Bret discusses the downfalls of greed, Karen goes over annuities 101, and David talks about the growth and progress within Thrive Financial Services

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We have a full jam-packed discussion of information this morning where we\’re going to cover the topic of greed. We\’re going to talk about annuities, and then we\’re going to have a conversation with David about retirement. So we\’ve got action packed show for our listening audience and we certainly welcome in everybody who is now proudly professing to be part of the Thrive army. Thank you so much. The Thrive Army continues to grow. I say hello to Bret, Karen, and of course David. last Saturday that Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow. So there is a re-energized thought that even though 65% of the time he\’s wrong, spring is close to upon us. David, a good morning to you sir.

Good Morning Joe. Still not quick enough.

No.

I\’m ready for spring and summer.

Yeah. Me as well. And with springtime comes tax time! And that means preparation for either decisions that you have made or penalties that you will have to deal with if you haven\’t made those decisions. But the one thing that I can profess, the one thing that I have started to do more since I started with Thrive Financial, since we started this radio program is I have started to read more information. I\’ve started to dive in to the topics that we talk about in the hour. And I start to do more research in downtime or when I have time. And I encourage the audience to do that. We can\’t cover everything on a topic, but we certainly can touch base on it and create an opportunity. And I\’m learning so much just from reading everything.

Joe, I mean, I think it\’s a wonderful practice, and we certainly encourage everybody to dive in on these different topics and find out what\’s going on. The only caution about that is there\’s a lot of noise.

Yes.

We get a lot of information that you can get easily confused, let\’s just put it that way, right? You could pick up a particular topic and what you will hear 50% of the time is one point of view and then the other 50% of the time, the opposing point of view, and we talked about this last week. When they\’re dealing with one of the most important topics in retirement, you really need to seek out a professional who has your best interest at heart.

One of our main objectives is to get to know the person or family on a personal level before we discuss what their financial goals are. I think that\’s one of the first steps. And then allowing that fiduciary to kind of cut through all that noise and give you the facts, things that are backed in math, things that are backed and verifiable. Because it is still somewhat of an art because when you read a particular topic, the consumer might automatically default and say, \”Well, that\’s a good answer and that\’s going to work for me.\” And then go do it without any of the back testing, without any of the analysis. And next thing you know, there\’s negative consequences to that. I listen to PHT 1210 every Saturday and I listen to our show as we\’re doing it. And then I listen to the shows that are afterwards. And it\’s really interesting to hear, it\’s sometimes frightening to be quite honest with you.

I get it. I hear you.

And I hear things that stop in my tracks and I\’d like, “I can\’t believe that they\’re making those comments”. And these are people who claim sometimes to be fiduciaries but aren\’t genuinely fiduciaries. And that scares the bejesus out of me. So, I just really caution, do your due diligence, come up with a list of questions and then go through with a qualified fiduciary, get those answers and then why those answers really make sense.

Yeah, no, that is a spot on and that certainly makes sense to me and an article that popped up in my inbox over the weekend was from USA Today. The headline was, “It Makes Financial Sense to Downsize My home as I prepare for Retirement, Here\’s Why”. I haven\’t gotten into the article, but when I get into that article, the contents of that article will create questions for us to have dialogue. And that\’s a very, very good point. Referencing noise I think is another good way to bring some clarity to that. Bret, you\’re going to talk about greed today and sometimes I think greed can be defined as noise. Now, it can be noise that hurts you or noise that prevents you from getting to the right answer, but it does check the box for me at least.

Yeah, absolutely Kraus, we\’ve talked about the unbelievable response that we\’ve had people coming out to our workshops and people taking advantage of that complimentary Thrive Retirement Roadmap Review.

And just as myself and our planning team has been putting a lot of plans together as part of this process, we\’re starting to see people that are like almost contradicting themselves. Like, \”Bret, I make $200,000 a year and my expenses are $4,000 and I have no money in a savings account.\” Well, that doesn\’t make sense. Then they say, “Well, Bret, I really don\’t care about legacy, but I have enough money to take care of my partner and I but we\’re all aggressive”. Well, that doesn\’t necessarily make a lot of sense either. Greed has to do with a lot of it. So, I\’m going to go through a couple stories that my planning team and I have, and just share some of the stories about their circumstances and is understanding that no two plans are ever alike. Everything is individualized, but against some things to think about as we enter retirement. And again, instigate some of this dialogue as we near that date.

That sounds great, Bret. and Karen, let\’s quickly come to you before we get to that. What are you taking to us about today?

Reviewing annuities. Basically annuities 101 if you went to school or college, you know what that means. Level 100.

I just want to point out one other website, meetthrivefinancial.com. It will give you an up close and personal look. A sample behind who is David Bezar? Who is Karen Bezar? Who is Bret Elam? Go to meetthrivefinancial.com. You\’ll find a lot of interesting facts about our three gracious hosts. Bret, I bring you into the conversation, greed is the topic as we referenced in the opening segment I\’ll toss it to you and let you take it from there.

Yeah, Kraus, just like you said, when people come in as part of that Thrive Retirement Roadmap Review. We ask people plenty of questions to find out everything there is to know about them. When you come in, you meet with David, Karen and myself, so it\’s good to know information about us as well.

The picture on the website is the picture you\’ll see when you come into the office.

There you go.

That\’s that much I can tell you.

Kraus, let me describe a client\’s situation to you. I have two clients. These are people that came in during the Thrive Retirement Roadmap. They said, \”We\’re going to retire in three years. Between the two of us, we\’re making $350,000 a year. Our Social Security combined income when we get there is going to be approximately almost $60,000 a year.\” Plus Karen\’s number one, she\’s going to be talking about annuities. They have this thing called a pension, which is an annuity. They have a pension which is also going to give them another $68,000 a year of income. So, between a pension and Social Security, they\’re going to have the most $10,000 to $11,000 of \’guaranteed income\’ as they enter retirement, gets better. Their situation from an expense standpoint is almost two and a half million dollars.

[bctt tweet=\”I think greed can be defined as noise\” via=\”no\”]

So everything sounds good so far.

And then the gentleman is also an executive and he has some deferred comp that is available to them as well, which will carry them for the first couple of years into retirement. So everything sounds great except their expenses on a monthly basis are $20,000 a month and they want to assume that they were going to continue into retirement. So again, about half of the income that they need in retirement\’s going to be guaranteed, but the rest they\’re going to have to take from their assets. So part of the assessment that we had gone through with them, and this is important because we see this a lot of the time, it\’s really prevalent today with the market conditions that were just coming out are from the fourth quarter. Because was that a tease for something that may be camping?

Things that we need to be conscious of because a lot of times when David, Karen, and myself are sitting in front of people when they come in as part of that Thrive Retirement Review, as we make the statement, risk is for people who don\’t have what you have, your job is to simply make sure we don\’t lose. That contradicts greed. And I\’m going to be chatting about that statement a little bit here. It looks like it\’s dark out there, but it\’s, I guess it\’s actually the sun\’s coming up not going down. So the issue with their situation is the risk that is in their portfolio that they have the ability to manage the risk in their deferred comp plan and they also have the ability to change the risk as their investments sit in their 401(k)s IRAs mean there other investments.

And the issue was this. They were actually more aggressive than the pure S&P 500 stock market. And when we asked him a little bit about that and be like, \”But, we\’re not retiring for another three years.\” And then, \”The market always comes up and it always goes down.\” And I said back to him, I go, \”Well, tell me what happened in 2008.\” They\’re like, \”The exact same thing that\’s happening right now. It came up and then it came way down 2007 through 2009 and Bret, I wrote it back up.\” I go, \”It took you five years to get back to even though, because again, when we hit the bottom of March of 2009 we didn\’t get back to those previous highs until 2013”.

I go, \”The one thing that we\’re forgetting now is only half of your income that you desire is now coming from guaranteed sources. Again, you need $200,000 a year. That\’s not gross, that\’s net, meaning we need to account for taxes on top of that. We need to account for a health care on top of that, if they forgot about that one and we see people that miss that all the time because health care always comes out of our paycheck before we ever receive it. So, we just think if I can just replicate what I made, and life is going to be good. But again, as we chronologically mature, healthcare is going to become that much more of a critical piece as part of the overall budget.\” In saying that, what we went ahead and stressed related to their portfolio was what happens if you do see a correction?

Are we in the beginning of one right now? Could it happen next year? Historically, every eight to 10 years, we see a significant 40% plus correction that is out there. And while they\’ve had the ability to just simply buy and hold, buy and hold, buy and hold again, their investment strategy. “Don\’t sell, Bret, don\’t sell”. I\’ve got those absolutely one big difference now, I go, \”You were making $350,000 a year in 2008 and you made it for the last decade.\” I go, \”Now where we have that demarcation point on the calendar that I\’m retiring in three years, we now absolutely care what\’s in that portfolio because it\’s now going to need to supplement what that pension is and what Social Security is at the same time.\” And what happened was, because there was so much of their income that was going to be needed from their investment portfolio when we stressed it twice again a decade apart from each other, what if we see two 40% corrections?

What we found was, that in year 16, at his 79th birthday, they are completely out of money. Think about that. Making a lot of money, between my deferred comp 401(k)’s. Again, all that adds up to about three and a half million. you add it into the deferred comp. You\’re going to run out of money. He goes, \”Bret, can you recheck your numbers?\” I go, \”I can make any picture look pretty. You tell me what you want me to make it look like I could do. Do you want me to be a fiduciary and tell you like we see it and tell you where you are susceptible to some risk or do you want me to do what a lot of my competition does? And they run things of the way things have been on the averages over the last, I call it 800 years, but it may only be the past 100 years, or you absolutely care what year it is that you retire. I get it. I know what averages are.\”

\”Hey Bret, the S&P 500 is averaging 7% over the past decade. Bret, the S&P 500 to average almost 10% over the last eight years”. I go, “If I told you something averages zero, it just means you\’re at the same place you were, right?” Average and zero. If I had something today and I average zero, it means I pretty much didn\’t change. It stayed the exact same place. Always tell people to be careful with averages. Something goes up 50% and then goes down 50%, you average zero, but you actually lost 25%

So, we need to take that word average and throw it out of our vocabulary as we enter retirement because we care about real numbers year in and year out.

Are you conscious about your fees you\’re paying for your portfolio? Are you conscious about the fees on the underlying investments that you have? Are you susceptible to risks? What are the fees that your advisor\’s charging you? These are all things that we need to be conscious of because it affects the real rate of return that we think that we can have peace of mind heading into retirement.

So, it\’s a really, really good example of a picture that perhaps gives you the impression that all is okay.

That all is okay, and I had to ask him this question when we started to test the portfolio, and this was a good one. I said, \”Mr. and Mrs., I have to ask you a question, do you have any uneasiness with what I just shared with you right there?\” And they said, \”Yes.\” I said, \”Well, your risk tolerance is very high, so I can\’t tell you there was a ton of divergence between how your portfolio looks and how you feel about risk.\” I go, \”But we may need to start thinking about this conversation, especially with what I just shared with you.\” I go, \”Let me ask you a question. Looking at your portfolio, what we\’re shooting from is to 8%, 9% rate of return. Is it worth you looking to go generate seven to 11% rate of return in the market with potential 50% corrections? Does that make you feel better? Or what if you could go get, say three to 6% or four to 7% without any potential corrections, which one more resonates with you.\”

And you get that look in the face and it\’s like, \”Bret, sounds like you\’re asking me a stupid question, but why wouldn\’t anybody take 4% to 7% without any corrections?\” I go, \”You\’re not going to get an argument out of me.\” I go, \”The problem is that\’s not the way you\’re set up today. Unfortunately, when I look at your portfolio, you\’re not set up for that no correction portfolio.\” \”Yeah, but Bret, I\’m going to go work three more years.\” Okay, so if you have $3.5 million and it goes down by 50% you have 1.75 million. And again, who knows when the bottom of that market is going to be, but you already have your date circled in mind of when you\’re going to retire.

David talks about this all the time during our workshops.

How many people in the audience know somebody that had planned to retire before the 2008 correction, who went back to work and still may not be retired today? Again, those words are now coming back in our vocabulary. I make another statement. Winning is for people who don\’t have what you have, whether you say risk or not. Again, it\’s our job just to make sure we don\’t lose. Is there an angel sitting on your shoulder said, \”Just put it under the mattress.\” Or is the devil sitting on your shoulder and says, \”The S&P is up 50% over the last couple of years.\”

Again, we start having those conflicts in our mind and what we\’re sharing with people is, as we\’re entering retirement, navigating down Mount Everest, it\’s a whole different set of rules to navigating up it and we just don\’t make that switch when we hit the peak. We needed to start thinking about making those switches before we hit that peak because sometimes time is so critical. It\’s all about timing. And the last thing we want to take is time out of the equation and don\’t leave things out to chance is let\’s just have that plan.

Well, a really good example from Bret Elam today under his topic of conversation. Really hard for me to wrap my arms around all of that. I\’ll have to process some of that, but $20,000 a month in expenses, $10,000 guaranteed money, and I\’m only going to work for three more years. And I urge all of our listeners too, if you\’re like me learning as we go, and as we listen to this program, we start to process our own variables and that\’s where the Roadmap to Retirement and the complimentary review and the workshop, that\’s why they\’re great places to start. Bret, well done. Nice job on your part

Later this month, our great partner from Del-Val Insurance will be back along to join us. So, we\’re excited to have a friend and Jim come back in, Karen.

I want to get right to you on your school lesson today on annuities.

So, the reason I\’m wanting to bring up annuities is when we meet with some people who are potentially becoming clients. Some people come to our workshops and when we meet with them, one of the greatest concerns, not everybody, but a lot of people have a concern that they\’re going to outlive their money or their income, the money they\’re going to use to create and come on retirement.

And a lot of people just depend on, they have one or two retirement income sources. One is Social Security and one is a pension, but sometimes you need to create your own pension. And the way you do that is through an annuity. It\’s a tongue twister, but I might throw you in the spotlight here, Joe, but when you hear the word annuity, I\’m going to ask you and then I\’ll see if you have some of the same responses that people I have met with the long the years have said to me but when you hear the word annuity, what\’s that mean to you? Is it good or bad?

Well, I think it\’s bad if you just ask him for a one word answer. And it might be bad from an ignorant standpoint, but there\’s a stigma out there that annuities are not good.

Right. And like David said, when people will say these absolute statements, you hear the stuff out there, never get an annuity. They\’re bad or yes, get an annuity, they\’re great. What is anything negative that you\’ve heard out there?

I just think it\’s the overall umbrella that they fall under in terms of the understanding, the fees, the dollars, when I can take my money, if I can\’t take my money, how can I exercise control, all of those things. I\’m not even sure if all of those are right. But again, that\’s the point.

So funny that you say that. These are comments that I have heard recently. One was when I met with a couple, I think we ask you where your money is, we go through some of your assets and one question I ask is, “do you have any annuities?” And she said, \”No.\” And we were never going to get an annuity. And I asked, \”Well, do you mind me asking why?” And she said, \”Yeah, I heard once you put your money in there, you can never get your money out.\” And I said, \”And who did you get your information from?\” She got it from her neighbor. So again, be careful where you\’re getting the information from, go to somebody who understands your particularly situation.

But just a quick refresher course out there. We might have done this before, but there are three types of annuities out there. There is a fixed annuity, which basically you put your money in and when you\’re ready to start taking money, when you put your money in, they\’re going to give you an interest rate every year, same number if it\’s 3% 4%, whatever the case may be. Then there\’s something called a variable annuity. And what a variable annuity does is its variable, so your money goes in and sometimes you have the possibility of losing money just like you do when you put money in the stock market. And then there\’s the other annuity, there\’s another annuity called an indexed annuity, which is different from a fixed annuity, but it does give you guarantee on your principle, which means whatever money you put in, you\’re guaranteed not to lose anything of what you put in.

And then you can also grow your money. But the reason I\’m bringing this up is, again, when I speak with other people, they say, \”Oh no, I hate annuities.\” Or. I\’ve had people who have annuities and they say to me, “I\’ll ask them why they got it”. They don\’t know what kind they have, and they say, \”I honestly don\’t remember. I don\’t remember why I got it. But I think it\’s because of this or because of that.\” And what we do here at Thrive, sometimes somebody does need an annuity, but again, we are fiduciaries. We are not just a life insurance agent that can sell an annuity other than variable annuities. Then we\’re not going to go into details there, but we understand the whole situation. Does everybody need an annuity? Absolutely not. But do they sometimes provide you with certain protections or income if you need it? Absolutely they do.

And the reason I\’m bringing this up again is because when I speak with people out there, they say, \”Oh, I got it. But I don\’t remember why.\” And the last time they spoke to the person that they helped that sold them the annuity was maybe five years ago or six years ago. You\’re not going to get that with us. Once you become a client, we\’re going to meet with you as often as you need and we\’ll review why you got an annuity if you got one. It\’s not something that we always do and another important thing there is-

And it\’s worth pointing out Karen too that, I didn\’t mean to cut you from your next point, but it is worth pointing out that as individuals, our data, our truth, our realities help you formulate a picture of what is the right roadmap, what\’s the right plan to get on the road? That\’s very, very important.

And annuities can have great benefit to your retirement plan but sometimes there are so many ins and outs, and like you said, sometimes there\’s these fees and there\’s all kinds of bells and whistles.

What we do is we make it simple for you to understand and we explain it. We teach you, educate you on why this is something good for you. I met with a gentleman and he had what\’s called a variable annuity and sometimes inside of a variable annuity can be lots of hidden charges. That\’s one type of product that we don\’t use with our planning for a retirement. But the one thing he said to me is he says, \”I think I\’m going to annuitize it next year or next month.\” And I was so happy that he came in to see us and he\’s coming back soon to review everything.

But I said, \”Do you understand what it actually means when you annuitize?\” And he said, \”No, I think, yeah, I get a monthly income.\” And I told him, I said, \”Do you understand that when you annuitize something, you cannot go back on that decision and you basically lose control of your money in that annuity that you have.\” So, he said to me, \”Oh my gosh, I\’m so happy I came to your workshop. I\’m so happy that we sat down, and I brought this information with me because I really didn\’t understand that if I annuitize it, I thought I was just going to get a monthly income and then if I wanted to stop it, I could just take my money out of it. I did not realize that once I make that decision, you cannot go back on that decision. You\’re going to get that income for the rest of your life and that\’s it.\”

And it might sound great if you get that income for the rest of your life. But what if you needed the money in there? So there\’s so many ins and outs to annuities that I couldn\’t even go into it on this program. But we want you to understand that we\’re fiduciaries and we\’re here to help you and understand all these different products out there. Take a look at our website, give us a call, come to a workshop or here to explain the ins and outs of what we do here.

It\’s like the question or the reference point that David makes often about Social Security. We\’ve all made it. There are so many choices to be made and once those choices are made well and you\’re going to live with the choice, now you either made the choice correctly or not. And that\’s all part of the educational process. As you were speaking, I was thinking of something my mother used to say to us and we didn\’t have much, but she always said to me, “listen, as you get older and in life, whenever somebody tells you it\’s an absolute, that you absolutely should do something. You should never absolutely ever do that.” That\’s one thing that I try and do in all phases of my life because there are no certain guarantees.

I agree.

David, something Karen and I, as you heard, talked about and I think it\’s something that we should have on Wednesday in Berwyn.

We\’re going to put the order in.

All right. Thank you, sir.

So Joe, I\’m going to talk about an interesting topic. We see it quite often in our practice and there was actually an article and the illustration on this topic will kind of communicate to our audience that this is something to look at when you\’re working with a financial advisor.

Do they do things in a general way or do they do things in a very detailed way? So what\’s becoming much more apparent is this concept called the rise of a discordant retirement. And yes, we all sat here, we had to look up discordant, we all had an idea, but we wanted to get the actual definition. And really what it just means is that we tend to have a couple that is disagreeing or has plans to retire at different ages.

So, they\’re not agreeing and I have be honest with you, it\’s really interesting to watch. This is kind of a shout out to my brethren out there in the sense that we typically see in a husband and wife situation where the husband tends to retire before the woman does. And there have been times where I\’ve sat and I\’ve witnessed where the husband does some subtle encouraging both to his wife and me in the planning that the wife should continue working for a little bit longer. So as you can imagine, that usually brings up a pretty colorful conversation.

I\’m sure it does.

It does.

So, what we try to do, obviously when we do our planning is to customize it specifically to the needs. Very often we\’ll deal with folks that maybe they have an advisor at Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab or maybe one of the independent firms out there. And when we get to the topic of a stress analysis, kind of looking at all the ins and outs of a particular retirement plan and whether we can assure and give certainty that assets are going to last a lifetime, income is going to last a lifetime in the event of a market downturn, in the event of a medical crisis. And then obviously with the passing of a spouse, these are all things that could be very disruptive. And we take all of that into consideration.

So, when I ask and start to talk about that, many people say, \”Well, I\’ve had that done.\” And I said, \”Okay, well share with me, tell me a little bit more about that.\” And they\’ll either bring out some type of written plan which is much more infrequent, or they\’ll say, \”Well, my advisor ran and told me everything\’s okay.\” And then I try to find out a little bit more because again, Joe you know that we here at Thrive are extraordinarily passionate about what we do. We want to be advocates, we want to empower people, again, and I know people kind of question this sometimes, but whether you work with us or not, I really want you walking down the path of retirement with pure certainty that everything is going to be the way you want.

And this is not a time to just take everything will be all right, take an interest in that, make sure that that advisor really gives you the math, tells you what they\’ve done. Not that they\’ve just run a chart or in the computer where you see the line going up and that\’s it. So when we run this, it puts a challenge out when you\’ve got a husband wanting to retire at what one age and then a spouse wanting to retire at a different age, interesting as well. Sometimes, there might be, and this is not marital consulting, but there are some times that I\’ve heard that, \”I don\’t know that I want him retired the same time that I\’m retired. I don\’t know if we want to be in the house and have all these things to do.\” So again, we have to listen to that from a customization standpoint.

Just laughing because of that.

Yeah. And figure out what really does make sense because it really does take some additional complexity. I\’ll give you some examples. So when we have a married couple and one of the spouse is going to stay working, we have to determine whether or not the nonworking spouse will still be on some type of a medical plan, healthcare plan. Whether the working spouse has the availability to put their non-working spouse on their plan. And I would tell you 50% of the time they can, 50% of the time they can\’t. If they can\’t, that\’s wonderful. It makes things a whole lot easier if they can and that spouse has not yet reached the age of 65 and can qualify for Medicare, we\’ve got a gap in time. Let\’s say they retire at age 62 and then we\’ve got to get them out to 65. So their only option at that point is to go onto the Affordable Health Care Act Exchange, right? The public exchange to get insurance. And if people just without information go do that, they\’ll pay a lot of money for the premiums.

Yes.

[bctt tweet=\”what we try to do when we do our planning, is to customize it specifically to the needs\” via=\”no\”]

It\’s just that simple, right? So with some proper planning and understanding what the working spouse\’s income is going to be and kind of what their tax situation is, the Affordable Healthcare Act is based upon household income and whether you can qualify for a subsidy or not.

So again, a good quality financial advisor will go through that analysis and see if there\’s a way that we could use the health care exchange and get a subsidy by controlling income. Well, how do we control income? Well, we may make a decision to pull money out of Roth accounts or savings accounts where that income is not showing up on the tax return.

It creates the cash flow so that the couple can retire, but it doesn\’t create a taxable event that\’s going to disqualify people from the subsidy. And again, this is just general statements of giving examples, every time we sit down with somebody we got to do it specifically to their particular need. So that\’s an example, right? Then whether they should take Social Security or not. Right? So we find 50% of the time that people sit down with us, and this is actually a national average as well. If 50% of the people go on to Social Security claim, start taking Social Security at the earliest possible age, which is 62 and they get a permanent discount in the amount that they\’re going to receive for the rest of their lives. Because now there\’s only one working spouse, the tendency to default where we have to replace that income that the non-working spouse was making. So the easiest and quickest way to do that is to take Social Security.

Now by taking Social Security and we have a working spouse, we may end up from a taxation standpoint, not making the best decision related to the taxation on Social Security. And if we took it earlier than full retirement age, we\’re now going to be stuck with that permanent discount and not take advantage of having that money differ at Social Security with an 8% annual compound so that we can max that number out. So again, there\’s a lot of intricacies about when you have a spouse wanting to retire early versus another spouse that\’s going to continue to work. Now on the flip side of that, which is kind of interesting is we have people who come in that have a pretty significant age difference between a husband and a wife.

So, we just had a couple in very recently, he was 63 years old and his wife was 56 years old, and they want to retire at the same time so that they can enjoy themselves.

So, he wants to retire at 65, which he\’s capable of doing. That means his wife is going to be 58 at the time. The challenge with that is if they are going to need using retirement assets, which they will, right? Because she\’s not going to even be qualified for Social Security. He is, if he goes to 65 it still doesn\’t get him to full retirement age, which for him is 66 so they won\’t be able to take one Social Security. She doesn\’t qualify from an age standpoint. And if he thinks he needs to rely on his, then he\’s going to be taking it a year early and getting a discount on top of it.

She also doesn\’t have the ability to draw money out of her IRA accounts because she\’s not 59 and a half and she\’ll be subjected to an early withdrawal penalty. So hopefully I\’m illustrating for our audience that there\’s a lot of different things that you got to think about related to what they\’re now calling a discordant retirement, meaning two people wanting to retire different times may be different ages, different lag times. A good quality financial advisor is going to go do that analysis and really test that analysis to make sure that they\’re going to retire with the amount of money that they want on a monthly basis and that it\’s going to last both of their lifetime. Subjected to possible market downturns, possible medical crisis, that it\’s going to take some type of long-term care coverage and then obviously the passing of a spouse, which triggers a lot of economic situations.

Wow. That was incredible because those two scenarios in some way, shape or form, I think touch just about every married couple around the Delaware Valley.

We’re visiting with 25 or 30 couples on a weekly basis because of our attendance at our workshops. People see the value they want to come in. Our last Monday staff meeting we did 32 appointments this week. So we get to see all that, right? We get to see those situations where somebody who is in a financial practice that doesn\’t see that volume of people, doesn\’t get the ability to think through that process.

Do yourself a favor, and contact Thrive Financial Services today if this information was beneficial, and if you have your own questions or concerns regarding your financial situation. Thanks to David, Bret, and Karen for an informing conversation today, and thank you to the Thrive Army for tuning in!