Austin Preece, Financial Planner

09/03/2026

Well, now I'm confident that my job is safe from AI.

I recently reviewed a financial plan that ANOTHER ADVISOR drafted with AI.

Two things jumped out immediately:
1. The client wasn't satisfied - their questions weren't answered, so they came to me, hoping I could help.
2. There were all sorts of errors - the advisor wasn't very well trained in taxes, so he didn't notice tax errors, but there were some cashflow errors that he should've caught.

Now, I use AI for quite a bit of what I do.

But it's hard for people to trust that licensed advisors know what they're talking about.

How long will it be before they can reliably trust AI to do the work of an advisor for them (since they won't be able to verify the veracity of the AI output)?

My bet is that it's decades out at the very least. The world will change in other ways before AI takes good advisors out of a job.

08/26/2026

Business Owners:
Please don't bank everything on selling your business.

Yes, it's great to invest in yourself.

Yes, there's massive opportunity if you do it right.

But for every 1 business owner who makes it big with a business sale when they're ready to retire...

There are a dozen who didn't invest enough outside of the business and now can't sell their business for what they need to retire.

You don't want to be one of the dozen.

08/24/2026

When I started my firm, my investments were super simple. Now they're more complicated.

I posted about the fixed income side of my portfolios yesterday - today it's all about stocks.

When I started my firm, I had two holdings on the stock side of my portfolios. One for US stocks, another for International.

Now I have three different portfolios that make up the "risk-on" side of the portfolio.
One has 4 holdings.
One has 6.
One has 7.

The first is a global equity portfolio with small tilts to value in small-cap and mid-cap equities.

The second is built to be more diversified. In it, I reduce stock exposure but add:
-High duration treasuries
-Commodities strategies

When added to stocks, these asset classes can dampen volatility without reducing returns as much as a traditional fixed income holding would. This is because they're also volatile, but they have low correlation to stocks and to each other.

The third is built to be more diversified without reducing stock exposure in an effort to outperform the market. How do we do this you ask? Leverage. Don't try this at home. In this portfolio, we have:
-A 2x leveraged stock ETF to maintain 100% notional exposure to stocks
-The high duration treasuries and commodities strategies from the second portfolio
-Small (very small) allocations to Bitcoin and Ethereum

None of this is a recommendation to buy or sell specific investments or asset classes or to use leverage in your portfolio. It's solely an example of when a little more complexity can make sense.

08/21/2026

When I started my firm, I had one bond holding in my portfolios.

Now I have 5, and one of them isn't even a bond fund.

Some people think that's too complex, and that's fine. Could you get by with one bond holding? Sure.

But I'll tell you what - you can't find one holding that does what these 5 do together.

On the fixed income side of my portfolios, I'm looking to dampen the volatility of equities, but achieve higher returns of cash.

In order to do that, I'm looking for a few things:
-Low overall duration - I don't want this part of the portfolio to get decimated if rates rise.
-Low correlation to stock indexes - if stocks are down, we need this part of the portfolio to be stable, so you won't see high yield bonds here.
-Return potential that's higher than T-bills by about 1.5-2% - if we're not going to take risk to get higher returns, the money should just be in cash.
-Upside potential in a recession - I want something in there that will be up a lot of rates come down. This directly competes with the idea of having a low overall duration, so it's a small part of the portfolio.

So what do I have in here?
There's a T Bill strategy with an options overlay
There's a high-quality, floating rate bond fund
There's a merger arbitrage fund (the underlying investments in this one are stocks)
There's a AAA CLO fund
And there's a long-term treasury fund.

They all achieve a different objective for the portfolio, and they all have relatively low correlation to each other.

There will be years that the aggregate bond index outperforms this portfolio. There will be years that this portfolio outperforms the aggregate bond index.

But it does a better job of achieving the objective that my clients have for the conservative side of their portfolio.

And that's all that matters.

None of this is a recommendation to buy or sell any specific investments.

08/18/2026

Seriously, folks.

QOZ 2.0 is a really big deal, and we're not talking about it enough.

Check out my blog at preecefp.com/blog to see my latest post about how strategic use of QOZ funds along with other investment strategies can save investors with significant capital gains a boat-load* in taxes.

*"boat-load" is a technical tax term meaning "a lot". Sorry to get all jargony on ya.

Expert perspectives on financial planning, investment strategies, and market insights.

08/17/2026

Selling real estate?

You have a few options to avoid paying taxes on your gain.

Option 1 (and most common): 1031 Exchange into a new property.

You need to know that you're going to do this BEFORE closing, so reach out to your accountant (or me) if you're planning to sell. Your gain gets deferred into another property, as long as you follow all the rules (which are many).

Option 2: 1031 Exchange into a Delaware Statutory Trust (DST).

Maybe you don't want to worry about finding another property to sell. Maybe you want something that's completely hands-off. In that case, a DST could be a great option. The same rules apply as a regular 1031 exchange, but I've run into a lot of confusion from tax preparers on how DSTs work, so consider talking to someone who has dealt with them before in addition to consulting your tax preparer.

Option 3: Defer only the gains into a Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund.

This one is interesting, and more flexible. Here are some of the things that make it different from DSTs:
-You don't have to invest all of your proceeds (just the gain, so you can do something else with the rest of the proceeds).
-You don't have to know that you're doing this when you close. You have up to 180 days from the date of sale in most cases (sometimes longer) to reinvest your gains.
-The gains are deferred for up to 5 years from the date of your investment (not the date of the sale) as long as you invest after 1/1/27.
-In year 5, when you owe tax on those gains, the gains are reduced by 10%.
-If you hold the QOZ fund for 10 years, the gains on the sale of the QOZ fund are tax-free.

Pretty neat. If you want indefinite deferral, a 1031/DST may be the best choice. But if you want shorter-term deferral, reduction in gain, and potential for future tax-free gains, a QOZ fund might be your best bet.

Best part? These aren't gray areas in the tax code. They're not exactly simple, but if you work with someone who knows the process, it can be pretty hands-off for you.

08/16/2026

Wrote a new post! Don't like paying taxes on capital gains? You should definitely read this one.

Whether you're selling stocks, real estate, or a business, QOZ Funds can help you defer, reduce, and even eliminate taxes on capital gains.

https://www.preecefp.com/post/qz

08/14/2026

There are certain tax moves that are just... illegal.

"But is the IRS really going to come after me?"

Not a convincing argument. And honestly, quite misguided.

Walmart may not notice if you steal some of your groceries (those self-checkouts have been great for affordability).

Even if they do, they may not prosecute you if they catch you.

But that doesn't mean it's okay to steal your groceries.

Know what happens as a result of shoplifting?

Companies price it into their profit margins. That raises prices for everyone else.

If you cheat on your taxes, you're not beating the government, you're making life harder for your neighbor.

Not to mention, there's a chance that you DO get audited and lose.

Seriously, I don't like paying taxes any more than the next person.

But there are a lot of LEGAL strategies you should consider before the obviously illegal ones.

If you're not sure where to start, I know a guy.

08/13/2026

"The insurance company always wins"

What a strange way to look at a transaction.

Either way, it's important to remember that when you buy insurance, you're not trying to wind up with more money.

You're trying to protect against losing a catastrophic amount of money.

That's often worth paying for.

08/12/2026

"So what, now what?"

I've lost a couple of prospective clients recently. For good reasons?

Not for me to judge.

My focus:
-Considering whether they were good fits in the first place
-Evaluating whether I could have done anything differently to showcase the value I provide
-Adjusting my approach where necessary

Man, it hurts sometimes!

Show someone how to save more than the fee in taxes (sometimes 10x the fee in taxes), and they still want to go with the cheaper option that hadn't brought any of these strategies up.

I'm just grateful to have my team - Brooks commiserated with me, then said:
"Well, you know what an old sales manager of mine would've said? 'So what, now what?'"

Nothing I can do now except move onto the next one.