are, obviously, there are a ton of tools that you can use. And like, and they're, they're good tools. It depends on the purpose. It depends on why and circumstances and things like that. Like, and I'll, I'll just kind of walk through, I guess, some of the pros and cons of what we can deploy, usually for families. And we have at Dominion examples of families doing all of these. It's just, it's what suits their situation. We're, we're obviously pretty agnostic about what tools use. We just want to make sure that it's applied the right way, the right purpose, the right time to write family, you know, classically, obviously you had things like, uh, uh, UGMA, uh, my accounts. So that's an account that you can put money into for a child. And, and by the way, it's time to be your children. You can actually, like, you can open an UGMA for the benefit of any child in the United States. UGMA, UGMA, universal gift to Miner's Act. Okay. Um, and this allows you to fund it. Uh, you can go up to, you know, normally $14,000 a year. Um, but you can go fat further than that. That's just gift tax based or gift reporting. You know, um, but that's just how much you can put in without having to report anything to IRS. Okay. Uh, those, uh, they don't have the huge tax advantages that like retirement account has where you have like, okay, taxes already pay like a Roth or anything like that. That you still pay capital gains taxes as it grows if there's trading in the account or funds are moved around. But when it's gifted to the Miner, there are no taxes to the Miner. Okay. And so that can be a very beneficial, but it also requires you generally most days to gift it to them between the ages of 18 and 21. Yeah. So that's a great way to give a, a kid a start without it having to be something like say a 529, which is only for education. It can be converted to a Roth, obviously. But those accounts are good for you can start a business with this. You can get your first home with this or, or, you know, down payment for a home or whatever it is like, it's helped you get, and it can be used for education. Yeah. Um, and those, what's cool about those versus certain other types of plans like a 529, for example, it can be invested in anything, you know, basically, there's no real limitations on how it's invested, meaning you can roll it over into other investments. It can't be rolled over into a different account type. Okay. Basically when it's, when it transitions to the ownership of the child, it becomes a, just a brokerage account. So just think your, yeah, blase investment account, which means there's no limitations on what you can put in a takeout in a year. You have capital gains to, to consider long term and short term, but it has what, what you're getting out of it is flexibility. Okay. So I'm walking through maybe like a little less savvy than how you just treated me. Um, so, let's say I put in a thousand bucks. Um, let's do, let's do five, five thousand. Yeah. Five that my daughter is 16, five thousand dollars. And next year I put in five thousand dollars. And next year I put in five thousand. She turned 18, there's 15,000 dollars in it. How, what's the potential of it growing? Like what's the standard? I wouldn't say standard, right? I think that that's a term that I'd be careful of using. Okay. But I would say that it can be invested in anything. So if it's managed properly, if the, if the market conditions during that window allow for it, then you would normally expect it to grow, you know, decent amounts. Yes. Even, even in three years. So was that something that let's say, dominion would manage for me and you guys would do it or I, or I would say, I would say, hey, um, I want this money to go towards my buddy's tech company, um, that he started. Can I do that? Not with an Agma. Okay. Not with an Agma. Agma, Agma is specific to, I'm going to open this for a minor, you know, and they will get it between the ages of 18, 21 transfers to them tax. Yep. Now they have an investment account. Yep. And yes, we have a bunch of Agmas in Agmas for, okay. You guys manage it. We, we manage it that we just, we work on, you know, because of what, what usually happens, right, is a parent starts, let's start doing this for the kids. Yep. And so they're like this guy here. Yeah. Yeah. So they've got four kids, five kids, two kids, whatever it is, of varying ages. Yep. And maybe they have like some seed money to fund it with and they're going to do monthly contributions. So what I usually do is try to do my best to project out. Okay, this is probably, we want to try to make it as level. Yeah. Obviously we can't predict the future, but we're doing our best to go, okay, this is how we're going to graduate each child's sort of seed money, if you know. And then factoring in those monthly, you know, payments, if that's what's in play here. And trying to make it so that each kid at 18, winds up with a similar amount as much as, again, as much as we can predict, possibly like reasonably predict. Yeah. That's a very common scenario that we run into. So it kind of grows basically off of some sort of up and down, return around mutual fund levels kind of stuff or. Yeah. I mean, it can be anything. But yeah, often we're using mutual funds and ETFs. Okay. And how we invested is based on a lot of different things. Of course, we're going to factor in just the individual's risk tolerance of who we're working with if they are scared of ups and downs. You know, and the time horizon is important. So like you mentioned your daughters, if you're wanting three years, yeah, three, let's say it's three years. That's going to be managed differently than say a five year old. Uh-huh. Because a five year old, we've got a lot of years to write out ups and downs. Yeah. Whereas if you're only a few years out, you might not be wanting to take a huge risk with, you might go a little bit lower on the risk tolerance with that because you don't want the volatility because we can't. I don't want the money to be there. You want the money to be there. Yeah. It grows fast. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because what you generally don't want to happen is like, okay, well, you're 18. There's the money. Too bad. Too bad. You know, the market dipped 20% in your account, dipped 30% because it was really high, or whatever the scenario is. So we're usually looking to seek a little bit more stability when you're getting closer. Okay. So then how does the tax thing work with Agma? Because what I don't, I guess is dad paying the capital gains tax and I assume it's basically capital gains tax. If it grew a lot, if it was invested well, you guys manage it great and it grew, let's say 20% year over year for three years. Every year I'm paying capital gains on it 20%. You only are if there are trades in the account. So what that means is let's say you invest, you invested $5,000 and it just sits and let's say that I'm managing it for you or something like that. It's just sitting. It grew by, let's just say 10%. So now, no one January 1st, the following year, the market valuation is $5,500. You would not pay taxes on that because it kept it in the same spot. Yeah, you kept the same spot. It's just like when you sell a house. You don't know taxes on how much the house appreciated until you sell it. Yeah. So it has to be a realized game. Now we do have to be cautious of whoops, a bubble microphone. We do have to be cautious of, because we do like to rebalance accounts. So if there's a bunch of different funds in there, if we rebalance, there will be some capital gains, taxes, implications. So we're usually doing some analysis on that to make sure that there's a good outcome and we're going, okay, so we rebalance and let's say that I'm just throwing none of our, that 3% of the account of the shares are going to get sold in this rebalancing effort. If it's in long, if it's long-term capital gains, because it's been a year since everything has been sitting there, that means you're going to pay 10% on 3%, on that 3%, but again, that 3% might not even be growth. So it's usually not, it depends on, of course, it could even be down in your rebalancing. So we keep it simple. And again, let's just one more fact, please. Those capital gains taxes can be paid out of the account. Okay. Yeah. So the only circumstance you can penalty free, take money out of the account, pay the government pay the government. It's amazing. It's amazing. You'll see, I'm not going to play money out, there's penalties associated with that. But if you, if you pull money out for the purpose of paying capital gains taxes, that can't be done. Yeah. Usually honestly, we see parents not do it because it's usually very, very small because once we have an account going and we've done the analysis, make sure that it's all okay to how it should be. The only reason we would normally be making a drastic change is we've, we're, we're seeing some leading indicators indicating that like, yeah, this is really aggressively invested. And we've got only one more year left. Things are looking, let's play safe now. Weird. How about we eat some taxes now to reduce the risk of volatility in like a year when they get very helpful. All right. So let's go back to the scenario. My daughter, you know, we do this $5,000, $5,000, $5,000, $3 years. And let's say it goes 20% or year over year. I'm not paying any capital gains. Yes. 20% really great. I know. That's what I want. But 2024 can't happen every year. I'm keeping it exactly. I know. I know. I'm keeping it in the same investment account so that I'm not getting that capital gains. Yeah. We're not trading in the account. That's not happening. But then, but then we go to pull it out and now 20% year over years, $3,000, $3,000 times $3,000, $9,000. So it's 24,000 or account now. It's like that. And then we pull the money out or my daughter. And now it goes to my daughter. Mm-hmm. Um, is there no, now that it's been transferred my daughter, there's no taxes. I can be taken out of that 24,000 now. It's all hers. It's all hers. Wow. Yeah. It's all hers. And that's really interesting. So I could do something like you said something in the very beginning, like $14,000 a year in a Agma for a child. And you can do more than that. It's just 14,000 is the, uh, the reporting threshold. So actually those numbers have been updated. So I think it might be 18 now. Yeah. Don't, don't hold me. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I always talk those numbers. We're just talking. This is not advice. Yeah, this isn't personal advice. Yeah. We're just talking. Yeah. Well, and just, yeah, some of these numbers like I always look them up before I say too much when I'm actually working with someone because they do, they do get updated. No, and just trying to do round numbers so we can. I think it's, I think it's something like 18 or something like that. Okay. Actually, we can look in. So, but if someone had some, a lot of money. Yeah. Um, do I get, I don't get taxed on the eight, let's say, 18,000 dollars. If we think that's, yeah, I don't get taxed on the 18,000 dollars. You're, I give my child in an Agma account. Yes. Yes. So that could be, it was a called pre-tax money I could, I could give. So, so you're, if you're talking about just, you understand my question there. So are you saying, like, I'm personally, I'm not getting taxed on that money because I, I put it in an Agma account from my daughter. So I'm not getting taxed on that. Let's say, what do you do? It's post tax. Okay. Yeah. It's not, it's, it's nothing like your retirement account. It's nothing like a traditional retirement account. There's no tax deduction for it. This is most tax money. Yeah. Could you have like, because I got some LLCs. Yeah. Could I have an LLC give a hundred dollars a month to my kids accounts and how does that function? So you just tell me what I'm stepping on like, like disclosure toes here. No, no, no, no, that's not so. So that scenario, if you wanted an LLC to pay a, well, the thing is the LLC, you're the LLC, right? Because LLC is a pass through entity. Well, it's a partnership LLC. That's, that's just changed things a little bit. Okay. I got both. Let's pass over the pass through. Let's say it's a pass through. It's just you. So we just think about it as you. It's still game. Yeah. You can do that, but it's the same thing as you doing it. Because I won't, I'm not like, I guess one of the things I'm trying to figure out is how can I do this and pay less taxes? That's part of my question. Yes. So the best way to usually do that is to use, is to set up a custodial IRA account. Okay. But that's a different kind of account. That is for retirement purposes. So my kid can realize it when it's like, she's 60 years old or whatever. Yeah. That's the prime way of getting a tax deduction on money you set aside for your children. There are more advanced tools for the very, for very wealthy people that can be leveraged. But for the common man, the, the prime way is what we call custodial IRA account. Whatever you put into it. Now one of the caveats with that is the limit of how much you put it on a yearly basis has to be earned income in a child. And this is easy to do. Like if you, if you have her doing chores around the house, you can establish reasonable compensation. But especially if she's doing any work to support your business endeavors, you can, you can compensate reasonably, document it. I have families that they just tell them keep a spreadsheet. If they do this, this many hours, these tasks, whatever, keep a spreadsheet running. Yeah. And that way, if you ever get audited, you have some sort of paper trail. Yeah. But that's, that's how you can have a deduction. But that's a very different account. Again, it's for retirement purposes, 59.5, you know, to get to it without, but it does grow tax-free. In general, you don't have to about capital gains taxes if you're training in it or anything like that. It's just that realize that taxes will be paid at withdrawal, whether you withdraw early and eat the penalty or you withdraw, you know, on time, 59.5. So I'm a little late in the game. My kids are a little older, trying to figure out some, some accounts for them. I open a bank accounts for my oldest and the savings account for my son because he can't he can't have his own bank account. He can't have savings account though. Yeah. This year. But what if, what if I would have let's say jumped on the ball when they're like five years old? Yeah. And did an argument count or, you know, what, what, and I still, because part of, part of how I'm thinking is like, I want them not to worry about that $9,000. I want them to be able to, yeah, when they're in that transition stage. Yeah. That 18 to 25 transition stage kind of out of the house, starting, you know, marriage, that kind of thing. I want to set them up for a better head start. Yeah. I'm not, if I had the money enabled and I'd love to open up an IRA account for them. So when they're 60, they also have retirement kind of thing. Yeah. I think you can do. I love that idea. And that's even far more covenantal than I'm trying to think right now. But I want them to get a better start. So like, yeah, if they're five years old, what, what am I able to do to be able to hand give them that launch pad, a lot, a lot bigger launch pad? Yeah. So Agma's a great way. Like what we just talked about. You do have the retirement account types, right? So you do have IRAs and Ross. If it's a five year old, it's really hard to claim that they've earned income. So that's, that's a challenge. Are you figured out? Yeah. No, yeah. It's, these things are impossible. How do they're things they can do, you know, so they have a better source. Yeah. The, the, the main way though, like the simple way would be like an Agma style account. The other thing that's an option that we do for a lot of families too is they just open a straight up joint brokerage account for mom and dad. And it's just like, this way you have control and discretion until you die. And you can decide, okay, I hate team, they're responsible enough. We're going to do this. Maybe when you're the kids at 18, you're like, sorry. 25. Yeah. Yeah. So it gives you, because there's no hard like we got to, we have to give this to them at a given age. And so it's not for the kids, but at the same time, is that what I have with you as a joint brokerage account? No, you've got, we just have a traditional hiring. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, but often we are seeing parents, they're like, well, I want to have discretion and I don't want to just, this to just be their start. Mm-hmm. I want it to be, you know, their start there. Maybe help fund their wedding, maybe help them with their first house, et cetera, and all these things. And they will have a brokerage account that's the parent's own that is basically like, this is how we're going to pull money out and fund things for the kids at our discretion at the times that we deem appropriate. And that, the benefit of that account is it does give you control. Like you can, you have, it's your account. Nobody else gets to say it in what happens with it. There's no tax advantages there. But you also, the gift tax to children is pretty generous. Like it's more than most people will be pulling out in a given year anyway. And again, if you exceed the gift tax, it's reporting to the IRS. It's, it's, like, it's, that's it. It's a form. Like it's not that big of a deal. Okay. Is there anything we're missing kind of in like, like, the big idea is how can I set up my kids better? What are some of the things I can be doing? Yeah. So I would say that it's, it, it, it should often be like a two pronged approach. So one is pick the investment account that works for the goals you have for your children. And that you think will be most appropriate for your family culture too, the values you're passing on to them. Whether it's in the accounts we just talked about today or, or, you know, there are a couple other options as well. There's a couple other things that I would mention, a couple of honorable mentions. One other type of account that can be useful would be even like a cash value life insurance policy. This is going to provide a death benefit for the surviving spouse of your child when they die. Also you can take a loan out on it that the child could when they assume ownership when they're older. That can be a great benefit to them. So they're also still going to have access to, to, you know, to money if they want. Yeah. They don't grow as much, typically as what you'd see that's invested in the market, but it comes with a death benefit. Again, right. I have its use. I'm not saying everybody should use this. Yeah. So it's a life policy. I die and my kids get too much of the money. Yeah. And I'm not talking about field. Actually, you can open one for your kids. Okay. That they can borrow against. Yes. Yes. So what you do is you, you, you, you buy a life insurance cash for life insurance policy, which I can hold for an IUL or something like that. And you're the owner. Yeah. Your child is the insured. Okay. And you're the pay. So you're paying into it. Yeah. And at a later age, they could, you can actually transfer ownership. Yeah. And so they take it over as the owner and they can change the beneficiary to be their spouse once they're, once they're married. Yeah. And so it's something like, I think I know what you're talking about now. It's something like, let's say I take out a 500,000-or policy on my kid. Yeah. And let's say they need a loan for a car. Yeah. They could actually pull a real low interest rate loan out instead of going to the dealership or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so they're moving over to them and let's say that the death benefits $500,000 in over 18 years, 15 years, how long you've had a thing. These are very long plays too. You can fund them up front. But again, it's individual. As you build into that account, you can take money out. Yeah. So you don't have $500,000 to draw from, right? You have whatever cash value is which is going to be usually significantly less. But let's say that over the years, there's $50,000 there because you did it for 15 years. Yeah. Well, awesome. Now what they could do is once they assume ownership, get a loan from that policy, that interest rate is typically going to be far better than anything you get anywhere else. In fact, the products we work with have zero interest loans. So it's nothing. And you pay the loan back into the policy. Yeah. So actually, it actually truly is a, like they can't say zero interest, but they charge you like a percent or two and then it gets credited back every year. So it's effectively what we call like a washroom. So that concept exists as well. And it's cool because it's beneficial for the spouse when they get married someday. So there's already coverage established. And if that policy survives their whole life and they make it into old age, you're looking at death benefit plus cash value. If it's an IUL that pays out to the estate for the support of the children. And that's all tax-free. It's wrapped up in the deathbed. This is a little reason, part of the reason why we prefer IUL. It's a tool's overhaul life usually because of that concept. So basically, it's a maximizing inheritance a little bit more. The other thing that I would say that's beneficial is looking to getting a trust for your family. This makes it so that your assets don't go through probate. And that can be very significant because there's risk where people can sue your estate and get at your assets potentially. And even if everything goes smoothly, it's just a lot more hassle for your family. And typically, you're going to lose some, I think, the common figure that's thrown out there is about 5% to 10% is lost in probate court. Even if everything goes smoothly, nobody tries to take any of it. But when your money goes through probate, anybody can sue the estate. I can sue your estate and be like, game promised me someday, not... He gave me money or what? He's an heir to it. And your children are forced to defend their inheritance from anybody that stands up in court. And even if you win, you could have lost so much that your estate is... It becomes worthless. So the assets that you place in the trust or the trust is beneficiary of that owes them. You have a new trustee. That person is making sure that everything is done according to your will and desire. It could be more granular, typically, than a will, that kind of thing. And we do that work with families and usually make sure it's designed appropriately for the family. But that is a good way of keeping your assets out of the system, if you will, and making sure that they go exactly where you want when you want them to die. Yeah. Man, thank you so much, Justin. Justin Johnson, Dominion Financial Planning. How can people get connected to you? Dominion.financial is the website. Dominion.financial. Dominion.financial. You own all those domains, don't you? You just bottom up. We just... We just wanted to go to the main site. It's open. Yeah. We want to because our emails are all at Dominion.financial. Cool. So I think it's neat. We just... We decided we just not going to do the dot coms. All the dot coms are taken anyway. So we were like, let's just go with stuff that makes sense. Yeah. That's cool. Well, hey, thank you guys for joining Crossball took. We actually look forward to seeing you guys out in Tennessee. Make sure you capture Justin and his crew while we're out there. And so have some safe travels out there. Make sure you guys share the show. Comment in the notes. The comments. And then go to Spotify. Go to iTunes. Give us a five star review. It really helps us. If you guys don't know, I just did a show on with business makers with one of the guys in our network last two weeks. He is a veteran who bought a gun range in New Mexico. I probably can't even see this level in the show. And they canceled that show. YouTube deleted that show. Really? Because... You're talking about the gun run. Oh, yes. My bad. We were talking about the gun range. The rumor range. The rumor range. It's unbelievable. It was just talking about his business model. Yeah. Like when he'd go in anything. It was just business model. How'd you buy it? Was it, you know, that kind of thing? So go in like, like, five star reviews on iTunes and Spotify really do help us. Apparently YouTube still plays dumb games that we ran into here and there. So thank you guys for sharing the show. And we'll hope to see you guys in Franklin, Tennessee. The Fight Lap Feast Conference.