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Make Your Mortgage Tax Deductible With the Smith Manoeuvre, with Robinson Smith

Presented by Wealthsimple

Welcome to The MapleMoney Show, the podcast that helps Canadians improve their personal finances to create lasting financial freedom. I’m your host, Tom Drake, the founder of MapleMoney, where I’ve been writing about all things related to personal finance since 2009.

Your mortgage is likely the biggest debt you’ll take on in your life, one that can delay your ability to save for retirement. But there’s a way to convert that mortgage into a tax deductible loan, and start saving for retirement much earlier. That’s where the Smith Manoeuvre comes in. My guest this week is Robinson Smith, president of Smith Consulting Group Limited, and the son of Smith Manoeuvre creator, Fraser Smith.

Did you know that Canadian families lose more than 50% of their incomes to various forms of taxation every year? What’s worse, is that the cost of housing keeps climbing, and is less affordable than ever. Robinson and I discuss how the Smith Manoeuvre can help Canadians convert their mortgage, which is non-tax deductible debt, into tax deductible debt. This makes it possible to lower your tax bill, and create additional cash flow that can be used to put more money towards retirement while you still have a mortgage.

However, as Robinson explains, successfully following the Smith Manoeuvre may require a change of mindset. One that the wealthy have lived by for years. After all, people tend to get nervous with the concept of borrowing to invest, even when they know the investment will appreciate in value. This is where it becomes important to understand the difference between good debt, and bad debt. Robinson and I talk about all of this, and more, in a can’t miss episode of The MapleMoney Show!

The biggest myth about robo-advisors is that they are all tech, and you’re on your own. Are you interested in moving over, but have some questions? Fortunately, our sponsor Wealthsimple makes getting answers easy. To book your 15 minute phone call with an experienced portfolio manager, head over to Wealthsimple today!

Episode Summary

  • How the Smith Manoeuvre was born
  • Canadian families lose more than 50% of their incomes to tax
  • What exactly is a readvanceable mortgage?
  • Why having the right mortgage is a key component of the Smith Manoeuvre
  • The kind of debt that creates wealth
  • Smith Manoeuvre deductions vs. RRSP deductions
  • How to track Smith Manoeuvre transactions
Read transcript

Your mortgage is likely the biggest debt you’ll take on in your life and it can delay your retirement savings. But what if you could convert that mortgage into a tax deductible loan and start saving for retirement a couple decades earlier? That’s exactly where Smith maneuver comes in. Robinson Smith is the president of Smith Consulting Group Limited and the son of Smith’s maneuver creator, Fraser Smith. Robinson is the expert on Smith maneuvers so it was a no brainer to bring him on the show for this topic.

Welcome to the Maple Money Show, the podcast that helps Canadians improve their personal finances to create lasting financial freedom. The biggest myth about robo advisors is that it’s all tech and you’re on your own. Are you curious about moving over but still have some questions? Thanks to our sponsor, Wealthsimple, you can book a 15 minute call with an experienced portfolio manager. To book your call, head over to maplemoney.com/wealthsimplechat today. Now, here’s Robinson…

Tom: Hi Robinson, welcome to the Maple Money Show.

Robinson: Well, thank you very much, Tom. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Tom: When I first started getting interested in personal finance back in 2008, 2009, one of the first things I really remember is sticking in my head in Canada here especially, is the Smith maneuver which was started by your dad. Tell us a little bit about that? What made him develop this idea?

Robinson: Back in the early to mid 80s my father, Fraser, was a financial planner in Vancouver. He was interested in the fact the Americans can deduct the interest on their mortgage—a good portion of it and we Canadians couldn’t. My dad didn’t think that was very fair so he picked up a copy of the Tax Act (which is fascinating reading) and read up on what the tax system is like in Canada and came up with the fact that the 100 year old principle that said if Canadians borrow to invest with a reasonable expectation of earning income, then they can deduct the interest. He sat down and thought about it and came up with the Smith maneuver and started putting his clients into the program.

Tom: That was the big push—was your mortgage tax deductible? That’s kind of what got me interested. I was very into frugality but I was also into tax deductions. Anywhere I could save money on my taxes. That was what really hooked me and a lot of people at that time. Let’s fast forward now into where we are currently. One of the things I kind of wanted to ask your opinion on was just the cost of owning a house nowadays. How does that make this maneuver even more important?

Robinson: Well, firstly, it’s not only the cost of owning a house. It’s taxation. There are a lot of things working against us Canadians. We’ve even got families earning over $100,000 a year that simply can’t get ahead. We’ve got taxation where your average Canadian family is paying over half their income in taxes when you account for income tax, all the taxes on your purchases, municipal taxes—everything. Over half of your income goes to taxes. With the rest of it we need to find money to pay for food, shelter and clothing. We pay more in tax than we pay in food, shelter, and clothing combined so it’s really tough to get ahead. Then we’ve got the cost of home ownership. They’re getting increasingly unaffordable. But the Smith maneuver helps in a number of ways. And a lot of professional investment advisers will tell you one of the easiest ways to increase your wealth is to reduce your taxes. And that’s one of the things that the Smith maneuver provides. There are a number of things but one of the things is that it’ll reduce your tax bill so you’ve got more take-home money. More take-home money means you’ve got more to put towards the mortgage so the mortgage payments become less onerous. When we’re reducing our tax bill we’re getting tax refunds back from the government and we’re able to do whatever we want with these. But if we’re doing a Smith maneuver properly and diligently, we’re taking these tax refunds and making extra payments against our mortgage. With these extra payments comes the fact that mortgage is going to be gone much quicker than if you weren’t making these pre-payments. And the last thing that we get with the Smith maneuver is, we’re starting to save for our retirement now with money that otherwise wouldn’t be available. The cost of home ownership is a big one, but if we can reduce our tax bill that eases the burden a little bit. Plus, we get the other benefits of getting rid of our expensive non-deductible mortgage much faster and starting to save for our retirement immediately, and not having to wait to do so.

Tom: So what’s step one of getting this started? Are there certain kinds of mortgages we need? How do we start structuring this?

Robinson: The first step, obviously, is to get the book. Go to the website, buy the book, go to the library or borrow the book from a friend. Read up on it learn how to do it properly. A lot of people out there who think they’re doing the Smith maneuver are, in actuality, not doing it—or don’t understand it. After reading the book, the next step is to get the proper mortgage. You need the appropriate financing in order to be able to execute the monthly transactions which affect the Smith maneuver. What we’re looking for is called a readvanceable mortgage. You’re probably aware of what a readvanceable mortgage is, Tom. But basically, it’s like a conventional mortgage although but it has one more component to it. And the fundamental principle is the mortgage lender is willing to have you owe them as much as you do on day one when you get this mortgage, through the future, month, after month, after month. If I borrow $300,000 and make payments against that mortgage, as soon as I make any payments against that mortgage balance, the secondary, third, fourth or fifth component (depending on the lender) will increase the limit I can re-borrow. So I’m paying down on my non-deductible mortgage and I’m able to re-borrow to invest which is what creates the tax deductions which is what enables me to prepay this mortgage once a year at a bare minimum. Plus, I’m getting investments for the future. So a readvanceable mortgage is what’s required. A lot of Canadians already have these readvanceables even though they might not be entirely sure that they have one. A lot of people go to a mortgage broker who says, “Okay, this is the best product for what you need.” And low and behold, it’s a readvanceable. So sometimes a refinancing into a readvanceable isn’t required because you may already have one.

Tom: know with mine I’ve got the Scotia STEP, the Total Equity plan. I specifically had to ask for it to be readvanceable. Although, at first they would have just set up the available equity there to just be a line-of-credit. It wasn’t readvanceable until I asked them to do that kind of thing.

Robinson: Yeah. And that is a critical point, Tom. I’m glad you brought it up because a lot of banks will say, “Okay, you want to re-borrow from your house with any access equity. Sure. We’ll slap a home equity line-of-credit on it with a $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 or $100,000 limit depending on your loan to value with your mortgage. But the problem there is it doesn’t readvance. And that’s what we need. We need this mortgage to readvance in real-time. So, in month one, if I pay $1,000 against the principal, that line-of-credit which is secured by the house is part of that readvanceable mortgage that will increase its limit by $1,000. And that needs to happen on a monthly basis.

Tom: That reminds me, going back to 2009, I seem to remember at least for some of the main banks you had to phone in and get your amount increased because it wasn’t an automatic thing. You could use certain mortgage products like that, but you literally had to manually call in and ask them to bump you up another $500 or whatever.

Robinson: That’s right. There are a lot of lenders that have readvanceable mortgages but they’re definitely not all created equal. Some you have to phone in, some you can do it online. Some you have to wait before you can readvance. Back in the day when we were advising, we actually had a preferred mortgage lender at the time. We got their call center employees. We put a manual in front of them because of the volume we were doing. Anytime a client of ours would call in and say they were a Smith maneuver client, the call center rep would know to pull the manual out and learn how to go through the steps that way so it was a very good way to do it.

Tom: That’s handy because I know a lot of people don’t understand this. How much equity can someone borrow in their house? Let’s say they buy a house for a certain amount, what percent can they borrow?

Robinson: In order to be able to get a readvanceable mortgage you need at least 20 percent down. With an insure mortgage you’re not going to be able to get into a readvanceable right away. If you’re talking to your mortgage broker and you don’t have the equity at that point to get a readvanceable, make sure they know that’s your goal and they’ll be able to set you up in a product that is most efficiently able to switch once you hit that 20 percent equity. A few years ago the government introduced a 65 percent heloc rule for your advanceables where you can borrow 80 percent of the value of your home for the mortgage. But on the line-of-credit side, they’ll only lend up to a maximum of 65 percent. So the readvanceable mortgages these days have to factor that in. Some lenders will say, “Okay, you’ve got to readvanceable mortgage at your 80 percent total loan but until you pay that down—until you have 35 percent equity, we’re not going to allow the line-of-credit to readvance. Some mortgage lenders will allow it to do it right away but there’s different functionality, different set up, different terms. There’s a lot out there but you need to know what you’re looking for. And that’s why we always suggest going to a mortgage broker.

Tom: So, we’ve got this mortgage setup. We’ve got the line-of-credit within it that’s readvanceable. What are we using it for? In the past I was doing this setup with dividend stocks which is obviously a big part of the answer, but in addition to that, are there other things you can use this for?

Robinson: Yes. As I mentioned earlier, the CRA will allow you to deduct interest on money you borrow to invest if there is a reasonable expectation of generating income. That is really the only requirement. There are certainly some considerations within that. But you can borrow to invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, your business, somebody else’s business, investment property, real estate. So there’s really any number of things that you can borrow to invest in while qualifying for those tax deductions. Of course, you’re going to want to talk to an advisor who is familiar with the Smith maneuver because there some assistance required and they need to know the investment side of things. But while we don’t always recommend borrowing from your home to invest in your cousin’s Internet startup (because we think it’s going to be the next best thing) there is a wide variety of investments you can make. And no one can dictate what you must invest in. So it’s up to the investor and their comfort level.

Tom: Okay. Is one of the benefits dividends—that they are paying those dividends? Does that help this whole process?

Robinson: In my new role after I sold my advisory business about a year ago to focus on getting the Smith maneuver concept out there to the Canadian public, I generally shy away from offering advice on what to invest in. That used to be my role but it’s not anymore. I’m not licensed anymore on the investment side. I choose to shy away from that. In my own investment program, yes, lots of dividends because not only are they useful in the fact that you’re getting money from these investments, you’re seeing some progress right away, and it takes some of the volatility of the market out of it, but also because there’s an opportunity to employ one of the accelerators with these dividends. There are a number of accelerators, but in this case, instead of having these dividends reinvest automatically each month through a DRIP program, you can request these dividends to be sent to you in cash and you can use them to prepay your mortgage. Then re-borrow the amount of dividends that you prepaid the mortgage by and go ahead and buy those dividends.

Tom: That’s basically what I was doing. I don’t have it anymore but when I was doing the Smith maneuver I was doing that. Then I realized that’s not the classic Smith maneuver kind of thing. I found that did help. Granted, I started in 2009 so those dividends started to become quite a perk compared to the price those buying that stock for.

Robinson: Yeah, I bet.

Tom: Just having that helped cover the expense of this—to have that dividend that’s actually worth more than my credit-line interest. It seemed like a good way to go.

Robinson: Well, you’re touching on something there, Tom, that is one of the things that a lot of people don’t really understand about the Smith maneuver, and that is, it’s self funding. The reason for this is because of the increasing efficiency of the mortgage payment. Basically, you’ve got a constant mortgage payment each and every month. Let’s call it $2,500. Every month $2,500 goes against that mortgage but each subsequent month a little bit less goes to interest and more goes to principal. So if $1,000 reduces month one, I borrow that back out and I invest it. Month two, $1,002 reduces the principal so I borrow back $1,002 but I only invest $1,000. That $2 is able to cover the interest on the previous borrowing of $1,000. Each subsequent month I’m able to pull back out more and more although I reinvest it constant enough that the difference is available to cover the incremental interest.

Tom: Speaking of the expense of this interest, I know your dad has talked in the past on the idea of capitalizing the interest. Can you go through that?

Robinson: Yes. Credit unions will typically allow you to capitalize the interest which means if I owe them $1,000 because I borrowed $1,000 the month previous—if I owe them $2 on that $1,000, they will just say, “You know what, don’t pay us that $2. You just now owe us $1,002.” So the amount of interest that you technically owe them just gets added to the balance that you owe. When you’re dealing with the charter banks they’re not going to allow you to capitalize the interest. In dad’s book, he’s got a section on gorilla capitalization. Basically what happens is if in month two I’m able to borrow $1,002 from that line-of-credit, I pull out that full $1,002. After I invest $1,000, there is still $2 sitting in my bank account. Then the lender comes and says I owe $2 for the previous month’s interest and I just use the $2 to pay out the interest that’s owed. So it’s coming out and going back in.

Tom: Exactly. I get it. You withdrawal and then bring it back in. But with the credit unions it’s an automatic thing?

Robinson: Yeah.

Tom: At least certain credit unions, I’m sure.

Robinson: That’s right. I don’t know exactly which ones allow it and which ones don’t. Maybe they all do. But generally, I know Van city does. You don’t necessarily need to make a payment. They’ll just say you owe them more that month.

Tom: There’s going to be a huge group of people that don’t mind having these huge mortgages but when it comes to borrowing to invest, the risk starts to bother them.

Robinson: Yeah.

Tom: How do they deal with this? How do they deal with this idea of risk? Because you could have a pretty large loan at the end of this— with the size of the mortgage all the investment.

Robinson: Well, that’s right. I alluded to the fact that many people have readvanceables and don’t really understand that they do. What they see is that every subsequent month they’re able to borrow more money from their mortgage lender, right? They just see this line-of-credit opening up so what they do is they go out and buy cars, jet skis. They go on vacation. All they’re doing there is replacing non-deductible debt of their mortgage with non-deductible consumer debt. And people generally don’t have as big a problem borrowing to consume when an item is going to definitely depreciate in value versus borrowing to invest which is going to appreciate in value. It’s a unique psychological circumstance, I think. But one of the biggest things we face, yes, is education on the debt side. This is a debt conversion strategy. You’re going to convert your debt to reduce your tax bill to get rid of your non-deductible debt faster and also to build a personal pension plan. So your debt is going to remain constant. Well, the idea is for your debt to remain constant. If you’ve got a $300,000 mortgage, by the end of the conversion period you’re going to still owe $300,000 but it’s all going to be tax-deductible debt. And you’re going to have a $500,000, $600,000 or $700,000 investment portfolio to offset that. What Canadians need to do is realize that the wealthy do not measure their wealth by how little debt they have. They measure their wealth by net worth. The wealthy learned a long time ago that deductible debt creates wealth. Non-deductible debt destroys wealth. So your typical Canadian (just by nature of the expense of life) has consumer debt. They’ve got lots of non-deductible debt including the mortgage but even outside of the mortgage. And so this is why debt is such a scary word for people. We need to start thinking like the wealthy do. They don’t have non-deductible debt. They pay cash for their houses and cars. Then what do they do? They go and mortgage that house, pull it out, and invest it. They invest in their business or somebody else’s business, or in stocks and bonds, mutual funds or whatever it is. That’s why they’re wealthy. No one ever got wealthy accumulating non-deductible debt or by putting pennies under the mattress. You’ve got to participate in the economy. You’ve got to invest in the economy. You’ve got to the advantages of tax-deductible debt. Don’t go crazy though. Be responsible about it. But employ the tactics of the wealthy. Do what they do.

Tom: That’s a great point I never actually thought of. With the Smith maneuver aside, if I were to tell someone it’s totally fine to take out a $30,000 loan for a car that they’re going to lose 20 percent on as soon as they drive it off the lot, if I were to tell to take $30,000 to invest and you might lose 20 percent right away, they wouldn’t do it. Even though the car is probably a guaranteed 20 percent loss, they won’t take that risk.

Robinson: Yes, exactly. Look at nowadays. The effects of 2008, 2009 are still fresh. With a lot of the older generation it’s still quite fresh for them. So there’s this, “Investing is risky,” attitude. And the younger generation is a little more open to it. They’re open to debt. They’ve grown up with debt; student debt and they’re looking at housing prices. They’re more used to it. But they still need to be a little clearer on the difference between good and bad debt. That’s the biggest issue we face here is the education. It’s fighting the inertia that we’ve grown up with. We’ve been told all our lives that debt is bad. Don’t get any debt. And if you do get debt, pay it off as soon as you can. We’ve grown up with that. That’s our mindset. But that’s not the mindset of the wealthy. What we have here is the opportunity to take advantage of the fact that there is such a thing as deductible-debt and we’re only getting tax deductions if we’re investing. So instead of this challenge of, “Okay, I’ve got two expensive things in my life. One is my mortgage and one is the fact that I need to save for my retirement. I’m very clear on that. I’ve got to pay my mortgage. I’ve got to save for retirement. Well, I can’t do both. So what’s the default?” The default is to pay off your mortgage. So if you spend 20, 25 years doing that at the expense of investing you’re losing out on compound growth. And that’s a ton of money that you’re leaving on the table. With the Smith maneuver you can do both at the same time.

Tom: For sure. So we’ve talked about the tax benefits of this, can we go into that a little bit? What deduction do people get with this idea that they’re using a loan to invest?

Robinson: Basically, the amount of interest you pay on this “borrowed” money that you’ve used to invest gets taken off your net income at tax time. So it’s very valuable. And the higher your tax rate, the more benefit you get. But if I’m at the 40 percent tax rate, I’m looking at a big tax refund at the end of each year. And this is money that otherwise wouldn’t come at me so it’s extremely beneficial for the people with a higher income scale. But even if you’re in the 20, 30 percent tax rate, those are still tax deductions that, otherwise, you wouldn’t see.

Tom: Yeah. You don’t get it on your mortgage.

Robinson: Yes, that’s right.

Tom: That’s a great point. So basically if someone that’s used to an RSP deduction is basically the same as that. It’s like you never made that amount of money?

Robinson: Well, with an RSP deduction you get that deduction for that year. And hopefully next year you’re able to put enough money aside to contribute again. There are questions as to whether you’re going to be able to do that. Maybe Heather needs braces and Billy is starting hockey and you don’t know if you’ll be able to contribute to an RSP. But RSP contributions—those deductions are one-time. With the Smith maneuver these tax deductions keep on rolling year, after year, after year. And they get bigger and bigger and bigger. So if you’ve got $10,000 in cash, do you want to contribute tat to an RSP this year (and this year alone) and get a $10,000 tax deduction or do you want to prepay your mortgage by a debt swap, borrow that $10,000 right back and then invest outside of a registered investment and get the interest on those tax deduction year, after year, after year as long as you hold that investment? Which will be forever because this is as long-term as it gets.

Tom: You mentioned doing this outside of a registered account. And that is the rule, right? You can’t do the Smith maneuver with your RRSP or TFSA?

Robinson: Yes, that is the general rule. And the reason is the CRA is generous in the fact that they’re giving you a tax deduction for your RSP contribution. They’re generous in the fact that they’re giving you a tax deduction on money that you borrowed to invest outside of a registered program. But they’re not so generous that they’re going to give you both. If you borrow to contribute to a registered program, they’re not going to give you both deductions. You don’t get the deduction on the money that you borrowed to contribute. That’s why when you make this investment on a monthly or periodic basis you go into an open investment, non-registered investment.

Tom: Yeah, no double-dipping on your tax deductions, right?

Robinson: You can try to get away with it but I wouldn’t advise it, folks.

Tom: Speaking of the CRA, how do we prove all this out? If need to show that what you borrowed was invested and that it all went to the right spot, I assume you can’t mingle everything together?

Robinson: The tracking is critical. In the Smith maneuver homeowner course which I’m coming up with, hopefully, by September, it goes into this in detail. But effectively, you want a separate bank account. Now, some people will dispute this. They’ll say you can do it from a single bank account as long as you track and make note of all the money and all those sorts of things. But the issue there is, if the CRA ever took a look at you, you might convince them that when you borrowed $1,016 into your account where your employment income goes, and you took $1,016 and used it for deductible purpose—that’s going to be a headache. You’re far better off opening up a separate checking account and using that only for Smith maneuver transactions on the borrowing side. So basically I’ve got my personal checking account that I’ve had forever. My employment income goes in there. I’m making my mortgage payment from that account. I’m making any extra prepayments with the refund or on a monthly basis. But when I do that re-borrowing it’s going into a dedicated account. The only thing that happens from there is I’m either investing each month or I’m servicing the interest on that deductible line-of-credit from there. That way if the CRA ever looks, they’re going to spend a minute and a half, then they’re going to turn around say, “Thank you very much.”

Tom: I like that way more. And bank accounts are free nowadays. It’s not that hard to get one.

Robinson: Well, if anyone knows where a free bank account is, it’s you, Tom.

Tom: Yes. And I should mention is the only reason I don’t have a Smith maneuver now is because I moved three years ago and when I did I cashed everything out. I paid everything off. And when I moved, I fell victim to house-upsizing a bit. So I’ve got to start over again to get to that point any ways. I’ll probably do it again as long as I can find the time. But I do love this idea. The only other question I had for you was, say you’ve paid off your $500,000 mortgage and you’ve got this $500,000 line-of-credit, deductable investment loan, what do you do then? Do you keep it forever? Do you start unwinding and paying it down with the interest? Or a bit of both?

Robinson: There are a number of things you can do. Firstly, let’s say you’ve got a 25-year mortgage with the Smith maneuver (including some of the accelerators). You’ve paid off that non-deductible $500,000 in 12 years. For the next 13 years, ideally what you do is say, “If I didn’t do this, I’d still have that $2,500 monthly mortgage payment. I’ve advanced in my career. I’m making a bit more money so as time goes on I’m still continue to commit that same amount of money as if I was making that mortgage payment, to the program.” That way you’re able to continue investing on a monthly basis, growing that portfolio while maintaining that deductible debt at that $500,000. So your portfolio increases and your debt does not change. You still enjoy the tax-deductions going forward. Alternatively, at conversion, some people—the most debt-adverse people will say, “You know what? I’ve got $500,000 owing. Yes, it’s tax-deductible. Yes, it’s very cheap because it’s a secured loan. Yes, it’s helped me grow an $800,000 or $900,000 portfolio but my husband is a tough time sleeping because he’s so ingrained about debt… Whatever the case may be. Sometimes people say they’re going to sell a bit of their accrued assets in order to get that $500,000 down to $300,000 and just keep it at $300,000 going forward.” Or they’ll sell $500,000 of that $900,000 in investments to pay off that line-of-credit, have clear title to the house and still have $400,000 in investments that they otherwise would not have. So the Smith maneuver is reversible. You don’t have to go whole-hog if you don’t want to. But at the very least, even the most debt-averse people should consider converting their mortgage. You’ve got the debt already so start making it work to your advantage. At any time you can rewind, reverse.

Tom: For sure. This has been a great walk-through. Can you tell people about your upcoming book and where they can find you online?

Robinson: Our website is smithman.net. You can sign up for the newsletter. There’s a bar on the bottom. And via that medium, I’ll be keeping everybody up to date on the release of the book which should be towards the middle of September. It’s got a lot more information than the current book my dad last updated in 2005. I’m also coming up with a new Smith Man calculator which is going to be much more functional and flexible than the existing calculator that we sell on the website. And, in addition to that I’m going to be coming out with some Smith maneuver homeowner courses because the biggest thing right now is that there’s a ton of misinformation out there. I don’t even go onto the internet anymore to police the errors the public is making—people who think they know what they’re talking about, these self-professed, financial professionals or so-called experts. Come to the source. Sign up for the newsletter. Learn about when we’re going to be releasing the book, the calculator, the homeowner course. And we’re also going to be setting up some Smith maneuver certified professional, accreditation programs for mortgage brokers, investment advisors, and accountants across the country. That way you’ll know if you are interested in implementing the Smith maneuver that you’re dealing with someone who has taken the course and passed the test.

Tom: Sounds like you have a busy fall but I’m looking forward to seeing all this come out. Thanks for being on the show.

Robinson: Much appreciated. It’s been a pleasure.

Thanks for your insight, Robinson. Look for his new book on the Smith maneuver coming out later this year. You can find the show notes for this episode at maplemoney.com/robinsonsmith. The Maple Money Show is at the one year mark. Thanks to all of you who continue to listen each week and let others know about the podcast. If you’ve just started listening recently, be sure to subscribe in the podcast player of your choice and download the past episodes with the awesome guests we’ve had over the year. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

The wealthy do not measure their wealth by how little debt they have, they measure it by net worth. The wealthy learned a long time ago that deductible debt creates wealth, and non-deductible debt destroys wealth. - Robinson Smith Click to Tweet

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