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Big weekend in Philadelphia, or in Florida, rather, for Philadelphia fans as Bryce Harper makes his debut at spring training today and with all of the conversation about the signing of Bryce Harper and that unbelievable contract. Some of the stories surfaced after about where Bryce Harper would live because of tax implications and why he signed in Philadelphia versus signing in Los Angeles. And it\’s strange, but true how things that occur in life all come back to having a plan, all come back to some way our lives affecting our lives or our thought process and many, many times in listening to some of the stuff that occurred with Bryce, even his agent talking about taxes and the reason why that contract was going to be worth more planning. So, so important.

I hope that\’s a great way to tie into a financial show, but to me, it was on my mind every time I heard it.

That was fantastic Joe. Absolutely. That\’s a great tie in to starting our show off and everybody who listens to us knows that taxes are a big topic for us. And obviously with that type of a contract, we\’re hoping that Bryce, and it sounds like he does have an awesome financial advisor in the equation and we\’re happy that he picked Philadelphia and taxes will be a whole lot better of a situation for him, so we\’ll cover a lot of that today.

Yeah, and I think maybe he\’s going to look at Montgomery County versus living over even in South Jersey. The difference from living in Jersey versus living on the Pennsylvania side, is a significant savings for him by choosing the latter. I\’m not sure where he\’s going to end up, but it points out to me that our decisions that we make personally will affect what we do later on. There\’s no doubt about it in the retirement game.

Yeah, you\’re spot-on with that, Joe. Specifically like you just said there at the end, in the retirement game. The rules, and that\’s the one thing that if you\’re going to win any type of game, you got to know what the rules are and the challenge is the rules getting to retirement are pretty darn easy. We talked about that in our workshops that, yeah, you work, you get a job, get paid well, and hopefully, you live below your means. Take that difference and if that company offers a 401(k) or some type of qualified retirement plan, you sock the money away, you don\’t touch it, you just keep letting it grow and grow and grow and hopefully over a 20 or 25 or 30-year span of time, it builds up a nice net nest egg for you.

The challenge becomes, and this is, you see the look on people\’s faces at our workshop when we start to go through the, and we call them complexities and they are. Now, for us, they\’re very routine because we get to deal with them 20, 25 times a week with clients, so we don\’t get any type of surprises but as you start to unfold these things that you have to think about as a future retiree, somebody in that target zone of retirement.

We actually had a lady one night, who said, \”I am really scared of retirement.\” Now, this wasn\’t about the market, this wasn\’t talking about the economy, this was talking about just the easy part and she just commented, “How do I take my required minimum distribution? Do I have to distribute it equally from all my different accounts or can I make it a little bit of a lopsided investment? Can I defer?\”

There are so many things that popped up just in that one little topic that people can easily get overwhelmed. That\’s where we take that very empathetic approach and take people by the hand and spell it out and show them all those options and which one mutually we agree upon that\’s going to make the most impact, the most positive impact, the most tax-efficient impact.

Yeah, and I think it\’s one of the things that I\’m going to continue to encourage our listeners to do and to react to. I can’t stress enough how important and educational it is for people out there to come to a workshop to learn more. They really are as informative as can be, and your questions will be answered.

Absolutely. But the really cool part about it was when we first started, we were nervous about it, right? Because we didn\’t know how it was going to be received by people because it was education. It wasn\’t an infomercial. A lot of seminars are done as dinner seminars and people who go to dinner seminars are going for one or two reasons. One, to get a free dinner, which God bless. Take it up if you can, and then, the other is they kind of know that they\’re walking into a sales pitch, right?

If somebody\’s going to put a to $150 to $200-dinner in front of you, you\’re going to sit there and spend time listening to a specific sales pitch, right? They have an idea, they have a product, they made that investment, we decide we are never going to do that. That just didn\’t make any sense for us. So long story short, this is a shout out to our new friends from Huntington Valley. The population of that audience, a lot of them were brought by friends, which was awesome to see. As a matter of fact, we had about three or four different people come up and say, \”I have never heard your radio show before but I happened to wake up one Saturday morning-\”

This was last Saturday morning, \”heard your show.\” He said, “This is awesome stuff.\” They heard us announce that we were going to be in Huntington Valley and they showed up. I think that\’s right place right time but they walked down and said, \”This was the most beneficial hour and 50 minutes that I have spent in my entire financial life.\” I feel great. Bret, we all as a team feel phenomenal when we get that type of feedback from these workshops.

Yeah. Well done and well said. Great stuff to hear. I love hearing that, and Bret, you hear me on-air, you hear me off-air talk about that constantly, and I can proudly profess and I don\’t know if I said this last week or the week before, but in all of the workshops that have been done over your tenure of doing the workshops, nothing has ever been sold, nothing was ever posted for sale.

That\’s it, Krause. Again, David just said if you\’re coming out for a meal, again, we have good cookies and it\’s Wawa Coffee, great coffee out there. But, again, it\’s just being that resource center, we love being educators and just being advocates out there in the community. Again, we\’ve been doing these workshops now for almost coming up on four years and what it was when we were sitting down with people over and over, Krause, and talking about these different things about Medicare and requirement distributions and just being proactive.

Again, helping navigate down, if you will, Mount Everest.

It was seeing the look on people\’s faces and it\’s like, \”Maybe we were naive to the point that everybody was doing this.\” It was like it wasn\’t happening and that\’s where we took that stance, and said, \”You know what? We have to get out here in the community and start doing these workshops.\” We\’re excited to come to a new location now, Mount Laurel. We\’re coming over to Jersey.

All right. Good stuff. We\’ll see you on the other side of the break. Karen Bezar is here. Karen, hello. Good morning. How are you?

Good morning. I\’m great.

I know you love Saturday mornings in your studio as we get to watch, although for not much longer because we are in-

Daylight saving … No. We\’re-

Spring forward.

Yeah. Spring forward, so we\’re going to have longer days.

We are, and that means next week it\’s going to be dark when we look out the beautiful skyline of Philadelphia. Quickly, Karen, what do you have on the agenda for our conversation today?

We\’re going to talk about marriage and finances. How\’s that?

All right.

That\’s always a good combination.

All right, sounds good and we\’ll let Bret continue his conversation from here.

Yeah, Krause, so we get the opportunity to do our educational workshops that people hear around the tri-state area and on a weekly basis, we\’re probably putting together anywhere from 40 to 50 different plans, so we get the opportunity to multiply that out, 50 weeks a year that we\’re seeing anywhere from 2000 to 2500 different scenarios as people are entering or already in retirement.

I thought I hadn’t done this before, it\’s been about 18 months now that we\’ve been here on the air and I wanted to dive deep into things that we see on a weekly basis that we see as common mistakes that we just want people to be aware of and the whys of what goes along with that as well. The number one thing that I want to kick things off with, and David talks about this during the workshops quite a bit, is that when beneficiaries aren\’t updated, when people come in as part of that complimentary Thrive Retirement Roadmap Review, we say, \”Bring your statements.\”

When we talk about policies like life insurance policies or annuities, where it\’s staring right there in our face, there are beneficiaries. You say, \”Are these up to date?\” They\’re like, \”You know what? I haven\’t actually looked at them in a while.\” It\’s interesting, now, I\’m coming in as part of this complimentary review.

It\’s like, \”Yeah, maybe I need to update that.\” Whether kids have gotten older, maybe you\’ve had more kids, maybe now you have grandkids, maybe there was a divorce, whatever that case may be, people say, \”I\’ve already taken care of my will, all those things are already updated.\” Understanding items like annuities and like IRAs and life insurance, it doesn\’t matter what those will say, it matters what\’s actually on those documents. Your 401k at work, your pension at work, what matters is what\’s named as beneficiaries on those documents.

Why is it that we don\’t pay more attention? I\’m not trying to be disrespectful to the listening audience because I\’m including myself in the conversation. Why don\’t we do that do you think?

I think life gets in the way.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Just life, we get something and a lot of times too, Joe, people don\’t necessarily understand what they have, right? Because they put their trust in a financial professional and the solution is provided, and then, it gets kind of packed away in the safety deposit box or in the kitchen drawer or wherever it is, and then, you don’t really pay much attention to it. It\’s important because like Bret was just saying, if you have a will and it says one thing from a beneficiary perspective and your IRA, 401k, 403b, life insurance, and annuity beneficiary say something different, those will trump all the legal documents and that\’s what Bret was getting at.

Yeah, and it seems to me, Bret, it seems so obvious when you say it, yet it\’s something we don\’t pay attention to.

That\’s right. Again, I always say we\’re all from the exact same nation and that nation as David was just referring to a little bit is what I call procrastination. It\’s all about what we want to make as a priority and these are things that are very important because, again, it\’s called life and we never know it sometimes things are going to throw at us tomorrow, so just being prepared for that.

This one\’s a big one, Krause. I want you to think about this. Let\’s say you\’re getting ready to go into the workforce and Krause, we\’re going to give you an opportunity, that we\’re going to give you a pension as part of your job, I need you to do me a favor.

Which should be a rarity today.

Yeah. Which should be rare but let\’s say that opportunity is there, but I need you to do me a favor. Before you start this job, before we enter into this contract, I need you to tell me, you want your income that you\’re going to collect when you are ready to start leaving this job, do you want it to be just on your life or do you want it to be on your life and someone else\’s life? But you got to make that decision right now. It doesn\’t sound like I don\’t know what my circumstances are going to be.

Well, what I\’m just referring to is there are so many people that buy themselves a pension as you just said that they don\’t have the opportunity to have a pension so they go buy themselves a pension. It\’s what we call as an annuity. There\’s a bunch of annuities out there that we call income annuities that are very suitable for some people but here\’s the issue that we see and David, Karen and I, we see these issues weekly, is that there\’s a bunch of insurance companies out there that forced you to do exactly what I just asked you, Krause.

They want you to make a decision today and sign that contract.

Are you going to take that income on your life? Are you going to take that income on your life and a spouse\’s life? What happens if maybe my spouse died of cancer at the age of 55 and I\’m single? I go purchase an annuity because now it\’s just me, I\’m going to do it on single life but I meet someone else in life and I get remarried, I can\’t add my spouse, my new spouse onto that annuity because that company forced me to choose single today, and it doesn\’t sound right.

No, it does not at all.

It frustrates the heck out, mistakes we see people make. Again, as fiduciaries, our job is to act on behalf of our clients and we sit down with them, but there are so many darn insurance companies out there that offer these solutions. So, we can\’t stand the ones that pigeonhole clients into making that decision up front where as we love the opportunity, and the flexibility when we make these decisions because who knows what life\’s going to throw at us tomorrow. It\’s a big mistake and it makes me cringe.

[bctt tweet=\”as fiduciaries, our job is to act on behalf of our clients\” via=\”no\”]

Again, we see it so many times and you feel bad because it\’s hard to unwind solutions like that.

Which is exactly what my question was going to be. Once the decision is made in life we\’re forced to live with, sometimes we\’re forced to live with all of our decisions. We got to take responsibility for them, but do you find options? Because I want the audience to know, listen, if you\’ve done something or made a mistake before, that\’s okay. I always profess it\’s better to be self-aware and find out what\’s right.

It\’s not going to be an easy decision because that becomes another mistake that we see with people all the time. It still relates to the same annuities that there are so many people in our industry that they don\’t hold their fiduciary license. They use this word called churning, where they\’ll take one annuity and every three, four, five years we\’re going to get out of it and go into another annuity for no rhyme or reason because that\’s the only solution that they can offer to clients.

It makes me cringe because when that happens, the only people that win are the insurance company and the person that sold the solution. Again, if there is a real reason to switch like when a company pigeonholes you up front knowing that we had a mistake because we weren\’t educated enough to make that right decision, that may be a reason to get out but you have to be careful of that person that may be saying, \”Turn your money over every couple of years.\”

But it\’s like, \”Is that really in my best interest?\” Those are things that we see all the time and it\’s like you just cringe and you feel bad.

Joe, it\’s just a math equation, right? When somebody gets down the road and didn\’t realize that they made a mistake and that mistake is kind of unfolded in front, that\’s shown. Here\’s the presentation, here\’s what\’s happening because of those decision, and a lot of times, most times, people say, \”I wasn\’t even given the choice.\” It\’s just a checkbox on an application a lot of times.

Coming in bringing that like you said and getting aware of it, and then, looking at the options, just from a math perspective. If we stay the course here\’s the consequence. If we make a change here\’s the upfront consequence but here\’s the long-term benefit to it. Again, everything\’s evaluated that way.

Yeah, and I think the beauty of that is it falls in line to the name of this program, Roadmap to Retirement because the road is going to have bumps. It\’s going to have turns, it\’s going to have uncertainty and when that occurs are you stuck or did you properly prepare? I think that\’s so … It\’s one of the most energized things that I like about the program is because of seeing the end before the end occurs.

100%. Yeah. Absolutely.

We have time for one more if we could squeeze it in, Bret.

Yeah, one more really quick. We meet so many people that are already retired and they\’re in a good situation but they have this big bucket of IRA, 401k, 403 money that they have no plans of touching, and they have no plan whatsoever of touching it until the age of 70-1/2 and what that becomes is a-ticking tax bomb. We\’ve been talking about that at our workshops. David does a great job of that at our workshops talking about this concept of being proactive and understanding what a Roth conversion is and does that meet my situation?

Again, just educating yourself as given your particular situation of understanding what the future may look like with the uncertainty of what taxes will be in the year 2026 and beyond because we have 7 years right now, 2019 through 2025 that we can take a proactive stance with certainty where taxes are going to be, that we can put ourselves in a very better situation to, for what the future may hold of what we don\’t know.

Again, just taking that proactive stance is what we call as forward tax planning today. Just being self-aware of given our circumstances.

Like what you hear so far on Roadmap to Retirement, go to thrivefinancialservices.tyl16lnm-liquidwebsites.com or meetthrivefinancial.com. Do yourself a favor, download How to Retire Worry-Free. It is loaded with great information.

Karen, for your topic today, we ask the audience to pay attention, there\’s a lot to know and we\’re never going to cover it all in this segment.

Right. Definitely not going to cover it all in this segment.

But a good topic.

But, say when people come in and meet with us after we offer that complimentary consultation, they do say, \”There was so much information that you went over, that\’s why I\’m here today.\” The funny thing is, I said, \”There\’s more out there, we just try to compact it into an hour and 20 minutes.\” If you come to the workshop, you\’re going to be pleasantly surprised. You\’re going to really get some good information.

I would add on to it real quickly one step further, if you ultimately decide that you would like David, Karen, Bret, and Thrive Financial Services to be your partner on this Roadmap to Retirement, you are collectively partnering with three individuals who are going to put together a plan, live with you on that plan, and prepare you for what comes ahead, so good stuff and well said by you.

Thank you and we love doing it, and we have a great team of people to help us. Real quick, did you happen to know that yesterday was International Women\’s Day, Joe?

I did know that.

You did?

I did from my Sunday night show on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, Women to Watch. We celebrated a lot of different small victories yesterday in honor of the day, so it was good stuff.

Yeah. I did not realize it\’s been around since 1911.

That I didn’t know.

It\’s international, so it\’s around the world, just not the USA. I don\’t think they have cards for that yet, so it\’s not one of those holidays like national peanut butter day or something. That\’s interesting, so since it was International Women\’s Day, and it got me thinking again about women and women in finance, and again, that\’s something that we tend to focus on. Interestingly enough, there are a lot of women at these workshops that we have, and they\’ll come without their husbands or their partners.

I\’m also going to touch on marriage, finance, and planning for the unexpected. There are many benefits to being an active participant in managing the household finances when you\’re married. Again, I try to emphasize when couples come in that the wife should always come in with her husband and it irks me when the partner comes in and says, \”Oh, I take care of everything and my wife lets me run with it and she trusts me.\”

What you want to do is be prepared for the unexpected, so in the United States we have divorce rates that are very high, and I\’ve met with quite a few people recently who have unexpectedly lost a spouse, and I\’m talking young people. It\’s good to plan for that, and like Bret said, sometimes you make a pension decision and you had to make it a long time ago and I have seen situations where spouses have passed away, and then, they get remarried and they didn\’t make the right decision.

I\’ve met with a great couple recently and they were in retirement and I asked them about their pensions. They each had a pension. I said, \”Do you know what the survivor benefit is?\” They honestly couldn\’t give me an answer, and they said, \”That\’s why we\’re here. We need to get the whole picture and see how it\’s going to look.\”

To that point, I just was in a conversation with a couple. She was ready to retire today, her husband made a quick reference, and said, \”I thought I was going to retire but now I must work another four or five years, so we can get to that point.\” You\’ve got to be ready if that\’s the decision that you\’re ultimately going to make and when you decide that, what does that mean?

I agree with you. Like we do, we do plan for the passing with spouses. One of the things that we plan for, we\’re risk mitigators. We need to make sure that every base is covered, so when you\’re planning for the unexpected, as a couple, make sure that you have some financial independence. Make sure that if you have checking accounts together or savings account, make sure it\’s together, make sure it\’s not in one person\’s name or the other because if your husband had the checking account in his name, good luck going to the bank and trying to get money out right away if you need it.

Things like that, it\’s very important. I know that happened to my grandmother. Everything was in my grandfather\’s name, so it was a struggle to go get the money that she needed to live right away. Maintain files of basic financial information. Make sure everything is together. Life insurance policies, ensure any type of insurance policy, make sure you know where your tax records are, make sure you have copies of all your financial statements, mutual fund statements.

Again, going back to the pension, I had a situation where the woman thought she was going to get, continuing to get the same pension and when her husband passed, she only got 50%, so would have been good, even if that was the case when you came in, at least, it\’s good that you know that up front and we can help you take care of that situation or plan for that.

Yeah, I think we end up becoming some way because of technology today, and I wonder if this is starting to pop up in conversations that you have. We don\’t know where anything is.

Or passwords.

Yeah. Or we get our statements electronically, we didn\’t get them before and that to me seems to be an area that we have to start to think about as things move forward.

We met with a couple a while ago, a long time ago, we met with this couple and we were reviewing their insurance policy and he got the policy before he was married, and they were married at least 10 years now, had children, and his mother was still the beneficiary of their life insurance policy.

That could have been an issue.

She looked at him and she goes, \”That better have been an oversight.\” That\’s all, that was the beginning of the conversation but they left happy so, but they came in for the review.

It\’s almost amazing how things are

Everything ties in right back to your opening. That was incredible.

Right. That could have been, it was a decent situation so we took care of everything. Here\’s an important one, credit cards, right? Did your husband or did your wife, did they open the credit card in their own name? Is it a joint account? Or are you just, what we call an authorized user on a credit card because if that person passes away, the credit card is going to go away, so make sure that you each, at least, have your own credit card in your name or you\’re definitely a joint credit, if that makes sense to you.

Yeah. In other words, you\’re not.

Right. You think you have that, whatever it is, your Visa, your American Express, it\’s gone. It\’s something important to think of in the back of your mind. Definitely prioritize saving. Many married couples, again, like I start in the beginning of the conversation, they kind of steer clear of savings for retirement because they believe their spouses, \”They\’re taking care of everything, they have it all under control.\”

[bctt tweet=\”What you want to do is be prepared for the unexpected\” via=\”no\”]

But keep in mind, just because your spouse is doing the planning doesn\’t necessarily mean they\’re doing a great job, so that\’s why we encourage people to come in, come in as a couple and we\’ll sit down, and we\’ll do the Roadmap to Retirement review for you.

Even if it starts with just the wife coming in or the husband coming in, all roads, pardon the pun, but all roads do lead back to collectively the husband and wife being involved in this process at some point, right? I think that\’s important.

Yes, and when people come in, we have, we give them a checklist of information to bring with and we have a worksheet for you and sometimes that when we meet with couples, they say, \”We\’re so happy that we met with you because it forced us to sit down and really take a look at where things are and where everything is.\” Speaking on behalf of women, but there\’s definitely the opposite happens where the men come in and I start asking questions and they look over at their wife and she\’s the one that\’s doing the answering, so it\’s good to see but they said, \”Yeah, thank you so much, you\’ve forced me to take a look at things.\”

But when we start asking certain questions they say, \”Oh, gee. I never thought of that.\”

All right, good stuff from Karen Bezar, thank you for the excellent discussion points in your segment today.

Thrive is excited to take workshops into New Jersey coming up soon. Welcome to the Mount Laurel Library, that\’s where we\’ll bring our first introduction or our first workshop over to South Jersey. David, should be good stuff. Should be a packed house I imagine.

Oh, absolutely. We\’re really looking forward to it and we did that. We did Social Security workshops back in the day as they say in Mount Laurel, so we\’re really excited about bringing Taxes and Retirement. I think it\’ll be great. Joe, what I wanted to talk a little bit about is I want to cover some of the investment philosophy out there and I want to share some information with our listening audience that I think will be beneficial.

Like Karen just said a lot of times people thank us for kind of being that instigator to get them coming into the office and maybe for the first-time during retirement, not getting the retirement but in retirement, taking an inventory, kind of taking a pen to paper and trying to really figure out what they have, what they\’re going to do. One of the other really nice experiences is that when we give people certainty that things are really going to work out, right? If they\’ve not yet taken Social Security, we run a Social Security maximization report.

Joe, what that is, is that is a report that works with the math to figure out which of the 567 different election choices that are out there is best suited for that particular couple. Many people, 50% of the population starts to take Social Security at age 62 and because of that, they\’re on a permanent discount of what they could have actually benefited for all that money and time that they put in.

That really enlightens people on the situation. They go, \”Geez, I didn\’t know I could do it that way. I didn\’t know how to do it because I need that money.\” What people don\’t realize like Bret always says is people think through conditioning, you have to wait to age 70 and you have to start using your IRA money.

Well, some of our philosophy is if we are currently in the lowest tax climate that we will probably see during the rest of our lifetime, you could start taking distributions earlier than anticipated and you can do it for two reasons. One, give you the opportunity to delay Social Security because you can now take money out of your IRA and live off of it instead of your Social Security and let your Social Security compound out and become a, and we know we\’re getting an 8% guaranteed rate.

The second thing because of taxes, if we can get money out of our IRA prior to age 70-1/2 at a much lower tax rate versus what we if we wait and that tax rate could be much higher that would seem to be a benefit. When we do these things, so that\’s our tax clarity report, that\’s our social security report, then we run what\’s called a money tree report and that money tree report will tell what probability, what percentage probability a couple\’s assets will last their entire lifetime or not, and if we see something after we kind of put some filters in it because we want to prepare for the unexpected.

One of the unexpected that people don\’t really plan for is health crisis, and today, not many, many people in retirement are carrying long-term care insurance to cover those potential risks. All then we have is the equity in our home, and then, our retirement assets. We put that in as a stress point during that report, and then, we put in a stress point for market corrections. I\’m going to talk about that in a second.

Then, the last thing is we do a risk analysis on the portfolio.

We go through an assessment with that particular couple and we find out what their tolerance level is to risk, and then, we do an analysis on the portfolio and we try to compare the two together. The goal is to have those folks walking out of our office with a smile on their face going, \”I now know that I can do things in retirement that I didn\’t know that I could do prior to walking through.\”

That\’s got to be a relief for people. I really believe that.

I think that\’s a great, I think that\’s the perfect word. It\’s a relief and it\’s confirmation and it\’s confidence-building. That\’s our goal, right? We have to come from a position where we\’re testing things versus just always giving a person a pat on the back and say, \”Yeah, everything\’s going to be all right.\” Which, unfortunately, most financial advisors don\’t take a deep enough dive into that type of, that they focus a lot more on the investment strategy than they do all these other puzzle pieces.

I think that\’s why Thrive has positioned itself to be really kind of the preeminent retirement income planning firm in the Delaware Valley. The word is spreading, people are joining the experience. We\’re expanding because of that, and so, that\’s the pace and that\’s what we really want to keep people up with.

I want to take a step back for a second and talk about those market corrections that we use in our analysis to say, what if? I was born in 1963, so I\’m the second to last year of the baby boomers. I want to read a couple of things. There have been during my lifetime, now not during my working career, but during my lifetime there has been six bear markets in the financial world. I\’m going to tell you, tell folks what those are.

November 1968 to May 1970, the S&P 500 lost 36.1% and that bear market lasted 18 months. In January of \’73 through October of \’74, S&P lost 48% and that bear market lasted 21 months. 1980 through 1982, S&P lost 27.8%, that bear market lasted 21 months. 1987 August through December of \’87, only lasted 3 months S&P went down 33.5%. March 2000 through October \’02, S&P lost 49.1%, the duration of that bear market was 20 months. October \’07 through March of \’09, S&P lost 56.4% and that duration lasted 17 months.

A lot of people, Joe, say, \”I know it\’s coming. I know it\’s going to happen, but it always returns.\” The difference for most people that we sit and visit with, the people who attend our workshops, those were their working years. We\’re now in the retirement years, and there\’s a concept that I really encourage people to go read about. It\’s called the Sequence of Returns, and what it basically says is if you experience a significant market correction in the first couple of years of your retirement, you dramatically reduce the chances that your retirement assets will last your lifetime.

When we do our stress analysis, we\’re putting two marks though … If you have somebody retiring in their early 60\’s. Let\’s say up to age 65, chances are based on what I just shared that they\’re going to experience two bear markets during their retirement years, maybe even three if they live into their 90\’s and if it happens early, which a lot of people listening I\’m sure are having some anxiety that what we see on the news today, what we see in the economy, the news around the world, things are not great in these markets.

They\’re over inflated. They\’re overvalued and there\’s going to be a day of reckoning for that. The challenge is we got to get people understanding that they got to take a position and try to figure out how to protect their principle. Now, I\’m a believer in the market. I do believe it will come back, but you have to have some options, you\’ve got to have some defense so that you protect yourself because you\’re not working now, you\’re not making contributions and you don\’t have time on your side.

Really good stuff. Talk about knocking you back in your chair with a teaspoon or a tablespoon of reality that is, I mean, you\’re giving those five reference points in those examples and I\’m trying to process where I was in my life at that point, and then, fast-forward it to now or to what it means, you\’ve got to know what it means or you\’ve got to be prepared for it, David. You really do. There\’s no other way around it.

Yeah, and for me, the scary part, because this is a topic I cover during the workshop, is I ask people, sitting in the audience, raise your hand, how many of you believe that during your retirement you will see a similar financial crisis as to the one we witness in \’08 and \’09? Without fail, Joe, 100% of the people raise their hand. Then, my follow-up question is what percentage of the people and we do 100 of these workshops on an annual basis, almost 4 years of doing them.

I\’ve asked this question probably close to 400 times, it\’s always the same, the follow-up question is always the same. What percentage of people that raise their hand up believe it\’s going to happen, actually do something about it to protect themselves? Very few hands go up. I say, \”Ladies and gentlemen, you know the definition of insanity.\” They all know what I\’m talking about and you start to get that head shake where people go, \”You know what?\”

I say I really, I put my hand on my chest, and I was like, \”This is the time, we may never see each other again, but this is a time for you to be proactive and talk to somebody who knows what they\’re talking about to help you get properly positioned.

I want to use the last two minutes of the program to just remind everybody and what to do. What I\’d like you to do right now, meet Thrive Financial right now. Meetthrivefinancial.com and you can download an eBook on Worry Free, How to Retire Worry Free.

It\’s great. 25-page eBook, covers a lot of the topics that need to be covered to help people figure out how to get through retirement successfully. On our normal website thrivefinancialservices.tyl16lnm-liquidwebsites.com, we have our book that we wrote, The Roadmap to Retirement: Navigating Your Way to a Peace of Mind. People can download an e-copy of that as well.

We\’ve got all kinds of great videos, a lot of good information there. The easiest thing, just go to our website, register for one of our workshops, come out and visit with us. There\’s no pressure whatsoever. You\’ll meet some great people. You\’ll talk to some peers. You\’ll kind of hear what other people are thinking about retirement. It\’s really a wonderful 1 hour and 15-minute experience to start that process of really getting certainty to your retirement plan.

Yeah. Great stuff. Bret, I\’ll come back to you for just a quick 30 seconds

Yeah. Absolutely. We\’re going to be sharing some things again with this new eight years of new taxes that started here in 2018. Again, we\’re excited to plant the flag in New Jersey so looking forward to meeting all our new guests across the bridge.

Yes. Absolutely. Remember, you don\’t know what you don\’t know so please come to a seminar and you might find out some very great information.

Thank you to Karen, Bret, and David for another informative discussion this week. We hope you enjoyed our topics this week and learned a thing or two along the way!