Keep more of what you earn. Build more with what you keep.
As a high-income family, you could be paying more in taxes than the cost of college. The same strategy can solve both, and your retirement with them.
Watch Lance explain the approach
You are doing it right, and it is still going out the door
You earn well. You max the retirement accounts, you saved into 529s, you have an accountant who files an accurate return. None of that is wrong. None of it is enough either.
The largest check you write each year probably goes to the IRS, and it grows every time you do. Your accountant meets you after the tax year has closed, when the decisions that mattered are already behind you, and tells you to max the 401(k). For a high earner on a W-2, that is usually where the conversation ends.
Meanwhile the college bill is coming. And the money set aside for it is the same money that was supposed to compound into your retirement.
- A tax bill that grows every time your income does.
- An accountant who files the return but does not plan the year.
- Tuition arriving while retirement still needs decades of growth.
- Savings sitting in accounts that may be counting against you.
College and tax are not two problems. They are one problem, arriving at the same time, and almost nobody plans them together.
What that money could be doing instead
The tax code is not mainly a device for raising money. Most of it is a list of things the government wants funded, and it pays people to fund them. You have already seen this work. Solar panels came with a credit. So did buying an electric car, and nobody worried about an audit for taking it.
The same structure exists in places most households never hear about, because the businesses built around them sell to investors rather than to consumers. Money that currently leaves as tax can instead buy an asset: one that produces a deduction this year and income for as long as you hold it.
Most people treat college, tax, property and retirement as four separate decisions. Handled together, each one pays for the next.
That is the whole idea. Tax saved in the first year buys the thing that produces the income. The income covers tuition. When tuition stops, the income does not.
What would you like your money to do more of?
Four outcomes, and four strategies behind them. Each works on its own. Combined, the savings from one pay for the next.
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Reduce my taxes, including a video
The tax code is a book of incentives to grow the economy. Most of them are not written for employees, and that is a fixable problem.
Most of the tax code's incentives are written for investors and business owners, which is why a high-earning employee is usually told to max the 401(k) and stop there. These programs let you own an income-producing asset instead of writing a larger check to the IRS.
Bonus depreciation returned to 100 percent in 2025 and was made permanent. Equipment leasing, energy storage and portable housing are the routes we see most. We call them tax scholarships.
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Pay for college more strategically, including a video
You make too much to qualify for aid. That does not have to mean paying full price.
Aid formulas look at your income and your non-retirement assets, which means saving into a 529 can quietly work against you. We work on the student's candidacy, on the shape of your balance sheet, and on the school choice that moves the number more than either of them.
There is an honest limit to it. Income is the largest input, so past a certain point the other three strategies are what actually move the answer.
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Build wealth through real estate, including a video
We wanted to make investing in real estate as easy as investing in the stock market. We do the hard work, you do the easy stuff.
A short-term rental is treated more like a hotel than a passive rental, and that distinction is what lets the depreciation reach a salary at all. Our team finds the property, runs the market data, handles the purchase and any renovation, designs it and manages the guests.
You end up owning something that produces deductions now and income for as long as you hold it. We call these scholarship houses.
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Plan for retirement and legacy, including a video
Help your kids pay for college without a negative impact on your retirement.
How you pay for a large expense matters more than how much it costs. Selling an asset stops it compounding and usually creates a tax bill. Borrowing against it does neither, which is how families with real money have always handled this.
It is the strategy behind the 2018 book The Retirement Scholarship Strategy: college gets paid for out of what retirement earns, rather than out of the retirement itself.
What clients say
I was amazed at how simple and beneficial it is. I am so glad I found this approach.
I regret waiting so long to check this out. It has been a total game changer for our family.
Having a real plan for college costs gave us peace of mind and freedom we never thought possible.
I never thought I could keep my college savings and allow it to keep earning interest.
The plan has given my wife and I peace of mind and security in knowing that we are going to be able to send both of our kids to college and also be able to retire.
The team are really just trying to make sure that parents understand that anyone can send their child to college, and the college that they want.
These are the experiences of individual Legetty clients, in their own words. Individual results depend entirely on your own income, tax position and circumstances, and nothing here is a guarantee, a projection or a typical result. Figures mentioned are what those clients say happened to them, not what this site offers or predicts.
How it works
Three steps, and the first one is a conversation rather than a commitment.
- Tell us your income, your timeline, and what you already have in place.
- We come back with which of the four strategies apply to you, and what each would actually involve.
- If it is worth doing, our team implements it and works alongside your own CPA.
There is no charge for the call and nothing to buy on it. Anything we suggest goes to your accountant to review before you act on it.
Who is behind this
Lance Morgan has spent over 20 years in the financial industry, most of it as a licensed fiduciary and planner. He is also the father of five, which is how this started. He worked out that he was going to pay full price five times over while his own tax bill kept climbing, and that the two problems were connected.
Rather than try to become a tax and real estate specialist in his spare time, he built a team of them. That team is what clients get access to.
Book a free strategy call
Tell us about your family, your income, and when the first tuition bill lands. We will walk through which of the four strategies apply to you, and what putting them in place would involve.