12/10/24 Taxes, Tunes, and Tech: The New Rules of Money

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Tuesday, December 10th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www. MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management instagram: MoneywiseWealthManagement Guest: Thomas Maxwell, CPA & Entrepreneur website: www.kmallpcpa.com/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  From the padded radio room off Stockdale Highway, here is Money Wise. Call or text in at 661-396-1000.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey. Well, I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey. Said I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me?

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  Securities offered through S E F Securities, Inc., member S I P C. Investment advisory services offered through S E F Investment Advisors, Inc. S E F Securities, Inc. and Money Wise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Now, let's start the Money Wise Show.

• 0:42Speaker 03

  Welcome to the Money Wise Show. We are live from the padded radio room off Stockdale Highway on ESPN Bakersfield, 1230 a.m., 101.1 FM, and always streaming at MoneyWiseGuys.com. You can call or text into the show 24 hours a day at 661-396-1000. Again, the number 661-396-1000. I'm your host today, along with, well, I'm your host, Sharad Waite, along with? Frank Lee. Hey, Frank. Uh, listen, this is such an interesting day today. We will have a guest here shortly, and it's a, he's a business owner, CPA, Tom Maxwell, really excited for it. But in the meantime, I want to get right to our listener comments and questions. Let's do it.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  And it leads right into perfectly what's, what some really interesting headlines in today's news. So, the first message here, it says, Elon is suing, Elon is suing OpenAI. How do you think this will affect the way governments watch over AI companies and their business practices in the future? So Frank, AI, obviously, big in the news. Just in today's news, we've, we have all kinds of focus on AI, the AI world, and...

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Essentially, though, what the listener question is asking is, what's up with Elon Musk? Like, why is Elon Musk suing OpenAI? What's, you want, why don't you just give like a breakdown quickly? What's going on?

• 2:14Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, to give a little context to the listeners, I think it's important to know that Elon Musk was also on the board of OpenAI. If you didn't know, OpenAI is actually a nonprofit organization. And they are trying to convert this organization into a for-profit entity.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  Because obviously with the boom in AI and all of its competitors and rivals, it would make sense for an entity like OpenAI to go for profit.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:46Speaker 04

  Musk left OpenAI because of disagreements with leadership and where the company was going. I forget when exactly he left. But he also started his own AI company called XAI.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:03Speaker 04

  All right, well, we'll get into that in a little bit.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  With him suing OpenAI, now, obviously, there's going to be a lot of implications with government regulations. But this kind of seems like a, a personal jab, like vendetta against OpenAI. Just from my own opinion, but.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  Well, Musk is alleging that OpenAI and Microsoft are, are trying to monopolize the AI world. And it, like you said, it happens to correspond with his competition that he's trying to build up in that world, XAI. And of course, it's preventing investors from maybe putting some funds into, you know, his, his competition. And so I can see where, you know, where maybe, maybe he has a claim. But it's, anytime there's this new technology, you have this risk that you've always run into of, well, there's could be somebody else that comes up with this that's just slightly better. A great example would be cell phones.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  When cell phones really started to take off and we just moved beyond, just before you had. Had the iPhone, the current version of the iPhone come out, you had these kind of fancy flip phones, but you had a few touchscreen phones that were available. I had one myself manufactured by HTC and it was a touchscreen and I could get on the internet and I could send emails and all of that. But as soon as Apple came out, they just kind of put just a slightly different twist on it and then just very quickly overtook the market. And so, you know, what happened to the, what happened to my, my previous mobile phone company? It's, you know, it had to, it had to shift or go out of business.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  And that's what we see, I think, with a lot of these emerging technologies.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Right. And that's, that was just my personal view on it in a sense. But as far as like government regulations getting involved, especially with like the antitrust bills and everything, you know, you're going to have a lot of scrutiny against AI companies. There's going to be a lot more regulations, tightening regulations, new legislations, legislations against AI, especially with all the governance with it. And probably the impact of like collaboration and competition. So that's, that's what I see in the sense of like government regulations.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  But again, with, with Elon Musk being the, at the helms of this lawsuit, it's like, hmm, is it really for, for the, the principles of what, you know, OpenAI was? It's like, I don't know.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  You know, it, it, it, we are in an interesting time in the world and in the world economy because we have some new emerging technologies that are coming out. And it's not just AI, but also in today's news, Google announces their, their

• 5:56Speaker 04

  Willow.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Willow, their quantum computing chip.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  And this apparently allows this quantum computing technology that Google announced on Monday, this was yesterday, they say that this is, they've solved a major computing problem

• 6:15Speaker 03

  or, or breakthrough by being able to

• 6:20Speaker 03

  Solve a computing problem in five minutes that would have previously taken a classical computer more than the history of the universe to solve. Wow. So like the classic computer model, the fastest computer classic model that we have, not the quantum computer, but the other chips that we currently use. It would take it the history of the universe. So that, you know. I can't, too many fingers. Yeah. Is that 14 billion years or whatever, close to 14 billion years it would do. It can do it in five minutes. This is, this is part of Google's offshoot of, of, of the Google parent company that

• 7:00Speaker 03

  does the quantum computing business. It's actually based in Santa Barbara, California, just down the road here from us. The Quantum Lab is there. They say that Google hopes that one day these computers will be able to solve massive problems like medicine, battery chemistry, AI, and things that currently are outside of today's computers' reach, but they currently does not have a commercial application. It's just, it's sort of, the technology is there, but the application is not. You know, you can see all kinds of really fascinating headlines coming out, including headlines that say that Google has, new quantum chip has indicated that there are now multi-universes,

• 7:45Speaker 03

  the multiverse proof is, can actually be solved by the quantum computing processing power of this new chip.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Did you hear what I said? No. The multiverse exists. The multiverse. Apparently, the multiverse exists according to some media sources that say. And Loki.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  I mean, it's just, it's unfathomable. I think it's just, these are numbers. I've always been fascinated with the financial mistakes that we make as people because, or let's say, that's voting that we make because us as, as humans can't, our minds can't comprehend the difference between a million and a billion.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Versus a trillion. So you have like these three, you know, big steps. So every time you, every time you, you put a comma in between there, there's a farther distance from our own minds as to what that number actually means. Therefore, what we, we have shortcuts in our minds to, to solve that, which is we just sort of lump a million and a trillion and a billion all into the same number. When it turns out, quite a bit of difference between a million and a billion. You know, the difference is?

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Vast, vast difference.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  It's about a billion. And you know the difference between a billion and a trillion is?

• 9:07Speaker 04

  A trillion.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  About a trillion. Basically a trillion, right? Because like a billion compared to a trillion is nothing. And so it, you know, when we get into these quantum computing theories, I think it's just interesting, we saw Google stock, for example, go up 5% today on this news of just now maybe a newer potential breakthrough in technology that would revolutionize the way that we function as a society. And now you have, you have a computer that's capable of cracking encrypted technology, right? It can break through encryption.

• 9:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  And in fact, it was just earlier this year that Apple announced that they had, they had released their latest quantum computer proof encryption technology that they're trying to get ahead of a state, a nation state that would have this technology, for example. Right now, there's some concerns and what China, there's some spyware that is coming out of China that has infected some, a large amount of phones in certain sectors. So there's constantly these, this battle, this war that's going on with technology companies and, and you know, who's, who's fighting for, for what gain and power.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  It's like, just, you know, it's like the robot war just before the robots start to get their legs. And now the robots are getting their legs.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  I can just see it. Skynet's gonna happen.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. You know, the Tesla bot was released a video yesterday of the new ability that the bot has to walk autonomously in outdoor, like, nature.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Oh, interesting.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Through like, you know, hills and slopes and, you know, through twigs and things like that. Similar to like, a couple of weeks ago, they released the video of the bot that can catch the tennis ball and drop it. It's like,

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. The future is happening very, very quickly.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Alright.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  I have to look this up during the break, but have you heard about, and this crosses some like ethical issues when it comes to technology and

• 11:25Speaker 04

  just mankind in itself, human nature. There's a company that develops chips using brain tissue. And so, these chips form a sense of consciousness, basically. And there's obviously a whole ethical debate about whether or not this should be allowed. So, again, Skynet.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Right. Well, I mean, right now, there's, it's another one of Elon's companies that does the implants, the brain implants.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  Oh, Neuralink?

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Neuralink, that, you know, we have, I think there's a couple of patients now that are quadriplegic and have function, are able to move a mouse computer, a mouse on a computer and do these kinds of things. I mean, like,

• 12:17Speaker 04

  I think that has some like real world applications in a sense of like paralysis or like paraplegic. Like, you can heal a body part or...

• 12:28Speaker 05

  You know, prosthetics might be the next thing, too.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 05

  You know?

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:31Speaker 05

  That might be awesome.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. We got bionic. I like the future is here. You know, with flying cars, we keep hearing more and more about flying cars. I mean, okay, the future's here, Frank.

• 12:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  It's actually arrived. All right, we're gonna stop speculating. We're gonna take our first break of the day. We come back. Tom Maxwell is gonna join us. Can't wait for that. We're Money Wise, don't go anywhere.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Are you curious to learn more about how you can be money wise? Check out the Money Wise website at moneywiseguys.com to get more info about what we do and how we can help you.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  I'm not gonna give you the idea.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Money Wise, thanks for tuning in. Really appreciate the comments and questions. Keep them coming our way, 661-396-1000. I'm Sharad Waite. I'm here with Frank Lee. And now we're joined by our guest, Tom Maxwell. Tom, thanks for being on the show.

• 13:22Speaker 05

  Thank you for having me once again. I appreciate it.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  I always, I don't, I don't want to introduce you as a CPA because I always feel like you're so much more than a CPA. Not there's anything wrong with a CPA.

• 13:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  But, you know, you're, you're a business owner, you're an entrepreneur. We were just talking about AI and

• 13:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Sort of where, like, are we in the future?

• 13:41Speaker 05

  I think, I think we are in the future. Actually, every day feels faster to me. I don't know about you guys.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  You know?

• 13:46Speaker 03

  It's speeding up.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  It's speeding up.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  So you had an idea that came up. You brought this up a couple of years ago. So this is, you know, AI was really starting to take out ChatGPT, ChatGPT and all that. And you said, you know what? I've got a great idea for an app, which is essentially, I don't know if it was an app, but the technology is it takes all, it takes your persona.

• 14:06Speaker 05

  Oh, yes.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  And so when you die,

• 14:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  You still have like, your grandkids can still go visit grandpa, like a hologram version of it. But you know, AI could take all your journals, upload your journals, your, your, your emails.

• 14:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, this started, it started as a death app, actually, because I was like, hey, something, something that will keep track of all your information, your trust, your will, you know, who your heirs are.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  All the pictures that you would want actually shown at your funeral, that type of stuff, you know?

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  Even the band you want to play, like you could buy an insurance policy so that band plays at your funeral. I mean, it goes really deep, so, you know.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 05

  It's a, I, I think that idea has legs, you know?

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 05

  What if you were asked 10,000 questions?

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 05

  And you got the answers to all of those, and then somebody could come and ask as if you were sitting there. Well, here's this. What if it was a hologram? And it was actually your face, like a digital image of you in 10,000 years from now, somebody could sit down and say, "I want to talk to my great, great, great, however many greats grandfather, Sherrod." Like, that would be pretty incredible, and I think we are close to having something like that.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Have you seen the, the series Black Mirror?

• 15:05Speaker 05

  I ha- oh, I love Black Mirror, it's great.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Is there an episode like that? That's totally Black Mirror, yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 05

  It is a Black Mirror type thing.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Have you seen it?

• 15:10Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  I've seen Black Mirror, but I haven't seen that episode.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. So, basically, what he's talking about is there's an episode in, in Black Mirror where the spouse, the, the husband dies, but the wife is, you know, she's mourning and everything, and, uh, there's a company that basically collects all of the data, like email, texts, phone calls, everything it was, and creates your persona. And so, like, she's, she finally does it and starts talking to him as if, like, he never left.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  And it's like.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  That technology's here. It's already here. And, and what's scary is it's been here for a long time, right? Really, at the, at the inception of the internet, companies figured out real quick, oh, we can find out more about people and know more about them and what they want to buy than they realize.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think Al Gore came up with that one too, didn't he? I know he invented the internet.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  But it's, it's also funny, because like, you don't see Black Mirror epis- like, seasons coming up.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  Because reality is crazier than Black Mirror.

• 16:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. Have you seen the movie where it's interactive, where you choose, kind of, remember those books when you were a kid where it's like, "Oh, if you want to do this," and then go to page 28, and something would happen, and then you choose which? They have a movie that's interactive that you can find, I think, on Netflix still, where it's a Black Mirror movie, and you choose which direction you want to go.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I did that. I, I, I watched that for a little bit. Um, it was interesting. Uh, but it, what's more interesting is the direction that we're. Going in terms of the the computing power that we just talked about AI being able to replace our own mental computing power. It's just far beyond what we can do.

• 16:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Uh, it can drive better than us. It can, you know, it's passing, uh, you know, logs, amps and

• 16:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  The bar and all that stuff. So yeah, it's really fascinating. Um, so anyways, Tom, welcome to the show. Here's a, here's a, this is great for you. Yesterday we had a listener, we had Chad Hathaway on yesterday. We're talking about business here in California. And here's a message, a question for you. It says, how can business owners like myself, especially in manufacturing and R and D, prepare to take advantage of possible changes in tax benefits like QBI deduction and bonus depreciation? Uh, and then he goes on to thank us for having Chad on the show.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure. So I mean, um, to start with, there's actually a new AI driven art research and development app that they're coming out with. I just met with a company. They have this new technology where they will actually do your R and D credit for you. A lot of companies qualify for that, but they actually won't do it because it's so invasive. They have to spend so much time helping with the calculations and how much they actually will get. It will cost them more to actually do it than to act, than to get the credit itself. So

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  I think that, uh, probably in the next few years, AI is going to help with things like that as well. But I mean, with regard to protection of, you know, what your income is for the current year, I would say as much as you can accelerate, uh, the timing of expenses. Um, so that would be things you use on a daily basis. You can buy those and they're usable items. A lot of companies that are not large enough where they have to use inventory, like inventory is only required when you're deemed to potentially be a tax shelter, which is for entities over $25 million. I think that's inflationarily adjusted, but I mean, around $25 million in revenue is where that comes in. So as much as you can, uh, be a cash basis taxpayer, um, the timing of receipts and obviously the timing of expenses.

• 18:23Speaker 05

  When you write that check on the 28th and the person gets it on the first, there's some of that type of thing you can do, but

• 18:28Speaker 03

  Is that there was a lot of concern before the election that if Kamala was elected, we were gonna let tax laws sunset, like the estate tax was sunset, lots of tax laws would sort of sunset. But now there's a lot of optimism that President Trump is was elected that not only will we keep what we have, but maybe it'll even get be more favorable. Is that the sense that you get?

• 18:53Speaker 05

  I, you know, I wish I had a crystal ball. I don't think it's gonna get worse than what it is now. I think that some of the rules that he's talking about, such as not taxing overtime and tips and things like that, that's helpful for the common day person, but it also could be the business owner that pays himself a wage and they could make themselves hourly and say, well, I work 70 hours a week and, you know, part of my salary is no longer taxable.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  So there's a lot of planning around that. I always say that whatever-

• 19:18Speaker 03

  This is great for your industry.

• 19:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  I mean- CPAs is an art. Like, it still requires an art.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  It takes thought and, you know, timing is everything when it comes to some of this stuff. We know what the rules are today. With Kamala, we would not have known what the rules are tomorrow, but we kind of have a good idea, like a kind of a landscape based on Trump's first presidency, you know, what we probably are dealing with. And that is more advantageous to business owners, more advantageous to everybody, really. Everybody pays a little bit less tax in a, hey, let's make government smaller mentality, you know? I think it's just, they need enough money to pay for themselves. So as big as they are is what we need to pay for. They have an annual budget. It's not like they look forward five years and say, I mean, they do that. They say, oh, yeah, it's gonna cost us $10 trillion or whatever over a 10-year period. But for all intents and purposes, we're dealing with today only, you know, and that's what makes it hard. But I do always

• 20:08Speaker 05

  say that whatever year there's a new tax bill, it's like the CPA Full Employment Act of whatever year it is, because it's like, you know, nobody really wants to try and understand all the rules.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. And then try, it makes it difficult to plan. But as far, as far as we know, we're not expecting anything dramatic that business owners have to take advantage of this year that won't be available for them next year, like in terms of depreciating-

• 20:31Speaker 05

  I don't, I don't, I mean, bonus technically is at 40% right now. So if they extend the bonus, you know, we may get a bill at, in the middle- And next year that says, oh yeah, even last year was a hundred percent.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Oh, right.

• 20:41Speaker 05

  I mean, I've long said they shouldn't pass tax rules after years over that apply to the previous year, but the fact is, we've had that multiple times in the last at least 10 years, you know, where it's like rules that we're living by today were actually yesterday's rules as well, you know, and so you know, I, I mean, there's been years where we've had to put everybody on extension because we're waiting for whatever tax bill is to see what the impact is to the prior year.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  So it's a, you know, but if bonus comes back at a hundred percent in 2025 at least, you know, your caller that was saying, hey, what do I do with this? Well, QBI is going to be more because you have more income this year and you have that 20% deduction on current year. And then you get bonus next year. So, you know, so it could be kind of a double whammy for them.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  Could, yeah, it for, for the good.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Right, for the good.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, but, but still, everybody, and this is for our listener that sent the question, take advantage of anything that you can, you know, you can do now.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Uh, that's always wise because you just never know what will happen next year. So.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. Live by the rules that we have, I guess, is, is good advice, I would say.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And, um, hold on to your hat because next year we'll see what happens in terms of it, you know, now Republican Congress.

• 21:44Speaker 05

  Right.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  And Republican White House. And, uh, it's, it's looking more favorable towards the, if it, I mean, I, I, I'm all for no taxes. If we can have no taxes or little as possible, I'm all for that. I guess my concern is we're still running $2 trillion annual budget deficits.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  And are sore, but you know, where, why are we still committing to spend? You know, $2 trillion on top of the $4 trillion federal budget. Year after year and pretend like we're, the money's coming from somewhere other than our grandkids.

• 22:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  That we're just, we're just mortgaging, um, this debt on the backs of our children and our grandchildren.

• 22:26Speaker 05

  You know what's funny about that though? Conceptually, we're just, we owe it to ourselves. So who really is the debt owed to, it's owed to us? I mean, if you were to take every country's debt and you started canceling it out against every other country, how much of the debt is really real?

• 22:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I agree.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  It's just a number.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  It is just a number and it only matters in comparison to other countries debt.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  Right.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  You know, you would think that globally, then you have central banks that are dealing with such monumental debt that then maybe everybody just has a handshake agreement that goes, hey, we're all good, right?

• 22:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  All at once, to base everybody's currency.

• 22:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  You know, by then we're crypto, you know, whenever, however many hundreds of years into the future that is.

• 23:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Uh, that's probably a good point for us to take a break right now because when we come back, I would like to get, if you come prepared, I want to see if there's any other changes that we can, we can discuss for our listeners in terms of what people can do for prepare tax wise for next year and what might be different. And we're going to talk with Tom Maxwell about that. I'm Sherid Wait here with Frank Lee. We're Money Wise and we'll be right back.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Are you an employee with a company sponsored retirement plan? Do you fully understand how you're invested and whether or not you are maximizing your retirement plans options? For more information on a free assessment, contact Money Wise's 401k specialist, Justin Leland at 661-847-1000. That's 661-847-1000.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  We're Money Wise, thanks for tuning in. I'm Sherid Wait here with Frank Lee. We're your hosts. Our guest today is Tom Maxwell. He's a local business accountant, business owner, entrepreneur. Hey, Tom, um, we have a message here. It says, if you haven't checked out the new VR, it's kind of trippy. My son sits courtside and watches live NBA games with his VR headset on. Again, we're talking about the future.

• 24:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, we are.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Flying cars, VR headsets, holographic images of ourselves. But in the real world, we still have taxes.

• 24:29Speaker 05

  We do. Yeah, we all pay it.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Exactly. We all pay them. We all can't avoid, um, uh, maybe you can talk about, uh, point out what, what draws your attention in terms of what? We can expect for changes next year.

• 24:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I came in here kind of with the idea that I wanted to talk a little bit about how the just the average person can prepare themselves for for their tax situation for the current year, for future years. Little things they can do, I think, that would really help them with understanding. The fact of the matter is, it's not a black box. You don't just go and like there's this unknown. You can really know a lot about it and it can take you very little time and effort really to know about those things. So, I mean, I spend my time helping a lot of businesses, but everybody's got a different tax situation, but they all have one, you know, so why not jump in and just kind of pop the hood on your own personal situation. So, you know, I would say just, you know, use the past as a gauge for like what's going to happen this year and don't run from reality. I mean, taxes are taxes and everybody's got to deal with it. And so,

• 25:25Speaker 05

  you know, the first thing I would say is like, if you're just the common employee and you owed $2,000 last year on your tax return and you didn't change your W-4, well, the chances are you're probably in the same situation this year. Right? So you could very easily take your current pay stub. You could annualize that and see, you know, based on how much tax you've paid in and what your expected adjusted gross income and taxable income is going to be, you know, what is your tax situation going to be? And I would bet that it's similar to last year because you didn't do anything to change what you what happened last year. Your reality is going to stay the same unless you actually, you know, do something about it. So like really look at your W-4, both on, I would say your W-2, or if you're retired, you know, if you owed money last year, you got a huge refund last year. It's both directions. You may look at and say,

• 26:09Speaker 05

  hey, I've already paid everything I need to this year, so maybe you can lower your withholding, you know, and you won't get a huge refund. You have to wait months for the government to give you. I mean, all it is is just a savings account with them, I guess, but, you know.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Nobody likes to have that bill and or be taken off guard by that bill, but the W-4, is there a worse form in the IRS than the W-4? Because it doesn't, I've gone through that calculation. It doesn't make any sense.

• 26:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, and actually during Trump's time period, he updated that form. It became a little bit more complicated because you have to factor in the second, you take the highest employee wage and you factor in the second highest if you're a dual income family. So it can be more complicated when it comes to that, but talk to your accountant, talk to your CPA. They can help you fill that out, make sure that you're covered.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  Well, you just gave a great, I think, shortcut, which is, well, what happened on last year's taxes? It's probably going to happen this year unless you change something.

• 26:58Speaker 05

  Right.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  And the only thing that people can usually change is they can change how much they're having withheld from their paycheck.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  Or how much is being withheld from their paycheck, not just taxes, but maybe they've upped their deductions.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  Well, yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Their 401K.

• 27:13Speaker 05

  And also typically, the government doesn't know when you paid it in. So if you are going to owe $2,000, we'll say, you could up your withholding for the remainder of this year on a new W-4 and then do a new one in January next year. And at least then you've covered most, if not all of that. Because the interest rate from the FTB and the franchise tax board and IRS right now is 8%.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Oof.

• 27:32Speaker 05

  I mean, so if you're underpaid and you have an underpayment penalty, it's not like that's a small amount. I mean, if, you know, 8% of $2,000 is a few hundred dollars. But I mean, you do that every year. It's like you're paying money you don't even need to.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  So it's just, I mean, it's all about just education. It's all about you really looking at your personal situation, looking inward and saying, what can I do to make sure that I'm set up for success? Because I don't want you to feel like when you come to somebody like me that you're going to the dentist. You know, I'm not here to pull your teeth out. I'm here to just prepare forms with very simple arithmetic on a incredibly complex set of rules. You know, it's just incredibly complex, but you know, there's, most of it is not complex. You know, like a W-2 employee that has a house or what, you know, they have a couple of kids. That's not a very hard reality. And but, you know, it can feel like it's hard because you just don't understand it, I guess.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I've found that there's a lot of confusion still because of the increase in the standard deduction that a lot of people are holding on to receipts.

• 28:32Speaker 05

  Right.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  That they don't need to hold on to because they're never going to reach that new high standard deduction limit.

• 28:39Speaker 05

  At the time those rules changed, they said that 67% of people who used to itemize will no longer itemize. And I think that holds true. There's people that I have that have huge businesses and they don't itemize anymore because their mortgage is low. You know, they just don't have enough there unless they're very charitable or they.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  You know, had a incredible life event, like maybe somebody had cancer or something and they paid a lot out of pocket. Medical expenses or something.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  But a lot of times you're surprised by the fact that you're just at the minimum that everybody gets, I guess.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  Which is around $27,000. So unless you have mortgage interest, property tax, which is also state and local income taxes limited $10,000 right now. I mean, it's, you need the right set of facts and there's just not a lot of people who meet the criteria to itemize.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  The, the SALT tax, the state and local tax.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Also changed under Trump.

• 29:26Speaker 05

  It did, yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  And put that 10,000, but there's talk of that, you know, again, changes could happen where that's, there's a workaround.

• 29:32Speaker 05

  There is a workaround, yeah. Yeah, there is.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Still, there, there are, it is not as, it's, I agree that for most people taxes have gotten more simple.

• 29:41Speaker 05

  They have.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  For this, for most people.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  We never got to a postcard, okay?

• 29:45Speaker 03

  I know.

• 29:46Speaker 05

  We actually went from a two-page form to like an eight-page form.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  You know, it's still, it's, it is technically an easier system because there's less rules that you need to consider.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. What else do you have? What else would, any, any other tip there for?

• 30:01Speaker 05

  I think that, you know, if you are in a situation where you can make gifts to kids, that you could do that up to $18,000 before you would have any kind of gift or estate tax consideration. So, you know, if you're a grandparent, you have assets that you want to give to your grandkids, you could put that into a 529 plan or some other vehicle for them for the future.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:20Speaker 05

  And have there be zero impact to you for the year. That could be both you and your spouse. So, I mean, really you're talking about $36,000 you could give away to whoever you want. So that can be huge, you know, if, if it's like, I, I want this to go to my, my child to buy a house or I want it to go to my grandkid or whatever, you know, you could definitely do something like that.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  That's a, that's a, something that I think is really important to bring up because there's another misconception with that $18,000 gift that you can give. It used to be, for years it was 10,000.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  It was, yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  And that's just what I have usually people go, oh, can you still give 10,000 and not pay taxes? Really clarify here, unless you are an individual that has more than 14 million dollars or expect to pass on more than 14, this doesn't really apply to you.

• 31:06Speaker 05

  Well, and also you're talking about, that's 14 million for you and your. And you get, there's a portability election you can make where even if you don't use all of it and you want to give it to your spouse because you know, uh, you pass away or whatever and they take what you have left. You're really talking about, yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Twenty eight million dollars.

• 31:22Speaker 05

  Phenomenal amount of money you'd have to have in your estate before it'd be taxable. And once you get done with discounts, uh, for lack of marketability and control. I mean, you're talking about it may be a fair market value, a state of thirty five, forty million dollars, but because of the discounts, you get that actual value down below that twenty eight.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  That's when it matters. So you've got, if you, if mom or dad or grandma and grandpa are sitting on more than twenty eight million dollars, they've likely have done some estate planning, which involves, you know, insurance and, and ways that you can avoid a death tax, which is very unpopular, obviously.

• 31:54Speaker 05

  But you would be surprised how many people don't have that and they actually do have an estate that large. I mean, you know, even somebody that doesn't have necessarily millions and millions of dollars are going to pass on to their heirs. If you don't have a trust and a will in California, you know, it, it goes in a probate court. It could be tied up for years. So having a simple will and trust, I think, uh, that is not overly expensive. I mean, you're maybe talking about two to five thousand dollars, depending on the complexity of that. Um, I think that's a good idea for anybody, anybody out there that is, that has something to lose. They have assets in their bank that doesn't have a written document that says what happens to their stuff is making a mistake. And I'd recommend all of you that are listening right now that are in that situation for you to

• 32:36Speaker 05

  call me or call Sherrod or call somebody, find an attorney, uh, to help you draft a will and a trust for you that is a instrument that would be used uh, after you die to determine what happens to your stuff.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Only fifteen percent of Californians itemize their returns.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  That's probably right. Yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  I don't know what is nationally, but.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Sixty seven percent it went down by that much, you know? So I mean, if, if originally there was fifty percent doing it, it went down. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's probably about right.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  You know, it's almost eighty five percent of the population. It, it doesn't, you know, there's a lot of, you can do it for free, essentially, almost for free.

• 33:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  For, for a lot of people because you have your, you just have your W two and maybe. Maybe a 1099, but you know, it's just not a ton of information there to fill out. But Matt, that's, that's crazy.

• 33:28Speaker 05

  That's a staggering, that's a staggeringly low number if you think about it, you know? That's less than, you know, two in 10 people that are going to be itemizing.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it's, I'm looking forward to the, going back to sort of technology. Intuit has invested a lot of money into AI and they own like Credit Karma. And so they've released some of the, the AI functionality that I've been able to play around with a little bit. And some of their apps and, and things is pretty awesome, you know, just, and also as financial advisors, we use this technology, essentially a calculator that can

• 34:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  calculate anything for you.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  And I mean, truthfully, most accounting firms are using some sort of AI as well. They're using it to analyze documents and get it informed. So you're taking the preparer into a position where they're reviewing information as opposed to entering it.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 05

  So that's actually making us more efficient and probably more accurate as a profession, I would say.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Way more accurate, obviously, just like, again, like the driving.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  I mean, we can say the same for ourselves, like utilizing AI to our advantage to become better financial advisors as well.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  Right.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  There's a lot of time involved in the process as well that people don't know about.

• 34:37Speaker 05

  Right. The analytics that you get from that, the KPIs you can produce just with a simple program is pretty powerful.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 34:44Speaker 03

  All right, we're going to take our final break of the day. We're Money Wise. We'll be right back.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Money Wise Wealth Management is the only locally owned, independent firm that uses a comprehensive wealth, tax and estate approach, working closely with a highly trusted CPA and attorney. For information on how Money Wise can help you invest and plan for your future, call 661-847-1000. That's 661-847-1000.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Gotta let it play out.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Thanks for tuning in. We're Money Wise. I'm Sharad Waite here with Frank Lee. Our guest is Tom Maxwell, local businessman, CPA. Hey, uh, record was broken today.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Tom, or not today, but here recently, and I know you're a fan of music, as am I.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  $2 billion was raked in over the 20-month period of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour that's just ended.

• 35:43Speaker 05

  That's incredible.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  $2 billion. It, it, it far surpassed any other tour in the history of the world. The next most highest grossing tour, world tour, was Coldplay, which they...

• 35:57Speaker 05

  What?

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Coldplay, yeah. They did a world tour, uh, and they made $1 billion off of their 156-day Music of the Spheres world tour. A billion dollars.

• 36:10Speaker 05

  I would just say that I think Mac Miller should have been the $2 billion guy.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, if we were going off of talent, you know, then, yeah, it would be, I mean, I'm not, I, I, I think Taylor Swift is very talented.

• 36:21Speaker 05

  Oh, she's amazing, yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  She is our generation's, our, our Beatles, or, or, or, I see, me growing up, Michael Jackson, yeah. Michael Jackson in his prime is where Taylor Swift is now, if not beyond. She's, she's broken so many records. Just, I'm talking in ticket sales alone, it's just over $2 billion. It doesn't count merchandise, which she was, she, she would affect the, the local economy everywhere she would go. And they would set up shop outside the arenas, uh, the day before. You didn't have to have a ticket. Anybody could go and buy the shirt or whatever. So there's even more money that was sold there. Her, her, the total number of people that attended concerts during the 21 months is just over 10 million.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  The largest venues being when she sold out Wembley Stadium, eight nights at Wembley Stadium in London, where they saw over 753,000 people attended. There were 96,000 people that attended her single night in Melbourne, Australia in February of this year. There, this is unbelievable. There were almost that many people in Seattle when she was there. So it's just like these, these whole, all of these numbers are just like, almost hard to believe.

• 37:43Speaker 05

  Music is real though. I mean, you know, let's, let's be honest. I mean, bands are not making money from you streaming their music. They're making money from their tours.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  That's it.

• 37:51Speaker 05

  And she really, I mean, she just has a captivated market that is, you know, I'm, I'm a 44 year old guy and I love her music. I, I own a lot of her albums, you know, I'll play them. I mean, down to my kid who's eight years old, you know, and all the way up to people in their 60s, 70s. I mean, everybody loves her music.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  And you know, she's, you know, you, you package that with somebody who really is a good person as well. And like, that's just a recipe for success right there. And I mean, I, my hat's off to her. I mean, I can't believe that that is possible, but it is. I mean, she's proven that.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  She's proven it. Yeah. Her, her latest, I think it's her latest album. Well, she put out three albums, by the way, while she was touring.

• 38:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Two of them were from old albums that she re-released, which is also like brilliant because she re-released albums under a different label.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  She didn't own her own music. Like she didn't own her own actual tapes from when she was a kid. And she tried to buy them and they said no. And she went out and made hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, it's crazy.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Unbelievable. The Tortured Poets, which is my, my favorite album of hers, recently got back on as the number, number one on the Billboard Top 200 charts for 16 weeks in a row. And it's part because of the release of the vinyl and CD sales. CD sales, which can we talk about CD sales? What's happening?

• 39:06Speaker 05

  They're coming back. I mean, we, so for those of you don't know, I, I'm involved in a store here in Bakersfield in Los Angeles called Going Underground. And we actually put CDs back in both of the stores after years of not having any CDs. We now have CDs. In both stores and it's incredible how many people are coming in and buying them. I mean, they're much less expensive than a vinyl record and they're way less temper metal. You can leave them in your car while it's sunny outside, you know, and you're not going to ruin it. Um, you know, anybody who gets into vinyl has to just appreciate the fact that they wanted something that was very fragile to use. And, you know, is, is difficult, you know, and, uh, a CD is much easier. Uh, although a CD compared to a digital track is, you know, 60 times less, uh, accurate, I guess, you know, from a.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  Than a, than a vinyl analog.

• 39:49Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I mean, vinyl is lossless sound. I mean, the, the concept is that it's real, like it's all the way in there and all the sound. If it was recorded to analog, then it should have everything that was in the recording. A CD doesn't have that. I mean, you can get what's called a digital to analog converter. And that's where you take a CD and it fills in all the gaps of music that's missing in the CD. The CD quality is just not that good to be honest. It's, it's just not, it's a technology that, uh, that needs to go away to be, I mean, to me, the last two types of music are going to be digital file and vinyl, and that's going to be it eventually, but.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  How about that? It's my guess of the appeal with CDs is that you have, you own that hard copy.

• 40:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Hard copy.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, I think the appeal is that it's old, you know, and it, to us, it still feels like that was the technology of the time when we were growing up. But, um, the fact is it's, you know, a kid buying it that's 16 years old considers a CD to be old technology, you know?

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Well, I, I showed my son, we picked up, uh, went to go in underground last weekend, picked out some vinyl. And, uh, when I have certain areas where I put my music at home and, uh, he saw a shoebox full of cassette tapes. He's like, what the hell is this? And then I had to show him eight tracks. I have old Kiss eight tracks. And I said, well, watch this.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  You have a, you have a player, you have a track?

• 41:05Speaker 00

  No, I don't have an eight track player, but I do have a cassette player.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  I have my old Walkman.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  I mean, cassettes are popular, too.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  They are, yeah. Cassettes do have that hiss noise, but I like the way a cassette sounds better than a CD myself.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 41:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, just the tape quality, I think, you know, there's something about it. I actually really want to get one of those big reel-to-reels and start buying the master tapes, but they're, it's a very expensive endeavor to get into those. I mean, one of those reel-to-reels is like four or $500, so it's, you better really like that album.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Mine is getting expensive, too.

• 41:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. The average record, I mean, you know, in our store, I'd say it starts with a new record at $22.99 and probably, I mean, you'd be surprised, but a Mac Miller or rap record, you know, is probably $39.99, you know, which is, I don't know why there's the difference there, but there is definitely, by the style of music, I mean, you can almost determine what the price point's gonna be.

• 41:56Speaker 03

  I think we talked about the music industry last time you were on, too, because you brought up the point that musicians don't make their money anymore from the records. They just make it from touring and merchandise.

• 42:05Speaker 05

  True.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  And there's another problem going on in the music world, which is really brought on by Live Nation, which is this monopoly that owns Ticketmaster. And back in November of 22, when Taylor Swift started her tour, it crashed Ticketmaster, and there was, it ultimately brought on a Senate Judiciary Hearing in January of 23 about breaking up the monopoly of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and the monopoly that they have on the live music world.

• 42:35Speaker 05

  Well, Ticketmaster since then has become much smarter with how they advertise tickets, because they try to price adjust for what they expect the market to be. So you may have a stated ticket value, but they will actually adjust even before they sell, so that there isn't anybody trying to buy a dozen and sell them aftermarket on StubHub or some other site, you know, so.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Well, now, it's created this other problem, and I don't know if you've seen this, because I know you go to a lot of live music events, but now, at least in California, I believe, if you buy a ticket for an event, they have to have what it's gonna cost you at the, at the end of the purchase right up front.

• 43:06Speaker 05

  They do, yeah.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  So you can't tack on all of these other additional surcharges. It has to be right up front. And what that has done, I think, is killed the live music industry, because now people are like, what? Sticker shock, essentially.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, Taylor Swift's still gonna sell, you know... Tickets and Coldplay, I guess, will still sell tickets, you know. But, um, yeah, I think it probably does hurt a lot of bands. I know there's been a few bands that I'm surprised they had to cancel tours. Uh, Black Keys was one of them. They actually just, they had to cancel their nationwide tour because they didn't sell enough tickets.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. There was another, it was with the Black Keys. Somebody else very popular had to do the same thing.

• 43:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's just, uh, it's crazy.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  Taylor Swift, by the way, um, had an average sales ticket of $204. If you take the 10 million people that attended her concerts and you do the math, it comes out to $204 that came to her. But there was the aftermarket.

• 43:57Speaker 05

  Right.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  That's like, sometimes these tickets are going for thousands of dollars.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  $10,000 sometimes.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 05

  I mean, I saw those tickets and yeah, I have friends that actually, uh, he, my, my friend actually, uh, promised his daughter that he'd take her. And they'd sit in the front row and he actually did it and it was incredible. I was like, wow, man, this, that's just.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's.

• 44:15Speaker 05

  And the question was, can I write this off? And I said, sorry, man, no.

• 44:20Speaker 03

  Where is a scenario where you could write it off? Can you think of a scenario?

• 44:24Speaker 05

  You know, honestly, entertainment is no longer deductible for federal purposes, but for California, it still has a 50% limit. So, uh, meals and entertainment is what a lot of even QuickBooks files will say, but technically meals are the only thing deductible on the federal side.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  Only meals?

• 44:38Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  What if you ate at the concert?

• 44:40Speaker 05

  Oh, you could take that.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  What if you went to the concert to eat?

• 44:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, you could, sure, yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  Can you deduct this cost of the ticket?

• 44:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're gonna eat your ticket too? Did you buy it to eat it?

• 44:48Speaker 03

  I bought, I bought the ticket so I could go eat.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  Right. Well, there, there you go. Yeah. Maybe, maybe we gotta turn and plan around that. Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  MoneyWise is gonna buy a ticket for Taylor Swift.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Oh, well, the, the tour's over now, uh, now officially.

• 45:01Speaker 05

  Dang it.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  The industry average, uh, for, uh, across the globe in 2023 for a ticket, uh, for the top 100 tours is $131.

• 45:11Speaker 05

  I believe it. Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  I just sold a kidney for Tyler, the Creator ticket, so.

• 45:16Speaker 05

  Seriously.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, I, you know, I would, I would, I would consider paying a lot of money for certain artists as well.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, Tyler, I mean, I'd love, do you need somebody to go with you to Tyler?

• 45:28Speaker 03

  That's right. It's a secret better hope.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, my teenager is still at school, so he didn't hear me, but that's a Christmas present that I wrote off.

• 45:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've, I've got one of those too. It's a, yeah, it's gonna be a good one for sure.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  But yeah, these tickets, I mean.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  A ticket to go there?

• 45:41Speaker 05

  Well, no, a ticket for a con, for a tour next year for my kids and stuff. And gosh, it's taking five people, I'm telling you, to these concerts is, is no joke, you know?

• 45:49Speaker 00

  It costs. And I, I think a lot of people that go to concerts find that creative way to just go to festivals. When you can see these people and it's the same price.

• 46:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just went to Jingle Ball. Jingle Ball was last weekend. Yeah, and so SZA was the headliner of that one. You know, it's only for seven songs or eight songs, but I mean, my kids are just in love with SZA, you know?

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 05

  I mean, she's great. Don't we, you know, don't get me wrong. I love that stuff, but yeah, it was like, it was like they were born again that day, you know?

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, there is some, there is, there is value to spending money on having experiences.

• 46:24Speaker 05

  You know what? Yeah, that's what people want in life now. That's it. They don't care about owning a house. They, you know, there's, they wanna know that their experiences made them who they are. And that's, I mean, I, I get it. The philosophy makes sense to me.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Well, when it, when does it go full circle where you can just sit at home with the AI and watch your favorite artist live in the show?

• 46:42Speaker 03

  We had a listener that just asked that question. Speaking of AI, it would be time, would it be, uh, they asked about, oh, I think I read it, about their son that's watching NBA games on the VR set. And I've watched, I just watched, uh, not long ago, the Bleachers concert on my Meta VR thing. It's so great.

• 47:00Speaker 05

  I, I, uh, I have a really nice stereo in my house and I, you know, I haven't gone to Coachella the last couple of years, but I'm telling you, man, watching it on YouTube from your house is, I mean, it's just, it's almost better than being there, you know?

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Especially with the right recording YouTube, recording concert and with the right sound.

• 47:15Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  That's awesome. Yeah, you do have a nice system. I haven't seen it in person, but you've sent pictures of your, you've got a nice, nice sound for sure. Well, thanks so much, Tom. Thanks for coming on the show.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  Thank you for having me.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  Really appreciate it. Well, we covered a lot from Taylor. Taylor Swift to taxes, to AI, to bots, to you name it.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  We need more time. We need more time.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  I know. I know. We have to, we need to do a side project where we can just talk about goofy stuff. Well, I want to thank our listeners for tuning in. Remember these three things. Be smart, be safe, and always be money wise.

• 47:50Speaker 02

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