Sarah Riegelhuth On Helping Millennials Become Financially Free & How To Manage A Remote Team

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Is it true that millennials don’t know how to handle money? Millennials are our future leaders, so if they lack financial education, what does that mean for our future? This education gap inspired our guest, Sarah Riegelhuth, to create a community called Wealth Enhancers – a Financial Planning and Advice Company for Gen Y’s and Millennials across Australia.

In today’s episode, I sit down with Sarah, who is a serial entrepreneur and one of Australia’s leading finance experts. She is also the Author of ‘Get Rich Slow: Start Now, Start Small to Achieve Real Wealth.’ Sarah is passionate about personal finance and helping people, truly embodying her company’s purpose of enabling millennials to become financially free.

We kickstart this episode by asking Sarah about her passion for finance and her experience in the industry. She shares that with Wealth Enhancers, they built a community for high achieving millennials who want to be the best they can be. They believe that current and future leaders must have financial stability, so they can achieve their personal goals, live their values, and create a better world.

We also learn how Sarah has built Wealth Enhancers with a fully remote team, and discover the benefits and issues behind this strategy.

We talk about Sarah’s latest project – Wealth Creation for Millennials. It’s a Free 4-week personal finance course that covers everything millennials need to know about money. Tune in to gain insights on how to lead a remote team, financial tips for business owners, and how mindset has played a role in Sarah’s success.

What You Will Discover in This Episode:

How & why Wealth Enhancers serve the Millennial market.
How building businesses that give back can create a better world.
What B Corp is and why it’s important for entrepreneurs to have their certification.
How Sarah’s trip to Cambodia changed her life.
How to balance running a profitable business with giving back and doing good.
How Sarah developed an abundance mindset to get to where she is now.
A word of advice from Sarah on how to maintain a remote team that can deliver excellent work.
The strategies Sarah uses to ensure that Wealth Enhancers consistently delight their customers.

Resources:

Wealth Creation for Millennials – Free Course

Who by Geoff Smart

Connect with Sarah

Sarah’s Website: WWW.SARAHRIEGELHUTH.COM

Sarah’s Facebook

Sarah’s Instagram

Sarah’s LinkedIn

Are you enjoying the podcast? Listen to the episode here and leave us a review:

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/sarah-riegelhuth-on-helping-millennials-become-financially/id1442173853?i=1000424016702&mt=2
Stitcher Radio: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/inspiring-business-for-good/e/57248322?autoplay=true

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7 mistakes keeping business owners struggling for cash

It’s always been our mission to help families pull more money, time and happiness from their business…

But if you look at the stats, not a lot of businesses are actually achieving this…

Of the almost 1.9 million small businesses around Australia, 60% either –

earn less than $200,000 in revenue
cannot afford a team
are unprofitable
or don’t pay themselves a decent salary

Worse still, ¾ took on debt, did so for survival.

In working with thousands of business owners over the last 7 years, we too have seen that the majority struggle for cash at some point during the Entrepreneur Journey.

Perhaps you can relate …

If there has ever been a time that you’ve wondered how you’re gonna make payroll, or pay the next BAS, then your primary job as a business owner is to get Cashed Up.

There are 7 mistakes that business owners make that are keeping them struggling for cash. Avoid them and you’re well on your way to getting Cashed Up.

P.s. Looking forward to seeing you at the Cashed Up book launch at our NEW offices in Fortitude Valley next Tues 24th at 5:30pm.

SAVE $500,000 TAX | Accounting that pays for itself

We are well known for a campaign we ran two years ago called Save $500,000 Tax. It was a bold and audacious target to save our clients half million dollars in tax by proactively implementing cutting edge tax saving strategies.

We didn’t think we’d actually get the $500,000 tax savings but we knew that we had to GO BIG or GO HOME.

We ended up saving our clients a huge $1.2M in tax in 12 short weeks and went on to be name Top 100 Companies in Australia and featured on many platforms including The DENT Podcast, Small Business Big Marketing, The Courier Mail and TEDx, to name a few.

Most importantly since that campaign we’ve now been able to help our clients save a total $2.35M dollars in tax or $18,000 each business which means our service pays for itself 3 – 4 times and our clients tell us they use to reinvest back into growing their businesses and taking their families on holiday.

Tax on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency

I’d like to clarify some thoughts around the tax on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency profits.

Background of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin has sometimes been referred to as the ‘currency of the underworld’. But whatever your view, it is likely that the currencies of the future will be cryptocurrencies.

This topic is fairly controversial, especially in the last sort of four or five months when Bitcoin shot through the roof (December 2017). This has lead onto more focus in the media, and an increase of conversations that we’ve had with our clients about the subject.

Bitcoin has been around since January 2009, and is a type of virtual currency. You might have heard the word cryptocurrency, which Bitcoin is one example of. But there’s lots and lots of other cryptocurrencies as well now that have come out since Bitcoin. There’s literally hundreds of them, if not thousands, and more and more people are working on developing their own cryptocurrency.

Here’s a list of the top ones by market capital: coinmarketcap.com

There’s people on both sides of the fence: some saying, “You’re going to lose all your money.” But on the other hand, there’s people making millions of dollars.

In the end, there’s people out there making money and there’s people out there losing money. But that’s not the point of what we’re here to talk about – go and rant on Facebook about that.

We’re here to talk about the tax effects, and what you need to consider from a tax perspective.

Tax on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies

I might pre-empt this by mentioning I actually bought and sold some cryptocurrency. But in no way am I a trader and I’m making millions of dollars from this. I actually put some money into it, so I could see how the crypto-world works, and how you actually buy and sell these currencies, and transact in them.

Now the first thing to consider is the ATO haven’t been very public on their opinion and recommendations in great detail on cryptocurrency. The ATO have released some materials on it though. There’s forums that the ATO hosts where people have asked lots and lots of questions, and they haven’t really got great or any answers.

But they have set some guidelines to cryptocurrency that you do need to consider. If you ignore them, and you’re caught out, then there will be massive penalties and fines, because that could be seen as tax evasion, or tax avoidance. People end up in jail for that sort of thing. We’re not here to ignore the fact that you’re making profits in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, and so we need to address it.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a Capital Gains Tax Asset

Firstly, the ATO see cryptocurrency as a CGT asset, or Capital Gains Tax asset. That generally means that you’re buying an asset to sell it later for a gain. You’re not necessarily making a business of it let’s say.

It’s kind of similar the ATO seeing gold bars, an investment property or even shares held on the Australian Stock Exchange as capital gains tax assets.

If you buy, let’s say $50,000 worth of Commonwealth Bank shares, and you sell them 10 years later for $100,000, you make a $50,000 gain on them. That’s called a capital gain. The ATO wants their cut, called capital gains tax.

You may also know about the capital gains tax discount, where if you are in an asset for more than 12 months, then you receive a 50% discount on the tax payable on that gain.

Let’s go back to the CBA shares, where if you buy them for $50,000, 10 years later you sell them for $100,000, then instead of paying tax on $50,000, you’ll pay tax on a $25,000 discounted gain.

Now what the ATO has said about cryptocurrency, is yes, they might consider your investment as a capital gain, and be able to give you that 50% discount, if you bought it over a year ago before you sold it.

But you need to be very careful, because they’ve also said that people who actively trade in Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies will be taxed as if that income was business profits.

In that case, you won’t actually get a 50% discount, even if you own that currency for more than 12 months.

Now from the people I’ve spoken to, there’s kind of two types of crypto investors:

1. Tax for Passive Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Investors

There’s ones who were lucky enough to buy, let’s say Bitcoin for a couple of cents, or a couple of dollars back in the very early days. Now their portfolios are worth tens of, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions of dollars.

But they would’ve whacked a few dollars on it years and years ago. They woke up all of a sudden, and bam they’ve got massive portfolio worth of Bitcoin.

Now had you not traded that stuff day-to-day, week to week, or even month to month, the ATO might actually consider you’re eligible for that 50% capital gains tax discount.

That’s the first type of investor, which is very passive, and you’re not too involved. You’re not logging in each day, and checking the price, and making regular decisions based on that.

But let’s say you are that person who, you might have got into it early. You might have even gotten into cryptocurrency recently, but you’re trading it quite actively. Read on…

2. Tax for Active Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Traders

Trading it ‘actively’ could even be making a few trades every week or month.

Now what I’ve seen with most of the traders who go about this to make profit (and it might be literally a part-time, or even a full-time job they’re doing trading cryptocurrency) is that in my opinion, and even the ATO’s opinion, it is actually considered business income.

So it wouldn’t be seen as capital gains for those investors. They wouldn’t receive that 50% discount, even if it’s held more than 12 months.

Now another point to mention is, I don’t believe not having access to the discount matters so much for these sort of traders, because they’re usually making trades and buying and selling on shorter than 12 month turnarounds anyway.

They might buy a coin for let’s say 1,000 bucks. Then a couple weeks, a couple of months later, they’ll sell all or some, to capture their profit.

Now even if that was capital gains, you would’ve paid tax on the full gain (without a discount).

But if we’re realising it as business profits, you’re still going to pay tax on the full amount anyway.

Using business structures to trade Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies

Now that brings into consideration the ability to use business structures. Our biggest strategy to control how much tax you pay.

The first thing to consider is that the tax rate of each structure.

Sole Trader: If you buy and sell bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in your own name, you can be taxed at the highest marginal tax rate of 47% tax.
Companies: Or if you run your business through a company, you can pay tax at either 27.5% or 30% tax, depending on your turnover.
Trusts: if you structure it through a trust, you basically distribute profit from that trust to family members, or other entities (like other companies) in your family group.

Unfortunately, I think most people started out with cryptocurrency as a sole trader – a little bit of a thing they do on the side. It may have actually turned into a highly profitable business. Just watch you’re not going to forever give 47% of what you make to the tax man.

A big thing to consider is what business structure you trade through. Now if you’re thinking this, and you’ve already made a decent amount of money already through cryptocurrency, we can’t go and retrospectively implement these things. But I’d definitely consider changing your structure moving forward. Especially if you’re going to continue making those profits moving forward.

Now the difficulty we get is it’s actually quite hard to get a designated company or trust account with a lot of these cryptocurrency exchanges. (Where you buy the coins.)

One thing you need to do is consider, “Well, I might want to structure through a company or a trust, but how to actually do that, when I can only signup for these things in my own name?”

This is why I intentionally went through the process of buying coins, and signing up for stuff – and this is one of the brick walls I hit and have since overcome.

There may be ways to achieve by signing up in your own name, buy running the profits through a company or trust – where you act on behalf of the company or trust.

As an example, if you are successful in running your trading through a company, then on your profits you’ll be paying tax at a flat rate of 27.5%, instead of up to 47% tax that you’ll pay if you do it in your own name.

I’d encourage you to reach out to us so we can have a chat about your situation, and see whether one of these options would be available to you.

Record keeping of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency trading

The other really important thing to keep in mind when you’re trading the cryptocurrency, or buying and selling, is make sure that you have records. Now, done a few trades, I’ve found it’s really, really difficult to keep track of it, given the prices change so much. You might be converting AUD -> BTC, then BTC -> some other random coin -> and so on.

There’s also no real central exchange or platform that you buy and sell coins from either. If you’re trading more than just Bitcoins, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, or whatever, some of the other big ones, there might not be just one exchange or place that you trade them.

But you might have signed up to three, four, five, or six exchanges and be buying and selling them from many different places. (Or even peer to peer trades with some of the smaller coins.)

The critical thing is to make sure you’ve got a way of systematically keeping a track of your profits. Now, I’d hope you’re doing this in any case to make sure you are making money, but on the other hand, the tax man will want to see how you come up with your calculations of profit.

Now, there are some websites that you can use to keep track of this for you. There’s been mixed feedback on them, but CoinTracking.info has a fairly decent way of reporting your trades and keeping track of your values.

If you’re making tens of trades a day, you probably want a way that automatically keeps track of your trades for you. I don’t know any at the moment, so if you know of any let me know in the comments below.

There’s a bit of background on tax on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. I hope that’s been helpful, and please let me know if you have any other questions.

B1G1 Study Tour to Kenya

Property Development in Kenya

We visited Aberdare Ranges Primary school on Day 2, then we drove up the road to the village which is where most of the children live.

We learned that much of the poverty and displacement was due to political violence in 2007. Due to an election, if you didn’t vote for the right person your house could be burned down and you could even be killed! Crazy stuff – but real. So it caused a lot of families to head out of the towns, and into the rural areas away from the violence.

But what was great to hear is after the political violence broke out, the Kenyan government gave each family around $100 USD to rebuild their lives.

Now there was an extremely entrepreneurial chief who suggested 1,000 families combine their $100 USD, and buy a big block of land.

From memory, this land was around 5 or 6 acres, and they got a town planner in to create roads, and blocks for each of the families to live on.

Each block has enough room for a very small house, but it was this coming together that created a community – that now 10 years on is thriving.

The kids are getting a great education only 20 minutes walk up the road, and this will mean the kids getting jobs, and bringing money back to this community.

The community even has its own medical centre, seeing 80 patients a day. All of this possible with that chief having his entrepreneurial thought process developing the land.

A hand up, rather than a hand out

One of the more well known projects in B1G1 is the ‘Goat Project‘, which we visited on Day 6.

We think it’s about the meal we’re giving; but it’s so much more.

This project is the hardest one for me to talk about, type about, or even think about.

5 x GAME CHANGING TOOLS TO HELP MAKE 2018 YOUR BEST YEAR YET

Happy New Year, Inspire Family.

I want to support your success in 2018 by sharing with you 5 tools that I personally use every single week, that I believe are critical to business and life success in 2018.

Bucket List – to help you live the good life.
One Page Business Plan – get everyone on board with your business strategy.
2018 Activities Plan – take 8 – 12 weeks a year holiday.
Business Budget – actually make some money.
Your Ideal Week – get some work life ‘harmony’ happening.

During this special FB LIVE for the Inspire Family I’ll give you the tools, share with you how I use them and inspire you to ‘fill in the blanks’ on the template versions I’ll provide.

This really has nothing to do with Tax & Accounting. It’s helping you to pull more money, time and happiness from your business.

Cheers

Harvee

Dream Big. Make an Impact. Remember Your Roots.

Watch entire Game Changing Tools webinar here

Download all 5 GAME CHANGING TOOLS here