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Transcript
Zach:
Welcome to retirement today. I’m your cohost, Zach Holcomb, and alongside me as always. We have Michael Reese, founder and president of Centennial Advisors headquartered right here in beautiful Austin, Texas. Mike, we have a great show on our hands tonight, but first of all, how are you today?
Mike:
You know, I’m always doing great. It’s Austin, Texas, baby. How can I not be doing great
Zach:
Greatest place in the world to be. Happy to have you alongside me as always, we have a really important show on our hands today. I know every single week we’re talking about really important stuff when it comes to the world of retirement planning, but this is a big one. Okay. So I just came across this article from the New York times. Just got put on my desk here this evening. They’re talking about getting old is a crisis that more and more Americans can’t seem to afford. Now, some of the things they’re talking about in this is information that a lot of us are pretty well versed on where, where, but I’m going to share this with you. Anyways, half of US households over 55, they have no retirement savings, you know this, right?
Mike:
Okay. So by the way, first of all, what’s your source here, Zach?
Zach:
The New York Times
Mike:
They just make up stuff as they go, Right?
Zach:
These sources are cited,
Mike:
But, for what it’s worth, it’s not a political, it’s not a political article. So we could maybe count on it being at least semi true.
Zach:
I would hope so.
Mike:
Anyway. So they’re saying that half of Americans have no retirement savings.
Zach:
Zero. Absolutely nothing.
Mike:
Man. I find that so hard to believe.
Zach:
Absolutely crazy. Isn’t it? And then half of Americans over 65, they’re living on social security, alone, $18,000 a year. How are people even able to do that.
Mike:
Okay. So my first comment is all right, so this is where I’m going to come out. This is how I was raised. All right. So as soon as I hear that, I’m going to say this, Zach, I’m probably going to, you know what? I hope I don’t offend half of the people listening right now. Okay. But I remember when I was raised that my parents instilled within me a strong sense of personal responsibility, right? It’s like I’m supposed to as an adult make decisions so that I’m standing on my own two feet. Part of personal responsibility is, Hey, save some money along the way so that you don’t end up living on nothing but social security. Now, with that being said, I know now, by the way, don’t be like calling in and emailing us, tell them, you know, talking about what a heartless, you know, a-hole I am.
Mike:
Right. Because I do recognize that there are people out there that have legitimate reasons for not having savings later in life. There are, I mean, things do occur. I get it. And you know what? My heart goes out to those people. But half you can’t tell me, half of the population are just victims. Right? I mean, it’s like, come on people. Yeah. You can’t sit there and oh man, that’s just, that’s rough. I don’t like hearing that. It really is. It’s I don’t know. I don’t know how, where are they getting this from? How accurate is this? Really?
Zach:
This is a report from fidelity.
Mike:
From fidelity. No less.
Zach:
Yes.
Mike:
Holy cow. I wonder where they, I questioned where they got this, but okay. So let’s assume that they’re correct. So they’re saying half of the population, no retirement savings and half of the population basically retired with nothing but social security income only. And it’s how much like 18 grand a year. You said a
Zach:
Little over 18 grand a year.
Mike:
All right. This just, this just kills me. So
Zach:
Let’s look at that 18,000 a year. Let’s compare that to the price of what long-term care is right now. So nationwide put out a study in 2020, the median cost of having a semi-private room in a nursing home for a year $93,000. That’s an unbelievable number
Mike:
So 93 grand a year. That’s medium. That means like it’s the middle.
Zach:
Yes.
Mike:
Holy cow. So, so obviously 18 grand. Isn’t going to cut it. Right. So, but here, okay. So here’s the deal first and foremost, let’s as much as I question these statistics, right? Cause I mean, you know, me, Zach I’m, I’m old enough to know to be skeptical, right? I’m scared, skeptical on lot of things. What if it’s not half the population what’s 10%, right? I mean, it doesn’t really matter what the number is. Here’s what I do now. I know that number one, the average person is not saving enough money for retirement. We do know that like, look, we know that to be true. Now we do live in Austin, Texas. There’s a lot of you out there listening, man, you, you, you’ve done a great job saving for retirement.
Mike:
You know, you’re saving how many times a day Zach, am I talking to someone in their fifties who are saving the full 26,000 a year in their 401k? I was talking to a guy today. That’s like, Hey, I need to say more than that. And that’s great. That’s great. If you’re in a position to do it I applaud you if you are doing it. By the way, here’s what I would highly recommend. So I told this to my daughter, Sara, I tell us all my kids and you’ve probably heard me say it to you, but here’s what I’m telling you. If you’re having trouble saving, you know, and you don’t want to be one of these, you know, one of these group of people that have nothing saved, right? So let’s say you’re out there and you just say, man, I’m just struggling, saving money.
Mike:
Well, here’s what you do. Just start with two or 3%, put it in your 401k or an IRA. Just set it up automatically. You are not going to write two or 3%. You’re not even going to notice it’s gone. And then what do you do? Six months later do another 1%, six months later do another 1% before you know it you’re saving some real money. Like my daughter, Sarah she’s 27. And she was telling me the other day, look at this dad. I’m so proud of myself. Not only did she buy a house, by the way, she’s up to 10%. Right. And she, but did she start there? No, she started at five and then six months later she did six and six months later, she did seven. She’s now at 10. And now she’s looking forward to six months later when she gets up to 11.
Mike:
Well you got to start somewhere. Right? Right. So don’t be one of these people. So step number one, save some money. Right? Long-term care. Healthcare expenses in retirement are going to be significant. Right? You’ve got to assume that. So here’s the thing. When you’re younger start getting in the habit of saving money. When you’re in your fifties here, here’s the thing. You start getting into your forties and especially in your fifties, here’s my question. Are you talking to a financial advisor to know how much you should be saving? You know, I was on the phone earlier. What was it? Last week? Had a great conversation. Super nice couple. They were in their late forties and he’s been doing really well at work. He’s making a pretty good income. And he said something to me. Actually. They said something to me that I hear all the time. They said to me, I said, Mike, we’ve kind of gotten the point where we just kind of spend money all over the place. We know we are wasting money. The problem is this. Like in the back of our heads, we know we should be saving more money, but here’s the thing. We don’t know how much we should be saving.
Zach:
Right. They need a plan.
Mike:
We need a plan. We need someone to help us map that out. Like, like if you just tell me, they said, just tell me, give me the number, tell me how much to save. I’ll do it. Right? And then I can spend the rest of my income. Guilt-Free they need a plan because everybody’s number is different. That’s right. But just tell me what I’m saving. What’s my plan. And you know what it really comes down to, and this is why we build our blueprint. Right? See here at Centennial Advisors, my company, and here on retirement today, the radio show, we are big believers that you deserve. Like you deserve to have a great retirement. You deserve to have the retirement of your dreams. But in order to do that, you just have to make good choices with your money.
Mike:
The problem is there’s a lot of different areas. You’ve got to make decisions on. You’ve gotta make decisions on income planning and investment planning and tax planning and health planning and estate planning. Like there’s a million different things you have to decide. So it’s kind of a big job and it’s kind of complicated. And so we were thinking, you know, what, how do we make it easy? How do we make retirement planning? Easy? How do we make it? Like on one page, couldn’t we drill down on one page, the things that you need to get, right? In order to live that prosperous life, that prosperous retirement, where you can be confident that you’re making the right choices or like this couple where, you know, where you, that confidence like, Hey, I’m saving the right amount of money. I’m doing the right job. How do you get that down on one page?
Mike:
So we’ve been able to do that. Yep. And so one of the things I want to share is if you are sitting there, maybe you’re sitting there saying, man, I’m making a pretty good amount of money, but am I saving enough? Am I doing the right job? How do I know? How do I make it easy? Well, I want to invite you to give us a call. Why not give us a call? Absolutely for free. We will put together for you, a personalized prosperity planning, blueprint. This is one page tells you what you need to do to live that prosperous life, to make the right financial choices. Doesn’t matter if you’re retired, whether you’re in your fifties, nearing retirement, wherever you are in life, this will help you get on the right path. And it’s easy Zach, how do they get this free report,
Zach:
Mike? Like you say, it’s easy peasy. All you have to do is give us a call at our number (512) 886-5850. Again, that number is (512) 886-5850 it’s after hours, you’ll get our answering service. You set up a quick 15 minute call with our team and we’ll walk you through the process to get this personalized, prosperity planning, blueprint. Now stick around. We’ll be right back. We’re going to continue our continuing our discussion on saving for retirement. We’ll be right back
Mike:
First. We’ve got people not taking personal responsibility. That drives me crazy. It’s like, they’d rather just claim their victim. You know what? If you want to be out there and just claim you’re living your life as a victim, don’t talk to me. You’re bringing me down, right? You’re not. You’re where you are in life. Usually because of the choices. You’ve made sure again, this isn’t everybody. I’m absolutely. What is it? I’m, I’m big painting a broad brush here. I’m not talking about every single person out there. There are people that are truly victims that truly have issues. I just think that, I’m sorry, I think the majority of people want to claim themselves as victims are you know, whatever, but take personal responsibility, save money, save money, save some money, spend some money. Find that good balance for yourself. Because guess what? Someday, you’re not going to be working.
Mike:
You’re going to have to replace your paycheck. You want to make sure that you’re in good shape there. You want to make, you want to be smart. Right? Be smart. All right. So here we go.
Zach:
What do you got here?
Mike:
Oh my gosh. We’re about to talk about politicians some more.
Zach:
Oh no.
Mike:
So you know I’m going to be irritated.
Zach:
This is a great show.
Mike:
I hate these people. All right. By the way, I talk about people. I hate all the time. You know who I love?
Zach:
Who do you like?
Mike:
I love people who are, you know, have positive attitudes. I love people who, you know, they, they see the as abundance. They look for opportunities. They’re always trying to improve themselves. You know, I like that kind of person that, by the way, doesn’t describe basically almost any politician. But anyway, here we go. So we know, we know that recently if you’re paying attention, both sides of the aisle got together and they said, all right, we’ve got to throw some money at infrastructure, right?
Mike:
Like what was it, the fifties? We build all these highways and all these bridges. I mean, it’s, they’re like 70 years old.
Zach:
Ancient.
Mike:
And you know these bridges, I mean, throughout the country, you look at them, they’re falling apart. They said, okay. And railroads, oh my gosh. So they said, let’s do this. We need to create an infrastructure bill. We’re going to throw a trillion dollars at infrastructure.
Zach:
Trillion with a T.
Mike:
A trillion with a T. By the way, in case you’re wondering that’s a lot of money. This always brings me back to one of my favorite movies. So, and as you’re listening, I mean, here we go. It’s poor Zach. It’s like, you just try to keep me on topic. And there I go off on these tangents, but I hear a trillion dollars. And right now I’m thinking of Dr. Evil, right?
Both:
One million dollars.
Zach:
With the pinky.
Mike:
And like Dr. Evil, you might want to ask for a little more than that. Yeah. And he goes to billions and our government says, oh, Dr. Evil, we’ve got to add some more zeros. Let’s make it a trillion. And you know, darn well, it’s going to happen. A trillion dollars that they give to the infrastructure, like half of that maybe is going to go to infrastructure. The rest is going to go to special interest groups. Which also drives me crazy. Right. Anyway, no sooner, like the instant they pass that trillion dollar, you know, bill like the instant it’s done, like immediately here comes our quote unquote leaders/weasels in DC. And they’re like, Hey, this comes from CNBC. Now this one, this one, I’m sorry, I don’t, I don’t know if you’re more right leaning or left leading, but this one’s all on the Democrat side.
Mike:
This is a Democrat led thing. The Republicans hate this idea. But again, any democratic idea, remember the Republicans hate any Republican idea, Democrats hate. That’s just the way it is these days. They don’t, they don’t even care to listen. But anyway, Democrats $3.5 trillion budget plan. Basically, they said, you know, we think we should spend $3.5 trillion next year, just for the government to run. By the way, I don’t know if you read this, but our the fed had to come in with emergency measures to lift the debt ceiling because they’re spending so much money in DC. These politicians they’re freaking morons when it comes to money, right? They’re morons, all of them, both sides of the aisle. They’re morons, when it comes to managing money, this is not their strong suit. Right? These people, they spend money like crazy. They have no fricking clue.
Mike:
They, they, they honestly couldn’t give a crap. Whether they actually balance a budget, right? They don’t care. All they want to do is, and especially right now, tax and spend tax and spend tax and spend that’s what they want to do. And you know what this is doing, this is going to, this is a kind of stuff that bankrupts our children, our grandchildren, this is a kind of stuff where this is why tax rates are going to go up in the future. It’s because of the, you know, so-and-so’s in DC who have not a financial bone in their body, right? They’re like a bunch of teenagers like here, mom and dad says to the teenager, here’s your credit card. Go spend all the money you want. We’ll just pay for it. That’s what they are. They’re like teenagers with their first credit card with no sense whatsoever of how they’re going to pay for anything.
Zach:
So all this spending going on, how is this going to affect our listeners, the public?
Mike:
So here we go, right? Thank you for bringing me onto this. Right? So here’s, what’s going on. See, this is Zach, this is why we’re here together.
New Speaker:
To bring you back in.
New Speaker:
You gotta say, all right, Mike, you’re out there ranting. You’re going crazy. We got to get to like corral you back into this. So, you know, we’ve got one article saying, Hey, people aren’t saving money. And the cost of healthcare is getting out of control. So we’ve got a problem there. How are you going to retire if you’re not saving enough money, you can’t replace your paycheck and you can’t even pay for healthcare. The answer is you can’t. Right, right. Then we’ve got these other articles saying government spending money like crazy. Tax, like spending like crazy. Here’s what’s going to happen.
Mike:
Tax rates are going up. You know, they they’re already talking about doing that. Now we know that already. If they don’t do anything in Washington DC tax rates go up in January 1, 2026, because the Trump tax code goes away vanishes at the end of 2025. So 2026 taxes go up automatically. They’re spending money like drunken sailors. And I can have fun with that now because I have an ex Navy person, Tony who works here and adviser here ex Navy. So I can make fun of him as the drunken sailor in the office. He’s not by the way. That’s not who he is.
Zach:
Just a joke.
Mike:
But it’s fun. But they’re spending my, like the drunken, the proverbial drunken sailor, right? Or the teenager with the first credit card. At some point you gotta pay it back. You gotta pay it back. We all know this.
Mike:
This is obvious. It’s simple. Who’s going to pay it back. Well, if half the people aren’t saving money, who’s going to pay it all back the half who actually do what they’re supposed to be doing and are saving money. And so here’s how it’s going to impact you. It’s all going to come from here’s. It’s going to come from the tax bomb account that you have when it comes to your retirement savings. That tax bomb is called a 401k, a 403b a 457, a traditional IRA, a profit sharing plan, a pension plan. Money in these pre-tax accounts, money that’s never been taxed. The IRS is ever, they’re just going to increasingly in the government with strokes of the pen and Washington, DC, they will increasingly be attacking your 401k, the money in your 401k, the money in your 4 0 3 BS. They’re going to be coming after it.
Mike:
And because this is where a lot of Americans, Zach save a ton of money this is what you need to do. So let’s say that you are actually the person, the half of the population that’s doing the right job. You’re actually saving money. Good for you. But if you’re saving it in your 401k, you might be building up a tax bomb. Right? And the question is, how do you like protect yourself? How do you immunize that account from future tax increases? That’s where things like Roth conversions come into play. You want to know the number? One question I get when I talk to people, it’s Mike, I know I should be doing Roth conversions. I know I should be moving my to something. That’s tax-free. My challenge is nobody can help me help tell me how much I should move each year. How much do I move each year?
Mike:
Well, that’s one of the questions we answer right? In our, in our prosperity planning, blueprint. One of the questions. So retirement planning is complicated. A lot of decisions you have to make. So what we wanted to do is we said, how do we make it easy? How do we make retirement planning, easy? How do we help you make the right decisions in the core areas that you have to make so that, you know, I want it to be simple. I want it on one page. Can we put on one page, you know, can we capture on one page, the three core areas that you need to get, right? So that you can retire comfortably, someday, right? Or if you’re already retired, you know, what three areas do you have to get, right? To make sure that you stay retired, right? When you retire, you don’t want to have to go back to work. How do you make sure you stay retired? And that’s what our prosperity planning, blueprint is all about. And this is something that we do for you. It’s a free service we provide. It’s personalized to you. The benefit to you. This will help you know, that you’re making the right choices with your planning. And it’s easy, Zach, easy number to call. What do they do?
Zach:
(512) 886-5850. Again, that number is (512) 886-5850. Give us a call, reach our answering service. It’s after hours, you’ll set up a quick 15 minute discussion with our team, and we’ll help you get this personalized, prosperity planning, blueprint. Now stick around. We’ll be right back. Continuing our discussion on the importance of saving for retirement. We’ll be right back.
Zach:
How do you know how much you should be saving for retirement? How do we find my number? How do we figure this out?`
Mike:
Ah, see, now that is a great question. I don’t think we talk about this enough, right? How much should you be saving for retirement? Right. By the way, tonight, I also feel like I’m full of well, they call it as my father would say, I hope I don’t get beeped out here. Piss and vinegar.
Zach:
Oh my gosh. Let’s just say energy.
Mike:
I’m full of something tonight. Oh, I got that’s a really good question. Like how much should we be saving for retirement? And you know, I will tell you this. I remember way back when I started out, I’m a certified financial planners. We all know. And, and back when I started, the, the rule of thumb was you should save 10% of your money in your 401k or IRA, but, or 10% of your income. You’re making a hundred grand a year, save 10,000 of it. Right. But 10%, that was the golden rule, right. There were books written about it. And you know, back when I started, this was in the nineties and we were at that point conservatively assuming, conservatively that you would average 10% a year, by the way, do you know what the stock market has earned on average from 2000 through 2020, that 21 year period
Zach:
Over 20%, right?
Mike:
Per year?
Zach:
Yeah.
Mike:
Try seven,
Zach:
Seven. Wow.
Mike:
7% a year for a 20 year period. I thought I was supposed to earn 10% a year. Right? Well, here’s how it works. Sometimes the market has periods where it does earn 10% a year or more, and sometimes it doesn’t and it turns out we don’t get to control that. So how does that affect how much you should be saving? Right. So here’s what I would tell you first, as they say, start early and often, right? As soon as you start working, when you’re in your twenties, start saving money. Now, if you could save 10% a year, when you’re in your twenties, odds are good. That you’re going to be in really good position, assuming, you know, and by the way, at that stage in your life, just invest in the stock market. You’ll have good years.
Mike:
You’ll have bad years who freaking cares. Who cares? If you have bad years, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need the money yet. You’re not going to need the money for several years. Invest for the long run. Let yourself go through ups and downs. You’ll be fine. It’d be great. Right. But what if you’re older? What if you start later in life like thirties or even forties, well, guess what? You might need to save more like 15%.
Zach:
Gotta bump that number up a little bit.
Mike:
Gotta bump it up. Right. And you know what the big problem is these days. Maybe we’ll talk about this in the next segment. I don’t know. Big problem. These days is a lot of people used to be like, when my parents retired, you know, they were always told, save 10%. But they also, when they retired, had a pension, so when they retired, they had social security, they had a pension and then like their retirement savings or 401k and stuff, it’s kinda like extra money.
Mike:
Well, what about people retiring today? Not so much the case. They don’t really have pensions. They have social security and their 401k company said, you know, instead of putting money into a pension, we’re just going to give you a match in your 401k that we liked that better. And if you’re a company yeah. That’s way better. You take the responsibility off your shoulders of delivering lifetime income. So a lot of people retiring to, it’s like, okay, I’ve got social security and that’s it that plus my, and we learned that’s not necessarily a big number for a lot of people. Right? the average social security, I think I see is around maybe 2,500 a month, 30,000 a year. Sure. And, and, but for a couple, maybe it’s more like between both of them, maybe it’s 40, 45,000 a year, kind of hard to live a great life.
Mike:
These days on 40, 45,000 a year. Where’s the rest of the money coming from? It’s come from your retirement savings and what are interest rates right now, are they high or are they low.
Zach:
Low.
Mike:
They’re very low. Here’s what Morningstar is telling us. Morningstar says, if you’ve got a million dollars saved for retirement, Zach, do you know how much money Morningstar says you should take out for income each year? You had a million dollars. How much should you pull out for income each year? And they say, don’t pull out more than this number. Or you’re probably going to run out of money. What do you think? The number is?
Zach:
3%.
Mike:
Very close. $28,000.
Zach:
Wow.
Mike:
3% would be $30,000.
Zach:
Almost there.
Mike:
But think about it. You got social security. That’s like if you’re married 40/45,000. You got a million dollars saved for retirement. You can pull out basically 30k. You’re at 75,000 for retirement.
Mike:
Is that good enough? What if you want to, what if you want to retire in a hundred grand, maybe you need 2 million or more income. So the reality is, this is a big job. That’s reality. The good news is the sooner you start, you’ve got time on your side for compounding. Compounding, Albert Einstein described the eighth wonder of the world, right? But the deal is, how much should you be saving? Well, here’s what it comes down to. This is what it comes down to. I’m going to give you a simple rule of thumb for how much you need to have in your accounts for work, to be optional for you. So I know morning star says you can only take out 3%. Well, Morningstar’s also assuming that you’re working with an advisor who doesn’t know what they’re doing with retirement income planning, or they’re assuming that you’re doing it yourself.
Mike:
So let’s say they can only get 4% income. So let’s be a little conservative here. Okay. What you do is you just simply say, all right, what’s your income goal in retirement. And I’m just going to make it a round number. Say, you want a hundred thousand a year. You say, okay, I want a hundred grand a year in retirement, which is great for a lot of people like, oh, that’d be sweet. Some people it’s like, how do I live on that? And other people will be like, holy cow. I wouldn’t know how to spend all that money. Right. But let’s use that number. It’s a round number you want might want more. You might want less, but it’s a hundred grand. And then you say, all right, what are we, what are sources of income? What, what do we have covered for most people?
Mike:
Social security for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that it’s 40,000 social security. Okay. Right. That would mean, oh wow. I’m short $60,000. I’ve got a gap to make up. What do I need? I need $60,000. You know what? And I’m doing this in my head, on the fly. I’m going to make it easier on myself for, for math. Let’s assume that social security is 50,000. Between husband and wife. So you got to cover $50,000. It’s easier in my brain. General. So here’s a question. If you can get 4% income, how big of a pot of money do you need to generate $50,000? Do you know what the answer is?
Zach:
Quite a bit,
Mike:
1.25 million. That’s the number. How’s that if you want $60,000, it’s one and a half million. Right? So here’s the thing. If you’re sitting there saying, okay, I want a hundred grand in retirement and I’ve got 50,000 of joint, social security income probably need somewhere between 1.2 to $1.5 million to, to be in good shape.
Mike:
Yeah. That’s how, you know, if you’ve got that much money, then now work is optional. Right? Ah, but then here’s the challenge you’re saying, but Mike, I only have 500,000 saved. You’re telling me I got to double that by. But like I got to more than double, like how much do I have to save to make this happen? How long do, how long is it going to be? Well, general thumb. Your, have you ever heard the rule of 72, Zach? That says you take whatever earnings rate you have divided into 72. That’s how long it takes for money to double. So you say, okay, I got 500 saved and I’m adding to it every year. Well, how long before I get to $1.3 million? Well, if you earn 7% a year, it takes 10 years to double. So your 500 goes to a million. So in 10 years at 7% you got a million. You figure you’re adding along the way, right? Let’s say you’re 52 years old. You’re adding the full 26,000 a year. That’s over 10 years, 260,000. Yeah. Some growth on that. You’re there, but it’s just math. Right? You just gotta do the math, but here’s the problem for a lot of people, you know what I’ve learned? I was, I did this talk and I asked, show hands. How many of you love math? Raise your hand. How many people raised their hand?
Zach:
They’re like, ‘I don’t think so’.
Mike:
About 10% of the room. People don’t like math.
Zach:
No.
Mike:
So we thought to ourselves, you know what? We’re talking about, how much money you need to save. So you can enjoy a prosperous financial life. People don’t like to do math, but you got to do math. So how do we make it simple? Right? That’s where our blueprint comes into play. Here’s the deal. Let’s say you’re sitting there. You’re like Mike, I, this is a great discussion. I need to know how much I need to say for retirement. Help me out. Make it easy on me to figure this out. All you gotta do is call us. If you call us, we’ll put together a prosperity planning, blueprint. It’s a one page piece of paper that tells you, here’s what you need to do with your investments. Here’s how you need to handle your taxes. Here’s how you need to handle this savings thing that we’re talking about. One page super simple gives you answers that are personalized, customized, just for you. How much should you be saving for your retirement? Well, to find out, give us a call.
Zach:
Is that number, Mike? That number’s easy. It’s (512) 886-5850. Again, that number is (512) 886-5850. If you want to get your personalized, prosperity planning, blueprint, you give us a call. It’s after hours to reach our answering service, you to set up a quick 15 minute call with our team and we’ll walk you through the process to get yours. It’s super simple and easy.
Mike:
Yeah. And here’s the best part. Like if you call, they set up a time for you to talk to somebody. A lot of the times you’re talking to my man, Zach, right here, you get to talk to Zach and Zach will be like, ah, and you can add, you can say poor Zach, when you talk to him and say, Zach, how do you deal with Mike? He’s all over the board. And you know, it’ll be great. Right? All right, listen, don’t go. Anywhere. Last segments coming up, we will be right back. We’re going to wrap the show up. It’s going to be glorious. Talk to you in a minute.
Zach:
Beginning of the show, we talked a lot about saving for retirement people. Aren’t doing enough of it and healthcare costs they’re going up. So how are people going to find the funds and the assets in retirement to pay for these costs? And also we talk about this a lot. There’s a lot of spending going on in DC. So who’s going to be paying those bills when the time comes.
Mike:
So here we go. So let’s, let’s kind of recap this. So first let me see this thing, Zach, you got, you got my man, Zach, he’s always so prepared, right? I’m just sitting here. He’s all prepared for these shows. And then I just get up here and just go off on tangents and you know, yelling and, and saying what I have problems. I think people in DC to.
Zach:
Get back on track.
New Speaker:
So first article came from New York times. This was like August 9th, 2021. Yeah. Personally, I don’t, if it, if they’re talking about political items, I think the New York times is a very non legitimate source. They have a, they, they, they are not very objective. Right. And I’m being very nice about that. But this is not a political article. This is something about the title of the article is getting old is a crisis that more and more Americans cannot afford.
Mike:
And in this article they actually quote a fidelity, right, Zach? A fidelity study that says something like half of Americans haven’t saved, don’t have any savings at all, not a dime, which by the way, you know, I’m going to go off on that because I’m like, have a little, let’s have a little, Hey, we’re Americans, let’s have a little personal responsibility and actually like take care of ourselves. Right? So half of Americans have no savings, shame on you for the half of you that do that are saving money. Let me say congratulations. Let me pat you on the back and let me say great job to you for doing the right thing. If you’re not saving money though, come on. There’s no excuse for that. I mean, I shouldn’t say that almost always, no excuse. Right? Like I come across people that aren’t making hardly any money and they save, I mean, they find a way, it’s called living within your means. You know, it’s like, it’s like, I read somewhere that our, I heard on the radio that D one of these big rap guys you know, one of the billionaires out there, like give me some names.
Zach:
Drake.
Mike:
Yeah. Like it wasn’t him, but like one of those guys, yeah. He has, you know, as you he’s like a basketball player, he’s got like 14 kids by 13 different baby mamas or something. Right. Anyway. And I’m probably getting this whole story wrong.
Zach:
You’re point?
Mike:
But anyway, this one of his kids is like 38 years old. She’s living in her car. She’s basically homeless. And dad’s a billionaire, but because they’re estranged, dad won’t give her money. And on the radio, they’re like, is that good? Is that bad? What is that? Right. But here’s the point talking about living within your means her car payments, like $2,000 a month. Right? So she can’t afford a house, but she’s got a car payment for $2,000. Who in the world who can’t afford a house decides, yeah, let’s have a car, let’s go get a car with a car payment of $2,000 a month.
Zach:
Not living within your means.
Mike:
How do you even qualify for that loan anyway? My point is, it doesn’t matter where you are in life. I mean, there’s a good example. Someone that’s obvious, they probably no savings.
Mike:
And they’re not living within their means, but whose fault is it? Right? It’s her fault. Yeah. So people aren’t saving money. And then healthcare in that same article, healthcare is going through the roof. Long-Term what was the number? They said, like, if you need long-term care, like the median price is what, $93,000 a year. And you know, what, what if you need like four or five years, you have Alzheimer’s, you’re talking half a million bucks gone to the nursing home and easy. We all know people that have blown through their life savings because they have to go to a nursing home. Right? Yeah. So, and those aren’t the only costs. There are other costs involved. So we got that issue going on. People aren’t saving enough money. Healthcare costs are going up. It just makes living a prosperous financial life that much harder. Right. Which is our goal.
Mike:
We want you to live the retirement you deserve, we want it to be great retirement. We want you to enjoy confidence and comfort and peace of mind and all that great stuff. But you got to make great decisions. So let’s imagine you’ve got that one figured out. You’re like, all right, that’s not my problem. I’m saving money. I’m doing a great job saving money. And I hope that’s you. And what we’ve learned, I’ve done this for 25, 26 years. Now, what I’ve learned over the years is this, whenever you’re facing retirement, if you’re getting the point where work is optional, you’re going to be facing one of two problems and maybe both. But problem. Number one, you have a legitimate concern that you’re going to run out of money, that you don’t have enough money saved. That’s the first problem. But let’s say, that’s not, you you’ve been saving like crazy.
Mike:
You’ve been doing a great job saving and you’re sitting there. You’re like, ah, it’s, you’re like the guy that called the office the other day that has $6 million saved in his 401k. Right. And he literally, because of pension, social security doesn’t need any of it. Doesn’t need a dime, right? Show your hand, raise your hand right now. If you want to be a, if you want that guy to adopt you
Zach:
Hands are raised.
Mike:
One of his children, right? No, but maybe you’ve done a great job. He’s obviously an outlier, but you’ve done a good job. Maybe you’ve saved a million and a half, $2 million. And you know, you know, like this is probably gonna last. I probably have enough money. I’m not going to run out of money. That’s not my problem. Well, then you’ve got problem number two. Problem number two is you now have a big bullseye painted on you.
Mike:
You are a target of the IRS and that’s just going to get worse. Because the other article we talked about came from CNBC and the title is ‘Democrat’- this is from CNBC, by the way, ‘Democrats $3.5 trillion budget plan’ That’s for one year spending people ‘would extend-‘ and then they go on and talk about what it does, right? Basically the Democrats right now in power are saying, we love the idea of tax and spend, we want to spend your money. And because you’re too stupid to know how to spend it yourself in their minds. I think we want to spend your money. We want to have that power. And we’re going to tax the heck out of you to do it right? By the way, in that article, I’m sure they talk about, they’re going to, they’re going to close the loop on crypto or something right now we’ll invest in crypto, have some tax benefits that they’re going to lose.
Mike:
Right? Anyway, the point is they want to tax and spend. They are spending my like crazy. And at some point, the Bill’s going to have to be paid. We all know this, right? We all know this. This is not like a surprise. We all know our government are like, when it comes to managing money, they’re not even passing first grade. Right? They’re about as stupid as you can get when it comes to balancing a budget. Yeah. They’re I mean, and I’m, and as much as I’m bashing on them, I’m being nice. Because I mean, honestly, every one, if, if they were trying to run a company, they would have lost their job so long ago, they would’ve been booted out so long ago because you can’t. I mean, they just have zero sense, zero sense of economic, like the basic stuff, right? I mean, in your own household, if you run up a credit card, what do you gotta do?
Mike:
You gotta pay it. And you know that apparently that’s not basic understanding in Washington. If you become a Congressman or Senator, you don’t know that it’s something you don’t know how to do anyway, because of that, taxes are going up. They’re going to go up. They’re talking about raising taxes now. And if you are a saver and you have money in a 401k, 403b, you’re a target, you’ve got to be making really smart choices now to protect your money, to protect yourself, protect your life savings, protect your financial security from the weasels in Washington, DC that can’t do crap when it comes to managing money. That’s what you gotta do. You can’t, you can’t just bury your head in the sand. You got to do something. You need to have a regular meeting annually with your advisors, working on your tax planning.
Mike:
And guess what? I know you probably don’t have that meaning. Cause advisors that’s too much work. They don’t want to mess with that. So here’s the deal we got to wrap this show up. This is what I want you to do retirement planning, enjoying a prosperous financial life. You have to make a lot of really smart decisions. You mess up in one area. It could completely collapse everything else. This is not simple. It’s not easy. It’s complicated. But what we’ve done is we’ve said, you know what? Let’s make it easy. Let’s provide an easy way for you and easy path to help you drill down and make sure you’re making the right core decisions so that you can truly live that prosperous life so that you’re protecting your money from market risk. You’re protecting that money from tax risk. You know, you’re just making sure that your money will last and that you can just really enjoy a wonderful, comfortable peace of mind life.
Mike:
Without having to worry about what the world throws at you. You just gotta make smart choices in core areas and we’re making it easy for you. It’s called a prosperity planning, blueprint. It’s one page, one simple page, but it’s personalized for you. And it captures all the, the decisions that you absolutely have to make. And the best part it’s free to get. It’s simple. It’s easy. All you gotta do is give us a call schedule a quick 15 minute call with the team. They’ll help you get it. Why would you not do that? It’s so simple. Zach, let’s wrap the show up. Let’s give everyone listening the number and Hey, no excuses. I do pick up the phone. Let’s make this happen, man, just do this.
Zach:
Give us a call tonight (512) 886-5850. Again, that number is (512) 886-5850. If you want your own personal prosperity planning blueprint, give us a call tonight. Hey, that’s our show this week. We enjoyed having you here, listening with us. We’ll see you next time.
