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Transcript

00:00:00:02 – 00:00:16:19
Mike
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 age, 100, instead of your money growing and you know why you take income instead, you’re going to run out of money at age 84.

00:00:20:23 – 00:00:33:15
Jonathan
Welcome to retirement today. I’m your co-host, Jonathan Birkeland. And with me here is Mr. Michael Reese, Certified Financial Planning Professional for over 25 years, helping families get to and through retirement. How are you doing today, Mike?

00:00:33:27 – 00:00:37:26
Mike
Oh, I am doing fantastic. As always. We are in Austin, Texas.

00:00:37:29 – 00:00:39:08
Jonathan
Absolutely. Absolutely.

00:00:39:09 – 00:00:41:10
Mike
Just beautiful. Love living in Austin.

00:00:41:13 – 00:00:42:26
Jonathan
Oh, it’s so fantastic.

00:00:43:00 – 00:00:51:23
Mike
Yeah. So I know this week, Jonathan, we’re talking a little bit about what do you do when your advisor tells you you’re good?

00:00:51:27 – 00:00:53:21
Jonathan
Yeah, yeah. What does that mean?

00:00:53:21 – 00:00:57:00
Mike
Yeah, what does it exactly mean if you you’ve ever heard that before?

00:00:57:00 – 00:01:01:12
Jonathan
Absolutely. Yes. You’re good. Trust me. Just just go along with it, right?

00:01:01:12 – 00:01:26:24
Mike
Yeah. All as 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, you know, would 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.

00:01:27:15 – 00:01:44:09
Mike
And you go to your 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 say, oh, don’t worry about it. You’re good. Yeah, that’s right. You’re good.

00:01:44:09 – 00:01:45:06
Jonathan
You got it? Yeah.

00:01:45:06 – 00:01:52:29
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?

00:01:53:23 – 00:02:02:12
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.

00:02:02:12 – 00:02:26:25
Mike
You’re good. Yes. Don’t worry about it. You’re fine. That’s all good. Well, here’s the thing. If your advisor if you have an advisor where they’re telling you that, where 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, here’s what’s going on there.

00:02:27:16 – 00:02:58:29
Mike
You’re talking to what is someone who’s probably a really good person right there, a financial advisor there, a good person. But here’s the deal. They’re probably not a retirement planning specialist. They probably don’t special lives in the world of retirement planning because here’s what you need to know. Investing for retirement is about growth and accumulation. But when it comes to retiring, suddenly the investment game changes.

00:02:58:29 – 00:03:12:10
Mike
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.

00:03:12:10 – 00:03:13:08
Jonathan
That’s it. That’s it.

00:03:13:11 – 00:03:31:18
Mike
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.

00:03:31:18 – 00:03:45:18
Mike
I need income and a tax plan. Need this, I need that. 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.

00:03:45:18 – 00:03:46:16
Jonathan
They don’t know either. Right.

00:03:46:16 – 00:04:15:13
Mike
And 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.

00:04:15:21 – 00:04:31:17
Mike
I know you’re going to need 3000, about 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.

00:04:31:17 – 00:04:32:10
Jonathan
In the discussion.

00:04:32:12 – 00:04:48:01
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 him Fred and Wilma Flynn.

00:04:48:01 – 00:04:49:13
Jonathan
Oh, boy. Here we go. Here we go.

00:04:49:13 – 00:04:59:13
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. Well, just go with George and Mary Jo. No, Joe and Mary.

00:04:59:13 – 00:04:59:25
Jonathan
Joe and.

00:04:59:25 – 00:05:15:08
Mike
Mary. I can remember Joan. 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?

00:05:15:08 – 00:05:30:27
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 advisor 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. They said, How are we really going to do this?

00:05:30:27 – 00:05:45:29
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 adviser said, hey, don’t worry about it. We got it covered. We’re just going to take some money out of your four and get you’re fine, right?

00:05:46:24 – 00:06:07:09
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. Someone does it all the time, like, all right, so tell me a little bit about your situation. And we started going off and they shared with me their information and this is what we learn.

00:06:07:09 – 00:06:34:07
Mike
It seems like over and over again when we come across someone who has an adviser 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.

00:06:34:14 – 00:06:52:21
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. And 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.

00:06:53:20 – 00:07:12:12
Mike
And at age 100, they would have they would be giving their children about one and a half million dollars. Right. So it’s like, hey, that’s cool. Everything’s work 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.

00:07:12:12 – 00:07:35:03
Mike
You start with a million, yet with 1.5 not worth as much as it was, of course, when they retired. But at least the money last 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 the risk level we used, you know, realistic numbers.

00:07:35:03 – 00:07:48:25
Mike
Right. And we learned, 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?

00:07:50:03 – 00:07:51:06
Jonathan
Not a good place to be.

00:07:51:29 – 00:07:56:27
Mike
It turned out they weren’t fans of that. It said, well, that doesn’t look like we’re buying.

00:07:56:28 – 00:07:57:24
Jonathan
Fair enough. Right?

00:07:57:28 – 00:08:15:09
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, do I do I really have enough money to last?

00:08:15:18 – 00:08:31:16
Mike
And your advisor looks 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 find that the market doesn’t work, you’re not so fine. You know, what’s the biggest concern people have when it comes to their retirement?

00:08:31:27 – 00:08:33:18
Jonathan
Am I going to run out of money? Yeah.

00:08:33:18 – 00:08:34:05
Mike
Will my money.

00:08:34:05 – 00:08:35:16
Jonathan
Last? Last. Yes.

00:08:35:16 – 00:08:54:00
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?

00:08:54:02 – 00:08:55:05
Jonathan
That’s a scary place to be.

00:08:55:15 – 00:09:05:04
Mike
Although except my dad likes to joke about that. My dad says he goes, You know, Mike, I raised you and took care of you for 18 years. I figure, you know, turnabout is fair.

00:09:05:04 – 00:09:06:20
Jonathan
Play your turn now.

00:09:06:24 – 00:09:08:14
Mike
I’m really hoping he’s joking about that.

00:09:09:09 – 00:09:10:06
Jonathan
I think I.

00:09:10:06 – 00:09:34:29
Mike
Know, he says. 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 earned you be 100 years old yourself, 1.5 million left over.

00:09:35:09 – 00:09:57:09
Mike
So you lived, you know, almost 40 years in retirement. And your money, you took income, you protected principal and you grew a little bit. Right. It’s just like what my dad said when he retired 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.

00:09:57:09 – 00:10:06:16
Mike
That’s exactly what would happen. But here’s the problem. Do you think the stock market’s going to cooperate? That’s always going to make money over the next 30 years. Jonathan, what do you.

00:10:06:16 – 00:10:08:09
Jonathan
Think? No, sir, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

00:10:08:23 – 00:10:15:22
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?

00:10:15:22 – 00:10:18:19
Jonathan
You know, I think that might happen. And we’ve seen it a time or two.

00:10:18:19 – 00:10:20:29
Mike
I’m going to. Yeah, I can’t say it’s 100%.

00:10:21:01 – 00:10:25:05
Jonathan
It’s got to be like 98 points, like a ridiculously high.

00:10:25:06 – 00:10:46:20
Mike
It’s like 99.9 and and then and then 9%. 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 in age 100, instead of your money growing and you know why you take income instead, you’re going to run out of money at age 84.

00:10:47:20 – 00:10:49:27
Mike
Now, how do we feel about that? They did not like that.

00:10:50:08 – 00:10:50:24
Jonathan
Not at all.

00:10:50:24 – 00:11:16:27
Mike
You know who really didn’t like it, Mary? Because here’s the deal. We all know women live longer and Mary is 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. Right. Who does? So this roadmap, what it did is it showed them that, though, it’s like, look, here’s your situation and the road you’re on now.

00:11:17:25 – 00:11:32:07
Mike
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, right. Which is what they all do.

00:11:32:12 – 00:11:32:24
Jonathan
Yes.

00:11:32:29 – 00:11:56:01
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 we 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 10 to 15 years.

00:11:56:26 – 00:12:14:09
Mike
The rest of your money, we’re going to put in a growth bucket that’s designed just to grow during that 10 to 15 years. At the end of the 10 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?

00:12:14:09 – 00:12:35:21
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.

00:12:36:00 – 00:12:42:29
Mike
If the markets don’t cooperate, instead of running out of money at age 84, they ran out of money at age 97.

00:12:43:10 – 00:12:44:11
Jonathan
Wow. Big difference.

00:12:44:15 – 00:12:53:23
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.

00:12:54:15 – 00:12:55:18
Jonathan
Loved in way.

00:12:55:18 – 00:12:56:02
Mike
Better.

00:12:56:04 – 00:12:57:05
Jonathan
Way better.

00:12:57:12 – 00:13:29:13
Mike
Why didn’t our advisor show us? This was the big question. And the answer is really simple because their advisor 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.

00:13:29:13 – 00:13:49:10
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.

00:13:49:10 – 00:14:07:15
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 doctor’s 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.

00:14:07:27 – 00:14:08:17
Jonathan
Right?

00:14:08:17 – 00:14:27:10
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 red in the face. Oh, boy. Yeah. You know, it happens every time on the radio. I talk about taxes, I start talking about the elected representatives in Washington. Yes, yes.

00:14:27:12 – 00:14:29:01
Mike
And I start getting bleeped out. But yeah.

00:14:29:01 – 00:14:31:14
Jonathan
The beep button comes out. We have to kind of be ready.

00:14:31:14 – 00:14:50:13
Mike
For you got 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 Bennie, and Bennie is our tax monster. For those of you on the podcast, not the podcast, but the YouTube video, you can maybe see Bennie.

00:14:51:10 – 00:14:59:04
Mike
He’s a very ugly character, as is anyone who is I think anyone working with the IRS is an ugly character.

00:14:59:04 – 00:15:02:12
Jonathan
I can’t even begin to describe this thing I’m looking at. By the.

00:15:02:12 – 00:15:09:18
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 just trying to do your job. So I hope you understand.

00:15:09:18 – 00:15:10:07
Jonathan
No offense.

00:15:10:17 – 00:15:18:01
Mike
We’re really just having a little fun here. Yeah, I got to be careful there, right? Yes, I know people. The IRS. B hey, this is Mike.

00:15:18:07 – 00:15:19:26
Jonathan
Right at his name to that list.

00:15:20:25 – 00:15:47:19
Mike
He’s mean, 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. Poor Joan. Mary. So they had their retirement laid out. They wanted to have roughly 90,000 a year in retirement.

00:15:47:21 – 00:16:10:05
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.

00:16:10:20 – 00:16:32:04
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 you’re planning the is all about the road you’re on.

00:16:32:19 – 00:16:55:15
Mike
Right. Your retirement planning. The question is, what does the road I’m on look like? Where is 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.

00:16:55:15 – 00:16:57:08
Mike
So you know what I get? Like the blank stare.

00:16:57:08 – 00:16:59:03
Jonathan
Yeah, just deer in headlights. What do you mean?

00:16:59:04 – 00:17:18:10
Mike
No, 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 tax do you own? It was like $5,000, I think it was, or something like that. So you’ve got about 90,000 income. You can spend.

00:17:18:17 – 00:17:27:09
Mike
You’ve like maybe five K because the IRS, 95,000 of income five goes the IRS, 90,000 goes to you. Is that really a major problem?

00:17:27:16 – 00:17:29:09
Jonathan
No, not at all. Not painful.

00:17:29:12 – 00:17:53:25
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 few years into retirement now you’re a little bit older, you’ve had really need a little more income because of inflation.

00:17:54:02 – 00:18:15:18
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 forced for money, other IRAs that they never plan on pulling out. And it just got worse and worse and worse and worse.

00:18:16:12 – 00:18:39:20
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. And so how we feel about that now, like we don’t like that.

00:18:39:27 – 00:18:40:01
Jonathan
Yeah.

00:18:40:18 – 00:19:01:05
Mike
I said, okay, so what are your current advisers telling you to do about it? They said, Our current advisors never even brought it up. So this is something I’ll never probably as long as I live, I’ll never forget this one. So here we go. It’s the year, it’s 27, so we’re going to go back in time.

00:19:01:06 – 00:19:01:25
Jonathan
Back a little ways?

00:19:01:25 – 00:19:20:20
Mike
Yeah, go back a little ways. It was a 15 plus years now. Anyway, it’s 27 and it’s the fall of very nice couple comes to the office. So at the time I don’t know how they came. I don’t know if they referred to a serve. They came to one of my speaking events. I don’t remember. I just remember very nice couple.

00:19:20:28 – 00:19:43:07
Mike
We’ll call them down in Shirley. Right. Every time I say the name Shirley, I think it was an airplane. Shirley, you jest. 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.

00:19:43:07 – 00:20:06:27
Mike
They had saved $600,000, right? 600,000 is 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.

00:20:06:27 – 00:20:29:17
Mike
We’re fine. And I said, tell me, why does your advisor say that? Well, our advisor, he says he’s putting us in this diversified, balanced portfolio, and he says we should be able to just take 4% a year out, 600,000 at 4% in 24,000 years, 2000 a month, and we should be fine. I said, Well, you realize. I said, Well, here’s my question.

00:20:29:17 – 00:20:52:26
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. Exactly. The same thing. Diversified, balanced portfolio take 4%.

00:20:52:26 – 00:21:09:17
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?

00:21:09:17 – 00:21:11:15
Mike
I’m like, whoa, look how awesome your son.

00:21:11:15 – 00:21:12:16
Jonathan
You know, wrong, right?

00:21:12:16 – 00:21:39:08
Mike
I know I’ve got to be the favorite son, but then in 2000, we had the dot.com crash, 2001 911 happen, 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%. You’ve been taking for percent distributions for three years in a row.

00:21:39:08 – 00:22:04:16
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.

00:22:04:24 – 00:22:22:24
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.

00:22:22:24 – 00:22:27:16
Mike
What if they don’t? How are you going to be okay then? Well, he says we’re fine.

00:22:28:02 – 00:22:30:09
Jonathan
He says we’re fine. Magic words, they say.

00:22:30:09 – 00:22:49:04
Mike
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.

00:22:49:22 – 00:23:09:26
Mike
So I went to my 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.

00:23:09:26 – 00:23:32:12
Mike
If you do that the right way, it works right. And I can’t promise you it works because you in the financial industry, you can’t promise really anything. But I’ve seen it working. Good markets, some 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.

00:23:32:12 – 00:23:57:28
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 at the end of 2008, actually, I’m sorry, a year and a half. It’s now I think it was February of. Yeah, it was February of oh nine. I get a call from them, hey, this is done and surely remember us like yeah, I remember you guys, they’re really nice people.

00:23:57:28 – 00:24:17:04
Mike
I remember them said, they said, well, you know what we wonder, would it be okay if we came in and talk to you again? Like, Sure, come on in. And so they came in and here’s what happens, Don, kind of like you said. I said, I don’t know if you remember, but when we spoke about a year, year and a half ago, we had about 600,000 saved.

00:24:18:02 – 00:24:45:20
Mike
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. And we’re worried that we’re going to run out of money.

00:24:45:20 – 00:25:05:20
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 if you really need that 2000, it’s time to get a part time job. Because if you keep taking 24,000, you’re out of a $300,000 portfolio. It’s going to run out of money.

00:25:05:20 – 00:25:27:08
Mike
It’s just a matter of time, right? They’re like, Yeah, we know that. We were just hoping you had a magic wand or something, right? Which I did. And I don’t have a magic wand. Now, what’s interesting is they said, okay, well, we’ve learned our lesson. 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.

00:25:28:09 – 00:25:46:25
Mike
He went out and got a part time job. Right. And after about three or four years, we had enough on the growth side that they were actually able to get back to where they were pretty close to it. They were able to get there a couple thousand month. But you know what they always talked about every time I did a review and they’re like, Yeah, lesson learned, right?

00:25:47:06 – 00:26:07:10
Mike
You know, what works to get you to retirement is not necessarily what works to get you through retirement. And every time I wish I would’ve listened to you, 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.

00:26:08:03 – 00:26:26:12
Mike
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. Well, if you’re retired, if you just retired, right. If you’re nearing retirement, why wouldn’t you want a second opinion from someone that does this all day long? Yeah, it’s like the biggest no brainer in the world, right?

00:26:26:12 – 00:26:27:20
Mike
Jonathan, what’s the number?

00:26:27:28 – 00:26:34:24
Jonathan
512886 5850. That’s 5128865850.

00:26:35:09 – 00:26:52:22
Mike
And everybody is 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 roadmap for, you know what? They come in, they’re like, wow, that’s awesome. I’m so glad I got that information. Thank thank you so much for doing this.

00:26:52:22 – 00:27:11:03
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 at Centennial, man. They were really, really helpful.

00:27:11:19 – 00:27:27:04
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?

00:27:27:18 – 00:27:54:29
Mike
So here we go. Number again, five. One, 288 650, 850. Call it now. First ten callers. You get this roadmap for free. As long as you’ve saved at least a couple hundred thousand for retirement. Again, 512886 5850. Retirement is such an important time in life to get your financial ducks in a row right. This little mistakes lead to major consequences.

00:27:55:17 – 00:28:07:16
Mike
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?

00:28:07:24 – 00:28:09:05
Jonathan
This is a great one, Mike. Enjoyed it.

00:28:09:10 – 00:28:27:04
Mike
Okay, fantastic. I hope you have a great week. We’ll see you or talk to you again next week.