Adam Torres and Christopher Dixon and Samuel Dixon discuss tax planning.
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Show Notes:
Comprehensive retirement and tax planning takes a team approach. In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Christopher J. Dixon, RFC. and Samuel J. Dixon, RFC. Co-Founders of Oxford Advisory Group. Explore the Oxford Advisory Group approach to financial planning.
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About Oxford Advisory Group
Oxford Advisory Group is a private, family-owned retirement planning & wealth management firm that specializes in helping pre-retirees and retirees navigate their retirement years. From humble beginnings, Oxford quickly flourished into what it is today: a family firm rich in tradition and focused on enriching lives.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Christopher Dixon and Samuel Dixon. They are co founders over at Oxford Advisory Group.
Chris, Sam, welcome to the show. Thanks, Adam. Appreciate it. All right. So so big, big topic today, guys. So tax efficient strategies for retirees and advanced tax planning. So a lot, a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of executives that watch this show and Hey, who does not want tax efficient strategies?
So there’s a popular topic for us and great to have you both on, but to get this episode started, we’ll start it the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters. So at Mission Matters, our, our goal and our aim is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and business owners.
That’s what we do. Sam, Chris, what what mission matters to you? You know, same thing, empowering the environment those around us, the community our families. And that’s what really I would say for me. Is what matters the most at the end of the day. That’s what i’m looking at. Yeah, I would say also, you know getting Our clients to retire with actual confidence in them And that helps not just them but also their family their grandkids that kind of thing So we see it as a kind of a generational impact kind of is our mission not just Existing clients.
I want their grandkids be taken care of and know that we had a hand in that as well. It’s great. I love bringing mission based entrepreneurs on here to share, you know, why they do what they do how they’re doing it Really what we can all learn from that so that we all grow together So, you know great having you guys on and just to get us kicked off here I mean Did you know that you were going to be in finance or that you wanted to go down this route?
Like we’re all speaking for you shoot. No, for me, I I always wanted to be an attorney really. Right. And you know, I was going to take the LSAT and trying to decide what law school to go to and then talk to every single lawyer friend that I knew. And I asked them all the same question. Hey man, do you, do you like what you’re doing?
Right. That’s what I wanted to know. Yeah. And they all gave me the resounding same answer. I’m talking about, I’ve talked to like 20 dudes and they all said, no, don’t do it. Yeah. So I remember the day I was sitting in my car on the, on the phone and I had a little breakdown. Well, crap, what am I going to do now?
And I was trying to figure out what am I going to do? I just knew one thing. I knew I wanted to help people. I, you know, I don’t want to be a doctor because I don’t want to walk around in scrubs all day and be in a hospital. I thought that turning around, I could help people. But then, you know, through, through, through research and talking to people, really, I figured if you do this right, if me and Sam and Oxford, we do this right, retirement planning.
Then you actually can, you know, save people’s lives and help people the way I was wanting to begin with. What about you, Sam? So I had a little bit more goal of going actually into finance. So you drugged up the drug, you drug Chris in the, go ahead. I’ve always liked the numbers and everything when it comes to it.
You know, I initially wanted to do mergers and acquisitions, which is a lot different, but you don’t get to work with people. I enjoy that our firm gets to work with individuals and creating a custom plan for those individuals and not just some big block number. You know what I mean? So instead of like the wall street, Up there kind of finance.
I was like, hey, let me stay more main street where I can actually talk to people Instead of just looking at numbers all day. I love actually building the plans and getting to know the people as well Yeah, and then at what point did you decide that you’re going into into business together? Like I see the co founders there.
Well, how did that take place? I think if I remember correctly, Sam, I kind of drugged Sam into it. Oh, did you? Okay. I knew kind of how Sam’s brain worked. I was going to let that go, but yeah. I usually have the, the ideas or the bigger ideas, trajectory, vision, and whatever you want to call it. And Sam usually double checks that and decides, Hey, can we actually really do that or not?
Most of the time I have to inform Sam, Hey, I’ve already done it. Right. So then he’s got to work that problem out. You know, we, we got other brothers as well. And what we realized is, Hey, if you got three brothers in here, guess what? It doesn’t work. Too many heads, not good against each other, too many shoots in a fire.
But I would say our strengths and our weaknesses, we were able to recognize together that they actually compliment each other. That’s awesome. That’s a great story. And I, I, I, you know, I’ve done over 6, 000 interviews at this point and I, and I love when I have like, like family businesses and, you know, and two, whether it’s two brothers, two, you know, father, son, like all these different variations that I’m always interested in and kind of how that works.
So, so thank you for sharing. I want to get, let’s let’s jump around a little bit here today. I want to get into Oxford advisory group. So maybe let’s talk about that before we get a little bit further. Further into maybe some strategies and ways that you’re helping your clients. But just tell me about the firm overall.
You know, we’re a retirement planning focused firm with the emphasis on tax planning and estate planning. When we, when we started out, we said, look, we want to be different. We don’t want to be like Sam said, the big box down the road or just the broker. Right. One, we wanted to be comprehensive, right?
You come here and you can get it all right. Make, it makes it easy. And the, and the other is we said, Hey, where’s the void in the market? Where are people being you know, where’s what’s not being utilized and it was, it was taxation. You know, everyone gets the same old advice to lower your taxes or whatnot.
It’s how, you know, donate, make, make a charitable contribution. I’m sure you’ve even heard that one. That’s about as far as they get with an advisor. Right. So we said, Hey, there is a niche that we want to really focus on. Is there anything that kind of surprised you as you went down that niche and got and got further along?
And the reason I’ll tell you why I asked this question, because I feel like for the just to set it up, I feel like for most individuals, when they’re kind of thinking about taxes, they think about their CPA and doing their taxes, but they don’t understand there’s a whole nother world and level and layer there.
That, you know, people can benefit from even if they’re not ultra high net worth in a family office realm. Like there’s a whole lot more that maybe your CPA is not either aware of, they’re not doing and it’s just not, that’s not what they’re set up to do for most firms. It’s just not. So I agree with what you said, but is there anything that kind of surprised you as you kind of went down this route and started to get more complex with helping families when you got to kind of see behind the curtain and to see what, what most families situations actually look like?
Yeah, I I was pretty shocked to learn there’s 3. 7 million words in our tax code, right? So It’s massive and and how little usually i’d see investments come in the door quite a bit But it wasn’t really like an investment plan that had an income plan with a tax plan Kind of all talking to each other a little bit So we would see certain investments that are causing way more taxes for no reason And somebody’s portfolio just because they’d never had it looked at.
They never had a tax plan built with the investments, right? Hey, the investment could be doing fantastic too, but if it’s causing unnecessary additional taxes, let’s try to work on that a little bit. Let’s keep it fantastic investment wise, but let’s work on that tax strategy. Over there as well. Yeah. And, and I know that every, and I’ll preface this.
So for everybody watching this or listening to this, obviously each situation’s going to be different and you do want to work with somebody one on one when you’re getting tax advice or investment advice like that. So I’ll do the disclaimer there. But what, as you’re, as you’re kind of digging through portfolios, you’re digging through, you know situations for different clients, especially newer clients when they first come on board, what are some of the common things that you find that are just.
I would say, I don’t know about you, Sam, but I would say a lot of people look at their current situation with their retirement accounts, their IRAs, and they don’t, they don’t think there’s much they can do because their CPA or their other advisors told them, look, you can’t do anything about it. You just gotta, you know, pay, pay all that tax.
Well We, we’re not necessarily in a boat. Like you said, everyone’s different. And we have found that a lot of times there are things people can do if they’re retiree with brokerage accounts or IRAs, that they can, in fact, they do have options, that that’s the good thing I will tell you. They do have options.
What about you, Sam? Like when you’re digging into portfolio or otherwise, like anything that, yeah, I’ll probably second that, that there’s a lot of stuff that gets overlooked and, and I was surprised, I guess to answer the other question too, I was surprised at how much tax deferred money I see and client accounts when they come in.
With our you know, record debt levels are 34 trillion makes me tremble a little bit about deferring tax to the future. Right. So that, that was a little bit of a shock to me. And like Chris said, people thought, Hey, I’m just, I’m stuck there. I can’t do anything. Right. So it’s a little eye opening.
So, so not obviously not prescribing because, you know, somebody, you’d have to ask them one on one questions, but like, what are some of the strategies that you, that you implement when they make sense for, for clients? Like talk to me a little bit about the strategies. There, there’s, you know, the, like Sam said, the tax goes 3.
7 million words. And so you’re really trying to piece different parts together. So it’s less about, cause I get that question a lot, right? It’s, it’s less about, Hey, this one product. In fact, there is no one product. You have to understand the tax code pretty well, where things are at. We’re talking, you know, can come down to a couple of sentences, a 3.
7 million words, and it’s bringing those together, weaving them together. So you may have three or four different parts that now create a strategy. Right. And you gotta be creative thinking in this to, to be able to weave those together and create that strategy. But we view it as really an art form.
We view it as art, as our craft. And we spend a lot of time researching this shoot. I was just an hour ago, I was just literally talking with one of my CPAs going over a certain part in the tax code because of upcoming legislation. So it’s also constantly being involved. Right. Which most humans want to take the path of least resistance.
And so if we, if we take the opposite and I’m constantly trying to innovate for my clients that will come across. Tell me about your approach to just the financial planning overall, like talk, talk to me about just the approach. Like I saw your, you got, you’re bringing on a new, new client. Like where, where does that start?
Yep. So the first thing we look at is, again, we deal with primarily pre retirees, retirees. So we’re looking at, Hey, what kind of lifestyle do you want? I’m trying to get their goals up front. What are you trying to achieve first? And then we dump out the puzzle pieces. So we look at what they have. I always see retirement like a giant puzzle, right?
You got to fit together an income plan with an investment plan, with a tax plan, healthcare plan and legacy plan. So it’s actually kind of like five plans inside of one plan. It’s an equal in our opinion, a true retirement plan, right? That’s what you need. So, and you have to fit them together the right way, just like those puzzle pieces.
So we always start with the end in mind. Hey, how much do you want to live on? Right? And people usually have a number and then we increase it a little bit because they’re usually low balling, right? They usually spend more than they think they spend. Okay. I always tell them, Hey, look at your tax return last year.
How much came in the door? How much did you put away out of that? If you didn’t put it away, you spent it. Right. So that’s your actual expenses. Right. And that’s eyeopening to a lot of people. They’ve never actually looked at it like that. Right. So that gives us our target goal. And then that allows me to know, all right, here’s the goal we’re trying to reach.
How do I rearrange these puzzle pieces with the income plan, the tax plan, the investment plan, how do I get them to match up? To get that final picture. Right. So starting with the end of mine gives me a bullseye or a target to hit. Yeah. Yeah. I see that. And I think something that you both said a little bit earlier in the interview was that concept of being comprehensive.
So many people will maybe only look at the, and it’s not saying that they’re. Do anything wrong. There’s just different setups and you’re going for it. You’re going for a more comprehensive firm approach. So some people, some, some firms only look at the investment piece. Some firms only look at the tax piece.
Right. But correctly, if I’m wrong, you’re looking at the whole picture, right? Yeah, definitely. You know, we’ve got. You know, divisions for the everyday American. We’ve got divisions for the high net worth clientele. It’s a totally separate ordeal, you know, different services, but you know, they can get the property and casualty.
They can get their health insurance. You know, we tried to think, what would we want? What do I like? What would I want is to be able to call up one number. Right. And I can get a auto quote, home quote, I can get investment advice, tax advice, ongoing tax planning, right. All that now, does that take a lot of effort to put together?
Yeah. Right. It takes a lot of effort. Manpower got a lot of teams here. But yeah, that was the aim from the beginning. And so we’re in just for, for context for everybody that’s watching this, let’s just say in a month, a year, whatever. So we’re in March of 2024 lots going on. It’s election year, obviously all the other things that are going on, you know, post pandemic we know what the market’s doing late, like what should investors be thinking right now?
Like, well, like, what are some of the conversations that you’re having right now with your clients? I think just buttoning down the hatches a little bit. It’s an election year, but we also potentially might have some rate cuts. I don’t know if those are going to happen. So you kind of have two conflicting forces.
Nobody has the crystal ball on that one. I agree. Nobody, but you have two major forces kind of pitted against each other right now. So that’s when you really got to true your stuff up and be like, Hey, I got to have a plan if this market continues to run and I want to take advantage of it. I also got to have a plan if this market doesn’t run up and it runs down, I got to be able to pivot really quick.
And I can’t be worried about that when it happens. I got to have the plan ahead of time. So I have a plan instead of reactionary, right? Cause when we’re reactionary, it’s usually emotional reactions. And with investing, as you know, you shouldn’t get emotional. It should already be preplanned. I’m going to do this.
If this happens, I’m going to do this. If this happens that way, we don’t get into the. You know, losing a bunch of money and making bad decisions out of emotions. And Adam, so most people, they’ve got the same plan for both of those scenarios, or at least that’s what they’re told when they call their advisor, broker, whoever it may be.
Markets, hey, what if the market goes up? Hang in there, ride it up. Well, what if the market goes down? Hang in there. You know, good luck to you. They’re told the same thing either way, which we think is erroneous. We think those need to be two different types of plans and two different types of strategies.
But the thing is, you have to have enough wherewithal, focus, and strategy to do that planning beforehand. Like Sam said, you can’t be reactionary when it happens. It’s too late if you do that. Well said well, Chris, Sam, I just want to say, first off, it’s been great having you on the show. What’s next? I mean, what’s next for you both?
What’s next for Oxford advisory group? You know we’re just going to keep expanding, you know, we, we have offices in our main offices in Orlando, Florida, Tampa, Sarasota, Naples, the Carolinas. We’re going to just try and keep expanding to reach and help more people. Wouldn’t you say that’s, Sam, what would you say?
What’s next? Yeah, I would exactly what he said. Our big goal is to educate as many people as possible, whether that means they come on with our farm or not. I don’t care. I want education out there because I feel like there’s so much misinformation out there. Where everybody has an opinion on that. So everybody has an opinion on that.
We just want to give the education and let you come to your own opinion on it. Right. So our goal is to help as many families and educate as many families as possible out there so they can make informed decisions and not reactionary decisions. And if somebody’s watching this or listening to this, and if they want to learn more and connect with you and your team what’s the best way for them to do that?
You know, they can always go to our website. You know, we got the main line office number on there. You can shoot us a, an email. You know, but we’re approachable, you know, you can call in, someone will pick up, you will be routed, you will be able to talk to somebody. We do have a lot of events going on. We do like three.
Three educational events. Like Sam said, a week to try three per week. So like 150 a year we’re doing in different cities around central Florida, Southwest Florida, Tampa. We’ve got radio shows in all those areas trying to get that education out. TV shows. So, yeah. Yeah. And, and in order for people to get on that list or figure it out, if they go to the website, like that’s the, that’s the best spot, right?
Yeah. If they call in, we’ll, we’ll let them know the next upcoming event in their area, and we’ll get them on that list. Awesome. And then are some of these, are these virtual in person, just to clarify? Yeah, I, you know, I hate, I like in person. I just want to clarify for everyone. That’s all. Yeah. We have some, we have some virtual options as well.
But we do a ton of in person, which I feel like I can get Q and a, and talk about what people actually want to hear. Right. Yep. We also have clients, you know, all over the country, really. And so if somebody does want to do virtual, we do that. We have special, you know, virtual parts in our office just for that.
So we definitely do that daily. Fantastic. Well, for everybody watching, just so you know, where we’ll, we’ll put all the links and everything else in the show notes so that you can just click on the links, head right on over to the website and definitely call in Oxford advisory group and get more information.
Speaking of the audience and those watching This is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t hit that subscribe button yet. Hey, this is your invitation. Hit that subscribe button. We have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing.
And if you’re longterm a listener or fan, then Hey, leave us a review if you haven’t done it yet. We sure do appreciate it. And Sam, Chris, again, thank you so much for coming on this show. I wishing you much more continued success over at Oxford Advisory Group. Thank you. Thanks, Adam. See you later.
Have a good one.
