Eric Courage, CFA, CFP®

Looking for an AMAZING CPA/firm to build a great relationship with. After this season. ~20 returns. What (I think) a bad referral relationship looks like from your side: Fee hagglers, no context/no communication, bad data, having to cover for bad advice from advisors, or clients who don't understand advisor recommendations, conflicting advice and tension, advisors who act like tax is beneath them/they are god's gift to the IRS code, and advisors/people who waste your energy, professional expertise, and family time on here questioning when AI will take your job. I am the opposite of that. YOU - Expertise: Multi-state, equity comp, deferred comp, RSUs/PSUs/ISOs, Options, 83(b)s, K-1s, foreign income, trusts, 5500s. An occasional plane. You do not need to know everything, but you handle edge cases, research jump balls, and are confident with clients who are direct and professional. YOU - Review process: You can walk through how errors get caught and how mistakes get made right. Work papers, a second set of eyes, AI-assisted review, etc. No, we are not going line by line, but we may have a question. I get letters, and mistakes happen, but if so, you amend or fix things and communicate what happened. You carry E&O, are capitalized, and you take responsibility for your work. YOU - Personality: You vibe with both the get-down-to-business type and the person who needs five minutes of "So, where are you from?" before they feel comfortable. Open: you are not defensive when challenged or asked a respectful question. Team: If I miss something or need to do better, you tell me directly. We are a team and we share in kicking ass for the client. I want to get better; we learn from each other. YOU - Technology: Shared portal, e-sign, real-time communication. You are comfortable with me having portal access for specific clients, so I can upload docs, provide context on investments, and planning decisions. Sometimes, I will ask for your blessing before execution when/if it matters to you. If it takes real work, please charge. Maybe, If it is a quick sanity check, you bless it and move on. YOU - Responsive: Outside of deadline season, 48 hoursish on anything time-sensitive. No ghosting. "I am slammed, I will get to this by X," is a completely acceptable answer. Three weeks of silence without a word or VM response feels morally wrong to you. I will run interference for you with clients during tax season in prep-season and answer any questions I can to help you through it. ME - I provide a year-in-review narrative for every client so your intake interpretation is minimal. Documents arrive on time best we can) and I will push clients so you do not have to project manage. I answer your questions f' FAST. If something feels too aggressive or creates exposure, we say so and handle it together; if you don't want to tell the client. I will. I am open to your feedback, I want this to work well for you. I see you #taxtwitter. I see the fee hagglers, the unappreciative clients, the advisors who missed something a Google search could have fixed and then act like it is your fault, and the people telling you AI is coming for your job in ninety days. That is not me. I am not perfect. I do value your expertise. I know how hard this season is and how little credit you get for most of it. I hate that for you. I see you. After tax season, I would love to connect. God bless, hang in there, and thank you for your service.🫡😎😊 Please DM, tag, or comment! Thank you!

Firm interested in me: Local boutique, highly credentialed w/UHNW investment and tax capabilities: ME: What are the top questions you ask yourself when you meet new advisors? Them: "I am in my 50s, I would ask myself, would I want this person to be my financial advisor?" (Great one) He says some advisors want to have 40% crypto, let only the lord dictate investment strategy, and need a 92% payout, but can't calculate their own "other expenses" to understand their true margin. LMAO.

ME: So...I reviewed your LP terms on that private deal... Client: Wait, I have a sidecar fee addendum...

T-bill ladders address practical and psychological challenges vs. Broad Bond ETFs for the initial 12-to-18 months of cash in taxable first-to-withdrawal retirement accounts. - Duration (short, and locked): IR decline & MM yields fall - Credit: Low - Market price Vol: Locked in yield vs. price up and down with rates - Fees: Nada (spreads sure) - Fixed cash flow showing up in your account: Helps to spend - State tax-free: Big for higher tax bracket states

"Planning" is BS. I hate all these little CFPs. - CFA who Bought $200MM+ firm; now $300MM investment shop. Printing 50-page e-money reports. Yes. Commodity. Proactively surfacing, challenging, and composing trade-offs in financial planning, investments, tax, estate, and life, and bringing peace of mind. No. Priceless

@realkpr16 @Jofi_Joseph_99 Nothing more productive to add. Wishing you well; best of luck

@Eric_M_Courage @Jofi_Joseph_99 I asked why you’d ignore other country data but I should have asked why you’d ignore 19th century US data as well. rpc.cfainstitute.org/blogs/enterpri…

Bonds are the most misunderstood asset class; worse the older you get. Allocations sized by one of three lazy methods: % tied to age, % benched to a target-date fund/age-dated, or "total householding" logic that slams them into your IRA for "tax efficiency". None of these answer questions that actually matter: - When and how much money do you need for spending? Here is what that costs. A 45-year-old executive with $1M in an IRA, allocated 70/30 per the glide path, holds $300K in bonds that he will not touch for AT LEAST 20 years. At a 4% equity risk premium compounded, that is roughly $357K in foregone growth. No fancy householding asset-location tax savings WILL EVER recover that. Current spreads make this WAY worse. OAS on high-yield and investment-grade corporate credit is tight. The yield pickup over cash is thin. If you are going to accept duration and credit risk, do so because: sequence of return risk and your average drawdown recovery in a portfolio, specific liability mapping, fixed maturities, not because a model said 30%. Get it wrong and you are either taking risk you do not understand or leaving returns on the table that compound for decades.

Point by point. 1. Really? Bonds outperforming equities over 20-30 years. JP Morgan, 1950-2025, 20 year rolling: stocks $908K, 60/40 $606K, bonds $277K on $100K. (attached) *Worst 20 year stretch for stocks still triples. TRIPLES! What time frame, or economic period/future makes this even close to possible? Do you allocate client assets based on this premise? Disaster? Or, what causes IRs to fall so hard or equities that much over 20 to 30 years!? Why are they calling you if these happen in our lifetimes? 2. Best thought: Mix gives a higher spending floor. True when the floor binds. For a 45 year old with 20 plus years to withdrawal, it does not bind. *75 years of DATA: every 20 year window cleared. Insurance against a risk that did not exist. 3. Reverse glide path? Not what I argued. The position is bonds need a specific job. Glide path direction is way downstream. Isolation in one principal/white paper thinking misses a lot of nuance on portfolio management. 4. Rebalance across taxable and tax-deferred to fix liquidity. Trace the dollars. IRA to taxable requires a distribution. Internal rebalancing does not put cash where you spend from. Selling taxable equities low is the problem bonds existed to prevent. 5. Very concerning (not you): "Bonds providing inflation-adjusted real returns like other asset classes." ???!!! Again are we allocating capital for clients based on this? AGG since 2020: nominal 6%, CPI 22%, real return negative -16%. NEGATIVE. Truflation captured the 2021-2022 surge faster than BLS and is running hot on the Iran gas shock. 2022 alone: AGG -13.01% nominal, -18.43% peak to trough, worst bond drawdown in index history, still not recovered. Early 50s, $2M portfolio, 20% bonds is $400K. Real purchasing power loss since 2020: $64K in a qualified account. That is the version where you held through the drawdown. At 50, you are not drawing for at least a decade unless this is outside your IRA--which I don't assume is the case. The sleeve has no current job. It loses real purchasing power while equities compound the difference. Bonds need a job: 1. Defeasance. 2. Sequence buffer in the withdrawal account. 3. Behavioral capacity. Outside those, the allocation is a default, not a strategy. No job, no allocation. We get the returns we deserve.

Questions I have: 1. It’s seems you don’t think bonds can outperform equities over a 20-30 year horizon? 2. Or that a mix of stocks and bonds can reduce the range of outcomes for an investor, giving them a higher floor for their spending policy? 3. You suggest that bonds are good for behavioral risk but ignore that the reverse glide path often increases equity risk if you’re not rebalancing or otherwise ignoring expected returns and goal funding. 4. Liquidity risk may still be there depending on specifics, but an investor can rebalance between taxable and tax deferred. I think this is rather obvious though, so maybe I misunderstood why you don’t like to utilize tax deferred space to shelter lower growth and higher yield assets.

That was FAST! 24-hour turn! Very excited to unpack the portal. A ton of information and analysis!

Function health: Has only used this? Just got my first base tests. Very curious to see the results. So many people I know are intuitively using peptides, but I wanted to understand my baseline. Anybody have a great online MD they use for results review or peptide guidance?

@couldbebjorn What changes have you made after seeing the repot, or taken peptides? Did you interpret the labs on your own or get a third party/MD to help?

@Eric_M_Courage Function

@couldbebjorn A fan of peptides or function? If peptides, how did you determine what you needed or the dosage?

@Eric_M_Courage Yep. I’m a fan. But haven’t gone through it yet with a doc.

@bryanhasling WTF. Haters going to hate; anger when you post something homespun and personal is more about them then you.

X is an awful place sometimes bc I post about being happily in love w a babe And an anon account (I blocked/hid) called me gay LOL

@BottjerCPA THIS! You get it.

@Eric_M_Courage Many years ago I showed my wife her tax bill (insert tears) she felt all of her hard work was being stolen (she had a successful Etsy shop back when it was truly handmade). “I don’t want to pay that? Does that make me a Republican or Democrat?” I think it makes you American

My wife is in shock. Baffled at how her small business—at her income level—pays SO MUCH in taxes. - How is that fair?! - What do they even do with MY money!? Doesn’t believe my calculations: NI - Taxes: Fed + Self-Employment+ CO = Thinks I need to run optimizations on MFS vs. MFJ. Welcome to my Sunday brunch at my house.

Is this the service for married people who call each other “partners”? Trying to start divorce conversations? 😂 I already showed her side-by-side MFS vs. MFJ, and her income without me. We already had the talk on when MFS could work too. E.g., Student loans, business losses, multi-state, etc. The numbers are not hard to calculate: where the money actually goes is the mystery, and the source of frustration.

@Eric_M_Courage I have to run optimizations for quite a few of my clients, even though MFJ saves the money. The optimization is for the one spouse who has to repay the other spouse for the savings.

@FinPlan_CPA I modeled if she worked for someone earning W2 versus vs. self-employed, almost parity on taxes. One thing that surprised me.

@Eric_M_Courage Self employment tax is one of the most, if not the most, talked about item I have with clients when I am done their return.

@BillKinneyCPA @ianweiner90 It’s on the 1040, and negative reaching that income threshold.

it's the "other half" ER of payroll tax that bowls over a lot of people who start small businesses (even with the deduction). Also, the EE half is not as transparent when deducted from a paycheck as opposed to being tallied on a 1040. is she making low 6 figures? tht would be the entry point to s corp for some of my clients.