Did you know that in the United States, anyone can sign your tax return — no license required? Katrina Kowalski found that out the hard way when her husband got hit with a $50,000-plus IRS audit, courtesy of an unlicensed preparer who was a family friend. That moment set her on a path from mortgage industry burnout, to quitting a Big 5 accounting firm on the day after Christmas, to eventually building On Point Wealth and On Point Tax Services in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In this conversation, Katrina joins Wheeler and Colin to talk about what business owners get wrong about taxes, why the goal shouldn't just be paying as little as possible, and how the right CPA relationship looks less like damage control and more like a long-term financial partnership. She walks through the hidden complexity of RSUs and IPO stock — including the client who watched their stock fall 65% and still got the tax bill — and why your CPA and your financial advisor need to be in the same conversation, not separate silos.

The episode goes deeper than tactics: Katrina talks about launching her firm in August 2019, six months before COVID, building a partnership with her now-co-owner Emily Roster, and why she believes the CPA talent shortage is a direct result of an industry that still rewards volume over relationship. And with $34 trillion of wealth transferring across generations, she makes the case that women need to be at the financial table — not just inheriting a box of paperwork they've never seen before.

Katrina's guiding philosophy: do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better.

Follow Us:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/compoundgrowthpod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CompoundGrowthPodcast
• TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@compoundgrowthpod
• Wheeler’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wheeler-crowley-0a63933b/
• Colin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-walker-mba-6099a038/

Credits:
Created By: Wheeler Crowley and Colin Walker
Production, Editing and Post-Production: Tori Rothwell

Ferrari announced a $640,000 electric car with worse performance than a Tesla Model S — and screened the journalists who came to see it based on how they felt about EVs. It's a strange move for a brand built on confidence. It's also a pretty good lens for what's happening across a lot of big institutions right now.

The bigger conversation this month is the SpaceX IPO. One theory floating around is that it's a head fake entirely — that Tesla absorbs SpaceX instead, because the demand simply isn't there to support a deal that size. If the IPO does happen, it would be the largest the market has ever seen. Either outcome changes things. The Cerebras IPO already showed what happens when the demand doesn't show up.

Underneath all of it: strong tech earnings, real AI adoption, and the honest question of whether this ends like the internet revolution or the dot-com crash. The gladiators are in the arena. It's too early to call.

Follow Us:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/compoundgrowthpod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CompoundGrowthPodcast
• TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@compoundgrowthpod
• Wheeler’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wheeler-crowley-0a63933b/
• Colin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-walker-mba-6099a038/

Credits:
Created By: Wheeler Crowley and Colin Walker
Production, Editing and Post-Production: Tori Rothwell

Buy now, pay later has gone from a niche checkout option to a fixture of how Americans spend — on everything from concert tickets to groceries to medical bills. The industry processed over $114 billion in transactions in 2024 alone, and the numbers are still growing. But the conversation around it rarely goes deeper than whether a specific purchase is worth it.

This episode does.

Wheeler and Colin break down how BNPL actually works, why it's grown so fast, and what separates a useful financial tool from a mechanism that quietly accelerates debt. They dig into the credit score question — why most BNPL products don't build credit, and what that means for borrowers who are trying to. They cover the real cost of convenience when deferred payments stack up, and where 0% financing is genuinely worth taking.

The bigger thread running through the episode: debt isn't inherently good or bad. A 0% BNPL plan on a Peloton is a different decision than spreading out Coachella across six payments. Context, opportunity cost, and self-awareness about your own spending patterns are the variables that actually determine whether any of these tools help or hurt you. That's true for an $8 burrito and a $3 million home purchase in equal measure.

The episode also covers the history of consumer credit — including the fact that women in the U.S. couldn't open their own credit cards until 1974 — and what the rise of BNPL reflects about how the financial system is evolving for people who have historically been locked out of it.

Follow Us:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/compoundgrowthpod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CompoundGrowthPodcast
• TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@compoundgrowthpod
• Wheeler’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wheeler-crowley-0a63933b/
• Colin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-walker-mba-6099a038/

Credits:
Created By: Wheeler Crowley and Colin Walker
Production, Editing and Post-Production: Tori Rothwell