Announcer:
It’s time now on KROS for Financial Focus, brought to you by NelsonCorp Wealth Management. The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Any indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Registered representatives, securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated, a broker-dealer, member of FINRA, SIPC, Investment Advisor Representative, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Incorporated. A registered investment advisor, Cambridge and NelsonCorp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. Now here’s today’s Financial Focus program.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Good morning, and welcome to this week’s Financial Focus brought to you each and every Wednesday morning right here on KROS. Well, this is Nate. Got Mike joining me today, second Wednesday of April. This is flying by.
Mike Steigerwald:
Grass is green, but it’s little chilly.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Grass is green.
Mike Steigerwald:
A little chilly still.
Nate Kreinbrink:
A little chilly. Temperatures are going to warm up, but so is the rain. So is the rain.
Mike Steigerwald:
April flowers or April showers-
Nate Kreinbrink:
April showers.
Mike Steigerwald:
… bring May flowers.
Nate Kreinbrink:
I’m going to tell you, those flowers are going to be plenty watered by the route that we’re going. I mowed my grass for the first time on Sunday afternoon. Tried holding off, but it needed it. I needed to get it done then.
Mike Steigerwald:
It’s at that point. Time of year.
Nate Kreinbrink:
I started, and then within a half hour, my two neighbors on both sides of me started mowing too. So I think I opened the floodgate, so it is officially mowing season now, I guess. But it’s fun. Major League Baseball’s open. College basketball just kind of wrapped up. That’s an exciting time.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yeah. Fun time of year.
Nate Kreinbrink:
I mean, spring sports in Iowa and Illinois kind of going, and you know summer’s coming. It’s just…
Mike Steigerwald:
Matter of time.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Matter of time. Matter of time. This time of year also too. It’s kind of a, I don’t know, mixed emotions as far as deadlines coming up, tax deadline, tax April 15th is coming up pretty darn quick here.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yep.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Next week, I think hopefully I might be able to steal Andy for the show on April 15th, which is a tax deadline. So we’re getting close. If you have not gotten your taxes done or even thought about your taxes yet, it’s time to look at what your options are.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yep. Yep. So I mean, Andy was… I was lucky enough to have Andy join me a few weeks back, and just to kind of reiterate one thing that really sticks out and probably still relevant to our listeners today is that if at this point you have not filed, not the end of the world, but start. Time to look at filing those extensions. One of the things that Andy had mentioned, and again, just to reiterate, if I have to file an extension, that is not necessarily a red flag. And many people think, “Oh, the IRS is going to look at that as a red flag and come banging down my door asking questions.” Not necessarily the case. Better to do that than file without all of the documents. If you’re still scrounging up some last-minute things that you haven’t gotten or haven’t been able to track down, best to wait for those and get them and file a complete return as opposed to not filing with that just to get it in before the deadline.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Right. And two, I mean, keep in mind extensions. There’s a lot of people that file an extension, but that’s just an extension to file your taxes. If you owe, you still have to have that paid by April 15th. So again, it’s not an extension to not have to pay in. So if you’re thinking, “Oh, I’m going to pay, I’ll just file an extension and not pay them until October 15th.” Well, you’re probably going to have a little bit of interest that’s going to be added to whatever it is that you owe to be able to do that. So again, and that’s a great thing to keep in mind. I mean, sometimes documents just don’t get to you in time, or sometimes you just, for whatever reason, you’ve got some moving parts, and you just need-
Mike Steigerwald:
Deadline creeped up on you. Yeah.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Yes. So again, look at that one. The other thing too is if you’ve gotten your tax returns done for 2025 already and you’ve seen the result, and it may or may not be exactly what you thought it was going to be, or where we see it is if you have a life changing event that you forgot to account for by changing any withholding on your taxes, i.e. you were married and now you’re single, you go to married, you get a high increase. You work multiple jobs is one thing that we kind of see with that. If you’re going to make changes to your withholding, the earlier you do that in the year, the bigger impact that that will have to moving the needle to get that return done 12 months from now, more so to the tune that you want it to be.
And I think that’s an important thing. I mean, if you wait till end of November to make that withholding change, well, you probably only have maybe just a couple paychecks that it’s really going to impact. Is it really going to move the needle a whole heck of a lot at that point? Probably not. So the earlier that you can do that, the kind of less it would impact every pay period from now going out, but it’s an important thing to look at.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yeah. And certainly thinking of that, having those meetings and getting the results, and whether they are what you wanted or maybe not what you expected, and taking the advice from your preparer to say, “Hey, these are the changes that would need to be made going forward.” To your point, Nate, I mean, the sooner you can implement them, the better off your outcome will be next year. If you put it on hold, I mean, had a conversation the other day with a client that said, “Well, I tried to figure this out last year, but didn’t find the right form, didn’t get the paperwork done, fully anticipates basically the same results as the prior year.” So I mean, that’s reasonable to think that way. I mean, as long as you know that, that you had maybe had some advice given to you, didn’t follow through on it, kind of only so much that your preparer’s going to be able to do for you in terms of provide the advice, but to actually execute those changes, ball will be in your court.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Right. And I think one thing that I know, talking with Andy and Mike and them, one of the main things that they see is filling out that tax form when you first initially start employment. And there was some new tax forms as far as filling those out that were big implemented a couple years ago. They were a little more streamlined than what they used to be, but if you have multiple jobs, okay, that tax form is not knowing that you have multiple jobs, unless you account for it by withholding an additional amount on each of those jobs. So again, when you fill out your name on the top of that, what is it? W-
Mike Steigerwald:
Is that a W-4?
Nate Kreinbrink:
W-4 every tax or every time that you start a new position to tell them how much taxes to withhold, you fill out your name, and then there’s the, again, either single, married filing jointly, whatever. Most people answer that, and again, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, they answer that based off of what their marital status is, okay? And so if you’re married, you mark married, okay? It is not against the law. They are not going to come after you if you are married, and you mark single on that W-4 form. And what that does is that withholds the standard deduction based off of either a single tax filer or a married filing jointly. It’s not what you are; it’s not to have to coincide with what your tax form is.
Mike Steigerwald:
Tax status, basically.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Yes. It just is how you want that to be withheld accordingly. So, for instance, if you have, let’s say, two or three jobs, and you’re married, okay, you work, your spouse works. If you have three jobs and you work married filing jointly, each employer is going to withhold the full 30-some thousand-dollars standard deduction before they start withholding taxes. Well, job number two is going to do the same thing. Job number three is going to do the same thing. Your spouse is going to do the same thing when they do. So essentially, you have almost $120,000 that you have exempted or deducted on your W-4 forms before they’re going to start withholding taxes accordingly. Obviously, we know you don’t get the full standard deduction for every job that you have. You only get it one time.
Mike Steigerwald:
Right.
Nate Kreinbrink:
So again, that’s just a little thing to kind of coincide a little bit more, but that’s a big thing that they do, and they a lot of times recommend, especially for those people that are working multiple jobs.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yeah, yeah, certainly. Really important, like I said, just having that plan, taking the advice that you receive from your prepared, getting the results that you want, because as we’ve said multiple times on the show, at this time when you’re getting ready to file, the story’s already told, right? So now would be the time after those meetings to implement the changes or the recommendations that you’d received and kind of move forward to get the results that you want to achieve for the next tax year.
Nate Kreinbrink:
And I think too, I mean, when you look at it, we had some new tax laws that went into effect last July 4th. And again, if your situation from 2025 is going to be pretty similar to 2026 and you just got a big refund back, well, maybe you need to look at what you can do to maybe not get so much. Again, we look at a lot of times with tax planning and using some of that refund to do Roth conversions or some things like that in order to, again, utilize those tax laws with where they’re at. They are the rules that we have to play with. How can we use them to our advantage, and if we’re going to have them again, because a lot of those aren’t permanent. There’s a couple years down the road, they’re going to go away and now-
Mike Steigerwald:
They’ll change again.
Nate Kreinbrink:
… we’re right back to where we are. So again, utilize those rules while we have them to our advantage and make it work. And make it work.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yep, absolutely. And again, all comes down to having the plan and then just executing the plan, whether that’s tax wise, whether that’s any type of planning, healthcare planning, the investment planning, I mean, regardless of what it is, important to get the advice and then execute on the recommendations.
Nate Kreinbrink:
If you got questions, give us a call. We’d be happy to sit down with you. Mike, Andy, TJ, probably give them two weeks.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yeah. A little time to-
Nate Kreinbrink:
Give a little time.
Mike Steigerwald:
… breathe and catch up.
Nate Kreinbrink:
But before we run out of time, I did want to mention that every month the NelsonCorp team is featuring a new charity a month. This month’s charity for April is the Clinton Area Substance Abuse Council. Again, this is Nate and Mike bringing you this week’s Financial Focus. Thanks again for tuning in, and have a great rest of your week.
Announcer:
Financial Focus is a production of NelsonCorp Wealth Management in Clinton and Davenport. The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Any indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Registered representative securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated, a broker-dealer, member FINRA, SIPC, Investment Advisor Representative, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Incorporated, a registered investment advisor. Cambridge and NelsonCorp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. For more information, visit our website at www.nelsoncorp.com.
Announcer:
Check of the weather now brought to you by S. Kelly’s Designs.
Announcer:
A much warmer and very-