Click below to listen to Episode 21 – Understanding Qualified Retirement Plans Part 2
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Episode 21 – Understanding Qualified Retirement Plans Part 2
In Part II of our series, Understanding Qualified Retirement Plans like IRA’s, Roth IRAs, 401k’s, 403b’s, SEP IRAs, SIMPLE IRAs and Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). Bob & Mary Jo discuss the specifics and the rules associated with each type of plan including:
- Required Minimum Distributions
- Distribution Rules
- Qualified Charitable Distributions
- And more
Individual Retirement Plans (contributory plans) are discussed before getting into Employer Sponsored Contributory Plans for 401k’s, 403b’s 457 and Thrift savings plans. Lastly, small business owner plans are discussed, including SEP and SIMPLE IRA plans.
HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS® and Mary Jo Lyons, CFP®
Mentioned In This Episode
Christian Financial Advisors
Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
Mary Jo Lyons, CFP®, CKA®
Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[INTRODUCTION]
Bob: Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, a weekly podcast where we talk about ways to integrate your faith with your finances. This is Bob Barber.
Mary Jo: And I’m Mary Jo Lyons.
Bob: Are you ready to learn how to apply biblical wisdom to everyday financial decisions?
Mary Jo: Join us as we look at integrating your faith with your finances. If it’s your first time listening, welcome to our podcast, and if you’re a returning listener, welcome back.
[EPISODE]
Mary Jo:
We’re going to talk more about understanding retirement plans, including IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401ks, 403bs, SEP IRAs, simple IRAs, and even get into required minimum distributions and what those mean and require.
Bob:
Do you think that went over anybody’s head what they just heard there, Mary Jo?
Mary Jo:
It’s a lot of acronyms.
Bob:
It is a lot of acronyms. In a recent episode, we talked about procrastination. When it comes to retirement savings, many of us are guilty of doing that. So, this is another “priority in retirement” podcast today because sometimes retirement seems so far away for some but so close for others. And in our last episode, we looked at the history of retirement plans and how social security got its start. So in today’s episode, we’re going to be looking at all the specifics regarding the most popular types of retirement plans that Mary Jo just mentioned, how they work, how much you can contribute, and what the rules are. I love the scripture, as we are Christian Financial Perspectives, That 2 Corinthians 6:1 says. It’s actually from the New Life Version of the Bible, “We are working together with God and we ask you from our hearts not to receive God’s loving favor and then waste it.” I just love that scripture because it talks about how God has given us favor by having the ability to make an income. And when we take that income and waste it, I think we’re not doing ourselves justice. That’s not a godly thing to do. So we want to be careful when God blesses us that we don’t waste it and save for our future retirement,
Mary Jo:
There’s another great scripture that I think also speaks to retirement readiness in a way. It speaks about self control, which is a hard when we’re faced with our savings goals versus spending on earthly stuff in the secular world and all the demands we see today and the pressures to buy, buy, buy. But we really want to stress that individuals can’t invest their way to retirement readiness. They have to save their way to retirement readiness. And you might hear me say that again, but it’s just kind of my biggest passion. So it is talking about our savings goal and there’s no time like the present. The other scripture that I like around this is from 2 Peter chapter 2:3-5, “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence, and because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises, supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence and moral excellence with knowledge.” So that’s our goal for today is to impart knowledge to our listeners.
Bob:
Are you ready to go with it, Mary Jo, cause there’s a lot to go through, isn’t there?
Mary Jo:
Let’s do it. Get your listening hats on.
Bob:
All right. So let’s start with the easiest retirement plans first, which most of us know about. And that’s the traditional IRA. For 2019, the maximum contribution that you can put in a traditional IRA is $6,000 per person or actually, if you’re over 50, you can put $7,000 per person. Now, I want you to understand that putting money in an IRA may not be tax deductible because it depends on what your income is and other plans that you may be putting money into.
Mary Jo:
Bob, we want our listeners to remember that in our first episode, part one on retirement plans, we shared that qualified plans are those that the “contributions” qualify as a reduction or deduction from taxable income. This is true for the individual, as well as the employer. The deduction is restricted if individuals making the contribution participate in an employer sponsored plan.
Bob:
So again, to emphasize that deduction. It may be restricted due to the individual’s level of income, and that depends on the modified, adjusted gross income. You’ll hear that referred to as MAGI, and a deduction may be allow for all non or a portion of your IRA contribution. So, a lot of people that max out their 401k or their 403bs and thrift savings plans that we’re going to be talking about here later in the program, they may not be able to put anything into an IRA as a deduction. Many I know of, Mary Jo, they actually don’t put money into an IRA if they have those other plans.
Mary Jo:
That’s typical, but they can if they have enough and they want to continue to save for retirement in a tax deferred way. So, you can contribute, you may not be able to deduct it.
Bob:
So in 2019 deductions are phased out at these numbers. If you’re single and you’re earning between $64,000 and $74,000 – so it starts phasing out at $64,000. So, if you go above that $74,000, you won’t get to deduct what you’re putting in an IRA if you’re single. And if you’re married filing jointly, those phase outs start at $103,000 on up to $123,000. So again, if you go above $123,000, there’s not going to be anything that you can deduct for that. And then there’s married filing separately, which the phase out range is actually $0 to $10,000.
Mary Jo:
One of the things I want to stress is a working spouse can fund an IRA for a non-working spouse. The deductability of that contribution is subject to the same phase out rules that you were just sharing with us, Bob. But I think this is really important for our listeners, especially all the stay at home moms that are out there or if you know a stay at home mom or one of your daughters is a stay at home mom. I would really encourage you to recommend that the family fund the IRA. The stay at home mom is working. She’s working really hard, and from a psychological benefit, everybody should have retirement savings in their own name. So she’s working for the family and the family should be funding her IRA. So even if her spouse is contributing to the 401k, I think it’s just a great thing that they also set up an IRA for the spouse that staying at home, and they begin to make contributions so that she or he are making retirement contributions in their own name. I think it’s just a psychological thing that nobody can take away from you, and it’s a huge benefit. I really encourage it.
Bob:
I do too. I think that is a wonderful thing to do. I encourage that always with everyone that are clients here at Christian Financial Advisors.
Mary Jo:
And Bob, we’ve talked about the traditional IRA. And if you are thinking about funding an IRA, but it’s not deductible, that makes a Roth IRA a possibility for you. And so these are also an individual contributory plan. Contributions are not tax deductible, but it’s a good solution for anyone who doesn’t qualify for a deductible IRA, but you do have to meet some income limitations. So why don’t you share those income limitations with our listeners.
Bob:
Yeah. So those income limitations, I do have people call me all the time, Mary Jo, and they’re making over $200,000 a year and they’re wanting to put money in a Roth IRA. So, they can’t do that, bottom line. So, let’s get to these actual numbers for single and head of households. It starts at $122,000, and then it peaks out at $137,000. So what I’m referring to is if you’re single and your income is over $137,000, you’re not going to be able to put money in a Roth IRA. For married couples, that range phases out from $193,000 to $203,000. So really the bottom line is if you’re making over $200,000 a year, you’re not going to get to put money in a Roth IRA either if you’re married, filing jointly. This phase out range for a married individual filing a separate return that makes a contribution to a Roth IRA is not subject to an annual cost of living adjustment. And that remains 0 to $10,000. So really if you’re married, filing separate returns, I guess, forget the Roth IRA, wouldn’t you say, Mary Jo?
Mary Jo:
Sounds that way. The other thing we want to touch on is that Roth IRAs are not subject to required minimum distributions. Therefore, they’re really one of the best ways to leave money to the next generation, wouldn’t you say, Bob?
Bob:
I would. And don’t forget that we work with a lot of people that like to do IRA conversions to a Roth, but there’s a lot of complex rules there. I’m not even going to get into those on today’s podcast. But if you would like to talk about converting a traditional to a Roth, just remember this. Anytime you convert, whatever you convert is going to be considered income for that year. And if you’re in a high tax bracket, it may not make sense to do it because we see a lot of that. I have a lot of folks, they’re making that high income, over a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. They can still do some conversion, but they’re in such a high tax bracket. It’s just going to add insult to injury already on top of their income by converting. And you want to convert the whole thing. You don’t want to take money out, if that makes sense. Like in other words, if you’re converting from the traditional to the Roth and you’re converting $30,000, you want to convert all 30. Now you just have to pay tax on an extra 30
Mary Jo:
That’s exactly right, Bob. But one of the things that we want to think about is maybe the years to do that are the years right after you quit working when your earned income is less and before you turn 70.5 and have to start taking required minimum distributions out. For most people, those are their lowest tax bracket years. And so they might want to take a look at, and this is where working with a good CPA comes in handy, is if they have room to convert a portion of their IRA to a Roth, you just want to make sure you don’t convert so much that it bumps you up into a higher tax bracket. Look at how much extra room you have on your bracket, and maybe you convert small portions of it each year. Anything you convert now is less you have to take out in the way of required minimum distributions later on.
Bob:
You saw me raising my hand. That’s exactly what I was going to tell you. That’s the big thing is that you don’t have to take required minimum distributions out of a Roth IRA. And I tell you, a lot of our podcast listeners are not above 70, but we do have a few of those that are, and that seems to always be a concern of their’s. They’re so concerned. Am I taking my RMD? Am I taking my RMD? And with the Roth, you wouldn’t have to worry about that.
Mary Jo:
And I think it’s important to, what I call, diversify across the tax code. And it’s great when every individual not only do they have a traditional IRA, but they have some monies in a Roth, but they also have sufficient after tax savings. That gives you a lot of flexibility down the road. If you’re subject to those income limitations and it keeps you from qualifying for a Roth now, and you’re still working, check to see if your employer offers a Roth 401k, cause that might be your best option for participating in a Roth.
Bob:
All right. So we’ve said a lot about those IRAs, traditional and Roth. Now, we’re going to get into the employer sponsored contributory plans, which so many of you are familiar with that are listening to our podcast today. The 401k or the 403b or the thrift savings plan if you’re working with the military. We’re going to get into these contribution levels first, and the 401k, 403b, 457 plan is another one, thrift savings plan. These all have pretty much the same contribution limits. And for 2019, those contribution limits are $19,000. So you can put up to $19,000 into one of these plans. If you’re over 50 and you’ve got a catch up provision, you can put another $6,000. That’s going to knock that up to where you could put up to $25,000 of your income. That’s not even including the match that your employer is going to make, which the employer, depending on how nice they are, can put an additional $37,000 into a 401k, 403b, thrift savings plan, which is $56,000 altogether if you’re below 50 or $62,000 above 50. Those are some serious dollars. I just want you to think about this. Say, you’re making up to $100,000 income. Your effective tax bracket is about 20%, 25%. Whatever you put into these plans, you’re lowering your tax bracket by that amount. So, let’s say you put $10,000 in a plan and your effective tax bracket is 20%, you’re saving $2,000 on taxes. So, it makes a lot of sense to put money into these plans.
Mary Jo:
For those higher income earners, that’s a lot of tax savings. So if you can avoid that and really think about what that does to your overall tax liability each year, it’s a huge benefit.
Bob:
Oh yeah. You think about folks in the higher tax brackets. We’re talking $12,000 – $15,000 in tax savings. Now we’re just going to go into the different plans. I’m going to go into one plan and Mary Jo’s going to go into another. We’re going to tell you the different rules behind one. The first one that so many are familiar with is the 401k. The 401k is considered a qualified retirement plan that allows eligible employees – they gotta be eligible – of a company to save and invest for their own retirement on a tax deferred basis. Only an employer is allowed to sponsor a 401k. So, your employer has to be sponsoring one for you to participate in it. And it can be funded with pretax or after tax dollars. So, we were talking about the tax savings. If you do put some after tax dollars in, cause there’s a Roth 401k. Some plans offer that. Some others don’t, but that would be your after tax dollars.
Bob:
The contributions are usually automatically withheld from your paycheck. So, you start off at $50 a month and then you go to $75 and before you know it, you’re at $300 or $500 or even $1,000 a month. And that’s the way I like to start people, Mary Jo, is in a lower amount. Get used to that and then just incrementally add $25 more every couple of months, and you don’t miss it. And then eventually, you’re way up there to where you’re putting large dollars into this 401k plan for your retirement.
Mary Jo:
Bob you’ve said, pay yourself first. So the way I like to encourage that is to increase that contribution every year on January 1st or every year when you get your annual raise. So a lot of firms, they can pretty much bank on a cost of living raise each year. So that’s a great time to up your contribution amount.
Bob:
I agree with you there.
Mary Jo:
I know we’re throwing around a lot of numbers and a lot of acronyms, so just bear with us, but we get lots of questions on these plans. We felt this would be a really helpful episode. So the next one is the 403b plan. This is designed for public school employees and certain tax exempt organizations such as hospitals, nonprofits, and museums. This is where I’ve had a lot of experience in my former life in dealing with a lot of these plans. They are also known as a tax sheltered annuity. So typically what that means is that can be turned into a stream of lifetime income if you desire. So a 403b plan is set up as an annuity, which you can either take distributions out or you can convert it to a stream of income. These are funded through elective employee salary deferrals, and some optional employer contributions. So after tax contributions may also be allowed. And we talked about that with both the 401k and 403b plan. What’s really important is that those stay segregated. Maybe you want to roll that over. You need to know which contributions were before tax and which ones were after tax and your plan administrator or your employer is responsible for auditing that and keeping great records on those contributions.
Bob:
So we’ve touched on the 401k. We’ve touched on the 403b. A lot of you might not be in either one of those, but maybe you have a 457 plan because this is designed for state and local government employees, including police officers, firefighters, and other civil servants, and some high paid executives at certain nonprofits like hospitals, charities, and unions also get access to a 457 plan on top of a 403b plan.
Mary Jo:
That’s a lot of our listeners. Think about how many police officers and firefighters that are out there and people that work for hospitals. It certainly is a way to contribute more.
Bob:
There is similar funding, just like the 403b and the 401k. Contributions are pretax. You don’t pay taxes until you take the distributions. If you take the money out prior to 59.5, though, the distribution is not subject to the typical 10% penalty in a 457 plan
Mary Jo:
The next one that we’re going to talk about is the thrift savings plans. These are referred to as TSPs, and they’re designed for federal employees or members of the uniformed services. They also have automatic payroll deductions. There’s a choice of tax treatments, again, pretax and after tax. Sometimes, there’s a raw provision aloud. And the one thing that’s interesting about these plans is they often allow for in service withdrawals. I’m going to back up a little bit. So for a lot of employer plans, such as a lot of 401ks, maybe your employer doesn’t have the best investment solutions available. So if they allow in service withdrawals, this may or may not be something that you want to look into. It just typically means that you can pull money out of your current employer plan and roll it into an IRA that becomes self directed. And for us at Christian Financial Advisors, we specialize in biblically responsible investing, and you probably don’t have access to that with your employer plan. So if that’s important to you and you have access to an inservice withdraw, it may be something to look at and we can certainly help you with that.
Bob:
As you can guess, we see a lot of the thrift savings plans. We’re in New Braunfels in between San Antonio and Austin. San Antonio is a big military city. So we see that the thrift savings plans probably more than any other plan, just because of where we’re located, so close to all the military bases. There’s other plans that we’re going to get into, but it kind of falls into different categories now. We’ve talked about the 401k, the 403b, the thrift savings plan, the 457, a few of you may have what’s called an employee stock ownership plan. And that’s referred to as an ESOP. And we’re not going into a lot of detail on that because not a lot of you have that option, but I just wanted to let you know that we understand ESOPs. And if you need some help with your Aesop plan, definitely give us a call and we’ll be able to go over that with you.
Mary Jo:
You’re absolutely right, Bob. Those can get pretty darn complicated, but it’s a great benefit.
Bob:
Well, then we have what’s called the profit sharing plans. It is a type of defined contribution plan, and it’s discretionary employer contributions only. And that vesting schedule may apply. So it looks something like this. Maybe that profit sharing plan, the company is going to distribute out 5% across the board and that’s how they could do that through your defined contribution plan, because you put that inside of a 401k type of plan. Does that make sense?
Mary Jo:
Yes. Next we’re going to talk about retirement plans designed for small business owners.
Bob:
There’s basically two plans that we’re going to talk about here. Well, actually three. We’re going to talk about the simple plan, the SEP plan, and a solo 401k. But the simple plan is a plan that I work with a lot, because we are a Christian company, and we’ve worked with a lot of Chick-fil-A owners over the years. For some reason, the simple just fits them perfectly. And the simple is less expensive and much easier to set up than a 401k. It’s for your smaller employees, for those with fewer than 100 employees, which is the majority of our land. We’ve done a lot of simple IRAs over the years. It works really good for anyone, say, less than 20 employees, and here’s the way the simple works. So, it’s not the same contribution amounts that you can put into the 401k that we mentioned earlier. The employee can put up to $13,000 if they’re below 50, and they can put in an additional $3,000 if they’re above 50. So it’s a total of $16,000. And this is what’s interesting about this plan, Mary Jo, is that you could make, let’s say you have a part time mom that’s working over at Chick-fil-A and she makes $13,000 in a year and they didn’t need the income for the family. She could take all $13,000, put it in that simple plan, 100% of it. We see a lot of this with people that are working in a part time capacity outside the home that’s not the breadwinner, and they just want to save that towards their retirement. And again, if they’re above 50, they can go up to $16,000 and then the company can match whatever they make up to a 3% match.
Mary Jo:
Bob, I want to encourage our listeners if you are a small business owner out there and you have been thinking about offering a retirement plan, we really encourage you to kind of give that some serious thought because it’s a great way to increase loyalty, but also make them sticky and to really compensate them in a way. I think, as an employer, it’s also partly your responsibility to help employees begin to save and prepare for their financial futures. So regarding the simple IRA, there’s actually two different types. There’s one where all of the employees have to stay at the same financial service firm that the plan is at, that’s called a 5305, but then there’s also what’s known as a 5304, and the employees can go open their own simple account wherever they want to, and the employer will then direct their contribution to that provider. There’s some flexibility in there for employees as well.
Bob:
Mary Jo, when we first started doing the simples, we did most of them were 5305, but now we do the 5304. The reason we do that is because, let’s say, the owner of the Chick-fil-A has a larger account that would require a managed account. Maybe they have $50,000 or $100,000 in the account, so they can have that account in our managed program. And then their employees can pick a totally different plan wherever they want to go with that. It enables us to really separate these accounts, and it makes a lot of sense to do the type where you can go with two different vendors.
Mary Jo:
They typically have smaller balances, so they may be best served going to a do-it-yourself financial services firm that has low fees, and they’re not paying for active management when they have relatively low balances. So that’s a great point, Bob.
Bob:
That’s exactly right.
Mary Jo:
So the next one we’re going to talk about is a SEP IRA, which is called a simplified employee pension plan. These are designed for business owners with 0 to 5 employees. It lets employers and self-employed contribute significantly more than they would be able to to a traditional IRA. And the contribution limits are up to $56,000 or 25% of taxable income. This is the kicker, however, and I know, Bob, you’ve got some thoughts around this. The employers must make proportional contributions to all full time employees after three years of employment and over the age of 21.
Bob:
Yeah. So if you do the SEP and we’ve done quite a few of these over the years, but as a company grows, I’m not really in favor of the SEP because there’s no vested interest on the employee side. The employer is putting all the money in, and if the employee decides to leave the company after six months, the employee gets to take that money with them. So if you don’t have any vested interest in something, what would keep you from taking the money?
Mary Jo:
That’s exactly right, Bob. And finally, we’re going to talk about a solo 401k, and this is a way for an independent business owner who wants a 401k option, but they’re just one employer and one person firms. So, I know you’ve got some experience there as well, Bob.
Bob:
We’ve done quite a few solo 401ks over the years, but we’ll look at it and we’ll say, well, is it better to do a SEP or the solo? So, it really depends on where your income is. This is something that we need to get with a CPA and figure out what’s the best route to go.
Mary Jo:
So we covered a lot of the most popular types of retirement plans and there’s others out there, but they’re not nearly as common. We’re not going to spend time on those for the sake of today’s discussions. We really wanted to just hit on the most popular that would apply to most of our listeners. And Bob, I think there’s also some defined benefit plans out there. So something else that we haven’t really talked a lot about. If you have a defined benefit plan, certainly give us a call and we’d be happy to talk to you about it.
Bob:
And I want to mention in there, the defined benefit plan is on top of the defined contribution plan. So you can have a 401k and a defined benefit plan because the 401k is a contribution plan. Mary Jo, we’ve done a lot of these defined benefit plans with folks that are in our Eagle Ford Shale that have a very, very high income and they need all the tax deduction they can get because they may have a windfall where they have $500,000 or a million dollars comes in. We set them up where their oil and gas, mineral rights are running like a business. And then we can contribute to a defined benefit plan up to like $200,000 or more. On top of that, they can do a defined contribution plan. We’re talking some very, very serious tax savings, like tax savings in the $50,000 range because they’re in that high, high tax bracket. But again, it’s very complex and this is something that we’d have to discuss with you off the podcast.
Mary Jo:
And that’s a good segue, Bob. If you are listening to us today, keep in mind that this is part two of understanding retirement plans. If you missed our previous episode, look for part one of understanding retirement plans where we talk more about the differences between defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans. One key thing to keep in mind, there are different rules for key employees and highly compensated individuals that may apply to the defined benefit plan. So we’ll touch on that. If you have questions, give us a call directly.
Bob:
So as we get close to the end here of today’s podcast, let’s go over some distribution rules. First, withdrawals before 59.5 are subject to a 10% penalty in most of these plans. Distributions are required, also, after you turn 70.5. This is called the RMD, required minimum distribution. There’s a calculation that is done and that amount must be withdrawn on an annual basis. Mary Jo, are you going to go into some of these other rules?
Mary Jo:
So RMDs are calculated based on a formula – that the IRS of course provides for us – that basically calculates what it will take for the account to be depleted at the end of the owner’s life expectancy. After all, the IRS wants their money. So they’ve got it planned so that when you die, they’ve gotten what’s theirs.
Bob:
Yes, they do. That’s right.
Mary Jo:
But the one key thing here is if you fail to take your required minimum distribution on time, there’s a penalty and it’s a steep penalty, 50% of what the required amount was. So ,don’t let that be you. If you’re working with an advisor, make sure that they help you calculate that each year and help you plan for how you want to take that out. This additional taxable income also could push you into a higher tax bracket. It may also reduce your eligibility for certain tax credits and deductions. You want to be really thoughtful about your options there, which brings us to the qualified charitable distribution. So Bob, why don’t you talk a little bit about that?
Bob:
Well, to eliminate or reduce the impact of the RMDs that we see and paying tax on that, charitably inclined investors may want to consider making a qualified charitable distribution. So they take that RMD and they give that directly to a charity, and you can distribute up to a $100,000 depending on how high that RMD would be. And you can go beyond the RMD, by the way, if you’re above 70.5, to a qualified charity, and you can exclude that completely from your taxable income. But remember, it has got to be made payable to the charity. You don’t take it yourself and then give it to the charity. You go directly from your qualified IRA plan to the charity.
Mary Jo:
This is a huge benefit. And one we’re certainly willing to help you with. God does love a cheerful giver. So as we wrap up today’s episode on understanding retirement plans, we’d like to leave you with this thought. It’s time to press on. In Philippians 3:12-16, Pressing Toward the Goal: “I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection, but I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing, forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you, but we must hold on to the progress that we’ve already made.”
Bob:
So as we end today’s podcast, if we’ve created retirement confusion, feel free to give us a call anytime at 877-71-TRUTH, and we’ll be glad to go over all of these types of retirement plans and which might be the right one for you and all these rules. We don’t expect you to take all this in and write all this down. There’s a lot of confusion out there, but Mary Jo and I are here to help guide you through that confusion. Give us a call.
[DISCLOSURES]
This broadcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information on the subjects covered. It is not however intended to provide specific legal tax or other professional advice for specific professional assistance. The services of an appropriate professional should be sought. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Mary Jo Lyons. Bob and Mary Jo do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc. DBA Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor.