Create your financial fortress – Before it is too late

Mark Goodson Welcome to the world of Asset Protection and Entity Structuring. It is an exciting field of knowledge, if correctly applied, that will catapult and secure your financial success. It is of the utmost importance to become educated in these concepts. In the following series of Articles, we will establish a solid foundation for your future educational growth in this arena. Knowledge of these basic concepts will enable you to determine if the Asset Protection professionals you engage actually know what they are doing.

Asset Protection/Entity Structuring is a very specialized arena, and just because a person is an attorney, an accountant, or a CPA does not mean they know anything about Asset Protection. I have been involved in this arena for over 20 years and I still learn new techniques everyday and so will you.

The main problem most beginners incur when delving into this arena, besides the confusion of all the terminology, is that every "so called professional" has different methods of accomplishing the same thing. For instance, the law firm that provides Private Nevada Corporations to my clients believes the C Corporation is the holy Mecca of asset protection. There are other professionals who preach that trusts are the only answer. Then you have all the local attorneys recommending LLC's because it is a hot buzzword, and the accountants suggesting proprietorship and S Corporations. So who do you listen to and who is correct?

During the upcoming weeks, my goal is to help you understand the basic concepts of this field of study. When we are done with this series of articles you will have a basic understanding of each possible building block required to build your financial fortress. In the process, I may or may not destroy a few myths and untruths, but I will certainly open your eyes to a world of tax reduction/deferment and/or elimination, while providing you the basic knowledge to construct your financial fortress and protect your hard earned efforts from greedy hands.

Our clients tend to be entrepreneurs who have many irons in many different fires. They earn anywhere from $50K a year to 5 Million. They are extremely busy people who crave education and then implement that knowledge into their lives. We firmly believe in educating our clients in how to setup and operate their structures. What good is it to have this intricate financial fortress, if you can't navigate from point A to point B, because you do not understand the direction of the walkways. Many of our Clients do not see a need to pay an attorney $1200 every time they need a new Limited Partnership or other entity, after all they are educated and can fill out blanks themselves and mail it to the Secretary of State. (I do recommend though that novices have their documentation reviewed by an attorney or a professional in this arena to verify your handiwork).

One of the first things we recommend to our clients is the most phenomenal educational package that has ever been assembled in the industry. Written by Jay Mitton who is one of the top ten Asset Protection attorneys in the United States. This package contains all the templates you will ever need. I use his package as my desk reference. Find out more.
This package gives you a complete educational foundation and it is taught by one of the most respected leaders in the industry, but I am not here to sell you anything, I am here to relay information. So let's start the journey!

The question I am asked most when I tell people I what I do is: "What is Asset Protection and Estate Planning?" My pat answer is, "It is a methodology of organizing ones assets so as to control, not own, in order to protect ones assets from lawsuits, liens and levies both from the government and civilly, with further consideration of wealth preservation, current and future tax reduction/deferral and smooth succession of the estate to the next generation with the least amount of legal interference and tax consequences".

In order to accomplish every aspect of that definition, it takes multiple entities structured in such a manner as to provide those goals and still be flexible enough to work in the real world. A professional who recommends just one structure or another is only working on a portion of the problem. In upcoming articles we will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each of the major building blocks being Corporations, LLC's, Limited Partnerships, and Trusts and then I will show you how to use them to construct your financial fortress. For this week, this is my story and I am sticking to it. Have a great week.

Mark Goodson

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