Making Money With The Law

Your ability to make money on business and real estate deals is directly related to your knowledge of the law. Whether it is structuring the deal or trimming the tax burdens, the law can turn a bad deal into a good deal and a good deal into a great deal. In fact, if you use the law to leverage what you do, you can make money faster than you ever thought possible. No more work – no more time – no more risk, just more money to spend!

Not only can you get ahead financially a lot faster, using the law, when problems strike, you can keep what you have worked your whole life for. In today’s society, if you don’t take the opportunity to protect yourself and your assets, somebody is going to take your assets away from you. It might be the government, the IRS, the lawyers, your tenants, your partners, or any one of a dozen other problems you face, but somebody is going to try to take your hard-earned money away from you, unless you protect it.

You undoubtedly hope and pray that you won’t have a lead paint problem, get sued by a tenant, or have the lawyers come after you for some insignificant reason. You do more than just hope and pray that you won’t lose your household property to a common thief. You lock your doors, put security lights around your house, and set up alarm systems. Your financial investments and real estate investments are a lot more valuable than your household property. Have you done anything to protect those assets from the thieves that could take them away from you through a legal or financial attack?

The legal system is the most powerful system we have in our nation today. When you get sued, you are going to spend every dime you’ve got just defending the lawsuit. Either that or you lose. That is the way the system is set up. The biggest mistake you’re going to make in your financial careers is to say that you don’t have enough to worry about yet. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you have, in today’s lawsuit happy society, you had better worry about how to protect your assets, or they will be taken away from you.

If you are going to protect your assets, you need to be able to identify the financial threats you face. The sad part is, the general public doesn’t even know what the threats look like, and they certainly don’t have a clue how to protect themselves from those threats. The first thing you have to do is identify the threats, and then you have to systematically eliminate them.

The IRS is one of the major threats you face. Your tax payments over your lifetime could dwarf your mortgage payments, your medical expenses, the retirement money you stoke away, and the cost of sending your kids to college–all combined. Taxes are by far the biggest constant drain on your financial resources. If you know the tax laws, can you make money? Certainly! You can cut 10 – 15 – or even 25% off your tax bill every year. Think about it. How much would a 25% reduction in your taxes be worth to you just this year?

You attend seminars, scour the real estate market, and do everything else you can think of to find a way so that you can make more money. The irony of it all is, if you learn the rules of law and to use various legal structures, you can make more money in everything you do. You don’t have to change what you are doing now. All you have to do is change your position in the law. Think about the rich people you know. It doesn’t matter what they are doing, they use the tax laws and all the other laws to their advantage and they make money. You can do that, just like they do. But, you have to have a legal foundation to build on.

You can’t build a house from the roof down. What do you have to build first? The foundation! You can’t build a financial fortune from the roof down either. You’ve got to have the foundation first. If you study the wealthy, you will find that every one of them has a legal foundation that they have built their wealth upon, and they have legal shields around their property to protect it from attacks.

The reason you don’t have a legal foundation and shields around your property is because of the cost, time, and frustration. If you have a lawyer set up shielding system, it will cost many thousands of dollars, and you probably won’t really get the protection you want. The process isn’t hard, but the lawyers make it very complicated to “protect their turf.” Most successful people learn that they have to understand what the opportunities in the law are, and they actually end up doing a lot of the “legal work” for themselves. Every wealthy person makes use of certain legal tools and principles. If you want to be rich, you have to learn to use the legal tools that the rich use.

Whatever you are doing today, if you understand the laws, you can make more money. Think about it. The rich make money at whatever they do. And, the rich just get richer. One of the major reasons they can do this is their use of legal techniques and structures. Their use of the laws puts them on the fast track to riches and lets them protect what they already have. Your use of the laws will do the same things for you.

I am really looking forward to helping you get repositioned in the law. At the Tampa REIA Meeting on November 13^th, I will overview the legal asset protection process and tools that can be used. At the Workshop on Saturday, November 15^th, we will get in and roll our sleeves up to dig deeper into how to use trusts, LLCs, corporations, and ERISA planning to get the maximum asset protection and tax benefits. We’ll actually spend a fair amount of time on the double asset protection you can get in addition to the “corporate shield” protection.

 Florida has some unique issue that have to be addressed for asset protection, so let’s make sure you are prepared. Join me.

 Lee R. Phillips
United States Supreme Court Counselor