Episode #190 – “The A Word”

Welcome to podcast episode #190 – “The A Word” of Roadmap to Retirement, The Radio Show.

Listen and read along as hosts David Bezar, Karen Bezar, and Joe Krause are joined by special guest, Jeff Walker CRC.

Announcer  00:00

This program is paid for by Jacob media partners. All opinions or statements expressed on this program are solely those of Jacob media or its guests and did not reflect the views of WP HT or Audacy. Today’s program is pre recorded. Welcome to roadmap to retirement, the radio show with David Bezar, Karen Bezar, and Bret Elam from Thrive Financial Services who have been featured on Fox, ABC, NBC, the Wall Street Journal and more. Saving for retirement is a great start. But it’s what you do with this money that really matters. What’s your strategy to reduce taxes, generate income in retirement, reduce your risk and get even more from Social Security. This is where you can count on straightforward and objective advice about how you can make your money go a lot further in retirement roadmap to retirement the radio show now here are your hosts David, Karen and Bret along with Joe Krause.

 

Joe Krause  00:52

Welcome everyone to another edition of roadmap to retirement the Radio Show with David Bezar, Karen Bezar and Bret Elam. I’m Joe Krause, we thank everybody for tuning in another busy week in our rearview mirror and a busy week ahead of us as well, David, but I want to begin the show. By putting you on the spot. I want to put you on the spot as we start roadmap to retirement the radio show, fill in the blank for me, if you will, the more educated you are about your retirement, the more what

 

David Bezar  01:24

Confident you will be that you’ll be successful in retirement.

 

Joe Krause  01:27

I love it. Good answer.

 

David Bezar  01:32

Good way to start there, Joe, you’re good man, you’re good. Early in the morning and I was like holy smokes. Well, good to see you. We got a lot to cover today, a lot of good stuff, I’m going to actually be covering a couple of things one, a little bit, you know how they say as much as things change, they stay the same. I’m going to go through a Pew Research Center report that was actually dated back in December of 2010. I think our audience is going to be really surprised to kind of hear the statistics of you know, what’s happening today, and how similar they were back then. And, you know, if you’re not making changes to your financial plans to be current and make sure that you’re dealing with the things, you know, it could be costing you 10s of 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of dollars. So we’ll talk a little bit about that. And then we’re going to be talking about, and I’ll tell everybody in my segment what the A word is. But we’re going to be talking about the a word because we are getting so many questions about this particular topic. I think I know why. So we want to make sure that we’re addressing them today. So let me just jump over to Karen really quick and hear a little bit about what you’re going to be covering on today’s show.

 

Karen Bezar  02:48

Just going over things that we plan for that again, when we meet with people for the first time. We it’s kind of like that, that mind blowing aha moment where they’re like, I didn’t even think of that. I didn’t even think of that just they think retirement is planned. They’re all set. And then we kind of throw a wrench into it. But the good news is we can help.

 

Joe Krause  03:11

Yeah, it’s not the a word. David Stockman is another good one. Yeah.

 

David Bezar  03:16

I think Karen’s very worried about what the A word.

 

Karen Bezar  03:19

A word? I don’t know.

 

David Bezar  03:23

She knows sometimes that things come out of my mouth that shouldn’t but I don’t know, we’ll be very careful today. Yeah, that speaks a little bit to, you know, what Thrive has really gotten very well known for is kind of bringing three things to people in the retirement community. One is the awareness. Right. So, Karen just kind of talked about it a little bit, there’s a lot of times that we will have conversations with people that they didn’t know that they really needed to have. Right. And we do that by kind of starting asking questions that they go Holy smokes, I didn’t, I didn’t think about that. I didn’t know that I actually needed an answer for that. So we start with that awareness. And that’s, you know, Joe, we’ve been doing the show now for a long time. And I don’t think anybody that’s been a listener, at any point, can ever accuse us of using this show, as a infomercial, right? We never talked about specific recommendations. We don’t really talk about product per se. We don’t talk about investment choices. We want to bring education, right. That’s the second stage. We start with the awareness. And then people go okay, I now have more questions, and I have answers. So that’s where we want to bring the education, and I’ll talk about the leadership. The third thing, which is leadership. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. But we got a special guest in the in the studio this morning, Jeff Walker, who’s one of our great financial planners, a veteran of the industry. And now as a designation Jeff, right, so CRC,

 

Jeff Walker  05:04

Yeah, certified retirement counselor.

 

David Bezar  05:07

So specializing, right, took the took the time, the energy to get the accreditation, as a certified retirement counselor specializing helping baby boomers understand how to gather, gather that awareness how to get educated, and then how to kind of plan to make sure they’re doing the right thing in retirement. So Jeff, tell us a little bit, and welcome to the show this morning. But tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be covering.

 

Jeff Walker  05:33

Thanks for having me. So actually, I’m going to go a little bit off script, I’m going to call an audible and I’m going to actually not talk about what I prepared to speak about. And I’m going to talk about a story. I think, Karen, you mentioned earlier, sometimes life throws a wrench. And that happened recently to one of our near and dear clients. So I’m just going to tell people kind of their story. And I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that as well.

 

David Bezar  05:59

Yeah, that’s always good. And you know, maybe the situation, I know the situation. So maybe that’s not, you know, necessarily a great topic, in the sense of we want to hear about it. But lessons learned and things like that, that’s always powerful. We love sharing that kind of information with our audience, because there’s always people that can go, you know, what, that kind of relates to me, you know, I kind of, I hear that I understand it, or it’s impactful enough that we want to, you know, we want to make sure that we get that awareness, create and say, hey, could I do something about that in advance? So, you know, we’ll look forward to that.

 

Joe Krause  06:33

And I think that’s a great trigger for us, David, and just in just in general, in life, we see something happen, or we learn of the story. And in some way, either directly or indirectly, we learn from the result of that story, I think, anyway, yeah,

 

David Bezar  06:48

I agree. 100%. I, you know, and I hope that’s what people take away, you know, you know, number one, I always thank people for plugging into the show. And we get so many when we go out and we do our seminars, or we meet people at appointments for the first time. And, hey, I’ve been listening to your radio show for two or three years and timings right now. So I took you up in, you know, on the offer to come out to, you know, one of our complimentary dinner workshops. And, you know, it’s been really great, and I got nothing but education out of it. You know, that’s, that’s a cool thing. So I really thank people for plugging into the show. And our hope is that we’re always delivering that value, right? People are walking away and say, you know, that 55 minutes that I spent with thrive on Saturday or Sunday was really, really valuable. And I learned something I walked away empowered with some more information that I can use to make sure retirement is a good thing.

 

Joe Krause  07:45

Well, I will tell you one exclamation point to that statement that validates that statement. Prior to the pre-show I was working through with Sam some of the upcoming workshops that are on the schedule. I’ve got a I’ve got to put an alert out to the listening audience. You got to get registered, the workshops are getting to a point that they’re literally at capacity, and they’re coming off the website. So very, very important. And that’s a tribute to what you’ll learn at the web. What you’ll learn by coming to the workshop, they are amazing, and more and more people want to get there.

 

David Bezar  08:24

Yeah, there’s no doubt. We had a very packed week with our workshops. We had an education only. That was packed out. I think it was at the Horsham live Horsham not aware from the Montgomery Township building. Is that where it was? We have so many going on ever. No. I know, Jeff, you were at the Plumsteadville in this past week. And Karen and I were at Lambertville, which was awesome. I don’t know the Lambertville station restaurant over there. It’s really tough to give a seminar there because the whole entire thing the whole room is a bank of windows looking out on the Delaware River. I was watching it the whole time I’m speaking I’m saying to the people, you know, I don’t want to talk I just want to sit down have dinner with you. And let’s you know have a good time. But anyway, we’ll talk about that in a little bit. So if you have an interest in scheduling a time to come out to one of the workshops you can do that by going to our website at Thrive financial services.com Or give us a call at 215-798-9088.

 

Joe Krause  09:25

All right, good stuff. We’ll get started on the other side of our first commercial break. Shout out to Bret Elam was off this weekend. Welcome Jeff Walker who’s sitting in and joining us this is roadmap to retirement the radio show back in the moment. Here are two opportunities to get registered for an upcoming workshop and meet the team at Thrive financial services on April 26th at the Plumsteadville in and on May 2 at the Radnor Valley Country Club. That’s April 26, at the Plumstedville Inn and on May 2 at the Radnor Valley Country Club starting time is 6 PM. Get registered at Thrivefinancialservices.com Welcome back everyone to Roadmap to Retirement the radio show again, if you heard in the last quarter or in our first commercial break, an upcoming workshop that you would like to attend, go to thrive, financial services.com and get registered Jeff Walker in for Bret Elam today. Jeff, I don’t want to make light of the reference that David mentioned about your certification. And I know you’ve got a topic that you want to cover. But talk about that for just a minute. It’s the see is it CRC?

 

Jeff Walker  10:41

Yes, sir. Certified retirement counselor. So it’s a designation specialization in the areas of retirement planning. So it’s a, you know, it’s not focused. There’s lots of designations sometimes I will say a lot of them are generalists. You know, you learn a lot. I mean, financial planning is a wide topic, could be business planning, income planning. But this particular designation is one that I’ve been working on for a while because it’s completely and only about retirement, specific issues and challenges and solutions.

 

Joe Krause  11:11

Well, Congrats on getting there. And congrats on that certification. Another example of Thrive Financial Services. Well done, sir.

 

Jeff Walker  11:18

Well, thank you. That’s why, you know, we talked about awareness and education, it’s so important for our clients. But I think it’s also equally important for us, as professionals, as things constantly change, we have to make sure that we’re doing our job to stay up with all those changes, and, and there’s a tremendous value. And you know, he’s learning. So I appreciate that. But I’m going to talk about, you know, I struggled with this, again, I kind of went a little off script. But it was something that happened recently, and I kind of feel obligated to talk about it, because I’m hoping like you said earlier, Joe, that if somebody hears this story that maybe they can kind of relate, maybe it’s in the back of their mind, or, you know, hopefully they can get something out of it. It’s not a fun topic. But so I had a client pair of clients, I’m going to call them Jane and John, I met with them, they came to one of our dinner workshops in 2020. And so after that workshop, they decided to schedule some time with us. When we met, I asked them, Why do you know what was the reason you want to meet with us? And they said, you know, they really haven’t thought much about taxes. That particular workshop was a tax workshop. And so they said, they never really quite thought about it. They did have an accountant, they did have an advisor who they felt very comfortable with. But they were doctors. And so they really understood the value of getting a second opinion. And so when we sat down with them, you know, like David said, and Karen and said, you know, our goal is to try to understand what it’s important to people. And they really had three main goals. And the first and foremost, John really wanted to retire. But he still felt for whatever reason that he needed to work. He wasn’t quite clear on their expenses. It had some home improvements that they wanted to do. Jane had recently retired, and she was really pushing John to retire. You know, she really wanted to travel, enjoy, visit their daughter, she felt they were fine. John wasn’t so sure. John’s main goal, and his biggest goal was to provide a legacy for their daughter, they only have one daughter, their absolute pride and joy. And that was his main mission. And so when we asked them what their concerns are, they honestly weren’t really sure. They said, You know, our advisors, great, you know, he never really mentioned taxes, we have asked them a few questions related to taxes. And they said the few times we brought it up, he would point us back to our accountant, they would go back to their accountant, they kind of you know, do traditional tax preparation, not really planning. So they started to feel a little bit nervous and worried, and you know, wasn’t quite sure. How is this all gonna work once they’re full, but both retired, you know, how’s this all gonna work together? And so I’ll never forget it. In our first meeting, they asked a lot of really great questions. You know, they actually just drilled me with questions. They said, you know, where are we going to create the income? What do we what do we pull first? Do we start Social Security? Do we pull from our taxable accounts? How are these RMDs going to affect us? What can we do from a tax perspective to try to reduce any future taxes? You know, what about Medicare legacy? Health care? I mean, they had so many questions. And so, you know, like, like, we talked about the roadmap to thrive. That’s the analysis that we do for people like David, I mentioned earlier, if anybody’s interested in that, please give us a call to 15798 98. And so after we did that analysis with him, we found quite a few things. And it was pretty interesting. We found that they did do a very good job of accumulating, they had about 2.3 million, but most of it was in their 401 Ks. They are what we would call an IRA millionaire. And so after looking ahead and starting to project forward and look at what would their tax liability be, we under we uncovered that they had a substantial tax bill coming as most Ira millionaires do. And again, one of John’s biggest goals was that his daughter receive as much as possible, but that wasn’t going to happen the way that his current plan are current investments were structured, they also had a lot of investments, actually too many, it was in a lot of different places. And it really wasn’t geared to creating the income that they were going to need. And most of all, after we did a retirement analysis, we found that they were actually in a pretty good position to retire, they did have enough money to cover their expenses, etc. And so they were quite surprised at the issues. And, you know, ultimately, they decided that they did want more help, and they didn’t want more service. So we decided to, you know, establish a relationship. And then we began making these changes, we began aligning their investments with their goals, their income, we implemented several key tax strategies, we began reducing their future tax bill, John loved the fact that we made some changes, and his daughter was now going to inherit, you know, quite a bit of funds on a tax free basis, and she wasn’t going to be impacted. God forbid, something did happen to him. And really, Jane and myself, we really kind of urged him to retire, they were completely fine. There was no reason for him to not, but he still kind of struggled with it. And I remember what he said the one day, he said, you know, what, why wouldn’t I work another year to what could it hurt. And so, unfortunately, fast forwarding February of this year, we got a phone call from James, John was working, he felt ill, he got some blood tests done, and found out that he had stage four pancreatic cancer. And Jane told us that, as a doctor, he read the chart, and he knew immediately, it was a death sentence, there was nothing that they could do. And it was at that point that, you know, as sad as it was, we really ramped up our strategies, we took action, we sped up all of the planning that we were planning to do, you know, over a period of time, we really put it into high gear, we prevent a lots of mistakes. And we really help them with their outside assets, and really get everything kind of structured, and, and the urgency was, you know, of the immediate concern, but ultimately, John passed away just just a few weeks later. You know, it’s funny, even as a financial planner, and all the work that we do, we talked about, you know, there’s only one thing you can’t get back more of, and it’s not money, it’s time. And I think we all have a tendency to take time for granted. And I remember when I got the call, and I looked at the map of where John was staying, and he was in a facility that was about 40 minutes away from my house. And I thought maybe I could get there, but I just didn’t, I couldn’t make it work with, you know, my kids activities, etc, at night. And, and even I didn’t have as much time as I thought, but ultimately, he passed away. And I really didn’t get a chance to see him one last time or to thank him for allowing us to help him. But he was an incredible man. I mean, so completely committed to his family, so concerned about his patience and everybody else’s well being. Just to give you an example of how selfless this guy was, his only daughter, you know, lives in another state. She’s currently in a lead role of a prominent production. And he refused her to come home to see him. Even though as a doctor, he knew he had just a few days. How incredible is that?

 

Joe Krause  18:06

Wow. Yeah. Incredible man. Great tribute to him. Thank you for sharing that. Boy, there’s so many just thoughts in that segment, in that Convo from Jeff Davis, I mean, from heavy stuff, and it’s heavy, but it’s real. You know, and that’s part of, you know, my mother used to say to me take a lesson from the dead. And, you know, sometimes that’s a very cold statement. And then other times, it’s very real. And, and I appreciate that, I appreciate your I appreciate John very, very much for being selfless, and also for being so open and willing to work with you, when I’m give you give thrive the opportunity to to put everything into perspective for him.

 

Jeff Walker  18:56

Yeah, part of he just wanted to number one, kind of acknowledge and pay the man a tribute and Jane as well. But, you know, it was interesting. So Jane told us that, you know, on his deathbed, he was so appreciative and grateful for all the work we’ve done over the past year, that he was a really able, at the end of the day to pass away with peace and confidence. Like David had said earlier, you know, at the end of the day, that’s what this is all about. It’s not about money. It’s about you know, feeling comfortable, safe, secure, knowing that things are taken care of, and he knew that his family was in good hands and and we were taking care of everything. So you know, as to shame that he did pass away but at least he was able to do it with some peace and confidence. And like Karen said, Sometimes life has a tendency to not go the way that we hope or think or want sometimes and and I know that sometimes we don’t want to talk about this stuff. But you know, if you just look back to where they were before we met that’s the lesson here, right? All of their questions and you know, uncertainty and maybe you know got feelings, they weren’t quite sure. And you look back to what we actually found, and then all of the work that we tried to do to help them recreate and fix those issues, when you look at that it’s almost like night and day, what if we didn’t meet? That’s what I always think like, what if we didn’t get the chance? What if he didn’t come to that workshop? You know, what’s interesting, too, they told me after that, you know, in that first meeting, I think it was actually a couple meetings later, they said, you know, we actually, we’re going to cancel our meeting, we scheduled some time, but we were going to cancel it. And Jane was like, let’s just, let’s just go and talk and see what they have to say, why wouldn’t we? Right? Why wouldn’t you take advantage of more education, more awareness, etc. And so I’m grateful that they did just for the opportunity to help them and to continue to help them, etc.

 

David Bezar  20:43

You know, Joe, one of the things that just kind of pops into my mind as I hear that story, and it’s not, unfortunately, it’s not an uncommon story, you know, that we deal with, especially, you know, Jeff and I, I’ve been in this business now, 34 years Canon has been in the business 34 years, Jeff, close to 20 years at this point, you know, you deal with that type of stuff. And, you know, when Thrive was in its formation stages, the, you know, the word Shepherd kind of kept coming up. And I think that’s how we view and I don’t mean that from an ego perspective, but I think it’s our obligation to kind of Shepherd people, right? Not talk at them, but talk with them. Not try to impress them with our knowledge, but to try to empower them to get on a level playing field so that they feel, you know, independent, that they know what they can do that, yeah, I mean, that makes it worthwhile going to work that, you know, you can have that kind of impact, I think it’s really pretty amazing. So obviously, people don’t want to think about that type of stuff, but it’s better to be prepared than not, and being able to, you know, kind of leave this earth feeling peaceful that your family is going to be taken care of. And I don’t use that as a scare tactic. It’s just, that’s a strong emotion to have that piece available. So you know, come out to one of our websites go to you know, our website, it’s one of our dinner workshops. It’s a web. I’m on the words now. Yeah. Thrive financial services.com, or give us a call to 215-798-9088, the inevitable reality of life is death back in a moment.

 

Joe Krause  22:20

This program is paid for by Jason media partners.

 

Joe Krause  22:27

And back here on roadmap to retirement to Radio Show with David Bezar, Karen Bezar, and Bret Elam, Jeff Walker sitting in for Bret today, we thank all of our listeners for tuning in. We’ll continue to update you on upcoming workshops. And as David mentioned, to 215-798-9088, or you can get registered by going to the website, thrivefinancialservices.com. Karen, over to you.

 

Karen Bezar  22:54

So over to me after that heavy topic, it’s very emotional. I’m proud of Jeff for getting through it without getting choked up. It’s affected him in a way and it affected all of us. But again, it makes you aware, to take some time, enjoy your life. And that’s what retirement is supposed to be. And some people feel like they don’t have a choice that they have to keep working and working and working. And one of the things that we can provide for somebody as a client or as a first time when they come in for the consultation, is you. We’ve actually told people you can retire. After doing all the planning and all the reports that we do. You’re good. You can retire now if you want to. And that’s a great feeling.

 

Joe Krause  23:51

And another thing that we’ve you know, yeah, it is, especially if you especially if you have no way of answering the question, and when you do answer the question, you think you’re wrong, right?

 

David Bezar  23:58

So it’s funny, Joe, every time I ask Karen, if I can retire, she doesn’t have that answer for.

 

Karen Bezar  24:04

money. No, I was gonna say sometimes when we have a couple, the wife’s like, no, he’s working for one more year because I got to prepare and like prepare myself. But here’s the good news. We work together. So retired news. Yeah.

 

David Bezar  24:19

All right. Yeah. Good news.

 

Joe Krause  24:21

Well, I say them, I say to my wife, hey, I’m never going to retire and she says good stuff.

 

Karen Bezar  24:28

But all kidding aside, you know, when we meet with people for the first time, one of the main questions is, well, I have a solvent retirement, do we have enough money to retire? And that’s a great question. There’s no magic number for any one person or one couple. There’s a lot of analysis that actually goes into planning for retirement. So when we meet with people, these are some of the this is the awareness that we bring to the table or to the plate. We and these are all Other things that we plan for in retirement and remember retirement is not set it and forget it. If you become our client, we will meet with you, you know, as often as you like, but at least once or twice a year, and as well as things come up, you pick up the phone and call and say, hey, my daughter is getting married, my grandson needs money for college, can I swing it? Can I help them out? So that’s all all information that we are able to help with. And again, it’s a dynamic, retirement is dynamic, it’s always changing, things are always changing, life is always changing. So when we take a look at retirement, these are some things that we bring awareness to that people again, kind of forget about. The number one thing on number one expense, I think people don’t plan on is health care expenses, right? They understand that Medicare is there for them. But when we get into the nitty gritty of it, and I’ve done, we’ve done segments on it, and possibly you could do a whole show on Medicare. But Medicare is just a part of the puzzle, right? So we take a look at everything. And we include that cost in your planning. Some people think I just need Medicare, and you’re done with it. No, that’s not the fact. We also have an expert here that can help you if you need Medicare insurance, get you on the best supplement plan. And then we have to also think about I spoke with somebody the other night at a workshop. And he was so upset because he’s on Medicare. And he’s working with his accountant. And he was like, Do you can you believe he didn’t tell me about Medicare surcharges? And I said, is he a financial planner? Or is he a financial advisor? And he kind of just thought, yeah, my accountants gonna be the one giving me the advice. So, lesson to learn. If you’re not working with a financial advisor and somebody specifically for retirement, Medicare surcharges don’t always come into play, but he was upset, because it’s not that it’s a one time charge. It’s something that he’s got to pay for forever. Unless you worked with somebody who can help them get out of that surcharge. There’s ways to get out of it. But you might have to pay for it for a year.

 

Joe Krause  27:10

Yeah, I would say this. I don’t even know if this is the right. If this is an accurate statement. Should you expect your accountant to say that to you or not? I don’t even know. Yeah, I mean, again, maybe not.

 

David Bezar  27:22

That’s exactly it could be some are, you know, pretty schooled on stuff and others, you know, it’s debits and credits and tax proper numbers. Right?

 

Karen Bezar  27:30

Right, especially now our favorite time of year tax time. Taxation. We do a report that shows projects when you’re older, what taxes are gonna look like at current tax rates. And sometimes people jaws drop, because they think, ah, in retirement, you know, the famous, I’m going to pay less in taxes. But in reality, sometimes you end up paying more than you expect. Because again, you got all that time you saved all your money in your 401, k’s are any type of traditional tax savings account when you’re working. And then you retire and you start taking those required minimum distributions, or you take money out because you need to live and you have Social Security, you might have a pension, all that adds up. It’s good to know what your taxes are going to be in retirement. And is there anything you can do now to plan for that? That’s something that we definitely focus on here thrive. Emergencies pop up. And also, people sometimes are under the false thought that they’re going to spend less in retirement. But when you go away on vacation, Joe, or you’re on the weekend, do you not spend money? Do you go out to dinner on the weekend, maybe do you go out to dinner, when you go on vacation.

 

Joe Krause  28:46

I’m going to see my grandkids, I’m going to see more grandkids in the next 24 hours. And I know we’re going to spend more money than I anticipate that I ate before I get there.

 

Karen Bezar  28:55

So emergencies pop up, you’re going to be in retirement, hopefully for 2030 years or longer. So are you going to maybe need a new roof on the house, so you’re going to maybe need a new car sometime down the road. These are things that we can plan for. And we can have input on even during retirement as the years go by. I was just going to say grandchildren for grandchildren in there. People forget, you know, what you could have five year you could have a lot of grandchildren.

 

Joe Krause  29:26

I’m hoping for a lot.

 

Karen Bezar  29:28

So you want to do things for them. So you know, we can actually play it for that we can say here’s some special expenses that you want to do for your things you want to do for your grandchildren. Right? So you want to enjoy retirement, you want to enjoy your grandchildren. So these are all things you have to plan for. Along with health care is long term care and statistically speaking, seven out of 10 people so they say someone turning 65 today has almost a 70% chance of needing some type of long term care services or support in your aging years. Sometimes it’s surgery that you have that maybe it’s something that you’re going to recover for. We’ve you know, you could have an accident, you just, you just have to plan for these things is long term care insurance, something that you have, bring in your policy, when we meet with you, we’ll take a look at it. Sometimes I think it’s it’s great policy, it may or may not be long term care insurance sounds great. But it’s really it is expensive. And then other people we meet with habit and they say I pay for it, I pay for it, I pay for it. What if I never need it? So what we have is, we plan for this. But there’s also hybrid products out there that might give you a combination of some long term health care, and some savings and some insurance. So these are little tidbits of information that I’m just throwing out there that people please listen, please plan for retirement, give us a call 215-798-9088 I’d love to meet you at one of our workshops. And this is all stuff that constant complimentary consultation, you come in for the first meeting, and we will give all of this information to you. Complimentary,

 

Joe Krause  31:06

yeah, if you’re thinking about it, if you’re listening to the show, perhaps for the very first time, or if you’re one of our longtime listeners, and you’ve had the time is now right, which was mentioned earlier in the when we first came on the air if the time is now right, get registered, go to thrive, financial services.com, there is nothing for sale at the workshop. You’ll be educated when you leave back in a moment. Back here on roadmap to retirement, the radio show 215-798-9088 a good number to store in your cell phone and never know when you’ll need it. David, over to you.

 

David Bezar  31:50

Alright, Joe. So I’m going to mention that I wanted to just talk shortly about some of the data that the Pew Research Center puts out and, you know, really top notch think tank out there, they really provide a lot of really good quality information. And what I was saying is, you know, as much as change, things change, sometimes they stay the same. So this was, you know, kind of in my archives, and I was looking at baby boomers approach to age 65 glumly that was the title of the research paper. And this is back in December of 2010. And I won’t read everything on it. But it kind of talks about how many baby boomers and I think most people probably heard the statistic that you know, right now, we have about 10,000 people, baby boomers, turning age 65 Every single day, for the next 14 years. Right, we Wow up into recent. And I think I don’t know what you know, with all the Gen X and Gen Z and Gen Y. I’m not sure which one it actually is. But I think we have finally been surpassed as the largest segment of the population, but we’re still a very, very significant portion of the population. So

 

Joe Krause  33:15

51 million people in the next 14 years are gonna turn 65 Amazing.

 

David Bezar  33:19

And again, and two people are living longer, right, the statistics out there are. And this is, you know, we hear this from a Census Bureau perspective that a married couple, who reaches the age of 65 together, that there’s a 50% chance one of the spouses is going to make it to net age 92 and a 25% chance that one of the spouses is going to make it to age 95. So that’s potentially another 30 years of retirement that you have to plan for. Right. So back in 2010, the title was glumly looking at things. This is kind of what was going on. It said here between the ages of 18 to 29 31% of the American population back in 2010 was satisfied with the direction of the country 60% were dissatisfied between the ages of 30 and 45 25% were dissatisfied 69% were dissatisfied between the ages of 46 and 64 15% of the population was satisfied with 80% dissatisfied. And that gap between the numbers is that you know people didn’t have any didn’t know they didn’t you know, basically I don’t really have an opinion when they were polled. Then then people aged 65 was also 65 Plus was 15%. were satisfied that the country was going in the right direction. 78% dissatisfied in the direction so Uh, you know, I’m a baby boomer Joe, you’re a baby boomer. I’m not gonna say what Karen is.

 

Karen Bezar  35:04

I’m a baby boomer, and I’m proud of it. The last year though I do the last one.

 

David Bezar  35:12

What do you think if people were polled today, and I am when we say the satisfaction with the direction of the country, I’m not just talking politically, I’m talking everything right geopolitical economics, you know, purpose in life, all of that. What would you say? Do you think it’s similar to the way it was back then? Or has it improved or gone? Gone? The other way? Well, I think.

 

Joe Krause  35:37

if you put it into a, if you put it into under a microscope, and that microscope extent extension is a short period, maybe 24 months or 36 months, or, you know, I think people are less confident right now than maybe ever. I truly feel that I don’t know if I’m right. I’m just making that from just conversation I’m out about, you know, I do a lot of programming. I’ve talked to a lot of people. I think that’s the feeling right now.

 

David Bezar  36:06

Yeah. And you know, that that really does give you the good perspective from the amount of people that you talk to. And it’s similar for us, we talked to a lot of people. And we actually, I don’t say we do official polls, but you know, when I’m run one of the workshops, I ask questions, you know, and people raise their hand based on certain things. And, you know, I don’t know, if it’s the people who tend to come out is totally representative of, you know, the population at large. I think so, right, we’ve got a very diverse group of people who tend to come out, these are diverse in the sense of their political views, their station in life, their economic conditions, so on and so forth. But it’s all people kind of in that target zone of retirement, you know, three to four years away from retirement, or they’re already in retirement. That’s kind of the common theme there. And I would tell you that most people feel some pending gloom related to the stock market. Some people have kind of this feeling of pending gloom related to taxes. People definitely, even though we give them some convincing information, think that social security is definitely at risk. They definitely feel healthcare costs are going to go up, they feel that inflation is not going to abate and go away, it’s going to be higher than it has been traditionally. Interestingly enough, though, you know, people are still traveling, people still buying homes, people are still so there is this gloom, but it seems for the first time in a long time that it’s not preventing people from doing things, I don’t know if that’s because they think it’s all going to happen, and they want to, you know, do things that they want to do while they can do it financially, I mean, that may be part of it. So, you know, it’s kind of interesting to be an AR lens, trying to help people navigate this process, when that’s what they’re thinking. Now, the good feeling about it is, there are things that you can do, to make sure that you mitigate those concerns, and real solutions, not just feelings and emotions, but there are things that you can do financially to make sure now, the a word that I had mentioned is annuities. And I want to talk about annuities today, because it’s something that comes up so frequently. Now, I hadn’t seen this in a very, very long time. We are we don’t love annuities here or thrive. Financial Services. We don’t not love annuities. We don’t love annuities, because typically, they get sold to people. Right and want to use the word sold. They you know, it’s kind of that sales type attitude towards it, right. It’s not coming from a fiduciary perspective. It’s, you know, we see clients, we see people who are prospects who ultimately become clients, where they’ve got 100% of their retirement assets in annuities. And when we asked them, Why did you do that? They said, well, the person we work with said it would be in our best interest to have 100% 100% of any right you’ve heard that old cliche, right, you know, 100% of anything, it’s all about moderation. It’s all about, you know, you know, people who go on to the carnivore diet or they go completely into the vegan space, right. It’s all it’s all about some degree of moderation is what is best. So we don’t love annuities, but we have come to the conclusion that for the right scenario, and the right proportionate amount of retirement money You can use annuities. Now there have to be certain types of annuities in our opinion. And, you know, we again, we are fiduciary. So we operate with this holistic approach, we look at the total picture. And we have, again, we’ve come to the conclusion that annuities can fit for a certain thing. Now what annuities do is they can either and again, I don’t want to go into the whole, and I’ll tell you why in a second, I don’t want to go into the whole picture of annuities, but we use them for one of two situations, one, where a retire and a person were a couple who’s getting ready to retire, can’t really meet their monthly expenses from the current situation that they have. So we’ll use annuities to produce a guaranteed additional income to their social security, possibly their pension to meet monthly expenses. It’s rare that we do that. But we do come across some people who want that guaranteed paycheck coming in month after month, year after year for the rest of their lives. The other way that we use annuities is we use them as a asset class to replace certain like instead of a stock or an individual bond, or a REIT, you know, real estate investment trusts or something like that, we use the annuity for a portion of the portfolio, because it brings guaranteed principal protection, it can provide a guaranteed fixed rate of return. It could also if chosen, participate in the upside of the market with no risk to principal. So there’s a lot of things there and people are starting to ask us, they’re asking us the workshop, they’re asking us at the complimentary consultation. What do you what should I do about annuities? I’m thinking about annuities, I have a feeling they’re not good, but I’m not sure and I want to get educated. So because of that, Joe, what we decided to do is we created a course. And we’re going to post this up on our website. And it’ll be up for 30 days, right? Because I don’t want to give the impression that that’s all we do is uh, nobody’s by it. And it’s not I mean, we manage money, we do taxes, we do health care planning, we do all of that. But we’re going to put up a seven-lesson course called the strategies the rich use to buy annuities. And those courses that you’ll have access to it’s going to be free, it doesn’t cost you anything. Those courses will be a secret annuity strategy that few investors, and even their advisors know about why most income plans fail during retirement years. How safe are fixed annuities, Confessions of an annuity agent, the ultimate checklist for interviewing a financial advisor who you want to find out what their take is on annuities, how retirees can dramatically reduce their taxes with annuities, and then advanced annuity plan case studies. So we want to show people examples. So we’re going to post that up at thrivefinancialservices.com it’ll be a pop up, you can sign up and then you’ll get access to those courses. You can study those courses. And then if you have any questions, you could give us a call to 215-798-9088. And I would tell you if you are thinking about purchasing an annuity. Before you take any action, get yourself educated. This would be a fantastic course it’s complimentary. You can review it, and then you could give us a call to bounce any questions off before you go purchase an annuity from anybody. I think it would be very valuable for people to do that.

 

Joe Krause  44:05

I second that statement with double exclamation points, no doubt about it. Well done great thought by you and the team from thrive to put that out there. Just another example as we end the show of thrives commitment to educating our listeners, educating the public and the population of the Delaware Valley that’s going to do it for this edition of roadmap to retirement, the radio show on behalf of David Bezar, Karen Bezar, Bret Elam, and of course Jeff Walker, who was our special guest today and all of our listeners tuning in this week. I’m Joe Krause. See you next time everybody.

 

44:45

Thanks for listening to roadmap to retirement the radio show from Thrive financial services. If you’re like most Americans, you have more questions than you do answer is about what to do with your retirement savings. If you have a question about your IRA or your 401 K pension or other tax deferred accounts. If you have a question about reducing taxes, generating income or filing for Social Security, whatever it is, David Caron and Brett are here to help and often your questions can be answered in a simple phone call which is call 215-798-9088 to 15798 9088. And so you know no statements made during roadmap to retirement the radio show shall constitute tax legal or accounting advice you should consult your own legal or tax professional on any such matters information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investment or investment strategies investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed here David bizarre brandy lemon Karen bizarre Thrive financial services and thrive Capital Management are licensed to offer investment advisory services through Thrive Capital Management LLC and SEC registered investment advisory firm office headquarters located in Fort Washington and offices of convenience used exclusively for client meetings and excellent Yardley in Cherry Hill roadmap to retirement the radio show was a paid commercial announcement from Jacob media partners. If you’d like to learn more about the power of the radio our contact Joe Kraus at 267-261-3428. Today’s program has been pre recorded.

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