David, Bret, and Joe are joined by a very special guest, Marty Ruby, of Stonewood Financial. They discuss what you can expect at the Thriving in Retirement: The Tax Revolution Summit coming up in a few weeks on September 25, where Marty will be a guest speaker. If you are interested, visit pataxsummit.org for more information about what to expect, and feel free to sign up!

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A good Saturday morning, everyone, and welcome in to Roadmap to Retirement, the radio show, as we come to you on what is the final Saturday in the month of August, and what that means, the fall is in front of us, and if you\’ve listened to this program over the last couple of weeks, you can hear the excitement and the passion in our voice as we prepare for what is going to be an incredible fall. Before we do that, I welcome in David Bezar. David, nice to have you back, refreshed for a Saturday morning.

As refreshed as we can be with the amount of workshops we\’re doing, so another fantastic week, exciting, happy to be in the studio this morning. We got a wonderful show.

I was in a conversation this past weekend, following our show last week, telling the individual about the impact of the workshop, the power that is in there, the amount of education that is presented. I think it\’s absolutely incredible.

Yeah. Well, we\’ve elevated our game again. Right? As our clients\’ needs continue to grow, we have to grow as a practice, and that\’s what we\’ve basically been doing. So, a lot of conversation related to taxation is what is highly intriguing to the folks, and we\’re going to continue that today. I think we\’re going to bring an amazing show that\’s got all kinds of interesting topics, but the main one being taxes.

No doubt about that. We\’ll get back to you on the phrase or the two words, capital storage.

We spent some time on that conversation during the show last week, on Saturday. We also have lots of information to be able to provide, Bret, including an incredible event coming up in September. No, it is not too early to talk about it. It is going to be a big, big night, and I think, I\’ve done some research, I think the only one of its kind in the Delaware Valley. I haven\’t been able to find anything remotely close to what we\’re going to provide for the listeners.

Yeah. I mean, we\’ve been talking about this day for a while, and again, here at the next segment, we\’re going to have our special guest, Mr. Marty Ruby, on the show with us, just giving us a preview, a little bit of what to expect on September 25th, and again, if you happen to be part of the Thrive Army, if you couldn\’t tell, we care about taxes. We\’re just going to be taking it to the next level that evening, again, just taking all these talking points that we\’ve talked about really in depth over the past couple months. How they\’re coming to fruition, and how, again, David\’s chatted about it recently, we have to be tax planners. it\’s really about just picking up the ball and making sure that we\’re proactive with that.

More information coming up on that event in September. David, I thought a good way for me to ask you to begin the dialogue today is for you, in its simplest terms, to go back and explain to the listening audience what that one potential change could be with taxes that will help them as part of the roadmap. I know we talked about it, not only last week, but in so many weeks, but in its simplest terms for people to understand.

Yeah. Again, taxes is a complex topic.

Very complex.

It\’s something that most people avoid. As a matter of fact, Bret just used the terminology that we\’ve been talking about, being a tax procrastinator versus a tax planner. A procrastinator is somebody who really doesn\’t take any action in the year that you\’re earning your money, and then April 14th just kind of shows up, and before you know it, you just go, \”Oh, okay. I guess I got to pay my taxes. I\’ll go to the CPA. I\’ll get my stuff done, and I got a bill, and whatever.\” So, what we\’re trying to make people understand is there is things, actionable things, that you can do in the year that these monies and earnings are happening on your tax return that can really make a dramatic shift.

I think the simplest way to describe it… I ask this question during our educational workshops. How many of you are frustrated? How many of you are aggravated? How many of you are angry that Wall Street, Corporate America, and affluent people tend to pay less in taxes than Middle America on an annual basis? You see all the hands go up in that workshop. So, we\’re trying to get people to understand through education that the IRS tax code doesn\’t have any prejudice. All it is that these organizations, whether it\’s Wall Street, Corporate America, or very wealthy people, they hire sophisticated tax planners that understand what the IRS tax code is, and what legally you can utilize to minimize your taxes.

So, we\’re helping people with this paradigm shift that says, \”What if I could learn what Wall Street knows as someone who lives on Main Street? Could this IRS tax code work for us?\” The answer simple is absolutely. So, here\’s a quick example, Joe, and I went over this before, but I want to kind of take it maybe a little bit slower. We had somebody come in, and I\’m just going to read the line items very, very quickly. So, they had taxable interest on their return for 2018 of $5,000. They took a $3,000 capital gains loss, or loss, and then between pensions and IRA distributions, they had $186,000 coming in. Their taxable Social Security was $37,000. So, when we add that all up, $225,000 of income. Okay? They took their standard deduction, that brought their income down to $198,000, and the federal income tax on that number was $36,301. Okay? Pretty standard.

Yep, standard. Following right along.

Sat down with us, said, \”What can you guys do? Because I can\’t see anything else that I understand about taxes that I could do from last year that would improve upon this.\” So, we started talking about this concept called capital storage. All capital storage is just a fancy terminology of “Where do I have that money invested?” Is it tax-deferred, is it tax-deductible, or is it tax-free? Right? So, these are options that maybe most people have never really ventured or studied, or no one\’s ever talked to them about it. So, what we were able to do is we came up with kind of what would be considered a Roth conversion idea, but we weren\’t going to actually use a Roth IRA. We were going to talk about pulling money out of the IRA accounts, having a tax bill, but then finding a financial instrument that we could use that would offset those tax bills.

So, in this particular situation, what we were able to do was pull out $300,000 out of their IRA account, 300,000. So, their income went from $225,000 to $525,000. So, on the surface you would suspect that there\’s going to be a much bigger tax bill, and guess what? There was. There was a much bigger tax bill. The tax bill on that was $125,000. So, we went from $36,000 up to $125,000. But here\’s the difference. We took a portion of that money, and we invested in what would be considered a more institutional-type investment, things that are offered to Wall Street, offered to Corporate America, offered to very wealthy people, but because of how we do this, we teach those rules in how they work, and this particular client qualified for one of those types of investments, and that investment had with it tax credits, tax credits that go dollar for dollar against what the tax bill would be.

So, when we made this investment, we were able to gather up a $90,000 tax credit.

So, $125,000 minus the $90,000 tax credit, instead of paying 36,000, writing the check out for $36,000, they only had to write a check out for $35,000. So, if you could basically pay the same amount of money, and through this type of a strategy get an extra $300,000 out, use a portion of it to make an investment, get that tax credit and pay the same in taxes, would it be in your best interest to find out a little bit more information?

Go to thrivefinancialservices.tyl16lnm-liquidwebsites.com. I hate to put it in the frame of a commercial, David, but I\’m going to do that. That is just a great example of what you do, of learning, of being educated. You see me looking at you, absorbing that information. So important.

Yeah, absolutely. So, we\’re happy to visit with people and go over those strategies.

Yeah, Krausey. Thank you. So, today we have our special guest we\’ve been talking about over the last couple weeks. Again, on Wednesday night, September 25th, we are hosting Delaware Valley\’s first tax summit. So, again, that\’s going to be on Wednesday, the 25th of September, and we\’ll talk about more information as to how to register for that event in the Plymouth meeting area. But I don\’t want to take too much time today. Today we have our special guest who\’s going to be with us that evening, Mr. Marty Ruby, who\’s CEO of Stonewood Financial, and a bestselling author, and to be honest with you, just a national celebrity in our world, of people that just have a handle on taxes.

So, not that we get Marty on the radio too much here, Krause, I just want to lob things over to Marty with some kind of Q&A. Marty, what are some of the things that you see out there? I know you\’ve done some of these summits around the country as well, just some of the things that you see out there, and just things that people need to be conscious of. Again, we make it an effort to talk about taxes quite a bit here on the show, but we\’d love to volley the ball over to you and just give people another perspective of somebody here from Kentucky, just given what\’s going on out there.

Sure, Bret. Thank you for having me on your show. First of all, a little bit of my background, because I think it\’ll give proper context to my comments. I\’m an actuary by training. For those listeners who don\’t know what an actuary is, we\’re kind of the numbers geeks of the insurance industry, and we\’re the ones that do the mortality studies and premium rates and development products, but from virtually all of my career, which now goes back about 47 years, I have focused on retirement savings and looking at, as an actuary, trained to look at the type of risks that are inherent in how people save and spend for retirement, and ways to reduce or eliminate that risk.

Now, for the last year-and-a-half, I have been going around talking about my latest book, The No-Compromise Retirement Plan, and it is aimed at Baby Boomers, aimed at people who are near retirement, at retirement, and really talk about what are some of the risks they face that they may not have thought about in the past. By far, the biggest risk that nobody else seems to be talking about is what I call tax risk, and the reason why is because most people have probably saved for retirement through 401(k)s, through IRAs, which are tax-deferred plans. In other words, they get a deduction when they put money in, and then they get taxed when they take money out.

So, you don\’t save taxes. You defer taxes, and the problem is the biggest worry, and I\’ve probably addressed 4,000 to 5,000 people the last year about this topic.

The biggest issue people have today, Baby Boomers, they\’re scared to death of higher taxes in the future, and what they realize now is that they\’re sitting on an IRA for most of retirement savings. That IRA is subject to all those higher taxes for the rest of their life.

Yeah. Marty, during our workshops that David and I host during the month, some of the things that we talk about of the conventional wisdom is, hey, I\’m going to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement, put money away. Again, all the misperceptions that everyone gives us that\’s out there. Talk a little bit about what you\’ve seen just in terms of when you get in front of that normal client. When we talk about the Baby Boomers, we talk about the IRA, we talk about required minimum distributions. Maybe comment a little bit, because we\’ve been talking about it over the last couple months, just things, words like the SECURE Act and just how much more… It almost brings your story to that much more of importance of being able to be that much more proactive, if you could comment on that a little bit.

Exactly. Well, here\’s the problem. Most people take what I call a micro view of taxes. They are worried about their taxes this year. It\’s kind of what you talked about in your first segment. How can I minimize my taxes this year? One of the quick and dirty ways to minimize your tax this year is you put money into an IRA or a 401(k), and you get deduction. Here\’s the problem. They\’re not looking at taxes on a macro basis. They\’re not thinking about the implications of what they\’ve done this year to how it affects the rest of their lifetime.

So, what we kind of stress is, when you look at your IRA today, you already owe taxes. Whether you\’d like to admit it or not, if you have, let\’s say, a half-a-million-dollar IRA, and you\’re in a 25% tax rate, then $125,000 of your IRA already belongs to the IRS. You just haven\’t recognized it yet. You maybe haven\’t wanted to admit it to yourself, or your statement certainly doesn\’t show it, but that\’s reality. So, what we kind of emphasize in the book and in my talks, I’ll be giving in your area next month is saying, \”Look. We have to look at a macro basis. We have to look over a person\’s lifetime. What kind of tax rates are going to be existing, and how do I minimize my overall tax bill over my lifetime, not just this year, but I got to look at a longer-term macro view.\”

Now, you mentioned the SECURE Act, and I think that\’s a great example because one thing I do talk about in my book is that people have this sometimes false impression that when they die, somehow, magically, the IRA money they leave to their spouse, to their kids, what have you, their grandkids, somehow escape taxes. Of course, we know that\’s not true, that in fact, inherited IRAs, whether going to your spouse, whether going to children or grandchildren, they now have to pay taxes as they start using that money.

Here\’s the problem. If the SECURE Act is passed, they decrease these stretch IRAs, they may take out tax sooner rather than later.

Of course, that\’s just going to increase the frequency of how you\’re going to pay your tax, but more importantly, they\’re talking about changing the required minimum distribution age from 70-and-a-half to 72, and I think that makes the matters worse, because the longer money grows in your IRA, the more taxes you will owe to the IRS. That is called IRS math, and there\’s no way to get around it. So, if you kind of think, I\’ll minimize my taxes this year by putting off my distribution from my IRA by a year, you haven\’t made matters better. You\’ve made them worse. You\’ve taken a micro view. You really haven\’t taken a macro view.

Can you comment a little bit about what you see that\’s out there in terms of unfunded Social Security, Medicare, just the state of the economy? You said it, and these are all topics that David and I chat about every day, about making rational decisions, not emotional decisions, and about the importance, and you just said it, of looking at things in the long-term. Well, we have maybe some certainty of where taxes are going to be today, but there\’s a lot of uncertainty of where taxes are going to go long-term, or it\’s only staring at us in the eye, that we all believe it can only in one direction. Can you maybe put a little bit of commentary on that, Marty?

[bctt tweet=\”If the SECURE Act is passed, they decrease these stretch IRAs, they may take out tax sooner rather than later.\” via=\”no\”]

Absolutely, because the problem is every year, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration and the chief actuary of Medicare issue reports.

Now, actuaries like myself, we\’re numbers people. We try to be very unemotional. Here are the numbers. Here\’s what we see how the future is playing out. Demographically, we are in a lot of trouble as a society. Why is that? We\’re getting older as a society. We\’re aging, and what happens when you age, and in fact, living longer? Well, two things. One is Social Security liabilities are going up because people are living longer to collect them, and Medicare is also going to be going up in terms of cost in the future, not just because of inflation, but because there\’ll be more and more seniors collecting under Medicare.

The bottom line when you look at the actuary reports says at some point in the future, we\’re just going to run out of money in terms of income into those programs to fund it, and what that\’ll cause is increased government debt, as bad as it is today. We\’re looking at trillion-dollar-plus deficits. It just keeps going up. So, my experience as kind of going around the country is people are scared to death, that when they look at this thing in the future, they\’re saying, \”Tax rates have got to go up. Something has got to give.\”

Marty Ruby is our special guest here on Roadmap to Retirement, the radio show, CEO of Stonewood Financial, leading expert of saving strategies for retirement, and the special guest of Thrive Financial Services for the event on September 25th at 7:00 p.m. at the DoubleTree Suites by the Hilton in Plymouth Meeting. The event starts at 7:00 p.m. Go to pataxsummit.org for information.

 You\’ll get an opportunity, Bret, to meet Marty specifically on that night in September. It\’s going to be a spectacular night, guaranteed to leave more educated than when you arrive.

Yeah, and we\’ll have some of his books there that he\’ll kindly be autographing for us as well, but Marty, let\’s go back to another question, since we have you here today. Just talk a little bit about how the Fed has decreased interest rates, and now they\’re talking about it again here in the short term, where now interest rates are quote-unquote back to an all-time low again, which obviously has people puzzled. What do I do with my money? Can you give a little bit of commentary, what your kind of thoughts are that you\’re talking about out there?

Yeah, absolutely, because this is another thing I talk about in my book, and it\’s something that, again, I don\’t know if the typical retirement saver\’s really focused on yet, but here\’s the problem. 2008, we had this financial crisis.

Hundreds of banks were going out of business. Mortgage companies were failing, all kind of blood in the street. The response by the Federal Reserve was, I think, a good one at that time. It was to slam down interest rates to near zero. In other words, they had to kind of nurse back the financial system, the banks around the country, and all the government, all the central banks around the world had a similar kind of response.

Here\’s the problem. After a couple years, our financial institutions recovered. They\’re strong right now, but the Fed never put rates back up again. So, what I have been kind of preaching around the country, and I kind of get up on a soapbox about this, is that basically, for the last seven or eight years, we have kind of maintained this health of our financial system on the backs of savers. Everybody who… If you want to borrow money in today\’s economy, it\’s great, easy to do. Right? Interest rates are low.

The fact is that what do people who save money, what choices do they have? This is where it\’s something I dub in my book as the saver\’s dilemma, because generally, when you look at a typical retirement portfolio, you say, \”Geez. I got a couple choices. Either I can be in the stock market and take a lot of risk, or, and I\’m almost forced this way, as I get older and I can\’t afford that risk, I could be in protected-type savings instruments, like a CD, like a high-grade corporate bond, and so forth.\” But the problem is there\’s virtually no yield left in these kind of instruments.

So, you have this real dilemma. If you\’re a saver, if you\’re probably most of the people listening today, if you\’re saying, \”I am saving dollars, not borrowing money, but saving dollars. I\’m really caught as to what I can do with my dollars. Do I take risk and be in the stock market, or do I take safety and give up all the yield,\” I think for future, for our generation, for the Baby Boomer generation who has saved for retirement, and now soon, if not now, will be starting to take money down from their retirement funds, this is a real dilemma. This is a very big dilemma, and it\’s one that all of us have to face, that there\’s really no good choices out there today. If you want protected, safe money, then the kind of typical choices that you see out there, the CDs, the savings accounts, the money market funds, those types of things, you\’ve given up most of your yield.

 Marty, how do you speak directly to me, the consumer in the room at the DoubleTree who doesn\’t have a handle or an understanding about what you just described? That\’s the challenge. Our ignorance to it, respectively, doesn\’t allow us to fully understand what you\’re saying.

Well, one thing I talk about is that there are alternatives out in the marketplace. There are alternatives in terms of what part of the tax code you save under. There are alternatives as to how you put some of your money to work. Basically, what I advise people is that, first of all, they should always have a diversified portfolio, but some portion of that portfolio has got to be growing tax-free, because you want to immunize yourself against future tax raises, and some part of that portfolio has to be an instrument that can both grow when the market goes up, and protect you when the market drops. In other words, I\’m trying to solve this, if you will, a saver\’s dilemma.

One of the things that, again, as an actuary, I have focused on, because I have been CEO of an insurance company before, and very heavily involved earlier in my career in product development, I look for instruments out there that are structured to favor the saver, that don\’t penalize the saver by either too much risk, or too little return, but find kind of an in between where you could have some of both. You can have growth when the market goes up. You could have protection when the market drops.

There are instruments out there that do that, and what I advise at least my clients in Louisville is saying, \”You got to have some diversification. You can\’t just rely on the stock market, just rely on very low-yielding kind of traditional fixed-income instruments. You got to look beyond that. You got to say, \’We\’re in this kind of new world today where a lot of the world outside the US has negative interest rates,\’ which is not even something I can think about, it\’s so weird, and in this kind of environment, you\’ve got to take some action. You got to protect yourself. You got to make sure that when you need that money in the future, it\’s really going to be there.\”

Yeah. I think it\’s really important.

If you\’re listening today, you\’re hearing a lot of things that are oriented around taxes, and it really is the dilemma. The average consumer investor is really thinking more about rates of return on their investments rather than the tax consequences of making those investments. I ask that question during our workshops. When you make a choice of what mutual fund, what financial instrument, what\’s number one? What\’s your objective? What\’s the number one thing that you consider when you make that? Overwhelmingly, it\’s the rate of return, the interest earned, whatever description that is.

What people forget, it\’s not always what you make, but what you end up keeping, and Marty hit it right on point, that we know what taxes are like today, but at the same time, we also know what the debt that this country owes, and the fact that that needs to be recovered through taxation, so chances are not only are taxes going to go up in our future, they\’re going to become more complicated. So, when people spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what investment manager they should be working with, they really should try to take a step back and start considering, I need to work with a planner. I need to work with somebody who\’s wholistic. I need to work with somebody who kind of understands all of these moving puzzle pieces, because that person will give us a better guidance of where we can go, and make sure we make those right choices. Does that make sense to you, Joe?

Makes sense to me. Let me ask Marty. I\’m sure it makes sense to you. I\’ll give you last word in the segment, sir, before we say goodbye until the 25th of September.

Well, thank you, and I look forward to being there next month, but I think what David was just saying is absolutely important. In fact, I\’m working on a third book right now, and it\’s tentatively titled The Holistic Retirement Plan, and it\’s just what was just being said. You got to look at the entire picture. You can\’t just look on one little segment of it. At the end of the day, you better look at everything. You better have people around you who are helping you look at everything.

Can\’t wait. I look forward to it.

All right.

Thanks, Marty. We really appreciate your time.

Special thanks to Marty Ruby, the CEO of Stonewood Financial, for jumping on and giving us a few minutes on this Saturday morning. I want to remind everyone, pataxsummit.org, pataxsummit.org is the destination for you to go online to get registered. David, Bret, David, I\’ll start with you, then Bret, I\’ll come to you. We do know that that night in September is going to be a spectacular night. I said this to you while we were in commercial break. The value that people receive when they come to a workshop is incredible. The value that they will leave from this summit I think will be monumental. You will leave with a full amount of education, guaranteed.

Yeah. Look, we do a wonderful job with our weekly workshops. This is taking a specific topic and going 10X with it, so I think there\’ll be tremendous value. There\’s no one that walks out of our workshops, says it wasn\’t worth coming out. They always get some pearls of wisdom at these workshops. So, pataxsummit.org, you\’ll see a lot of great information about Marty on there. You\’ll be able to register directly. If you want more information, just go to our website, thrivefinancialservices.tyl16lnm-liquidwebsites.com.

By the way, there is no charge or cost to be in the room. You are the guest of Thrive Financial Services. The room will be packed.

Yeah. The only important thing is that we register. Again, we do a lot of these workshops throughout the month, but again, it took a while for us to get Marty to come into town, so it\’s what\’s having us do one event, one night. I\’m not sure we\’re going to be able to get him back in town for a while again, so it is very important that we register, where a lot of or workshops that we have during the month that people are able to walk in. You know, Krause, I actually had somebody, a prospect I had come to one of our workshops recently who had sent me an email, said, \”Bret, I loved the workshop that you came to, and I heard you guys talking about Marty on the radio. Should I come?\” I said, \”Absolutely, you should come.\” This event\’s going to be different than the event that David and I are hosting on a weekly basis, where again, it\’s a big deal.

Again, we have Marty coming to the room, and people say, \”Well, who should come?\” For our listening audience, the people that should come are the people that are fed up with paying taxes, the people that maybe you have been experiencing Medicare surcharges, and you\’re figuring out, hey, how can I maybe change my situation a little bit? Marty said it. If you have a lot of 401(k), IRA money, and conventional wisdom has said never touch it until the age of 70-and-a-half, maybe you get a lot of 1099s from your dividends or long-term capital gains. Again, these are all items that we talk about during our workshops and here on the show, where again, if you\’re looking to take it to the next step, saying, \”Hey, I love the education that David, Bret, Karen, and the rest of the team at Thrive have given to me. I want to understand even just a little bit more and a little bit deeper on what else is more that\’s out there, that\’s tangible, that I might even be able to act on.\” That\’s who should come to this event on September 25th.

Again, pataxsummit.org is how you register for the event. Again, it\’s going to be on Wednesday, September 25th. It\’s going to be a one-time event. Again, we\’ll be having some regular workshops throughout the month like we normally do. Remember, this week coming up, we have one Thursday, the 5th of September. We\’re going to be back out in Chester County at the West Whiteland Township Building, but again, this event on September 25th is going to be like no event that we\’ve ever had before.

[bctt tweet=\”When you make a choice of what mutual fund, what financial instrument, what\’s the number one goal?\” via=\”no\”]

Bret, just a reminder, it is definitely a must-register.

We already have it filling. People will receive an email with a QR code on it, and our team will be checking those QR codes upon entry. If you don\’t have one… There\’s no walk-in traffic on this one.

This will be no seat left open, and we\’re only allowed so many people in the room.

We just had that happen, to be honest with you. We were in Cherry Hill, and the room sat a hundred people, and we had 35 people standing in the back of the room, and we actually… People from the library came in and said that we were beyond, and we actually had to ask some people to leave, which is unfortunate, because it was great information, but that\’s what\’s starting to happen with your workshops.

Wow. Amazing. I mean, that\’s the good and the bad of doing an incredible workshop. Well, you\’ve heard it there. Pataxsummit.org, no cost, priceless information, an absolute must-attend, and as Bret mentioned it, you mentioned it before, the only one of its kind in the Delaware Valley in 2019, for sure, and if you want to be proactive, if you want to start to understand your capital storage and decision that you can make around that today, you\’ve got to come to this event on September 25th.

We find a lot of those do-it-yourselfers, and you know what? Those do-it-yourselfers have gone out there, and the thing that they have to learn is diversification, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, annuities, ETFs, all that stuff.

So, that means if we\’re having some, I guess, suspect gains on the upside, is the other way how we can make money, is by paying less in taxes.

So, us being able to be proactive, where especially in times like today, where you have a lot of uncertainty, a lot of ups and down in the market, the next step of how we go to educate ourselves, to go make sure that we make more better-informed decisions is that tax side of it. So, we\’re excited, again, about the workshops that we\’re doing here on a monthly basis are never so prevalent in terms of everything that\’s going out there, but again, having this big event on September 25th, again, the first ever PA Tax Summit, again, pataxsummit.org. Again, please, please, please register. I think that\’s amazing. We\’re about a month out, and we\’re about at 40% capacity right now, so it\’s going to be important for people, again, to register again at pataxsummit.org.

I would ask all of our listeners, or perhaps people tuning in for the very first time this morning on Roadmap to Retirement, the radio show, the one thing and the only thing necessary is be willing and be receptive to accept information that you don\’t know. That\’s the key. That\’s how I show up every single week to consume this radio show, you\’ll learn. You\’re guaranteed you\’re going to learn.

Yeah. Unfortunately, this is one of the industries where a lot of times, and with no disrespect, people will debate the professional. Right? If you go to the doctor, and you get diagnosed with a terrible disease, people kind of go into a mode of you\’re the professional, you know more than I do, so I guess I should follow order. Now, you always want to question. You want to be your own advocate, and so on and so forth, but it\’s when you bring in experts, nationally renowned, and again, whether it\’s a Marty Ruby or it\’s your local financial advisor, if they are a fiduciary, it is their obligation to make sure through a transparent way they are acting in your best interest, and it should become a collaborative effort. Right? Instead of kind of a conflictual… it should be, explain to me why you\’re making that recommendation. How does that work from a tax perspective?

What we\’re trying to do here at Thrive is expand that conversation. We start with the educational process, so you can see that there\’s a different conversation, like we talk about things that had not been discussed before. You now come to this realization, like hey, geez, I didn\’t even know that I was supposed to be thinking that way. So, now we get the chance to sit down, you ask your questions, we\’re going to ask questions back, and we\’re going to come up with a conclusion, what\’s the best way to process, and we\’re going to consider Social Security in that equation. We\’re obviously going to consider taxation in that. We\’re going to consider longevity. We\’re going to consider risk profile, and try to establish an actionable plan that you go, \”That gave me certainty, versus uncertainty,\” because if we\’re only worried about one aspect of overall retirement, there\’s a good chance it\’s going to go off the rails. But if you consider everything related to your retirement, and you walk away with comfort that that made sense, the math worked, then you can gain that certainty.

I think everything, the word everything, equals plan. Right?

That\’s exactly it.

Without everything, there\’s no plan. There\’s just a piece of it. So, do yourself a favor. If you haven\’t considered it, I ask you to consider it. Go to pataxsummit.org.