Penny Tutorial Video Series

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident
conversations with your clients. This first video will talk about the tax planning report. So, let's say your client asks, "Why my tax is so high or what's going on with my tax situation?" This is a perfect opportunity to run the tax planning report and explain the client's situation to them in a clear and simple manner. So, let's start by understanding how your taxes actually work. Not just what happened last year, but what's happening right now. This report breaks down your income step by step, how it turns into taxable income, and then that turns into the taxes you actually pay. We can clearly see where you are today. And more importantly, we can start identifying opportunities before they begin. Whether that's looking at things like reducing taxes, shifting income, or planning ahead more strategically.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with clients. Let's say you have a client who has multiple beneficiaries and wants to make sure they're setting up their estate in the most efficient way possible. This is a perfect opportunity to go to the estate planning section and open up the multiple beneficiary optimizer. Here we double-check the client's accounts, set up the information for their beneficiaries, and then decide if we want to do an equal split or set up a proportional allocation. Once you've entered their information, you can then say to the client, "Let's align your assets with the best outcomes." Different accounts are taxed differently, so who receives what can be a big impact on your family. This helps us structure things so your beneficiaries receive more after taxes. Then we can easily plan out the optimal designations for each beneficiary down to the account level. We can set up the appropriate allocations. Then we can quickly compare the optimal versus doing a proportional allocation so we can confirm that this plan makes sense for you and for your beneficiaries long term.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say you have a client who inherits an IRA. This is the perfect opportunity to go into the estate planning section and open up the single beneficiary optimizer. We can quickly fill out the information for the inherited IRA like the balance, the owner's death year, the owner's birth year, and the current age of our client and their annual income. You can also include the expected growth rate and the state tax rate. Once you fill out the information, you can then say to your client, "Let's structure this efficiently." When you inherit a retirement account, how you withdraw it really matters. This shows the total tax cost, the distribution rules we have to follow, if any annual RMDs are required. Then it compares different strategies and shows the best way to take distributions over time. The goal here is to reduce total taxes while staying within the rules, allowing us to set up the distributions from your inherited IRA in the most efficient way possible. And here we can review the year-by-year distribution schedule to make sure we execute this properly.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say you have a client who's interested in giving, but is not sure whether it's better to give now or later. This is a perfect opportunity to go to the estate planning section and open up the gift versus inherit tool. Here you can enter the asset details like the current fair market value, the cost basis, the annual appreciation, the years until death, the donor's estate size, and any prior taxable gifts. Then you can enter the donor and recipient details like their filing status, their annual income, the relationship of the recipient, the state they're in, and if there will be any splitting. After you fill out the information, then you can say to the client, let's compare both option. Giving assets now versus passing them later can have different tax outcomes. This helps us to clearly see the difference so we can choose the option that benefits your family the most.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say you're having an estate planning conversation and your client asks, "What happens when someone inherits this account?" This is a perfect opportunity to go into the beneficiary classification tool. Then after you fill out the information for the original account owner, the beneficiary, and fill out any of the beneficiary questions, you can say to your client, "Let's look at how these inherited account rules would apply in your situation." When someone inherits a retirement account like an IRA or 401k, the IRS has specific rules about how and when that money should be distributed. These rules often depend on who inherits the account. This tool helps us determine which beneficiary classification applies and what options come with that classification. Some beneficiaries have to distribute the account within a certain number of years. Others may have more flexible options that allow for longer tax deferral or different withdrawal strategies. What we're really trying to do here is to understand how much flexibility do you have, what deadlines apply, and which approach creates the best long-term outcome. This also helps us to identify important planning opportunities like whether accounts should be separated, whether rollover options are available, or whether certain strategies could reduce taxes over time. The goal is to make sure inherited retirement assets are handled in the most efficient and flexible way possible for the beneficiary.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say you have a client retiring before Medicare and they're concerned about their health care cost during this transitionary period. This is a great time to go to the Medicare section, access the ACA to Medicare transition tool, and then say to your client, "Let's map this transition clearly. This shows your coverage options before and after Medicare. Things like your employer coverage, COBRA or ACA plans. It helps us avoid gaps in coverage and unexpected costs. We also have an action checklist to make sure you have a clear path forward.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say your client says, "My withholding is off." This is a perfect opportunity to go into the W4 optimizer, enter the client's information, and say, "Let's fix it directly." This shows exactly what to put on your W4, so the right amount is withheld automatically, which means fewer surprises at tax time and a better control of your monthly cash flow. It's a small adjustment, but it can make a big difference.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say your clients ask, "Why am premium so high?" This is a perfect opportunity to go to the Medicare planning focus and select the Irma appeal tool. Here you can enter the client's information like their income from two years ago because of the 2-year look back, their 2026 estimated income, the Medicare enrolles, if they've had a life-changing event, and the date of that event. So based on the information we entered, we can see here that you likely qualify for an Irma appeal. If you've had a life-changing event, like in this case, retirement, your income may have dropped, which it did in this case, which may mean that you could be overpaying those Medicare Irma premiums. The beauty here is that based on this information, we can see that not only do you qualify for an Irma appeal, this shows the potential savings here of approximately $5,700 a year and exactly how we can fix it. We've got clear instructions on what to file, the documentation you need to bring, and if you're approved, we'll know that your part three premium should change from $388 to about $185 a month. So now we can take action instead of just identifying the problem. If you'd like me to print a memo, I can quickly do that for you here and allow you to take this with

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say you have a client ask, "Am I behind on my taxes and what should I be paying quarterly?" This is a great opportunity to go to the estimated taxes tool inside Penny. This calculates what you should be paying in estimated taxes this year so you're not overpaying. or underpaying. It helps avoid penalties and keeps your cash flow predictable so you always know what to set aside and when.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say you have a client ask, "Should I convert to a Roth?" This is the perfect opportunity to go into the Roth conversion analysis inside Penny. You can walk the client through the tool by saying instead of just saying yes or no to should I convert to a WTH, let's find the right amount. The Roth conversion analyzer shows how much you could convert this year. We can do that by simply moving the slider, entering a specific amount, or targeting specific records. Then we can quickly see what the tax cost would be. But more importantly, it shows how your decision plays out over time. Let's see how it affects your future taxes, your Medicare costs, and your overall plan. So instead of guessing, we can choose a conversion amount that's optimized for your situation.
 

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your client. Let's say you have a client asking about company stock. This is a perfect opportunity to take them to the MUA analysis. When you get to the NUA analyzer, you can put in the client's employer stock details and then you can say something like this. Figuring out what to do with your company stock is an important decision in your plan. So, we want to help you find the most taxefficient option. On this page, we're going to compare two approaches here. Rolling it over into an IRA or using something called NUA. NUA stands for net unrealized appreciation. In simple terms, it means instead of rolling your company stock into an IRA, you move it into a taxable account and only pay the ordinary tax on what you originally paid for. then the growth the appreciation is laid tax at capital gains rates which are usually lower. The difference between those two approach can be significant from a tax standpoint and in this case we see that just based off your employer stock details that the optimal strategy here is doing the NUA which will save you about $64,000 in your plan. So giving you significant tax savings by doing the NUA instead of rolling it over. So through the NUA analyzer here, this helps us see clearly which path gives you the better outcome.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say a client asks, "What happens if I do this?" Well, this is a perfect opportunity to go into the scenario comparison tool and look at both options side by side. We What we're doing here is comparing two different scenarios. Instead of guessing, we can actually see the impact of that decision. So, let's say our clients are planning to move and take a new job. So, here you said you're planning on taking a job and moving to California. Let's quickly change the state and we can immediately see the impact on your taxes just by moving to California. Since you're taking a new job, you're also expecting a bit of a pay raise. We can quickly update your W2 wages and now see that if you go from earning $88,000 to $100,000, we're seeing an increase in your overall taxes by about $24,216. Then on the bottom here, when we look at the summary page, we can quickly see how it affects your taxes, your income, and your overall plan. This is how we help you make decisions with clarity, not assumptions.

Welcome to the Penny video series by Income Lab. In each short video, you'll learn how to explain one tool in Penny so you can have clear, confident conversations with your clients. Let's say a client asks, "Will this push me into a higher bracket?" This is a great opportunity to utilize the marginal rate explorer. Here you can say, "Let's look at the real cost of that decision." This shows the true cost of your next dollar of income. Not just your tax bracket, but everything layered on top of it. So whether you're deciding to take income or convert to a Roth conversion or sell an investment, this tells us exactly what that decision will cost you. It helps us avoid hidden tax fights and it can help us make smarter timing decisions.