If you prefer to listen while you are on the road, click below!
Transcript
Zach:
Welcome back to retirement today. I’m your co-host to Zach Holcomb and alongside me, we have Michael Reese. He’s a certified financial planning professional, and he spent the last 20 plus years helping families get into and through retirement. We’re back on retirement today, Mike, on our previous segment, we talked a little bit about what we do, who we serve, why we do it. And you told us the story of your parents and the situation they were in. We have another story for us here. You wanna talk a little bit about your grandparents now?
Mike:
Yeah. I I’ll tell you. This is a great example of things that are done really well, but then how, how little mistakes can
Zach:
Cost you? Everything. We see that a lot in retirement. Yeah. And by the
Mike:
Way, if you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, Hey, I’m worried about my retirement and you know, maybe you’re within that retirement red zone. Do you know what the retirement red zone is? Zach? You
Zach:
Know, it’s like, you’re, you’re close, but you’re not there yet. Like maybe five, five or so years out.
Mike:
Yeah. The way the retirement red zone, as I’ve seen it defined is the five years. It’s a 10 year period. Okay. Five years before you retire and five years after you retire. Gotcha. Because this period of your life represents some of the most sensitive decision making time period, meaning like little miss stakes here are magnified. Big mistakes are of course just killing you. But it’s a time of life where you’ve absolutely have to get your eyes dotted and teases crossed. If you do things right in this time period, everything’s gonna flow for you. And remember, as I mentioned, at the end of the last segment, we have, we’ve opened up 10 spots for, for people to call us and talk to us. We’ve got, if you want a free second opinion on your retirement planning where you’re saying, Hey, I’m, I’m, I’m in that retirement red zone. Maybe you are in that retirement red zone. You’re like, man, I gotta make sure that I’m, you know, doting those eyes and crossing those Ts. I don’t wanna miss anything if that’s you, you, this is a great opportunity to give us a call again, that number’s (512) 886-5850 first 10 callers. By the way, when they’re gone, they’re gone.
Zach:
And we already had a few people call in after last segment. It it’s
Mike:
Always, they always come fast. Don’t it’s great. Well, anyway I wanna tell you a little bit about my grandparents. So these are my grandparents on my father’s side. My grandfather’s name was Wes and Carol is the, is my grandmother’s name. They’re both gone of course today, but I wanna share the story. This is really the story of Wes. So when I was a kid, my grandfather, Wes, he was like larger than life. You know, he’s already a big guy. I wanna say he is like six, two, you or six, three, you know, pretty, not like a body builder, but you know, pretty in good shape. Yeah. Right. And he had one of these personalities, Zach, he would just laugh and laugh. I mean, just really a big happy personality controls the room. The second he steps in. Oh yeah. He’s one of those guys.
Mike:
And, and he would walk in and I remember when we would go visit him, you know, grandma and grandpa. Right. And we’d see him on the weekends usually. And you know, he just loved the grandkids. He loved hanging out with us and you know, we would play card games. But I remember, you know, as I’m sitting here are standing here today talking to y’all. I remember one weekend we were there. I must have been, I wasn’t very old. I was maybe eight years old. Right. And he had the weekend edition of the wall street journal. Ooh, exciting. And he was showing me, I’m like, what are you looking at? Grandpa? He’s showing me, you know, he was a stock investor. So what my grandfather would do, this is the before 401ks and all this other stuff. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> what he would do is he would save up some money and then he would buy stock.
Mike:
He’d go to a stock broker and buy some stock and then he’d save up more money and buy some more stock and save up more money and buy some more stock and so on and so on. And so the reason he was doing this was that it was his goal. When he retired, they lived now, my grandparents lived in, you know, Lansing, Michigan, which is kind of the south part of Michigan. When they retired, he wanted to buy a cottage on a lake in Northern Michigan. He wanted this cottage to be like a family enclave. You know, the kind of place were all the children and grandchildren get together in the summertime. Right? Yep. That was his dream. And the way he would go about doing it is by saving money, buying stock, saving money, buying stock. And he was showing me how he always invested in stock, where he knew who they were like big, big companies, names you all heard of mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Mike:
And at the time it might have been Coda or, you know, something like that. And they were paying dividends, right? Dividend paying stock, blue chip companies. That was his approach. And by the way, that was an excellent approach for what he was trying to accomplish. And guess what? Sure enough, when he and my grandmother retired <affirmative> they had the money to buy the cottage. So they bought the cottage and it was awesome. And I remember we’d go up as kids up there, and this is Northern Michigan folks. Even in the summer, it gets cold there. I remember that the rule was we that, you know, we could not put our toes in the water until it was 70 degrees mm-hmm <affirmative> and they had, my grandparents had this big Thermo oter mm-hmm <affirmative> on, on the wall by the by the beach, they had a little beach house and on that beach house, this big thermometer, and we would sit there and just watch it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, you know, like watching a clock, you know, 69. Oh, we can’t go in the water yet. 70 boom in we’d go. And it was freezing cold water, but we were kids. We didn’t care. Right? Yep. It was awesome. Them. I mean, I, I have great memories there. Memories of swimming, water skiing. I remember at night, you know, we would play card games and you know, or dominoes. I remember that, you know, my grandfather would get us up early. We’d go fishing. I mean, all this cool stuff. Right. It was
Mike:
Just everything that we wanted it to be. Everything he wanted it to be. But then a funny thing happened, and this is where he made the mistake. He did not. When he retired. Right. Remember what was his goal? Get the cottage mm-hmm <affirmative>. But what happened when he retired, he got the, did his goals change? Well, now you gotta keep it. Now you gotta keep the cottage. Right? Cuz the idea is he wanted pass this down to his children. This is the family enclave. This is where my grandfather made the mistake. He did not recognize that his goals changed. And so his investing just kept going. He just owning these blue chip companies. And his thinking was, this is awesome because I get capital appreciation. And the dividends, you know, combined with his pension and social security took care of all the bills. But then a funny thing happened, the markets decided that it was time not to cooperate for a while.
Mike:
Right. They decided we’re going to actually go south. It was the oil embargo in the early seventies. We’re going to go take a trip south to Florida or something for a while. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. And it’s gonna be a while before we come back to hang out with you. So for my grandfather, all of his money was in these stocks. They’re all paying dividends that he was counting on to make gens meat. And when the stock went down, the value of his stocks went down. Zach, what do you think happened to the dividends? Oh, they went away. They went, well, they didn’t go away. Well, they went down, went down. Right? So next thing you know, he’s like, oh crap, the dividends are enough. I’m short. I don’t have enough money to pay the bills. So what did he have to do to pay the bills?
Mike:
Sell the cottage. Well, no he had sell stocks. Stocks. Yeah. He had these stocks. He sold them, but they sell ’em at high prices. Low prices. No. Cuz the market went down, sold ’em at low prices. And so this starts like this downward spiral because he’s selling low, which means he has to sell more shares to get the money he needs, which means those shares are gone. So they’re not generating dividends anymore. Which means next year he’s gotta sell even more stock and even more. And it’s just, it’s a downward spiral. Right? Right. Next thing you know, he’s running outta money. He’s like, oh boy, now I gotta sell the family cottage. I gotta sell the dream. And I’m telling you, selling that cottage broke my grandfather this bigger than life man, who was happy and laughing all the time. Once that cottage was sold, when he, he got his dream and he lost it, he lived a year and died.
Mike:
And that year that he lived, it’s like he shrunk as a person. I never saw him laughing again. It was, it broke him. And when he died, there’s my grandmother. Right. I’ll by yourself now. But guess what? What happened to all the money? It was gone. Yeah. Money’s like gone. Right? So she’s in dire financial straights. So by the way, that’s the first part of the story I’m running outta time in this segment. And I’ll tell you the second part of the story in her net segment about what happened to grandma, right? Which you’re gonna want to hear. But before we do that at, I wanna make sure that you all know, we help people with comprehensive planning. We help people who are middle class, upper middle class people of anywhere from 250,000 safer retirement, all the way up to 5 million. If you are in that category and you’re sitting there thinking, man, I need to talk to someone about my retirement planning.
Mike:
Maybe you need some help. You you’ve got some pressing questions in your mind. Maybe you’ve got an advisor who just helps you with investing, but they don’t help you with anything else. Maybe you’re sitting there and you’re like, man, I need a second opinion. If that’s you, we have opened up 10 spots. First 10 callers. And already you said three of ’em are gone, right Zach and probably got another one or two in while I’m talking here. Anyway, if you’re sitting there, just give us a call. You get a free second opinion from, you know, from our team, I’ve been doing this over 20, 25 years now, helping people get through into and through retirement. Why not have someone who is, who specializes in this area? Look over your shoulder, make sure you’re making the right moves here. You don’t wanna make mistakes again. It’s free, no obligation. It’s so easy. Zach, what is this easy path? The easiest way to complete planning that they need to take. Mike,
Zach:
It really is easy. All you have to do is give us a quick call. Our numbers five one to 2 8, 8, 6 58 50. Again, that number’s 5 1, 2 8, 8, 6 58 50. Now remember this is for the first 10 callers only this evening. And a few of those spots are already gone. You give us a call at that number. You’re gonna get our after hours answering service. They’re just gonna get your name, your number and a good time for us to give you a call back. One more time. It’s 5 1, 2 8, 8, 6 58 50.
Mike:
And by the way when you call in, if, if you get like a busy signal, which might happen, cuz you know, sometimes people start crushing our phone lines, just call back. Right? It’s okay. Here’s the deal. You’re in that retirement red zone five years until you retire or years after you’ve retired, super important that your Dotty and eyes and crossing tees. If you’re in that stage, you are the person you need to take advantage of this and it’s free and it’s easy. Don’t miss out on that. All right, we gotta wrap on this segment coming up. I told you about my grandfather. Now on the other side, we’re gonna talk about what it happened to my grandmother. We’ll be right back.
