Savvy Tax Secrets for Real Estate Wealth: An Interview with Amanda Han, CPA

Josh: Welcome to the Wealth In Yourself Podcast, where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I’m your host, Josh St. Laurent. Today we’re joined by Amanda Han. Amanda is a CPA and tax strategist who specializes in helping people use real estate to save massive amounts in taxes and keep their hard earned money.

She helps educate investors on how to maximize tax write-offs and legal entity strategies, tax efficient ways to access profit, how to use 401k money for real estate and much more. She is the author of the highly rated book Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor and has been featured in prominent publications, including the Forbes Finance Council.

Money Magazine, Talks at Google, CNBC, Smart Money Talk Radio, as well as the Bigger Pockets Podcast. Today, Amanda has helped thousands of investors nationwide to save on taxes with proactive tax planning. Amanda, welcome. Glad you’re here.

Amanda: Yeah, thanks for having me, Josh. I love how you just had my book and you just popped it up. I don’t even have a copy readily available.

Josh: Oh yeah. Yeah. I’ve had this book for years. I love your book. I was, you know, introduced to you probably from Bigger Pockets, honestly, years ago. Yeah. I love the work that you do. So for someone who isn’t maybe familiar with your work, what would you want them to know about you and what you do?

Amanda: Oh, gosh. Well, what I typically tell people is that I am a CPA by day and real estate investor by night. So like a lot of people who are maybe with us today. My passion is in helping people understand how to use real estate, not just as a wealth building tool, but also as a way to save on taxes too.

And it happens to work out really well because I’m also a real estate investor and I am always trying to build and grow my own portfolio. So it’s kind of a really good synergy there in terms of me being able to help investors, but also I learned a lot. From investors that we work with in terms of what’s working out well, and what people are doing so successfully right now in the market.

Josh: Yeah, I can imagine that helps like building that network through your work. So, what came first? CPA or real estate investor, what came first?

Amanda: Yeah, that is such a great question. So personally, I was a CPA. First, I started out working in one of the big four public accounting firms. And I happen to end up in the real estate specialty group. So my job out of college was really to help some of the larger real estate investment firms, the developers on tax filing and tax strategy.

So that. sort of came first. And then it wasn’t until my husband actually read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, when we decided, hey, we should kind of dabble in real estate ourselves as well. But what was really interesting as the reason I said, well, I can’t really, I don’t really know what came first is because I’m actually the third generation of real estate investors in my family.

So my grandparents invested in real estate. My parents did a little bit of investing in real estate as well. So I kind of grew up around entrepreneurship and real estate investing. However, for me personally, I kind of had the poor dad who really encouraged me to like, you know, go to school, get a good education and get a really stable job and what job is more stable than being a CPA.

Josh: Yes, I can resonate with that. I also had the poor dad and never learned those lessons. I probably have Rich Dad, Poor Dad over here too. That was kind of a gateway for me as well. 

What are some of the lessons that you would want to make sure people who are just starting out on their journey, what are some lessons that you’d want to make sure that they know and that they’re aware of?

Amanda: Gosh, I would have to say for me you know, I understand it, especially for newer investors. Sometimes it takes people a little bit longer to pull the trigger for their first investment property. I certainly felt that type of pressure and hesitation for it. My own first property and it kind of shocks people sometimes being that I am a CPA and I was at the time a CPA for real estate investors, even knowing everything I did.

I still always felt like maybe I was inadequate or maybe I wasn’t ready. You know why? What made me think I could invest in real estate? So it took a little bit of work to kind of overcome that. So I think just for the newer investors or people getting started, it’s okay to feel that way. It’s very common.

One of the ways I overcame that was to really look at the numbers. Obviously as an accountant, I’m a numbers person, so what kind of got me over that fear was taking a look at the numbers and getting comfortable with the fact that, you know, these numbers work in the way I’m looking at it. And if they didn’t work, I was able to survive.

Whatever that worst case scenario was. So I think that helps me to make an informed decision when we first got started into real estate investing. And I think, you know, like I said, the first deal is the hardest for us. And I think for many of our clients, too. Thereafter, I think everyone just gets, you know, every transaction gets a little bit easier.

Josh: Yes, the first time is always the hardest. I like that you leverage your skills though as a CPA. I see a lot of people wanting to go into real estate and trying to do it all themselves, right? Like they think of themselves as self directed and they want to learn as much as they can. I’ve been thinking about this all day.

Like I wanted to get your opinion on what Can be self directed like what is okay for you to say? You know what? I can tackle this Let me try to learn this myself And what can you not because as someone who’s taken some, you know, tax law classes like you could never learn it all You know, it would be crazy to think that so I wanted to get your opinion

Amanda: Yeah, I think, about what are the things that we should do ourselves versus what can we outsource? I think the answer would be very different from person to person. You know, you’re someone who’s obviously financial savvy, investment savvy. So maybe it’s not a bad idea for you to, for example, dive into, like, the tax.

The tax things in the world for someone else who’s maybe really good with the construction background with their hands. It might be okay for them to kind of focus a little bit more in that area. And then outsource maybe like the finance pieces of it. So the answer will kind of depend on what your unique ability is.

And I think as you get into investing, you’ll quickly know or identify what things you’re good at, or at least you love to learn about and what are some things that you just really hate or are like a bad use of your time. I’m of the opinion that, if budget constraints are not there, or if money is not a huge concern for me, at least I try to outsource sooner rather than later, because I feel like it’s really important for me to have the best people on my team to help with the specific things that I don’t know or I can’t do because I, you know, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Right? So someone obviously will know something better than me. 

So, you know, in terms of our business, our investments, you know, we try to hire the best professionals, whether it’s investment advisors or attorneys or even like syndications that we invest in those are things, obviously I can probably do on my own. I can go out and find a deal and do that kind of sourcing. But if I’m talking about larger scale stuff, there are people who clearly are world class at what they do. And I wouldn’t be one of those people sourcing deals.

Josh: I totally believe in that. It’s kind of like that “who not how” type mentality, right? Like find the best people, like you said, world class people who are already experts in that field. So you don’t have to go up-skill there. Let’s build upon that. I mean, what does the team look like, like you’re talking about, right?

If someone says, you know what, I want to go all in and go full time and be, you know, a world class real estate investor. What kind of team should they anticipate having to build? What kind of people should they be keeping an eye out for?

Amanda: Yeah, I feel like for real estate investors some of the key team members, you know, kind of also depends on whether they are already well versed in real estate or brand new. If someone is brand new to real estate, having a mentor who has done it is very, very important. You know, if you’re someone who wants to get into short term rental investing.

I obviously have a mentor. It doesn’t have to be an official mentor that you pay. It could also be someone that you befriend. But basically someone who kind of has already done what you’re trying to do to mentor you through the transactions of what to do, what to look for, where to look for, what are the considerations?

I think that’s kind of the first step. Having a good lender on your team is going to be key because as a real estate investor, as we build our portfolio there’s always going to be points when. financing becomes a little bit more difficult. So earlier rather than later, it’s good to have a good lender on your team.

Of course, finance wise, good to have, you know, an accountant or bookkeeper who helps you with tracking your expenses. A CPA, a tax strategist, they help you with extracting all of the tax benefits of being a real estate investor. And I think last but not least, an attorney. You know, with real estate investment always comes liability concerns.

So always sooner rather than later to get a good asset protection person on your team as well.

Josh: Totally agree. Could you build upon like when you’re searching for these people, right? I could pick out any one of those examples. When you, when you’re trying to go find a good lender, a good attorney, are there questions that you’re asking them? Like, how do you determine, “yes, this is the right person I should be working with” or “oh, red flag, definitely not this person.”

Amanda: Yeah, I think, you know, in terms of good questions to ask when we are vetting out the right people on our team. I always tell people you should try to ask more powerful questions and we all kind of fall victim to this where we try to ask very generic questions. I’ll use CPAs as an example. People who are looking for a CPA, I think most investors will ask, like, do you work with real estate investors?

And I think nine times out of ten, the CPA is going to say, yes, I do work with real estate investors, right? Because they probably have at least one person who has, you know, rented out their home, right? Or something like that. So that’s not really indicative of really how well versed they are in real estate taxes.

So you want to ask more powerful questions, like what are some of the tax strategies that you like to use with your real estate investor clients? So that leaves the door open for them to really shine and kind of explain or at least describe the kind of strategies that they’re using. Or another great question would be, you know, not even if you’re interviewing a tax person, let’s say, don’t even ask them about taxes.

You can say, Hey, what are your successful investor clients doing right now? You know, in light of the higher interest rates. So I think really quickly you’ll be able to see, like, do they know what they’re talking about? Are they working through those kinds of things with their clients? And I think, you know, similar, more powerful questions could be directed towards your attorney as well as your lender, too.

Josh: So I have a powerful question for you. What are your successful real estate investor clients doing right now with high interest rates?

Amanda: Oh, man, throw it back to me immediately, huh? You know, it’s funny because I mean, we talked to clients all the time. I was just speaking with someone right now. when we do tax planning, especially for our clients who are heavy in real estate. The ability to use rental property acquisitions during the year, take depreciation really significantly offsets their income right from their job or their business.

And one of the issues that we’re seeing is for this year is less deal flow, right? Whereas previously we had clients who bought a lot of properties every year. We have a lot of depreciation. Everyone’s happy this year. The struggle is, should I buy properties even though it’s higher interest rate for the tax savings or do I forego?

And what I always tell people is like, you got to look at the whole picture. You never want to just look at the tax benefits of it. You want to still make sure whether the deal makes sense or not, whether it’s going to cash flow. Do you think it’s going to appreciate? So all those pillars that, you know, we make our decisions on are still true.

But one thing that more of our clients are doing is getting into creative financing. So creative financing, whether it’s. Where the seller is carrying the node or doing a lot more of the subject to deals where they get to take over the existing rate in terms of the seller those we’ve seen to be a little bit of a workaround in today times where, you know, there’s this increasing or uncertainty, let’s say in the interest rates.

Josh: Yeah, I think that’s fascinating. The different avenues you can take with creative financing. Can you talk about that as a strategy? And I’m also curious, you know, it’s sort of a double question here, but when you said look at the holistic picture are there different asset classes that make sense for different people, depending on where they’re at in their real estate journey. Because I get that question a lot from clients, you know, Hey I have a high paying job and I’m trying to offset income versus the person who says, well, no, I quit my job to do real estate investing. Do you know, do certain asset classes make different sense for different people?

Amanda: Yeah, for sure. And I think that it’s part of the overall planning when we work with clients and the two examples that you provided, right? if you’re someone who already quit their job and you’re just doing real estate full time. There are a lot of options with respect to asset classes within real estate, meaning you can do long term rentals, short term rentals, you know, mobile home parks, self storage as long as you are a real estate professional for tax purposes, then you’re able to use those losses against all types of income that you might be generating.

On the other hand, if you’re someone who’s still working a W 2 job, or if you’re married and both of you are working a W 2 job, then the limitation is that for a lot of these real estate asset classes, the losses are going to be considered passive losses, which simply means that they only offset passive income on your tax return and not your active income, like a W 2 job.

Now the loophole around that for people who are high W 2 earners working full time is to use the “short term rental loophole.” If you are someone who invests in short term rentals, it may be possible for you to use those rental losses against W2 income or income from your non real estate business.

As long as you meet material participation hours, and we kind of touch on the details of that if you want, but the big picture is that. If you’re working full time and real estate is sort of a side hustle, short term rentals are typically going to be the preferred. We’ll call the asset class within real estate.

If you’re looking for a way to significantly reduce taxes on your W2 income.

Josh: Yeah, I would love to expand upon it selfishly, right? I’m sitting in my first short term rental right here. you know, out of curiosity, I, you know, I would love to expand upon it and learn more.

Amanda: for short term rental, so, well, let me start with long term rentals. If you have a long term rental, I mentioned that you have to be a real estate professional to use the loss against your W2 income. A couple different requirements for real estate professionals, but the hardest one for most people to meet is that you have to spend more time in real estate than your job.

So if you’re working full time at 2000 hours a year, you have to have more than 2000 hours in real estate to be a real estate professional and use long term rental losses. Now, when we switch gears to the short term rental realm, the benefit is when you invest in short term rentals, you don’t have to be a real estate professional.

You just have to meet material participation hours. As long as you meet material participation hours. You can then use short term rental losses against W 2 income. So to meet material participation, there’s actually seven different ways to qualify, but we’ll touch on two or three of them that are like the most common that we see in 99 percent of the people that the investors that we come across.

So the first one, which is kind of the gold standard, is if you spend at least 500 On your short term rentals. So if you have 1 or 2 or 3 short term rentals, if you spend 500 hours on those properties, then you’ve met material participation. If you haven’t spent 500 hours, the other way to qualify is if you spend at least 100 hours on your short term rentals.

And nobody else spends more time than you, so it would be like Josh spent 120 hours, but Josh’s cleaning crew only spent 60, the repair guys only spent 20, then you’ve met that designation. And then the third way to qualify is that you spend more time than everybody else combined. So it would be like Josh spent 100, but I add up everyone’s hours and it only came to be 80.

Then I also qualify. So, again, the reason we care about these hours is because if you meet 1 of those 3 requirements, then your short term rentals are no longer passive and then you can use it to offset taxes from your W2 job or other businesses that you have.

Josh: That was a really great and concise explanation. I’m curious about the documentation side of it, because obviously that’s really important from a tax standpoint. Is there a system that you advise clients to use that could be as simple as a spreadsheet? What do you typically have people do to track that throughout the year?

Amanda: Yeah, that is a great question. So the IRS doesn’t really have a requirement in terms of what methodology used to track it. So it could be your calendar. It could be Excel. We have clients who put it in a notebook. They just kind of hand write it in. That part of it doesn’t matter as much.

What the IRS does want is consistency and reasonableness. Consistency meaning I’m using the same methodology all year, right? It’s always on the app. It’s always on the calendar. They don’t want it to be like, Partly here, partly there. They got to go around and try to make sense of it all. They don’t like that.

And then the other part is reasonableness. So depending on what you’re doing, the hours that you record has to be reasonable for the task at hand. So a couple hours to build furniture, but probably not a couple months to do furniture building. All right. So those are the things they’re looking at.

One of our clients actually developed an app called REPS tracker. So for those of you who are interested, you know, who like to use apps, it’s one that’s really awesome. You can just download it on your phone and you can kind of track your hours in real time.

Josh: And what was the name of that again?

Amanda: REPS tracker. 

Josh: Okay. And so I wanted to pivot a little bit. I’m thinking through the lens of a financial advisor, of course. Right. And so a lot of clients lately for whatever reason have been saying, you know what, it’s great. The things that you do for me, but I really find a lot of value in the things that you stop me from doing.

And so, you know, mistakes that were never made, if you will. And so I wanted to ask you about mistakes that you see really commonly with clients. If there’s something that you run into all the time that’s maybe even an easy fix that people should stop doing.

Amanda: I love that you said that because I haven’t really heard it verbalized that way. And I think I do see that a lot with clients that we work with. It’s stopping them from making a mistake or stopping them from. You know, doing something just for the tax benefit or making a wrong investment decision you know, there’s so many mistakes, unfortunately, that we see kind of on a daily basis since we were talking about the short term rentals just now, I think a common mistake that we see all the time is CPAs not understanding the short term rental loophole.

And so I will always come across people every time I do a post on social media, I’ll get a lot of DMS where people say, Hey, I have short term rentals. My CPA said I can’t do it because you know, I don’t have 750 hours. I’m not a real estate professional. So that’s one thing to catch. If you are a short term rental investor, you’re working with your CPA.

If they mentioned the words “real estate professional status,” then that’s a sign that they don’t understand what the rule is right because the main thing to understand is for short term rentals is we don’t even care whether you’re a real estate professional. So that should not even be part of the conversation.

I think another common mistake I see from the investors side that the investors make, not that the CPAs make. Investors are always confused about legal entities. It’s kind of a joke in our office.

You know, we talk about like, ah, I don’t know why people are so confused. I think a lot of people are under the impression that you can only write off business expenses if you have a legal entity. but the reality is you don’t have to, the vast majority of deductions that we can claim as investors.

are available to us regardless of whether we own our properties in an LLC or if we just own it in our personal name.

 So what that means is if you’re driving your car for business, for real estate investing, if you use your home office to manage your properties from you can claim those deductions, even though you may not ever have had a legal entity.

And the same is for like, if you go to a real estate conference or you flew somewhere to buy a rental property, all those are business deductions because you are in the business of investing in real estate. And this is true regardless of whether there’s a legal entity or

Josh: Yeah, I, I agree with you. I have this conversation a lot as well, you know, and it seems like they fall into one of two camps: either no business structure whatsoever, right. For whatever reason I never went there. Or, you know, they’ve got this complex web of C corps owning LLCs, you know, anonymously and the, you know, so when would it make sense for somebody to say okay, now I should go and set up the LLC or whatever that business structure might be.

Amanda: not. I mean, I think it’s kind of going back to the concept of available money and budgeting. Right. Right. So if budget is not a concern, then the sooner you have a liability protection attorney on your team, the better it is. Why? Because once you start owning real estate, there’s immediately going to be exposure, right?

We have tenants, we have contractors going in and out. So, the liability exposure exists immediately. So you want to make sure you have someone on your team to help you set that up or, or minimize the exposure at least. The other things to consider are equity and net worth. If I have a lot of net worth, that means I have a lot at risk.

So I’m more inclined to hire professional help sooner. If I have a lot of equity in my properties or, you know, my other businesses that’s risky, then I also want to have assistance sooner rather than later. So I guess in other words, if you have Low net worth and not a lot of equity, then maybe it’s okay to kind of hold off on that a little bit.

But other than that, yeah, typically, the sooner you have the entity structuring set up, the better it is. I do see some pretty horrific mistakes when it comes to entity structuring. One that you just mentioned, Josh, is just overly complex. And I hate seeing that, especially for newer investors who are on a budget.

They’ve already spent 30,000 on all these entities and now we have no more money to invest and we have no more money to pay the CPA to actually file these returns. Right? And so I think entities like anything. It’s a business decision. So we have to look at the cost and weigh that against the benefit of what we’re getting to having all those entities.

Josh: Yeah, that’s great. I like how you, how you put that. I mean, it really is like the more net worth you have, the more you have at risk, basically. So at the beginning of the podcast, I touched upon in your bio, you know, investing in real estate in 401ks or IRAs and different tax efficient ways to invest in real estate. And you brought up creative financing. So I wanted to talk about, you know, different ways that people can invest in real estate, maybe a self directed IRA, unconventional ways I’ll say that can help them to save in taxes. I wanted to talk about that a little bit.

Amanda: Yeah. I mean, the whole conversation around using retirement money for real estate is one that’s really important, you know, for investors to understand, because I think traditionally we’re always taught that 401k and IRA money should be in the stock market. Right. I mean, you, you never see like.

Commercials about using retirement money for real estate on TV. So one of the things that we’ve tried to do, you know, in the last like decade is really try to bring awareness and education to let people know that there are options that the IRS does not restrict your retirement money. To be in the market, you know, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

And in fact, it’s been around for many, many years. This whole concept of self directed investing where the IRS says, Hey, your retirement money can invest in all sorts of assets like real estate, like notes, like. You know, different kinds of businesses that are available so whether it makes sense for you to use retirement money for real estate that in itself is not really a tax strategy or tax consideration because the money that’s in the retirement account.

Theoretically, you already got a benefit from that, right? So, for example, if I funded a 401k, I got a tax deduction when the money went in. And so once the money is in the 401k or IRA, whether I choose to use that for stocks or I choose it to do in real estate both are going to be growing tax deferred.

So there’s not really any added tax savings. It’s already protected from current taxes. So then the decision of whether I should move it to real estate or if I should keep it in the stock market, it’s kind of a conversation about ROI, right? Am I going to have the highest return by leaning it where it is in the market?

Or do I feel like I’ll generate better returns overall if I moved it to a real estate asset or any kind of other different kind of asset?

Josh: So I’m curious about this. Are all self directed IRAs created equal? You know, in your opinion, because there’s a lot of different companies that offer them, and they all seem to be structured a little bit differently. Are there things that you know, is a plus or a minus when you’re kind of analyzing, like, do I go with this company or this company for my self directed IRA?

Does it make a difference?

Amanda: I mean, most self-directed companies do the same thing, which is, you know, they take the money in your retirement account, and then they sort of administer it while you go out and shop for the assets, right? And the reason they exist is because you can’t touch the money yourself. So you have the custodians who are kind of there to oversee that piece of it.

From a transaction perspective, no, I feel like they pretty much do the same thing in terms of handling the money. But you’re absolutely right. There’s all sorts of differences that we see in terms of how fees are charged. So there are custodians who charge higher setup fees, but lower transaction fees are lower annual and monthly fees.

Then there are others who charge. Based on the number of transactions, I’ve also seen where they charge based on the value of the assets in the retirement account that you have with them. So which one makes the most sense will depend on you as an investor, right? If you’re transaction heavy, then maybe you want to go with one that has lower transaction costs.

If you have a lot of value in the retirement account, but not a lot of transactions, because I’m just holding a bunch of properties, then maybe, you don’t really care as much if they have higher transaction fees. So I think they kind of do the same thing. You do have to kind of shop a little bit in terms of what the fee structure is.

And then there’s also. You know, larger self directed custodians and the pros are that when you call they’re reachable, right? There’s always somebody at the 1 800 number, but the downside is you might always be talking to a different person. So they don’t remember the issue that Josh brought up last week versus on a smaller custodian company.

They remember Josh. You know, you might not Get to call them right away to talk to that same person. But you know, who is your contact at all times?

Josh: I like that. So fees and also the level of service that you’re going to be able to expect from them. That makes a lot of sense. So for someone listening who’s like, Amanda’s awesome, but you know, I’ve been doing it myself in QuickBooks for years. I’m not really sure if I need a tax professional.

Like, what would you say to that person?

Amanda: You know, I think the one thing just for anybody, right, is to think about what my tax savings plan is. So you can just ask yourself that question and kind of ponder about, do I have a plan in place? Do I have a strategy? What are the steps I’m using to implement the strategies? And if you can verbalize it to yourself, then that’s really good.

That’s a really good sign that you already have someone really strategic on your team, and you know what you should be doing to reduce your taxes, or at least keep your taxes fairly low. But I think for many people, when we ask that question, they don’t really know it’s like, I don’t, I don’t have a strategy.

I know real estate helps me save money, but I’m not sure I’m doing it right. Or I’m not sure what else I should be doing. So if you’re not really able to answer that question, then it makes sense to seek out the advice of someone, whether it’s me or someone else who kind of specializes in real estate planning.

Because I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking that. when they file their tax returns in April, that their tax person is also doing planning for them. And I can tell you with almost 90 percent certainty that that’s not happening. And the reason is because tax planning is proactive, right?

So right now we’re planning out the rest of this year to say, what can we do for 2023 taxes in terms of savings? What can we do now to save taxes for last year? Little to nothing because that year is already over. Right? So being proactive and taking the time to actually meet with your advisor and getting an understanding of what you should be doing and actually doing those things is going to be key to really saving on time.

Josh: Makes me happy to hear that. It’s always a little alarming to me when I meet with new clients late in the year. Right. And we say, Hey, we’re going to do some proactive tax planning and they’re in shock or disbelief, you know, and it’s like, Hey, you gotta be doing this all along, you know? So it makes me happy to hear that.

Amanda: I’ve had people who say like why are we talking about tax? planning in June, you know, like we have all the way until April. And what I tell people is we are already six months late. We should have started in January. So if we’re in June, we already missed out on six months of transactions that could have helped save us taxes.

Josh: absolutely. So for the listeners, right. If someone is considering working with you, what should they know? You know, I’d imagine there’s a certain level of real estate investor that you work with. So I wanted to hear from you about that for the listeners.

Amanda: So yeah, we have a pretty diverse group of clientele. Our specialty, as I said earlier, is in real estate. So the majority, if not all, of our clients are involved in real estate to some extent. So we have people who are just starting out in real estate. Maybe they have high income, they’re trying to reduce their taxes, and this is their first short term rental property.

All the way up to people who are doing you know, multi million dollar syndication deals of large commercial property. So kind of the whole gamut of real estate. So for us, really, an ideal client is someone who is looking to grow their real estate portfolio. Because it’s in the growth of that wealth building phase where the strategies come in, right?

I mean, you could be someone who owns a bunch of rentals, but you know, you’ve had them for 30, 40 years and you’re not really wanting to buy any more than, I mean, unfortunately the truth is there’s really just not much strategy if we’re not going to have like the movement of money and the wealth building.

So that’s what I would say in terms of like, who would be a good fit for tax planning?

Josh: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. So I want to transition a little bit to the same three questions that I like to ask everybody as we’re kind of nearing the end. These are a little more personal to you. And the first one is what does living a wealthy life look like for you?

Amanda: Oh, gosh. So you know, I think for me, a wealthy life is just the ability to do what you want when you want. Not to be like super spontaneous— because I’m not very spontaneous— but a certain level of flexibility in having that sense of control, right?

I know people like from the numbers perspective, typically I say, hey, wealth. Wealth is where you have enough passive residual income that your job or your business becomes optional. But I think more from a personal perspective, you know, it’s kind of the freedom of time.

Josh: Couldn’t agree more. If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom who isn’t there yet, what would that message be?

Amanda: Hmm. So a message for someone to gain financial freedom who’s not there yet. I think one step at a time. You know, I think a lot of times we see, you know, in marketing and social media, just these Outrageously. Fancy, blissful lives of people. But it’s important to all understand that everybody starts somewhere.

And so if this is brand new to you, you feel like you’re  just on this long journey to build wealth. It’s important to know it’s, you know, everybody started at the same place where you are today. And you could be 20 years old, you could be 50 or 70 years old. There’s always time to kind of make that transition.

And build wealth slowly.

Josh: Well, that’s the perfect segue to the third question and that’s basically if you were starting over, right? We’ll say you’re 20 years old. You’re starting over. You have a thousand dollars. What would you spend it on?

Amanda: Oh my gosh, a thousand? Just a thousand dollars. Gosh, you know, I think if I, if that was the money I had from an investment perspective, I would spend it to get into the right room with the right people. I’m a big believer that wealth is built based not just by your own efforts, but by the people around you, whether it’s, you know, I touched on that earlier, the mentors, your team, other investors who are kind of on that same journey.

That’s typically where I would start because I feel like once you get into the room of people where you aspire to be, then a lot of great things and magic could happen. If that’s my only money, hopefully in that room, people will teach me how to get deals. Without too much additional money.

Josh: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Part of me wants to plug BP right here. BiggerPockets kind of has a good network for that. But is there anywhere else you’d suggest people look for mentorship and people to learn from?

Amanda: Yeah, I mean there’s you know, there’s so many great I think Bigger Pockets back when they first started It was such an anomaly It was like the first of its kind where people didn’t have to pay thirty thousand dollars to get some of these, you know strategies and know how so, yeah, I think we’re all very fortunate to have been touched by BiggerPockets in that way, and it continues to be one of the best platforms in terms of, you know, just like amazing free information.

Speaking of BiggerPockets, Brandon Turner, who, you know, was alongside Josh Dworkin, part of the original crew for BiggerPockets he now has his own group. It’s called the Better Life Tribe. That’s a really good community as well, made up of a lot of real estate investors, a kind of similar thing where people mastermind and, you know, kind of lift each other up.

So that’s also another one, but there’s so many of them. It’s hard for me to name all of them. There’s also GoBundance which I’m a part of the women’s one. And that’s another community of just people who are, you know, building wealth, having fun and, kind of touching out all the different aspects of their lives, not just the money side.

Josh: Yes. Yes. Which is so important. So we’re going to drop all your links in the show notes, but is there a preferred place that you would want people to connect with you who are listening?

Amanda: Yeah, I mean, if any of the stuff that we talked about is kind of newer to you on your investing journey I definitely recommend you download. We have a free tax savings toolkit. You can get it directly from our website at KeystoneCPA.com. And along that are common tax deductions for real estate investors.

We talk about legal entity structuring. And there’s also a self assessment tool that you can utilize too. Basically it will help you answer what is your risk right now in overpaying in taxes. And all that is free as part of our tax savings toolkit at KeystoneCPA.com. And if you are just looking for daily tax tips you can find me on Instagram as AmandaHanCPA.

Josh: Perfect. Perfect. We’ll put all those in the show notes. Any upcoming books at all to plug?

Amanda: Oh, man, maybe. I mean, we’ve written two now. And I’ve just kind of been brainstorming on what the third book should be. I wanted to do something a little bit more comprehensive. So maybe something in the works, but nothing to share just yet.

Josh: Okay, fair enough. Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you’re like, man, I wish we would have gone there.

Amanda: There’s so many things. I mean, you know, one thing that’s on the mind of many CPAs recently is kind of the additional funding that the IRS is going to be getting where they’ve already received. They’ve taken some pretty significant moves as even in the past couple of weeks.

In terms of hiring and moving people around to really ramp up audit efforts. So, you know, I know on podcasts, we talk a lot about kind of the sexy part of tax savings, right, of short term rental loophole and depreciation and all that is really great. I think it’s really important, though, for all of us as taxpayers to understand that none of this happens by chance.

And for us to legitimately benefit from a lot of these deductions, it involves planning and implementation. So we can’t just say we have the hours we have to actually earn the hours. We can’t just say we spent money on something. We have to actually be able to prove it. And especially with the expectation that audits will increase, there likely could be a focus on real estate investors.

Because, you know, real estate investors are always like the bad guy in the room. Right. And especially with politics recently, right? Real estate is one of those bad, wealthy people. So it is really important for us to make sure that we are doing everything we can to get our ducks in a row so that if we are audited down the road that we have the ability to prove all of the positions that we’ve taken.

Josh: Yeah, that’s a really important point. You got to be able to justify it and have documentation. That’s a great point to wrap on. So thank you for being here. I appreciate all your insights.

Amanda: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Josh: Definitely. This has been the Wealth in Yourself Podcast, where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money.

Our guest today was Amanda Han. We’ll see you next week and thanks for listening.