Listen and read along as hosts David Bezar, Karen Bezar, and Bret Elam talk with Joe Krause.

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Announcer: 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 do not reflect the views of WPHT 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: Welcome everyone to another edition of Roadmap to Retirement to Radio Show with David Bezar, Karen Bezar, and Bret Elam glad you’re with us for another week of education we continue, or I should say Thrive Financial Services. They continue on their mission to educate everyone in the Delaware Valley on the doorstep of retirement, perhaps in retirement, perhaps just getting ready to retire. Or more importantly, all of that. confused about what decisions they should make if they fall into one of those categories?

 

David Bezar: Yeah. And what’s interesting about that, Joe, is we’re always learning as well, right? Because we got to stay ahead of the group to make sure we have answers that potentially come to us. And every single week, we do find something to get ourselves educated about whether it’s taxes, Social Security, estate planning, health care costs, which is a big thing. Investment Strategies, you know, we got so much going on, in the economy. In geopolitical situations, it’s not easy today, it’s really not easy for people who are in the doorstop, or have already gone through the doorstep of retirement, to really make sure that they get that complete peace of mind that everything’s gonna be okay on retirement. So, you know, that’s one of the driving motivations for us here. We are, you know, one of our core values, we have an acronym for our core values within our firm. And it’s the word lead, L.E.A.D, and lead is an acronym, the L stands for learning, we want to be a learning company, we want to let you know, we as individuals within the firm, we want to learn we want to, you know, kind of grow the value. You know, what our mission is to bring education, you know, learning education to the consumer, so that they can make the right decisions on these critical components related to retirement. So the L stands for learning, the E stands for excellence, and we want to give people a spectacular experience with us. Our company is committed, everybody within the company is committed to excellence. We want that to be world-class when people come and visit the education, the experience, the service levels, all of that. The A is for attention to detail. Right? So, we want to make sure the i’s are dotted, the T’s are crossed, and we want to make sure we consider all options available. We have attention to detail. And then the D is discipline, right? Discipline is doing things regardless of how you feel, right, getting the job done. We do 100 educational workshops and seminars on an annual basis. We do tons of webinars, we put out blog content, I mean, we’re, you know, it’s very, it takes a lot of discipline, especially when it gets to my age. Right? It takes discipline. But it takes a lot of discipline to get up every single day, stay motivated, be pumped up, stay focused on your mission, and so on and so on, especially with the world today, it’s just, you know, it’s so crazy. Karen and I were driving into the office yesterday. And you know, a lot of the flags are flying half-staff. And, you know, there’s just so much going on. I got to be honest with you, like I said to Karen, you know, “why are the flags flying half staffed?” There’s so many terrible events that occur, you know, you don’t know. It’s so sad from a commentary standpoint, Joe, that there is a website called halfstaff.org – that will tell you why the flag, like the different circumstances, the different events that have recently happened to do that. And this one happened to be, you know, for the unfortunate tragedy that happened down in Texas. So it’s just crazy. You know, I’m a little off track. But my point is, you know, that acronym of lead that learning, we always want to stay on top. So we’ll cover a little bit about that today. You know, Karen and I are, or primarily me, I sat with another business owner this week, and they happened to be in the healthcare business and learning more about health care, it really drove me to say, “hey, let’s put some type of strategic partnership together. You know, we do seminars, we do webinars, we do a radio show, we do these things called Lunch and Learns for our clients, which we just had a very successful one a couple weeks ago”, and said, “You got to be part of that this is a message that people need to hear about.” So a lot of good stuff is going on. Joe, we have a good show lined up for you, Karen, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be covering on today’s show.

 

Karen Bezar: So my title is women prepare to go out alone in their golden years. And the article that I’m going to be touching about and discussing is how women can achieve financial empowerment and a better retirement.

 

David Bezar: That’s a great topic, right. And so, you know, we know, statistically that it tends to be us guys who pass away first in a relationship. I think, you know, I think God has a fantastic plan there. Because if something happened to Karen, first, it’s just-

 

Bret Elam: I got you covered, David. 

 

Karen Bezar: You’re so sweet. Thanks. 

 

David Bezar: Thanks, buddy. Yeah, I just don’t think you’ll do all the things. Yeah. Now, it’s just like, you know, I mean, you just.

 

Joe Krause: Yeah know I get it.

 

David Bezar: I don’t know, you know, not even the emotional side, and all that kind of stuff. It’s just the logistical side of life, it’s just me, you know, completely spun out of control. So, it’s important. And to, you know, if we’re not here, making sure that the relationship was mutually partnered, you know, on the finance from an education standpoint, so it’s a great topic to go over. Bret, what do you think you’ll be covering? 

 

Bret Elam: We’re gonna be talking about Social Security. And we’re gonna go through an article 69% of Americans that were just recently surveyed pretty much failed the foundational steps to Social Security. So I think it’d be interesting to kind of go through the top things that people missed. And just to tell a little bit of a story about why it’s so important to plan just related to social security benefits, I’m so excited to share that next segment.

 

David Bezar: Yeah. So that, you know, look, that’s a topic that we know, people make their decisions on Social Security more emotionally than they do, logically. And part of that is there’s, you know, the facts haven’t been disclosed, you know? You hear what’s kind of going on, from a media perspective, that, you know, social security benefits are going to be cut soon, you know, the trust fund is running out of money, you know, all these different things. So before we go to the break Joe, one of the big topics that’s happening right now is the debt ceiling. And we talk a lot about the debt ceiling in our seminars. This is what I will tell you for the first time, and I think they said that the debt ceiling, and don’t quote me on this number, because this, you know, I’m not great with memory on this, but the debt ceiling has been suspended, or increased. I think 78 times. I’m gonna look that up, I think 78 times. So but this is the first time that we have such a chasm between the political parties, that I would say I’m a little bit nervous about the potential of the debt ceiling not being suspended or increased. And having to go to one of the amendments to make sure that the country can pay its bills. This would be catastrophic. Like this is the first time that I would tell you there’s a little bit of anxiety on my part, that this could be catastrophic. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about how to make sure you’re prepared.

 

Joe Krause: Good stuff, I hope we can survive 2024. But that’s for another conversation. Roadmap to Retirement, the radio show as we broadcast to you with our Thrive Financial Services. We’ll get to our first commercial break, remember in the break, and as we go to the breaks throughout the show one of those references to an upcoming workshop where you can get scheduled to attend that is to go to thrive financial services.com Back in a moment. Here are two opportunities coming up on May 16. Today after Mother’s Day to get educated and get registered on Monday, May 16 at the Brandywine Prime which is located in Chadds Ford. And then also on May 16, at Riverwinds located in West Deptford, New Jersey, go to thrivefinancialservices.com. Get registered, get educated, that’s thrivefinancialservices.com. And welcome back everyone to this edition of roadmap to retirement, the radio show again, thank you very much for listening. I saw a post on LinkedIn the other day. Bret and I were forwarding the post to a friend of mine, it was a one of the thrive podcast, which was pushed out on LinkedIn, and I was sending it around. And it reminded me to say today, that if you miss any of the shows, or if you want to go back and listen to our show, there’s a wealth of education, right on thrivefinancialservices.com, all of the broadcasts are there.

 

Bret Elam: That’s it. I mean, our theme of awareness, education and leadership. I mean, we just put it out there, whether it’s a show the podcast seminars, it’s just all about empowering people to become advocates not only for themselves, and the ones who want to do it for themselves, they can chat with us about the leadership that people need, because they don’t want to do it. No one wants to become that part time financial planner. But starting to segment just came out this week, the initial forecast for raises in Social Security, which will be announced in the next three to four months, came in at 3.1%. So in the last two years, we saw a 5.9% increase and a 8.7% increase, and because quote, unquote, supposedly inflation is back in check, we’re only looking at a 3% increase year over year. And you know, it was interesting reading that article it dug into since the year 2000. That the cost of normal goods and services that the everyday consumer uses, if you used to pay $1 for it? Today, it costs $2.50, literally over the past 23 years. However, if you are earning what you had, if you are getting $1, from Social Security, with how they calculate inflation, that dollar is now only worth $1.78. So there’s a gap. That’s what they’ve been talking about your year over a year over a year that we need to more closely align what inflation looks like with Social Security with like what’s happening in the real world, not this fictitious number that’s coming out there. And you see the disconnect yet again, where the rate of inflation is almost doubled the rate of Social Security going up. But I want to dig into this article talking about and again, I’m just going to go through this and we’ll talk about the top things that people have misconstrued thoughts on related to social security. 

 

Bret Elam: So 69% of Americans approaching retirement failed or eked out a passing grade with a recent Social Security retirement quiz. And this was done by a big insurance company called Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. And the results were just released actually earlier this month. And they looked at the results indicating that near retirees knowledge about Social Security actually went down year over year. And it says there are two key things to remember when it comes to retirement. Knowledge is power. We talked about that all the time. And planning is powerful. But as we talked about on the show as well, what’s more important than knowledge is applied knowledge. So how do we take what we think we know and don’t, don’t commoditize them, but pull all those different pieces together. So on that basis, many workers near retirement are in bad shape, meaning 35% of test takers failed the quiz, up from 29% last year, and 39% passed with a D. A lot of people getting ready to graduate or the school you’re getting ready to end. So I think they’re sick of talking about grades, but some flashbacks here. So that was down 36%. So 69% of people are pretty much almost failing the questionnaire and say for those nearing retirement, the questions you need to ask yourself is what is my income going? Where is my income going to come from? And what do I need to ensure that I don’t leave anything on the table. And that’s what this show is all about. Do not leave anything on the table. I understand educating yourself as to the intricacies, the ins and outs, and especially this topic on social security so that you understand all the facts to make what? Not an emotional but yet a rational decision. So in terms of retirement planning, the survey found that 43% of respondents did not know what percentage of the retirement income would come from Social Security. Blows me away. Like are you kidding me? Two and five people have no idea what’s happening there and a further 28% did not know how much money in addition to Social Security they would need to live comfortably in retirement. Like, you got to plan like everyone’s always thinking about what they’re retiring from. You need to think about what you’re retiring to, not just what are you going to do from a purpose standpoint, but from a financial standpoint as well. So only 28% of people are winging again, it doesn’t work for peace of mind. Only 28% of people said that retirement income plans take into account inflation and market volatility. That’s crazy. Yeah, I would hope that more than that only 28%. 26% said their plan did not do so. 25% I love this word hope, hope that it did my gosh, find out. And 21%? Just had no idea. So 16% also did not know how suppose they are the stock market fluctuations and retirement. Again, don’t take the ostrich approach, we got to be aware of everything that’s going on. So we don’t get hit with the surprises down the road.

 

Joe Krause: Those numbers or those percentages. Sad really, and they really spotlight where people are, they don’t understand. And that proves it right there.

 

Bret Elam: And each week I do a workshop. I come on here and I say yet again, is a question in front of me before the workshop starts how many people believe RMD age is going to start at 70 and a half 70 to 73. Knowledge is power, applied knowledge is even better. So it’s all about just educating yourself. So you make the right decisions. So with that being said, we talked about how Social Security and all your other retirement income streams know the nuances. Plan carefully and make decisions on purpose, not by accident. And encouraging. 24% of respondents reported that they had documented all their financial information and online usernames and passwords in one place as part of their estate plan. The one thing I find because my brother, sister and I are going to throw a little bit with my parents is that as people continue to chronologically mature isn’t a nice way of saying it. 

 

Joe Krause: Very nice way of saying that.

 

Bret Elam: The memory starts to fade. And we’re experiencing it right now with our parents right now. So it’s like how do we get all our ducks in a row, because you don’t want to triage and go through a crisis and try to go through all that plan, plan, plan and prepare. So 22% had not done this and had zero plans to do it at all. The good thing was 54% Ready for this plan to do so. You know why they say they plan to do so because they’re from the biggest nation in the world. You know what the biggest nation in the world is procrastinating. Don’t plan to do it, just do it. Just do it and get it done. So PSB insights, that’s who conducted the survey on behalf of Massachusetts mutual just literally went through this a couple months ago with 1500 Americans aged 55 to 65, who had not filed for benefits and on the quiz itself most respondents correctly answered questions about receiving reduced benefits by filing early, receiving reduced benefits by continuing to work after filing early for retirement. We talked about that week in and week out, just related to security and a majority also correctly understood that a married person can also receive benefits based on a spouse’s record, even if that person had no earnings history. So I already gave you the bad news about Social Security inflation, what’s being projected, let’s start going through some of the most popular answers people get wrong. And these were simple. It wasn’t even multiple choice, it’s true or false, you’re a 50% chance you’re gonna get it right. Number one, generally, if I if I am in a same sex marriage, there are different eligibility requirements when it comes to spouse, Social Security, retirement benefits, answers false. I mean, 69% answered that one correctly. Next one, if I have a spouse, and he or she passes away, I will receive both my full benefit and my deceased full benefit. Wrong. Only 65% of people got that one, right. Next one, the money that comes out of my paycheck for Social Security goes into a specific account for me and remains there earning interest until I begin receiving Social Security benefits and the answer is false. Only 60% of people that were all getting into the privatization of Social Security that we’ve heard over the past couple of decades have gone nowhere. Now, it all goes into one poll at the end of the day. If I file for retirement benefits and have dependent children or even grandchildren, aged 18 or younger, they also may qualify for Social Security benefits and that answer is true. Only 56% of people got that one correctly. And we see people getting married later and later in life people have in second marriages. We see a lot of people collecting Social Security and having kids still in school, oh, my gosh, you’re entitled to more money. But guess what? The government doesn’t volunteer that you need to go get it. If I’m divorced, I might be able to collect social security benefits based on my ex spouse’s Social Security earnings record. Answers true. Only 56% of people got that correct again. A couple of roles that have been married greater than 10 years can’t be remarried, all that couple other rules. Under current law, Social Security benefits could be reduced by 20% or more for everyone by 2035. That’s true. We’ve talked about this crisis and the issues going on Social Security, please understand and plan for that, appropriately. Next one, under current Social Security law, the full retirement age is 65, no matter when you were born. Wrong. And it’s not 65. For anybody, it used to be that now it’s 66 and change and soon to be 67 for everybody, and pay attention – because my guess is it’s going to go beyond age 67 as well. Next one, if I delay taking Social Security benefits past the age of 70, I will continue to get delayed retirement credit increases for every year I wait. Wrong, for only 49% of people got that right. At age 70. There’s nothing more than it’ll grow, collect it, collect it collect it.Okay, there’s really not too many circumstances on why you wouldn’t have the next one. So security retirement benefits are subject to income tax, just like a withdrawal from an IRA. That’s absolutely wrong. Only 38% of people got that correct. These are all topics that we go through when people come in just going through the ins and outs and social security. So again, we can make a rational decision. The last one is that I must be a US citizen to collect Social Security retirement benefits. Wrong. That’s not right. It’s false. Only 29% of people got that right. And I want to stress the importance. Again, those sound like some basics. But understand there’s a reason the government’s not supposed to give advice, because there’s so many darn roles related to social security. They’re supposed to just give people rational information so you can make a decision. So you may have just heard this segment. So well, how the heck am I going to figure this out? Here’s an awesome answer. You don’t have to go it alone. And that’s why we offer that complimentary session when we sit down, not only go through social security, but we go through the importance of looking at the whole plan of making sure that everything works together. So if you just heard that segment segment and you have some questions hanging out there if like, I just don’t get it related to social security, winging, it has always been my plan. My encouragement is to give us a call. No better time than today at 215-798-9088. Again, 215-798-9088, your social security will be the foundation of your financial plan. Let’s figure out how it all works.

 

Joe Krause: Yeah, really good segment. And I love the question and then providing the answer because I think for the benefit for the listening audience, if they probably found themselves in this isn’t being disrespectful, they probably found themselves answering incorrectly not knowing the correct answer. And that’s okay. That’s okay. Take the next step: Roadmap to Retirement, the radio show. Back in a moment, this program is paid for by Jacob media partners.

 

Joe Krause: Back here on Roadmap to Retirement with David Bezar, Karen Bezar, and Bret Elam. We thank everybody for tuning in. And continuing to join us every week. Again, if you heard of a workshop near you or an upcoming workshop and you’d like to get registered, go to thrivefinancialservices.com. And get registered. Also check the availability because the workshops fill quickly, when they are posted on the website. Karen, over to you. How are you today?

 

Karen Bezar: I’m great. How are you? 

 

Joe Krause: Good,  I’m excited for your topic after you mentioned it and referenced it in the opening segment of the show. 

 

Karen Bezar: Okay, good! So the reason I’m discussing this today is I got a phone call during the week from my cousin, who had a friend whose husband passed away suddenly, and he had just turned 70. And she is beside herself because she doesn’t know where anything is. She doesn’t know what she has. And my cousin is in the industry but not in financial planning or working with retirees. So he said, you know, he’s like, I’m gonna pass your information along. And, you know, set up an appointment with my cousin, which is me. But it’s it again, it brought to light the situation of if you are part of a married couple, it’s statistically speaking, you’re not going to both pass away on the same day. So if you’re a married woman, and this is specifically geared toward a woman, because there were some studies done, chances are that one day you will be a widow, will you be ready to handle finances on your own? Here’s how to get started now to help yourself and get yourself in a better position. And it’s not something that we like to think about, but you do have to plan for it. And we definitely do that here at Thrive. We plan for the passing of one spouse and we look to see if there’s an income gap going forward. But most women most Most, most often, it’s the women who end up alone. Women generally outlive men and are more than three times as likely as men to lose their spouse. So I’m not going to bore you with all the statistics. But this was alarming to me. Almost 60% of men over 85 are still married, but just 17% of women in the same age group are married. So if you’re a woman, and you’re part of a married couple, you need to plan and you need to have your ducks in a row. Your faces were like really?

 

Joe Krause: I’m saying wow. There are a widow? Their spouse has passed?

 

Karen Bezar: Yeah, yeah. So they are no longer here. And then this is a statistic actually, Merrill Lynch did this statistic and they said over 3000 respondents to this study, they did found that just 14% of widows were making financial decisions on their own before their husbands died. So listen up, if you’re, if you’re out there saying that that could be me, maybe I need to start making a choice and start looking at our financial future, again, here are Thrive this is what we focus on. If we have a married couple and one person passes away, there is already a plan in place, there’s no stress, there’s nothing for that spouse to worry about. We have everything under control. Our number is 215-798-9088 and also encourage our listeners to check out our website thrivefinancialservices.com. And we have a lot of information on there about all aspects of financial planning.

 

Joe Krause: Some of the questions that Bret mentioned, even in the last segment will help you define and prepare for some of that.

 

Karen Bezar: And as a matter of fact, the first thing is that they are on the list here. It’s an article from Kiplinger by the way, so you want to get financially organized in a binder, right? So Brett was just saying, as you get older, you’re gonna get forgetful, I noticed I’m forgetful about certain things, I have to stick notes or put reminders in my phone. But when you get to be 80-85. You know, it’s good to be organized. So this is what you should have, you should have a binder. A good thing to have in there is your goals either as a married couple, or if you’re moving into widowhood goals, right? You want to write your financial goals in this section. And they’re more likely to become a reality when you write things down. But in the binder, you should have your goals, you should have your budget, right? So you should know what your monthly expenses are, you need to know what bills need to be paid. And once you’re doing it on your own, you need to continue paying those bills. Also, in the binder along with the budget and the bills, remember, we’re in the age of technology, right? Everything you pay online, you need to know these passwords. I know they say you’re not supposed to write them down, I encourage you to write them down. If you’re not going to keep them listed in a binder, fold them up, put them in a safe or some kind of fireproof box because it is I mean, my the list of my passwords is it’s two pages, it’s incredible for this bank for this investment account for your social security, which I’m going to next for Social Security. You know, that should be in your binder. Um, you should have an account set up, it’s ssa.gov, you need to create your login, they’re going to ask you questions that they’re going to ask you where you lived 20 years ago, and sometimes people don’t remember this stuff. So I would say set that account up sooner rather than later. 

 

Joe Krause: I agree. Because as you’re mentioning, I’m thinking, I have no idea what my I have an account on Social Security. I have no idea what the password is.

 

Karen Bezar: So just a side note, if you need to know that login, and you need to know that email if you change it – I can’t even describe if you forget your password, it’s not gonna you’re not gonna be able to get in. So you want to have your Social Security information you want to have by

 

Joe Krause: And by the way, you have to request it. And the only way they’ll give it to you is by mail. Yes, four to six weeks for you to get the letter to take the next Yes,

 

Karen Bezar: Yes, yep. Cuz I ‘ve gone through that with clients. I’m going through that with David’s parents right now. So in the barn, you want to have your estate planning right? Do you have a living world? Do you have trust? Your life insurance, what debt you have, tax returns, you want to keep at least five years of tax returns. It’s just nice to have it all in one place in a situation when your spouse passes away. Honestly, the woman that I spoke with, she was beside herself. She was just focused on what she had to do next and then stepping into her financials was the aftermath. But so have that binder. You also want to have a plan for both your income and your taxes. You want to know the fundamentals of Social Security. You want to understand the plan that you have in place. And like Bret said, you know, people don’t know all the ins and outs but you want to know the fundamentals of your Social Security. You want to know if you have to start with your husband’s benefit, or are you going to continue with your benefit? What’s the plan there? You need to take advantage of your tax strategies when you’re a married couple. Taxes are one, taxes are one way. And then when you’re single your tax and the amount of taxes you pay, and then you have to worry about your health insurance, you’re going to end up being in those Medicare surcharge areas. So luckily, a good place to go is Thrives website or give us a call to 215-798-9088. We plan for this right, we plan for Social Security, we help with tax strategies, we help you plan for your legacy. These are all things that you should have in order to enjoy your retirement. And it’s again, it’s not something that you want to think about. But statistically speaking, one person will pass away prior to the other and look good financial preparation, it impacts your enjoyment of what they call golden years, you want to have a financial house and more. It’s important when that spouse passes away and you as a female, you gain financial knowledge. So right so you want to be part of the planning, you want to be part of all the you want to know all the passwords, you want to know the ins and outs of what your retirement future looks like. But it’s gonna help you have courage and feel empowered when you have to take that next step and you’re on your own.

 

Joe Krause: Good stuff from Karen Bazar. David Bezar is on deck. Before we go to the break, I’ll take this opportunity, just one more time to remind the listening audience to listen to one of the upcoming workshops. And if you’ve been thinking about it, and you haven’t decided to do it yet, get registered, I think that’s the best place to start. You can go to attend one of the workshops with others. And just get walk out of there you’ll learn you’ll know more when you leave than before you and tonight, I think it’s really really a great spot for you to get introduced to the team at thrivefinancialservices.com, I have been fortunate to sit in this chair for every educational hour that this team has ever produced. And that, my friends, is an amazing thing. Back in a moment. Welcome back everyone to this edition Roadmap to Retirement, the radio show. Now to get it over to David Bezar for what will be our final segment for this week’s edition of Roadmap to Retirement, the radio show. David over to you.

 

David Bezar: So Joe, when we started this show, I had mentioned that I met up this week with you know, a couple of business owners that are in the healthcare space. And I think this is a, you know, this is a topic that number one is, you know, personal, you know, as, as our parents get older at some particular point, you know, most need some assistance. And, you know, what I’ve experienced working with a lot of clients is that very, very few people are informed enough, have gained the knowledge enough on the topic of health care costs and health care coverages. So today, you know, a lot of people at some particular point in time in their life, and nobody wants to think about it, nobody wants to deal with it, you know, there may be a need from a healthcare perspective, for additional services. You know, unfortunately, some people end up with, you know, an assisted living type situation, whether that’s in a facility or whether it’s a home, ultimately migrating over to kind of nursing care. And then ultimately, you know, into that, whether it’s hospice or you know, end of life type situation. And, you know, it’s a busy world today, and a lot of this, if unprepared will fall on the laps, you know, of the children of these, you know, parents that didn’t necessarily prepare, and we’re talking about the baby boomers right now, right? So that’s pretty much age, you know, kind of 59, all the way up into the 80s. We’re getting older, this is a big segment of the population, health care is going to become a major, major, major deal. So I happen to be talking with these folks that own a company where they place live health care providers. And we were talking about that and a lot of it where, you know, if you’ve got, you know, an elderly person, who at this particular point in time, can’t take care of themselves. And they don’t have necessarily the financial wherewithal to come, you know, to go to kind of a continuing care retirement community or an assisted living or long term care facility, things of that sort, and their kids don’t live nearby or whatever it may be, you know, this is the type of business that they will put certified professionals into a home to take care of, you know, these elderly folks, you know, you know, bathing, feeding, making sure medicines are Taking care of driving them to doctor’s appointments, you know, all of those types of things. And this particular business owner was talking to, you know, their business is doing extraordinary. And unfortunately, I mean, that’s kind of a weird thing, right? The business is doing extraordinary. And they’re, you know, financially doing incredibly well. But it’s because the need is being filled. And the need is enormous at this particular point.

 

Joe Krause: Yeah, yep. 

 

David Bezar: And what you find is that, that coverage or that those services are not covered, typically, by any type of Medicare or Medicaid. So this becomes a self funding type situation. And nobody knows, you know, whether or not we’re going to need it, but a lot of people roll the dice on it. And what it comes down to is a couple of things, you may not be able to get your cake and eat it at the same time, meaning a lot of people don’t prepare for these potential long term care needs. There are products out there, I will tell you here at Thrive, we’re not huge advocates of traditional long term care insurance. And the primary reasons for it is the industry itself didn’t really do the right type of pricing on the product, they didn’t really anticipate the risk well enough. And what we see now is typical companies are increasing the insurance premiums on these long term care the traditional long term care products dramatically. And it’s not one time, it’s year after year after year. One very, very popular, well known name brand company, literally prints on its annual premium statement, that their intention is to increase premiums by 125% over the next five years. Right. So that could and probably will become cost prohibitive, right. So like today, we’re paying for a product that we’re actually being told, we probably won’t be he probably won’t be able to afford this in the future. So now we’re throwing good money after bad right. So that’s one problem, my premiums keep increasing. Second, and you know, this is that old adage, you know, what are we talking about legal contracts, you know, somebody comes out and sells you a long term care insurance product, they don’t really review the contract. Right? It’s more of an illustration. It’s talking about the benefits and the features. But they don’t really get into the details until the contract actually shows up. And that’s why insurance companies tend to offer what they call free look periods, so that the consumer has time to review everything that was told to them, and confirm and affirm that everything that was said is actually going to be upheld in the contract. So there’s a lot of stipulations, a lot of things that you actually have to deal with, before those long term care contracts kick in. So we’ve got very expensive, we’ve got very complicated. And then here’s the big kicker, right? Like, what if you just pass away in your sleep, like we all want that to be the case. Now you’ve paid all of these premium dollars in and it kind of went for not. So we’re not huge advocates of traditional long term care insurance. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid options that are available to make sure that you get covered properly. Now, these are things that we talked about. And we don’t leave any stone unturned, right? Like you want a complete, comprehensive strategy to make sure you navigate retirement successfully. We call that your roadmap to thrive. It’s actually trademarked. Right, that is our process. That is our comprehensive analysis. Then our comprehensive work effort to come up with our comprehensive recommendations to make sure that we’ve covered every single aspect of retirement. And that review, which is completely complimentary, gives you the consumer insight. Am I on track? Am I a little off track? Am I completely off track? And I said this last week on the show, you know a lot of people don’t go to the doctor because they don’t want to know if anything’s wrong. But avoiding it doesn’t make the ailment go away. It just will fester and get worse and eventually cause catastrophic situations I would tell you, you got to muster up the courage, you got to muster up the energy you got to muster up and just bite the bullet and come in for a complimentary consultation. I agree, right? Like, if you really think about it, like, what do you have to lose? Right now you may be thinking, and I look, I get it. I’ve been in this business for 34 years, I see people’s anxiety coming in. And that primary anxiety is I don’t want to be sold anything, folks, we get it. And I will tell you, and look, you I don’t know what you know how you want to call this. Let me give you a quick example. Joe, we, and this is a little off track. So I’m gonna ask you to get me back on track in a second. We just got voted as one of the 20 fastest growing retirement focused firms from the Inc 5000 list. Right. So we’re in the top 20. It’s our third year in a row that we were part of the Inc 5000. So that’s the 5000 fastest growing privately held companies in the United States. Some of us were just put on as the number 12 fastest growing advisors to watch by Advisors Hub Magazine. And then we were ranked as the 25th Best Financial Podcast by Feedspot. Right?

 

Joe Krause: Wow, thats great. 

 

David Bezar: Now here, here’s the reason I tell you that is somebody’s listening to us. Somebody’s consuming the recommendations. People are implementing the strategies, and they’re enjoying the benefits of what we have to offer. So I asked you, what do you have to lose? We’re not going to sell you, I just gave you some promotional background. The company, the partners here are blessed. We don’t have to do this for monetary purposes anymore. We do it because we love it. And we love what we love is watching people get complete comfort and peace of mind that everything’s gonna be okay in retirement. I promise you, if you’re listening to this radio show, you will receive zero pressure during your consultation to become our clients. People become our clients by free will. They ask us “What’s the next step? I love what you’ve said, it makes me feel good. How do I become a client?” Now for us? It’s awesome, right? It’s great to do business where you don’t have the pressure. But I can’t convey strongly enough, you probably need to go through this process to get that comfort that everything’s gonna be okay in retirement. So when it comes to health care, and we cover a lot of that, Joe, a lot of people default to this. They’ll say, Well, I just told my kids to take me out to the backyard, get a shotgun, and just end it for me. Okay, you know, I’ve seen some people say it where they look like they’re serious about it. But God, how would you put that type of pressure on your child to do that? Like, come on, let’s get real about the situation, folks. There are absolute solutions. There are hybrid type products today that instead of having bad conditions to them, have great conditions to satisfy all of your needs. Happening that one of them just happens to be long term care. So look, number one, the easiest way to get started is to give us a phone call to 215-798-9088. Whether it’s a discovery call, you spend 15 minutes, ask a couple questions or you want to come in for a consultation. If you’re not yet ready to do that, go to one of our workshops, you say Joe all the time in the commercial breaks. We list all the work we do 100 A year, right? All the workshops, their locations, their times, all that type of stuff. Go to our website, thrivefinancialservices.com. It is a great resource center for people to gain information. And I encourage you to keep listening to the radio show because our goal is to get better each week. 

 

Joe Krause: And I would say this as we run out of time and get to the close of the show. I would say this. Everything you just stated in that entire segment is 100% accurate about what it means to do business with Thrive Financial Services. It is just unbelievable. That’s gonna do it for this edition of Roadmap to Retirement, the radio show. Great show today. I hope the listening audience enjoyed it on behalf of David Bezar, Karen Bezar, and Bret Elam. I’m Joe Krause. See you next time everybody.

Announcer: 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 401k pension or other tax deferred accounts, if you have a question about reducing taxes, generating income or finally for Social Security, whatever it is, David, Karen and Bret are here to help and often your questions can be answered in a simple phone call. Just call 215-798-9088. Thats 215-798-9088 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 Bezar, Bret Elam, and Karen Bezar of 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 in Exton, Yardley and 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 Krause at 267-261-3428. Today’s program has been pre-recorded.