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Transcript
00:00:00:01 – 00:00:25:05
Mike
We had about 600,000 saved. We wanted $2,000 a month. Right. And you told us what you would do. Well, and we didn’t do it. We stuck with our advisor. Right. And and you know, we appreciate that you weren’t, like, pushy, but we stuck with our advisor. Here’s the problem. Our 600,000 is now down to 300,000. And we still want 2000 a month.
00:00:26:11 – 00:00:28:06
Mike
And we’re worried that we’re going to run out of money.
00:00:30:12 – 00:00:42:07
Mike
Do you have any ideas for us? And I said, and honestly, I sat down. I said, Well, here’s the problem. The problem is you’re stuck. You need to if you really need that 2000, it’s time to get a part time job.
00:00:48:11 – 00:01:01:03
Jonathan
Welcome to Retirement Today. I’m your co-host, Jonathan Berglund. And with me here is Mr. Michael Reese, certified financial planning professional for over 25 years, helping families get two and three retirement. How are you doing today, Mike?
00:01:01:15 – 00:01:05:14
Mike
Oh, I am doing fantastic. As always. We are in Austin, Texas.
00:01:05:17 – 00:01:06:26
Jonathan
Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:01:06:27 – 00:01:08:25
Mike
Just beautiful love living in Austin.
00:01:09:15 – 00:01:10:14
Jonathan
It’s so fantastic.
00:01:10:18 – 00:01:19:11
Mike
Yeah. So I know this week, Jonathan, we’re talking a little bit about what do you do when your adviser tells you you’re good?
00:01:19:16 – 00:01:21:18
Jonathan
Yeah. Yeah. What does that mean? Yeah.
00:01:21:18 – 00:01:24:17
Mike
What is it exactly mean? Have you you’ve you ever heard that before?
00:01:24:18 – 00:01:29:00
Jonathan
Absolutely. Yes. You’re good. Trust me. Just. Just go along with it, right?
00:01:29:01 – 00:01:54:12
Mike
Yeah. All is well. So here’s what happens. I’ve had this come up with a number of people that have come in recently, so I thought this be a great time to talk about it on the radio. So imagine this. Let’s imagine you are, you know, going to retire in the next few years. Or maybe imagine that you’ve recently retired because I had a couple of people come in who had been recently retired.
00:01:55:03 – 00:02:08:24
Mike
And you go to you have a financial advisor and you say, Hey, I just want to make sure I’ve got enough money. I want to make sure I’m on track. I want to make sure, you know, everything’s going to be okay. And they look you to say, Oh, don’t worry about it. You’re good.
00:02:09:26 – 00:02:10:19
Jonathan
Yeah, that’s right.
00:02:10:25 – 00:02:11:24
Mike
Yeah.
00:02:11:26 – 00:02:12:24
Jonathan
You got it. Yeah.
00:02:12:24 – 00:02:20:17
Mike
You done? You’re fine. You got plenty of money. You got nothing to worry about. You’re good. Jonathan, what does that mean?
00:02:21:11 – 00:02:29:27
Jonathan
That’s a great question. Right? It’s it’s different things to different people. It just. It just means trust me, believe in me, and don’t look the other way. Right? Right.
00:02:30:00 – 00:02:51:18
Mike
You’re good. Yes. Don’t worry about it. You’re fine. It’s all good. Well, here’s the thing. If your advisor if you have an advisor where they’re telling you that we’re. That’s how the conversation goes. Guess what? You’re probably not as good as you think. And you know what? I think you probably know that in the back of your mind.
00:02:52:12 – 00:03:19:23
Mike
Here’s what’s going on there. You’re talking to what is someone who’s probably a really good person, right? They’re a financial advisor. They’re a good person. But here’s the deal. They’re probably not a retirement planning specialist. They probably don’t specialize in the world of retirement planning, because here’s what you need to know. Investing for retirement is about growth and accumulation.
00:03:21:02 – 00:03:39:28
Mike
But when it comes to retiring, suddenly the investment game changes. It changes from growth and accumulation to wait a minute. I still want to grow and accumulate, but now I need to take income. I need to preserve that money because it’s that money. That’s all I got. Right? I don’t have anything else.
00:03:39:28 – 00:03:40:12
Jonathan
That’s it.
00:03:40:12 – 00:04:01:16
Mike
That’s it. It’s got to last got tax issues to suddenly worry about, like, what do I do about required distributions? What do I do? You know, am I going to get slammed in taxes? What about health care expenses? Right. Suddenly you go from just simple growth in accumulation to growth in accumulation, plus all this other stuff. I’ve got to preserve I need income tax plan, need this, I need that.
00:04:02:03 – 00:04:13:05
Mike
It’s a lot more complicated. If your advisor saying to you, don’t worry, you’ll be fine, but they don’t tell you how you’re going to be fine. Guess what? They probably don’t have a plan for all that stuff.
00:04:13:06 – 00:04:13:25
Jonathan
They don’t know either.
00:04:14:16 – 00:04:43:01
Mike
Here’s what they’re saying when they say you’re fine. Here’s what they’re looking at. This is what you need to understand and this is how you get into trouble. What they’re looking at is they look at your portfolio and they’re doing a quick calculation in their brains. The calculation is 4%. They’re saying, all right, you want I know you’re going to retire in two years and I know you’re going to need $35,000, $36,000 from your retirement savings.
00:04:43:09 – 00:04:59:13
Mike
I know you’re going to need 3000 a month or 36,000. Let’s see, how much money do you have? You got $1,000,000. Okay. 4% of $1,000,000 is $40,000. You only need 36. You could pull 40. Okay, we’re done. You’re good. You’re fine. That’s what they’re doing. And the.
00:04:59:13 – 00:04:59:28
Jonathan
Discussion.
00:05:00:00 – 00:05:15:20
Mike
We’re done here is the problem when they say you’re fine. And let me just share with you I think it’s best shared in a story, right. So, Jonathan, I mean, you know, we had this couple come in, we’ll call them. I want to call them Fred and Wilma Flynn.
00:05:15:22 – 00:05:17:01
Jonathan
Boy, here we go. Here we go.
00:05:17:01 – 00:05:27:00
Mike
I can’t do that, because if I call them Fred Wilma Flintstone, then I’m in trouble with some type of compliance and all that stuff. So we’ll just go with Georgia. Mary Jo. No, Joe and Mary.
00:05:27:01 – 00:05:27:21
Jonathan
Jo and Mary.
00:05:27:21 – 00:05:42:26
Mike
I can remember John. Mary. So Joan, Mary, very nice couple. Just like you. They’re listening to the radio show like you’re doing right now. And we’re talking about something that kind of triggered their minds. And they said, hey, we want to come in and talk to you. And I said, What? What motivated you to want to come in and visit?
00:05:42:26 – 00:05:58:14
Mike
Well, they said, and here’s what they said. They said, well, just like we’re talking about tonight, my advisor says or our adviser says, we’re fine. But when we press them and say, well, but what’s our plan? How are we going to really do this? Because they wanted to retire here in a few months and said, how are we really going to do this?
00:05:58:14 – 00:06:13:17
Mike
Where are we going to get income from? Right. What what account will we be pulling income from? And when should we be taking Social Security? And what are we going to about taxes? Their advisor said, Hey, don’t worry about it. We got it covered. We’re just going to take some money out of your fall and get your fine right.
00:06:14:11 – 00:06:34:27
Mike
They’re like, Well, I don’t know that that’s we feel comfortable with that. And so they said, We want to come visit with you because we want to get a second opinion from someone who lives and breathes retirement. Planning some of does it all the time, like. All right. So tell me a little bit about your situation. And we started going off and they share with me their information and this is what we learn.
00:06:34:27 – 00:07:01:25
Mike
It seems like over and over again when we come across someone who has an advisor that says, quote, You’re fine, unquote, as long as the stock market cooperates for the rest of their lives for the next 30 years, then, yes, congratulations you are fine. But what if the market decides, you know what, I’m not going to cooperate for a while.
00:07:02:02 – 00:07:20:09
Mike
What if the market just decides I’m going to have a bad year? Or two, or I’m going to have a bad five or six years, this couple. So here’s the deal. This couple, they had roughly $1,000,000 in, by the way. You might have more. You might have less. Than about $1,000,000. We learned that if the market cooperates, they could live to 100 with the income they wanted.
00:07:21:08 – 00:07:40:00
Mike
And at age 100 they would to have they would be given their children about one and a half million dollars. Right. So it’s like, hey, that’s cool. Everything’s working in the market. You’re taking your income, you’re living your life. And if you make it all the way to 100, you still have one and a half million dollars left over.
00:07:40:00 – 00:08:03:01
Mike
You start with ¥1,000,000 with 1.5. Not worth as much as it was, of course, when they retired, but at least the money lasts beautiful. And so again, market cooperates. You’re fine. But then we stress tested the income. We said, well, what if the market decides maybe we’re not going to cooperate? And given their risk level, we used, you know, realistic numbers right.
00:08:04:08 – 00:08:16:13
Mike
And we learn, oh, if the market doesn’t cooperate, congratulations. You run out of money at age. What was it like? 84? I think it was. Yep. Right. And I said, how do we feel about running out of money at age 84?
00:08:17:21 – 00:08:18:24
Jonathan
Not a good place to be.
00:08:19:17 – 00:08:24:16
Mike
It turned out they weren’t fans of that. It said, Well, that doesn’t look like we’re buying.
00:08:24:16 – 00:08:25:11
Jonathan
There enough, right?
00:08:25:17 – 00:08:42:27
Mike
It doesn’t look like we’re fine at all. And I said, Well, that’s the problem. Right? And by the way, as you’re listening when you talk, if you have an advisor, when you talk to your financial advisor about your retirement planning, so let’s say you’ve recently retired and you’re saying, hey, Dwight, do I really have enough money to last?
00:08:43:06 – 00:08:59:04
Mike
And your advisors, let’s see you says you’re fine, don’t worry about it. That might be a red flag because they might be like Joe and Mary saying, Hey, as long as the market works, you fine, but the market doesn’t work. You’re not so fine. Yeah. What’s the biggest concern people have when it comes to their retirement?
00:08:59:15 – 00:09:01:05
Jonathan
Am I going to run out of money? Yeah.
00:09:01:06 – 00:09:02:06
Mike
Well, my money last.
00:09:02:20 – 00:09:03:03
Jonathan
Yes.
00:09:03:04 – 00:09:21:18
Mike
And and the key is, what do we really want? What do you really want? You want to maintain lifestyle. You want to maintain your lifestyle. You want to maintain your independence. You do not want to be in a position someday where you’re like, Oh, I’m out of money. I got to rely on my kids. Right.
00:09:21:20 – 00:09:22:23
Jonathan
That’s a scary place to be.
00:09:23:02 – 00:09:32:22
Mike
Although except my dad likes to joke about that. My dad says he goes, You know, Mike, I. I raised you and took care of you for 18 years. I figure, you know, turnabout is fair.
00:09:32:22 – 00:09:34:09
Jonathan
Play your turn now.
00:09:34:13 – 00:09:36:02
Mike
I’m really hoping he’s joking about that.
00:09:36:28 – 00:09:38:11
Jonathan
I think I know he says.
00:09:38:25 – 00:10:01:08
Mike
Anyway, the point I’m getting to is we want to maintain lifestyle. Right. So here’s Joan. Mary. They got this million dollars they want 36,000 a year. So we put together a retiring well roadmap for them. In this roadmap, we learned, guess what? If the markets cooperate. Yeah, you’re fine. Your money will last. In fact, you end. You’d be 100 years old yourself.
00:10:01:08 – 00:10:24:27
Mike
1.5 million left over. So you lived, you know, almost 40 years in retirement and your money, you took income. You protect the principle and you grew it a little bit. Right. It’s just like what my dad said when he retired to me. He said, Hey, protect my principal, give me some income and grow it a little bit. Hey, for Joe and Mary, if the market cooperates, congratulations.
00:10:24:27 – 00:10:33:15
Mike
That’s exactly what would happen. But here’s the problem. Do you think the stock market’s going to cooperate? It’s always going to make money over the next 30 years. Jonathan.
00:10:33:25 – 00:10:35:27
Jonathan
What do you think? No, sir. I don’t think that’s going to happen.
00:10:36:11 – 00:10:43:10
Mike
Is there any like like what’s a probability do you think that the market’s going to have some bad years over the next 30 years?
00:10:43:10 – 00:10:46:07
Jonathan
You know, I think that might happen. And we’ve seen it a time or two.
00:10:46:08 – 00:10:48:17
Mike
I’m going to yeah. I can’t say it’s 100%.
00:10:48:20 – 00:10:52:22
Jonathan
It’s got to be like 98.6. Yeah, like a ridiculously high.
00:10:52:23 – 00:11:14:08
Mike
It’s like 99.9. And, and then and then 9% of the. Yeah, the markets don’t always go up. So anyway, if the markets would not if they chose not to cooperate with this couple, we learned that oh my gosh, instead of your money last year and age 100 instead of your money growing and you know, while you take income instead you’re going to run out of money at age 84.
00:11:15:08 – 00:11:31:19
Mike
Now how do we feel about that? They did not like that. Not at all. You know who really didn’t like it, Mary? Because here’s the deal. We all know women live longer and Mary’s like, hey, I think there’s a really good probability I’m still going to be alive at 84. I don’t want to be the widow out of money.
00:11:32:05 – 00:11:57:22
Mike
Right? Who does? So this roadmap, what it did is it showed them that though it’s like, look, here’s your situation on the road you’re on now. But then the next thing we did is we said, Hey, what if we tweak things a little bit? You have that million dollars. What if we did this? Because what their advisor was doing is they basically had them in a balanced portfolio.
00:11:57:26 – 00:11:59:25
Mike
Right? Which is what they all do.
00:11:59:29 – 00:12:00:13
Jonathan
Yes.
00:12:00:17 – 00:12:23:19
Mike
Balanced, diversified portfolio. Yeah. You know, which which by the way, studies tell us that that’s just a dumb way to enter retirement that you don’t want to do that. So I said, what if we utilized a strategy where we take some of your money, some of your retirement savings let’s put it into an income bucket that’s designed to pay out income for the next ten to 15 years.
00:12:24:14 – 00:12:41:27
Mike
The rest of your money, we’re going to put in a growth bucket that’s designed just to grow during that ten to 15 years. At the end of the ten to 15 year period when the income bucket is emptied out, the growth buckets grown big enough to replace it. We’ll just you know, play the game again, right? So we said, what if we did something like that?
00:12:41:27 – 00:13:03:09
Mike
Just this is not a major tweak. It’s a small tweak. Check it out. Here’s what we learned when they hit age 100. If the markets cooperated, instead of having one and a half million dollars, they had closer to two and a half million dollars. But the markets, as we said, don’t always cooperate. Right. But here’s the best part.
00:13:03:09 – 00:13:10:17
Mike
And if the markets don’t cooperate instead of running out of money at age 84, they ran out of money at age 97.
00:13:10:29 – 00:13:11:29
Jonathan
Wow. Big difference.
00:13:12:03 – 00:13:21:11
Mike
So here’s my question. I said, hey, Joe, Mary, how do we feel about these tweaks and how they affect your retirement planning? What do you think? They said.
00:13:22:03 – 00:13:22:22
Jonathan
Loved it.
00:13:22:23 – 00:13:23:20
Mike
Way better.
00:13:23:22 – 00:13:24:23
Jonathan
Way better.
00:13:25:00 – 00:13:55:29
Mike
Why didn’t our advisor show us? This was the big question. And the answer is really simple because they’re advisor they didn’t focus on retirement planning. Their advisor was a great person, a great a great guy. And he truly wanted to do what was right for Joe and Mary. He did everything he could do based on his training and based on what his company allowed him to do.
00:13:57:01 – 00:14:16:05
Mike
The problem was that he didn’t focus on the time of life. That is retirement. That is a different stage of life. It requires a different skill set that’s what we do, right? So when Joe and Mary came to us and we were able to show them these tweaks, they said, Wow, those are easy tweaks. It makes sense. It’s very logical.
00:14:16:28 – 00:14:35:03
Mike
Why didn’t our guy tell us? Well, because he doesn’t specialize in retirement planning. That’s why. Right. And it’s like anything else in life. If you have cancer, your regular doctors, probably not the doctor to go to, you need a specialist. Retirement is not like having cancer, by the way. That’s probably a bad example.
00:14:35:15 – 00:14:35:26
Jonathan
Right?
00:14:36:05 – 00:14:53:23
Mike
I probably should come up with something different there. But the point is, it’s different and you need a specialist. We haven’t gotten to taxes yet, which make me really right in the face. Oh, boy. Yeah. You know what happens every time on the radio? I talk about taxes. I start talking about the elected representatives in Washington.
00:14:54:07 – 00:14:55:00
Jonathan
Yes, yes.
00:14:55:00 – 00:14:56:18
Mike
And I start getting bleeped out. Yeah.
00:14:56:19 – 00:14:59:16
Jonathan
The beep button comes out. We have to kind of be ready for you got.
00:14:59:16 – 00:15:23:25
Mike
To keep an eye on my my language with those people. By the way, what’s funny is, as we’re here in the studio, I have a special guest in the studio. His name is Benny, and Benny is our tax monster. For those of you on the podcast, not the podcast, but the YouTube video, you can maybe see Benny. He’s a very ugly character, as is anyone who is.
00:15:24:09 – 00:15:26:22
Mike
I think anyone working with the IRS is an ugly character.
00:15:26:22 – 00:15:30:00
Jonathan
I can’t even begin to describe this thing. I’m looking at this, by the.
00:15:30:00 – 00:15:45:19
Mike
Way, for those of you that work at the IRS, I know you’re not an ugly character. I know you’re like everybody else is trying to do your job, so I hope you understand. No offense. We’re really just having a little fun here. Yeah, I got to be careful there, right? Like you say, I know people the IRS be hey, this Mike.
00:15:46:00 – 00:15:47:20
Jonathan
Guy had his name to that list, but.
00:15:48:14 – 00:16:15:08
Mike
He’s been mean to us. We should, like, add his name to a special audit list. Anyway, one of the things that you absolutely must be thinking about when you go into retirement is what your tax situation will be. Here we go with poor Joan Marie. So they had their retirement laid out. They wanted to have roughly 90,000 a year in retirement.
00:16:15:08 – 00:16:37:23
Mike
Right. That was kind of the income they wanted. They had Social Security, they had money from their retirement accounts. They had a little bit of real estate rental real estate. And one of the things that no one had ever done for them is no one had ever shown them what their taxes would look like during their retirement years.
00:16:38:09 – 00:16:59:23
Mike
They would no one showed them that, like their their current advisor never brought up taxes because it turns out he that’s not he didn’t do that. They did their own tax return on TurboTax. So they never thought about any of this. But what’s really important, in my opinion, is part of retirement planning, you know, is, well, they say your planning is all about the road you’re on.
00:17:00:07 – 00:17:24:26
Mike
Right. Your retirement plan. The question is, what does the Road Island look like? Where’s it taking me? What’s the destination I’m heading towards for Joe and Mary for them I asked him, I said, Has anyone ever shown you, you know, how taxes might affect you during your retirement? You know, you’ve been in some of these meetings, Jonathan. So you know what I get like the blank stare.
00:17:24:26 – 00:17:27:01
Jonathan
Yeah, just deer in headlights. What do you mean, no?
00:17:27:06 – 00:17:52:29
Mike
No. Yeah, no. What do you mean? And so what I did is I started showing them, look, the first year in retirement, right? So here it is. Your first year in retirement. How much in taxes? Oh, and it was like $5,000. I think it was, or something like that. So you’ve got about 90,000 income you can spend. You’d like maybe five K because the IRS 95,000 of income five goes the IRS 90,000 goes to you.
00:17:53:11 – 00:17:56:09
Mike
Is that really a major problem? No, not at all.
00:17:56:09 – 00:17:56:27
Jonathan
Not painful.
00:17:57:00 – 00:18:21:13
Mike
Not a big deal at all. I said how we feel about that. Like actually that’s pretty good. Mike. We thought it’d be worse than that. Yeah. Yeah. I said, but wait, as they said, a late night infomercial. But wait, there’s more, right? So then what happens? I say, Well, what about when you’re 70, right? You’re four years into retirement now you’re a little bit older, you badly need a little more income because of inflation.
00:18:21:21 – 00:18:43:06
Mike
Well, now their tax bill is up to closer to about 10,000. Still not horrible. But then we start getting into required distributions and how that affected their taxes. Before you know it, they’re projected to be over 20 grand a year in tax because they’re forceful money out of their IRAs that they never plan on pulling out. And it just got worse and worse and worse and worse.
00:18:44:00 – 00:19:07:08
Mike
And then what about for surviving spouse? It gets worse and worse and worse. And then I said, Hey, if you add up, I showed them if you add up all of the taxes over your expected lifetime, assuming the current tax code, do you know how much their total tax liability came up to? It was like $780,000. Oh, and so how we feel about that now, we don’t like that.
00:19:08:06 – 00:19:28:22
Mike
I said, Okay, so what are your current advisors telling you to do about it? They said, Our current advisors never even brought it up, so this is something they’ll never probably as long as I live, I’ll never forget this one. So here we go. It’s the year, it’s 2007. So we’re going to go back in time.
00:19:28:22 – 00:19:29:23
Jonathan
We’re back a little ways. Yeah, go.
00:19:29:23 – 00:19:48:08
Mike
Back a little ways. Was the 15 plus years now. Anyway, it’s 2007 and it’s the fall. A very nice couple comes to the office. So at the time, I don’t know how they came out. I don’t know if they referred to a survey. They came to one of my speaking events. I don’t remember. I just remember very nice couple.
00:19:48:16 – 00:20:10:25
Mike
We’ll call them down in Shirley, right? Every time I say the name Shirley, I think of that was an airplane. Shirley, you just. Yes, anyway, Don and Shirley, super nice couple. They had been working with an advisor for some time and but they were getting ready to retire and their deal was this. They’d worked really hard over the years.
00:20:10:25 – 00:20:34:15
Mike
They had saved $600,000, right. 600 thousands. What they saved, they only needed $2,000 a month income which is 24,000 a year. Now, at the time I said, you know, do you have an advisor? They said, yes, we do. Well what does your advisor tell you about this? Well they said we’re fine, don’t worry about the money. Kind of what we’re talking about tonight.
00:20:34:15 – 00:20:56:12
Mike
We’re fine. And I said Tell me, why does your advisor say that? Well, our advisor, he says he’s put us in this diversified, balanced portfolio and he says we should be able to just take 4% a year out 600,004%, 24,000 years, 2000 a month, and we should be fine. I said, well you realize. I said, well, here’s my question.
00:20:57:05 – 00:21:20:14
Mike
What are you going to do if the market decides not to cooperate? And they said, Well, what do you mean? I said, Well, here’s what I mean. Back in 1999, now we’re going back even further. When my very own parents retired, I thought that that was how you do retirement planning. The same thing. Diversified, balanced portfolio take 4%.
00:21:20:14 – 00:21:37:05
Mike
That’s what I was trained in the financial industry. And so that’s what I did with my parents in the first year. 1999. It went beautifully. Market was up, you know they took their income at the end of the year. They had more money in their savings. And we started with I was like, you know, the favored son, right?
00:21:37:05 – 00:21:39:01
Mike
I’m like, well, look how awesome your son.
00:21:39:01 – 00:21:40:03
Jonathan
Do no wrong, right?
00:21:40:04 – 00:22:06:26
Mike
I know I’ve got to be the favorite son. But then in 2000 we had the dot.com crash, 2001 Nine-Eleven happened and then 2002, we had a big recession. And over that three year period, the stock market was down about 45%. Now you figure, okay, the market part of your portfolio is down roughly 45 to 50%, even taken 4% distributions for three years in a row.
00:22:06:26 – 00:22:32:04
Mike
That’s 11% that you’re down. And guess what? My parents, along with millions of other American families, if they were retired with a balanced portfolio taking that 4% income, half their money was gone by the end of 2002, at which point there’s no turning back because now if you want to keep taking income, you’re now taking like eight or 10% of your portfolio for income.
00:22:32:11 – 00:22:50:11
Mike
Guess what? You’re going to run out of money. It’s not a question of are you going to run out of money? It’s a question of when will you run out of money? It’s not going to be very long. Going back to Don and Shirley, so what is your adviser say about, you know, all of that? So, yeah, you could take 4% if the markets cooperate.
00:22:50:12 – 00:22:55:04
Mike
What if they don’t? How are you going to be okay then? Well, he says we’re fine.
00:22:55:20 – 00:22:57:23
Jonathan
He says we’re fine. Magic word they.
00:22:57:23 – 00:23:16:22
Mike
Said. But that’s why we’re here. They said they said we’re here to see you because we just want a second opinion, which is a smart move. By the way, if you’re getting close to retirement, that is a that is a unique period of your lifetime. You only want to retire once and you got to make sure you’re making the right decisions.
00:23:17:11 – 00:23:37:14
Mike
So I went to I said, okay, well, let me share with you how we do things. And for us, we like to take the portfolio. We take some of the money, put in an income bucket to generate income. Some of the money puts in a growth bucket so your money can grow. And we do it that way because we’ve learned that it doesn’t matter if the markets cooperate or not.
00:23:37:14 – 00:24:00:00
Mike
If you do that the right way, it works. Right? And I can’t promise you it works because, you know, in the financial industry, you can’t promise really anything. But I’ve seen it work in good markets bad. How about that? Well, here’s the thing. This couple they said, yeah, we see what you’re doing. It makes sense. We’re going to just go talk to our old advisor about maybe doing something like that.
00:24:00:00 – 00:24:21:03
Mike
And for whatever reason, they just stuck with their old advisor. They didn’t want to work with me. I’m like, Okay, a year goes by. Now it’s the end of 2008. Actually, I’m sorry, a year and a half it’s now up. I think it was February of. Yeah, it was February nine. I get a call from them, hey, this is down.
00:24:21:03 – 00:24:38:03
Mike
And Shirley, remember us? Like, Yeah, I remember you guys. They’re really nice people. I remember them. So they said, Well, you know what? We wonder, would it be okay if we came in and talk to you again? Make sure. Come on in. And so they came and they said, and here’s what happens, Don. Kind of like his head dies.
00:24:38:08 – 00:24:59:25
Mike
I don’t know if you remember, though, when we spoke about a year and a half ago, we had about 600,000 saved. We wanted $2,000 a month. Right. And you told us what you would do well, and we didn’t do it. We stuck with our advisor. Right. And and, you know, we appreciated that you weren’t, like, pushy, but we stuck with our advisor.
00:25:00:21 – 00:25:25:05
Mike
Here’s the problem. Our 600,000 is now down to 300,000, and we still want 2000 a month and we’re worried that we’re going to run out of money do you have any ideas for us? And I said, and honestly, I sat down, I said, Well, here’s the problem. The problem is you’re stuck. You need to if you really need that 2000, it’s time to get a part time job.
00:25:26:03 – 00:25:47:00
Mike
Because if you keep taking 24,000 year out of a $300,000 portfolio, it’s going to run out of money. It’s just a matter of time right now. They’re like, Yeah, we know that. We were just hoping you had a magic wand or something real, which I did I don’t have a magic wand. Now, what’s interesting is they said, Okay, well, we’ve learned our lesson.
00:25:47:00 – 00:26:06:09
Mike
We’re going to go ahead and move our money to you now, right? Give us what we can get for now, which is like a thousand a month or maybe 1200 at the time. He went out and got a part time job, right? And after about three or four years, we had enough on the gross side that they were actually able to get back to where they were pretty close to it.
00:26:06:17 – 00:26:22:23
Mike
They were able to get there a couple thousand a month. But you know what? They always talked about it every time I did remember review and the lesson learned, right? You know, what works to get you to retirement is not necessarily what works to get you to a retirement. And every time. I wish I would’ve listened to you.
00:26:22:23 – 00:26:45:24
Mike
I wish I would listen to you. Here’s the thing, folks. When you have an advisor says you’re fine, odds are you’re not or odds are you are if the market cooperates. But the markets, as you know, don’t always cooperate. Odds are you probably have enough money but you probably need to make some tweaks. Look, if you’re retired, if you just retired, right?
00:26:45:24 – 00:26:55:08
Mike
If you’re nearing retirement, why wouldn’t you want a second opinion from some of the does this all day long? Yeah, it’s like the biggest no brainer in the world, right? Jonathan, what’s the number?
00:26:55:16 – 00:27:02:11
Jonathan
512886 50. Eight 50. That’s 5128865850.
00:27:02:27 – 00:27:20:00
Mike
And everybody’s like, Mike, why would you offer this for free? You know, it’s really simple. I’m very selfish here. Here’s why I do it. Half of the people we do the road map for, you know what? They come in, they’re like, Wow, that’s awesome. I’m so glad I got that information. Think. Thank you so much for doing this.
00:27:20:10 – 00:27:38:20
Mike
And they go off. They take care of things themselves or their current advisor, and they go away happy. But you know what? Those very same people, whenever they come across a friend that needs help with retirement planning, with retirement planning, you know, they tell their friends, you should go see Mike. And those guys are Centennial, man. They were really, really helpful.
00:27:39:07 – 00:27:54:22
Mike
We get a lot of referrals from those people. So guess what? It ends up being a great win for us. The other half of people that come in, turns out we can help them in some way. And guess what? They become clients. That’s why we do it for free. It’s a win win. I’m a big believer. What goes around comes around, right?
00:27:55:05 – 00:28:19:14
Mike
So here we go. Number again. Five, one, two. Eight, eight, six 50, eight 50. Call it. Now, first ten callers, you get this map, road map for free. As long as you saved at least a couple hundred thousand for retirement. Again, 512886 50, eight 50. Retirement is such an important time in life to get your financial ducks in a row right.
00:28:19:14 – 00:28:35:04
Mike
There’s little mistakes lead to major consequences. Get that second opinion. Let’s make sure that you’re making those right financial choices. So that you get to truly enjoy that retirement you deserve. All right, folks. That’s our show this week. Jonathan, any last thoughts?
00:28:35:12 – 00:28:36:23
Jonathan
This was a great one. Mike enjoyed it.
00:28:36:29 – 00:28:41:01
Mike
Okay, fantastic. I hope you have a great week. We’ll see you or talk to you again next week.
