05/13/2025
Out of the Crisis
Friends,
Before I got back in the financial services industry in 1995 I had been a manufacturers rep for 7 1/2 years. I was fortunate enough to work for the second leading adhesives supplier to factories in the United States.(According to volume sold.) The way we separated ourselves from the pack was by what was called a “value added approach”. My competitors typically sold on price of goods, while I was taught how to learn processes on the factory floor and evaluate the cost to produce a product.
The person who I primarily got guidance from was a gentleman named W. Edwards Deming. He wrote a book entitled “ Out of the Crisis“ in 1982.
Deming stated that he could identify “40% waste in any production process in manufacturing in the United States". Deming was in such demand, for example, that he spent one day at four different Procter & Gamble facilities and was able to command a $2 million dollar fee.
I used this value added process to bring on 40 key clients, 14 of which were Fortune 500 companies. In fact, I did so well that the company I worked for rewarded me by firing me. They said I was making too much money for my age. That’s how I got back into the financial services industry.
When I got back into the financial services industry, I decided to adopt the same philosophy of identifying financial waste and reducing it. In order to understand a solution, one must first understand the problem. In my opinion, the biggest financial waste for most families is in the form of taxes. The average family that we serve here at Cornerstone Financial pays approximately 50% of of their income in taxes when you add everything together: income tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, property tax, etc.
Why are taxes so high? The answer is because not only is the United States Federal Government broke, it has so much debt that it is almost mind-boggling. Consider the following:
-As we speak the current debt for our country is almost 37 trillion. If you add the unfunded liability for Social Security that is another 48 trillion. There is another 76 trillion of unfunded liability with Medicare. The total US unfunded liabilities in 2025 is 230 trillion.
If you go towww.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/financial-state-of-the-union-2025 you will see the following:
-The numbers listed above means an added tax burden of $974,000 per taxpayer. Let that sink in. That means each of you who is paying taxes has close to another million dollars of debt that you are carrying on your financial statement. If you had to add that number to your financial statement, most of us would be below water.
-Truth in accounting has given the US government the grade of F for its financial management.
Does the US government need to take drastic measures in order to keep us from totally imploding financially as a country? In my opinion, the answer is a resounding: absolutely.
Fortunately, there are and have been time proven tax strategies to help each taxpayer get back a portion of what they would automatically forfeit to the country if they didn’t use these strategies.
During our next e-blast, we will go over some of these key strategies and who are some of the key relationships you can use as financial consultants to help you get back a meaningful portion of what you have worked so hard to earn.
Best regards,
Chris
