Retirement Planning - Redefined

Ep 37: Things That Don‘t Matter Till They Do

Ep 36: 5 Things About Decumulation

If you’re of the age that your mom and dad retired 20 or 30 years ago, the world was a much different place when they walked away from their paychecks. Let’s talk about how things are different now. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Welcome into the podcast. It's Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. Hanging out with me to talk about this being not our father's retirement now. That's our podcast topic this week, not your father's not our fathers, whatever you want to say, we're going to go into this conversation about how things are so much different even just 20 years ago when it comes to retirement. And some things to think about before we walk away from that paycheck. And there's a lot that's obviously changed and obviously we're seeing a lot of turmoil coming off of COVID and things of that nature. So there's a lot of good topical stuff in here for us to discuss, but let's jump in and say hi to the guys first, Nick, what's going on, buddy? How are you doing?   Nick: Pretty well, staying busy.   Speaker 1: Staying busy. Well, that's always good. John, how are you, my friend? Last time we talked you were having some troubles with the kids. Everybody not sleeping and things like that. Doing better?   John: Yeah, for the most part, actually, I don't know if I've mentioned it. We got them to share a room which has helped their sleeping habits a bit. So we've been sleeping through the night. So it's been a few years, my friend, of consistent nights of sleeping.   Speaker 1: There you go.   John: Starting to feel pretty good again.   Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that. Well, very good. So you never know what's going to make the trigger there. So I'm glad to hear that. Do you guys remember these commercials? I'm a little bit older than you, but I know a lot of our listeners might remember these as well, if you guys don't. But back, maybe late '70s, early '80s, Oldsmobile was trying to rebrand and make the Oldsmobile a little bit cooler. And so they had these commercials and it would always say things like, "It's not your father's Oldsmobile." You guys remember those at all?   Nick: I do actually.   Speaker 1: Yeah. And so they would try to rebrand it that way. So that's kind of the idea I had for today's conversation. It's not our father's retirement. My dad retired in '93. He passed away in '96. So he didn't have a very long retirement, but even just the principles and some of the things are completely different here 30 years later.   Speaker 1: So let's talk about a couple of these things and how the world's changed and how really planning has also changed and what you guys do and what folks need to consider when they get closer to retirement. First of all, the concept of retirement is not actually that old, a hundred years ago you didn't retire. You worked until you dropped. Right? So really retirement's only been around since, the idea of it really since the late '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, so on and so forth. And it was this thing where you got to 65, you retired, you were done. Maybe you sat on the front porch and did little, but nowadays more and more people work beyond 65. They want to, not just have to, they want to, and that's okay. Right? There's nothing wrong with that.   John: Yeah. I would definitely, we see that in our office here, Bob Perry's 76, 77, he's still working. We joke that his wife won't let him retire, but he really enjoys coming in and the environment here and just being with everyone, it gives him stuff to do and he provides a lot of insight for us as well. So it's great to have him around so I could see where in his situation or other people's, if they're somewhere they enjoy, what's the point of retiring if you enjoy it?   Speaker 1: Right. Exactly. And not only that, Nick, but a lot of times people, again, they just want to do some other things and maybe you don't need the full job income, like you used to have, the big career, but maybe you do need a little extra money to help with the plan or something, but it's just a way to kind of have some fun and maybe make a little extra scratch on the side.   Nick: Yeah. I think ultimately what happens is that almost one analogy to think about, you see things like football players, baseball players, et cetera. Here you have people that retire early, they maybe have a career 5 to 10, maybe 15 years. And obviously their situation is a little bit different from a perspective of the money that they're retiring with and the bandwidth they have to route the time between retirement and their life expectancy. However, there's probably a little bit more similarities than people realize where ultimately when you see interviews with people like that, the things that you hear them talk about are missing the structure, missing the comradery, coworkers slash teammates, those sorts of things.   Nick: So, there's actually a lot of similarities and it's almost keeping that sort of structure and help keep my mind sharp, keep people engaged. We definitely see patterns from the perspective of, there are some people that they do a great job of having hobbies and they know that when they retire, they've got a list of things that they want to do, whether it's travel, whether it's hobbies, whether it's a small sort of business. And then you have people that really struggle. And I was having this conversation actually with my parents this weekend. My dad is a retired fireman, but he's been working, he had his own small business for the last maybe 15 years. So he retired as a fireman really early.   Nick: My mom's a nurse. She works a couple days a week now, but she's looking to slow down. And my dad was talking about a friend of his, maybe like 10 years older, that still does some work because he can't just sit around, he's got to stay busy. And my dad was like, "Well, he needs hobbies." And I said, "No, you need some hobbies. You don't have any hobbies." And he looked at me like, "I had never really thought about that before." And we've had different conversations, but the point that I'm trying to make is a lot of times, we look at other people, we look at other situations and we perceive ourselves in a different way. And sometimes just taking that self inventory and asking ourselves these sorts of questions, it really is important because there's many more similarities that we realize. So...   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: So we've tasked my nieces who are younger to help, start coming up with some hobbies for my father, their grandfather, to keep him sharp and engaged. So...   Speaker 1: Well, I think we went through this cycle. Like I mentioned earlier, a hundred years ago you just worked until you dropped. And then we said, "Oh, we can do this thing called retirement." And then people started retiring and sitting around and doing nothing. And then you wither away that way too. So I think we've now started to learn over this past a hundred years that, okay, it's got to be a bit of both. You, you work really hard, you get to retirement, you hit retirement, but you still need to be active. You still need to do things and have things that interest you, if you want to just sit on the front porch and make wicker baskets, then that's great, do that, if that's what you want, but more and more people are-   John: Real quick, Nick loves making wicker baskets.   Speaker 1: Does he really? I got to get one now, I need a custom wicker basket.   Nick: No wicker baskets.   Speaker 1: Oh man, just crushed my dreams right there. But anyway, I think that's a really great point is having something to retire to. Now, the next point on this guys, is being retired, it can be more expensive nowadays than working. So, we used to see that 20% less is what you need in retirement. Well, that might not be the case now. And we've just been having conversations as well about inflation and stuff. So it can be quite expensive to retire if you're not careful.   Nick: It absolutely can. Especially depending on where you live from the perspective of the things that you may be looking to get into or do. I live in a downtown area in St. Pete and I absolutely see how, anybody that lives in this space, all you have to do is walk down the street to grab a coffee, to grab a lunch and depending upon your lifestyle, you've just got more time on your hands to do the things that you want to do. So, so why wouldn't it be more expensive if we're just doing these things more often, more frequently, so it can definitely be the case. And that's even from a discretionary standpoint, let alone the health care costs and all the things that people do to stay healthier, stay more engaged, live longer, all those sorts of things.   Nick: And ultimately, one of the things that we'll have conversations with people, sometimes people come in with an open mind thinking like, "Hey, this might be happening. I may spend more money." Other times we have people that they're absolutely convinced, " No I'm going to spend 50%, 60% of what I spent before." And that's sometimes the question to them is, "Why would you? Is that what you want to do? Or is this just something that you read?" Because I would guess ultimately you want to enjoy what you've saved up for and worked hard for. So, at what point in life or maybe even in the last 30 years, one of the questions, at one point in the last 30 years, have you lived only for needs and realistically here in the U.S That's for most people that's not too common, ultimately we live in the things that we bought. We enjoy the times that we want to spend with others, all those sorts of things. So, that's an important conversation to have.   Speaker 1: No, I definitely agree with you there. John, retirees are facing more problems than ever too. Well society, we're all facing more problems than ever before, social media, so on and so forth. Just the inundation of information, but longevity, I think maybe longevity guys might be a key to this whole conversation today because it magnifies all of these things. And that's certainly going to be the case when juggling more problems because we're living longer, so much longer, the body's able, we're figuring out lots of great ways to keep the body going, but sometimes we're having some difficulties when it comes to the mental side, dementia is on the rise, things of that nature. And that gets pretty costly.   John: Yeah. Yeah. Previously we talked about retirement changing, people had pensions which lasted for their life. And the shift has been away from pensions to putting the responsibility on the individual where now they have just basically savings, whether it's cash or investments or whatever, but now you need to be very cautious, we have to be very careful that that's going to last you 30 plus years. And that's why it's important to have the plan to make sure that your money is going to last throughout retirement, which is really the biggest concern for retirees. Some other things we've seen popping up more recently and we've just dealt with this with a client where their they're aging parents, they were providing financial assistance for their parents in assisted living facilities and things like that, or having helpers.   John: So I have one client where they're were assisting their parents with that. So they weren't really going on vacation and enjoying their time. And then the parent passed away and then with everything that's happened recently, their son lost a job and then they were not helping out their son with expenses. So it was a double whammy for them is that they can't truly enjoy retirement because they're helping family members out, which again, no one plans for this, you just happen in this situation, but it's something that you always want to keep track of.   Nick: Yeah. That's kind of that sandwich generation that they talk about a little bit and it really started coming to the forefront back during the recession, '08, '09, '10, where there was a lot of kids coming out of college, couldn't get jobs, parents aging, all these sorts of things. So I would say baby boomers definitely have their hands full with all the different things that they have to juggle. And so having peace of mind of having that plan in place and understanding how their money is going to work in retirement is more important than ever.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and like I said, longevity is probably the key to this whole conversation. So we have to sell fun. Right? We don't have pensions now. Well, not many do. Right? So I think something like 15% or less of the population has pensions. It's an interesting statistic, but we're talking 30, 40 years. I was just chatting with somebody yesterday, guys who they're 72 and their mom and dad both are still alive. They're in their 90s and they're also dealing with helping their 40 year old children. So there's a lot in this to unpack.   Nick: Yeah. Yeah. We see it all the time. We see it all the time and it can be pretty stressful. And a lot of times what we'll try to do and go through with people and this even ties into some other previous podcasts, that we'll have from the perspective of, "Hey, my kids are looking to buy a house. I want to give them money for a down payment." And we'll talk about things like, "All right, well, where does that money have to come from? How does it impact your overall plan?"   Nick: So we try to walk it through and we try, we joke where we try not to be the money police and tell people what they can and can't do, but we just help them understand the impact of their decisions and trying to make sure that they do it from a perspective of viewing their retirement first and making sure that they're okay because they also don't want to be a burden down the line for their kids. So it can be a really slippery slope and making sure that the decisions that are made along the way position them to be able to help, but it can be difficult, especially like you said, planning for that 30, 40 year retirement.   Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. And it's a situation where we're just going to continue to see more of it. So having a good strategy, having a good plan is going to be paramount to getting through all these hurdles and things that we've got going on. Because I imagine at the end of the day, nobody comes in and says, "Hey, I'd like to have less of a lifestyle than I have now in retirement." No one wants to go backwards. So you want to make sure that you are having those conversations to move yourself forward or at least maintain into retirement. So that's our topic this week. So we all know things are different than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But when you really start dissecting it, especially from a financial standpoint, there's just a lot to unpack.   Speaker 1: So sit down and have a conversation. If you're not already with a team that can help you like the team at PFG Private Wealth, John and Nick, and the whole team there to get on the counter, reach out to them. (813) 286-7776. If you've got some questions or concerns, reach out on the website if you'd like to as well pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the show. Retirement Planning Redefined on your smartphone there. If you've got an Apple phone, for example, Apple Podcasts is already on your phone. You can just open up that app and type in Retirement, Planning Redefined, and subscribe that way or Google or whatever platform you use. Most of that stuff's already pre-installed on your phones anyway, but you can find it all at pfgprivatewealth.com. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me this week. I appreciate it. John. I'm bummed that he's not going to make me a wicker basket.   John: I've been trying to get one, he won't do it.   Nick: I'm not the creative type.   Speaker 1: Not the creative type. All right, guys. Well, thanks for hanging out again. I appreciate it. I'll see you next time. John, take care, buddy.   John: Have a good one.   Speaker 1: We'll see you later. Nick, take care. Have yourself a good week.   Nick: All right. You too. Take care.   Speaker 1: We'll talk to you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth.

Ep 35: Not Your Father’s Retirement

Ep 34: Learning Through Uncommon Sense

Sometimes the easiest way to learn about something is make it really simple. Like some of the first true/false tests you might have taken in school, let’s play a round of fact or fiction to test your financial planning acuity. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Marc: Hey everybody. Welcome into this edition of the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with us here on retirement planning, redefined with John and Nick, financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth. Find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com. Fun podcast this week, we're going to have a little fun with some financial fact or fiction and test our financial planning acuity with the guys in just a minute, but let's say, hey and see what's going on. John, how are you my friend? John: I'm doing good. How are you? Marc: Doing pretty good hanging out and doing well hope you guys are doing the same down there. Nick, what's going on with you? Any new action on that attorney you guys were telling us about? Nick: No, we're still plugging away on the golf tournament. We're looking forward to doing that. This the first time that John and I have been involved in putting together a golf tournament. We're not big golfers, it's definitely an interesting process, but we're looking forward to... I think our two charities are going to be locally Pepin Academies and Southeastern Guide Dogs. We're looking forward to raising some money for charity. And then, we also actually recently sponsored a run through the Herald Center, which is a part of the USF Tampa campus and through the college of public health, that's done to support in studies, family violence, which is a huge issue really in any community. They have a run coming up and we're sponsoring that. Anybody that's involved locally with that, we'll see the name of the podcast and those sorts of things. We always stay involved in the community, enjoy doing those things. Marc: That's great. John: But we are definitely not running. Marc: You're not running. Are you going to golf? John: We're probably not golfing either. Nick: [crosstalk 00:01:47]. Marc: I imagine planning a tourney, a golf tournament, is a bit more challenging than you might expect. You first dive into it. You think, oh, this is... And then you're like, wow, this is a lot more work than I thought. John: There are a lot of moving parts, but we have a really strong team. We have some members that have planned golf tournaments before and they're heading up the logistics. Nick and I are very organized and detail oriented, we're making sure all the tasks are checked off and everyone's doing their work, but we're really excited about that one. Marc: Dotting the I's and crossing the T's. Nick: The local steakhouse that we're teaming up with is really well known. Having them involved, this is the first time that we had paired up with them. It's a pretty cool experience as well. Marc: Very cool. Well, I'll keep asking about it and we'll keep updating things as we get closer, but for now let's play a little financial fact or fiction. I know it's a little tougher sometimes in your guys' industry, because often I've heard that saying that the answer to most financial questions are, it depends, but we'll try to do as best we can here. Like when we were in school, we do true or false of simple ways to learn things. I've got some basic statements here guys, just have a little fun with it. Fact or fiction, give us the best answer you can, based on the way the question is worded and we'll go from there. Fact or fiction, whoever wants to take this first one, your social security can be taxable. John: I'm going to say fact, although sometimes it's not, but it's based off of your income in retirement. They called it, your modified adjusted gross income in this situation, where basically it's half of your social security, your adjusted gross income, plus any non taxable interest like municipal bonds. They add all that up and depending on where that falls will determine how much of your social security is taxable. Example if you're making married filing jointly over 44 000 of that [inaudible 00:03:46] income, up to 85% of your social security is going to be taxable. That's the maximum amount of your social security that's going to be taxable is up to 85%. Marc: Okay. It can be taxable. It doesn't mean it always will be, but it can be. John: Correct. I'll say more often than not, it is going to be taxable because the limits where it's not taxable, it's married filing jointly between zero and 32 000, 0% is taxable at that point. But you'll find the majority of people, they're above that when you're talking two incomes. Marc: Got you. Okay. All right. We'll go with fact on that one, it can be taxable. Quick and easy fact or fiction. Nick, how about you, you want to take this one? Your taxes will likely be lower in retirement. Nick: There is a decent chance that may be the case, the tricky part about that, and we usually have a better idea of that within the last couple of years of retirement, when we can measure your expenses and measure what is being deployed into savings and those sorts of things. I would say that a solid percentage of people do have lower taxes, at least initially in retirement. But one of the things that we've started to see is, especially those that have done a good job of maybe managing expenses, because the market has taken such a big jump over the last, five to 10 years, there's a lot of people that have found themselves with a lot more money in retirement accounts than they expected. And they're creeping into their RMD age, which is now 72, they're going to have income that's going to be coming in via their required minimum distribution that may be much higher than their spending that could really flatten out that difference. going back to what we've said in previous podcasts, there is a decent chance that your taxes will be lower in retirement. However, it's important for us to plan for scenarios that they aren't and give you options in retirement. Marc: Yeah. And to be fair with continuing taxes possibly going to be on the rise with all the spending we're doing, it's one of those statements where again, it's in the wording, likely to be lower. Okay. But there's a good chance of anything happening in that arena. You always want to make sure you're checking them as relates to your specific scenario and plan efficiently. Try to plan to be as efficient as possible so that you can be tax efficient, hopefully in the future, just in case they do go up, because they do raise up the tax brackets. All right. How about fact or fiction guys? Term life insurance is better than whole life insurance. John: I'm going to have to say it's a, it depends on this one. I can't go fact or fiction on this one because it depends on your situation. Term-life is great for covering an immediate need. Example, having two kids, I've enough life insurance, death benefit to cover my income for the next 20 years, if something were to happen to me. Whole life is nice to have basically a permanent policy. Going into retirement, I have something that's going to last, in essence, depending on the policy and disclosures, whatever and disclaimers it's going to last forever. This one is, it can't be fact or fiction, it really depends on the person's situation. Nick: One of the things I would just throw in there on this is that, life insurance can be a topic that people feel strongly about. Typically though, it breaks down to a cashflow issue where if you have the cashflow to be able to have the right type of permanent whole life insurance, oftentimes it can be a better plan and strategy than otherwise, but it's definitely an in-depth and a topic that's important to go through in detail. Marc: Well, we're having a little fun with these, but like any financial vehicle or product there's pros and cons to everything and what's going to be right for your scenario may be different for someone else. It's all about that complete holistic strategy, if you will. And that's why working with an advisor is a good idea to do so when it comes to your scenario. And of course, if you've got questions or you need some help or whatever the case might be as always check out John and Nick, and have a conversation with them if you need some help, or if you have something that sparks your interest a little bit, go to pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com, and you can drop them a line there while you're on the website. Lot of good tools, tips, and resources. Here's another one guys. Medicare will cover most of your medical needs in retirement, fact or fiction? John: I'll say fact that the right type of Medicare policy will cover most of your medical needs in retirement. Again, disclosure, everyone's situation is different and Medicare only covers certain things. But I'll say from your basic health needs, going to the doctor, prescriptions, if you have the right type of Medicare policy, it will cover quite a bit of that. As far as any disabilities, that's where Medicare does not really kick in for that. A lot of people get confused. Marc: Hospital stays, basic doctor visits, things like that. But it doesn't do dental. I can be interesting. My mom had, with her Medicare, she had some cataract stuff done and it covered portions of it. There's definitely some outliers there, which is why they've got the 47 million supplement programs that go in there. A lot of stuff to talk about for sure and it doesn't do anything with long-term care. John: Correct. It's important just to understand what it covers. Both Nick and I, we know a good amount about it, but we've both gone to some seminars and presentations and make sure we're up to date on the latest. But we typically, when it comes to that point in the planning, we refer this out to a couple of people that specialize in it because there's so many different policies of so many different nuances. And again, it's all about finding the right professional and what fits your needs. Fact, some of the time, fiction some of the time as well. Marc: Yeah, exactly. Well, I guess with these, it's really just a fun way to do it, but ideally when it comes to financial stuff, there's always a depends caveat, if you will. One more here, we'll have this last one, then we'll take an email question to wrap up this week. As you get older, you should gradually shift from stocks to bonds. That's been a thinking for a very long time fact or fiction, or maybe has that changed? Nick: I would say that it obviously depends upon where you're starting from. If you've been a typical investor that has been comfortable with market risk throughout your life and you are starting from a place of maybe having a 70/30 stock to bond or a 60/40 stock bond portfolio that shifting to decrease your risk does make some sense. We've seen plenty of people that haven't really taken enough risk from the perspective of market risk. Not taking enough market risk, can create things like longevity risk and your money lasting for you, those sorts of things. If you're going to make shifts, it's important to be shifting in the right way. Making sure that you're looking at stocks that are on the lower risk side of things is important. But I would say in general, the key is to tie your investments to your overall financial plan. But in general, it will make some sense for many people to reduce some of their stock holding risk as things go forward. With the caveat that when you're getting your access to the fixed side of things, the bond world, you need to do it much more carefully than maybe you had to 10 or 15 years ago. It's a much more convoluted space than it was. And so that's something where there are many people that under-appreciate the risk that you can have in the bond space. Marc: All right. Well, that's going to do it for fact or fiction, and we're going to wrap up this podcast with an email question again, if you'd like to submit your own, stop by the website at pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com. Greg's got a question for you. Greg says, "Guys, I'm being offered an early retirement package from the company I worked at. It also includes a severance package and pension buyout. It seems wise to consider this anything to think?" Anything that he should be thinking about, questions to maybe ask? Nick: Yeah. Good question, Greg. Nick and I are seeing quite a bit of this coming up where clients are near retirement, few years away, and all of a sudden it's, hey, I got the severance package and this pension buyout, what should I do? And the first thing we do is really to say, "Hey, let's run the numbers and the plan and see if you can retire with that severance package and what the pension buyout is." And we'll evaluate it and give our recommendations based on, again, the plan. I'll say it's definitely worth comparing your options in that situation. One thing you want to consider is the financial health of the pension itself. Is it fully funded or is it underfunded? Because we have seen some pensions that aren't fully funded and there's some financial risks of that pension. In that scenario, I would say you might want to go ahead and take the money. Nick: And then, reverting back to the plan, what are their current income needs versus liquidity? Just to give you an example of a plan we're doing, client had a couple of pensions and didn't really have much liquidity. When a situation like this came up, we evaluated it based on the income that it was spinning off and what a lump sum could do. But, we looked at it and said, "Hey, this, this could be a nice option to give you some of the liquidity, which you currently don't have", because he had two pensions and social security, but didn't have a lot of liquid assets he could draw on if needed. Another thing to consider is beneficiaries. We've seen a lot of clients where they say, "Something happens to me with this pension, basically the money goes away. I don't feel comfortable with that. I'd prefer the lump sum buyout. At least if something happens to me within the next 10 years or 15 years, someone's going to get something versus in the pension option that I'm given, they're not going to get anything." And again, there's different pension options and we review it all. And then, we've seen some scenarios where the pension guaranteed income was so excellent, we didn't even consider a lump sum withdrawal or any other type of contracts that provide guaranteed income because it was so strong. Marc: Some good questions to ponder there, Greg. Thanks for submitting that in. There's obviously a lot of information that you didn't share with us. If you'd like to have a more in-depth conversation about exactly what they're offering, you definitely reach out to John and Nick. You can call them at 813-286-7776, but that gives you four or five things there to think about. Again, 813-286-7776. You can give them a call and have a conversation with them. Of course, with the podcast, subscribe to the show folks, if you have done so already. That way you can catch up new episodes when they come out, you can also check out past episodes and all that good jazz. You can find it all at pfgprivatewealth.com. It's really the easiest way to get in touch with the guys, If you'd like. Marc: You can drop an email question, you can book some time with them. You can subscribe to the podcast, just a lot of good tools, tips, and resources there at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com and that's going to do it for us this week on the podcast. John, Nick, guys thanks for hanging out with me and good luck with the upcoming events. Nick: All right, thanks Marc. John: Thanks, have a good one. Marc: We appreciate it. We'll see you next time here on retirement planning, redefined with the guys from PFG Private Wealth, serving you here in the Tampa Bay area. We'll talk to you next time on the podcast folks.

Ep 33: Fact Or Fiction

Ep 32: Are You Flirtin' With Financial Disaster?

Ep 31: Where Crisis & Opportunity Meet

Ep 30: This Is Why You Never Assume

This is the final installment for our annuity mini-series. We will wrap things up by diving into fixed-indexed annuities. We get more into the finer details of some properties of annuities and also take a look at how these contracts are typically structured.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comDisclaimer:PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.Transcript of Today's Show:For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/----more----Speaker 1: Back here for another episode of the podcast. Thanks so much for listening to Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. They are financial advisors serving you here in the Tampa Bay area. 813 286-7776 is how you get ahold of them if you've got some questions or concerns about anything you hear on our show, or really any others when it comes to your retirement plans. Speaker 1: And this week on the podcast, we're going to continue on with our annuity session. This is part three, and we're going to talk a little bit about indexed crediting strategies as well as indexing methods. And that sounds fancy, so we'll let the guys break it down. But first, we'll say what's going on. John, how are you, my friend? John: I'm good. I'm good. I was, this morning, just getting some quotes on artificial grass. It was- Speaker 1: Oh, that sounds fun. John: ... very interesting to look at the different samples of them. Speaker 1: The different samples of artificial grass. All right. Who would've thought, right? John: Not me. Speaker 1: It's a strange thing you can do. That's for sure. Nick, how are you doing, buddy? Nick: Definitely not looking at artificial grass, but doing pretty well. Staying busy. Speaker 1: Good. At the time we're taping this podcast, your Bills won a playoff game, yeah. Nick: Yeah. Yeah. First time in quite a while. And they continue to take years off of my life, but at least it's a lot more enjoyable to watch now. Speaker 1: I totally forgot to ask you, because as a Bills fan, you finally get rid of Brady in your division, but he moved to the town you're in. Nick: Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I mean, I've been in Tampa Bay since '03. I moved down the July after they won the Super Bowl, so they were pretty popular. And then Florida is such a different town from a sports perspective, and Tampa Bay, specifically is obviously all I have experience with. But there's so many people from other areas that it's just different. Whereas, the Bills, in Western New York, are kind of like a way of life. It's been an interesting... The Bucs have a chance, we'll see, to be the first team to play a Super Bowl in their home stadium, which would be kind of interesting. And then if it ended up being against the Bills, that would be double interesting. Speaker 1: Yeah. Some of those ghosts could be haunting them, so they're probably hoping to not see him once again. But, anyway. Nick: Yes. Yes. Speaker 1: We'll get into financial topics and we'll talk sports another time, but I just wanted to ask you about that. So good stuff, indeed. So guys, what am I talking about or what are we talking about here today on this annuity session? What are some of the features and some of the things we need to be thinking about? Nick: Yeah, this will be the last in the series of the annuities that we talk about. And just like anything else, we view ourselves as informational and educational. And because annuities are such a topic that there's so much information out there about, there's plenty of positives and plenty of negatives, that we want to make sure that we go through these different things. Nick: And so this session is going to be focused on what are called fixed index annuities, which can be confusing, just like anything else. There are some more moving parts, but we have found over the years that for those people that are pretty conservative and risk averse in looking for opportunities to have some sort of upside from the market, but are not comfortable having much downside, that these are something that can make sense for them. So we're going to spend the session kind of going through and talking about them. John: To compare these to the last session we talked about, you can expect a higher interest rate than a fixed annuity, over a long-term period. And comparing it to the variable annuity, it doesn't have the same potential because you're tied to a specific index and there's some restrictions to it, which we'll go through. John: So this is really a good hybrid in between, if you're looking for, like Nick mentioned, you want some principal protection. But the negative to a fixed annuity is, hey, I'm locked into this rate, I can't really get much more. How can I get more? And then this fixed index would actually accomplish that because if the market does go up, there's potential to actually go up with the market to a point. John: Something to understand with these, again, important in all annuities, understand the fees that you're in. And while typically... Again, I hate using the word, but we have to. Older contracts, we haven't seen fees in these, but there are some newer ones where they are having some fees within the contract. And the way that they explain that is, hey, if we put this fee in here, well actually, there's more growth potential on your crediting methods. John: So just understand if you're looking at any of these, like anything, you want to look at the surrender period, you want to look at the surrender charge, you want to look at the fees. I mean, those are three important things to look at in any annuity contract, and especially with these. Nick: So in general, the term index annuity really comes from the structure of how they credit growth inside of these contracts. One of the most popular indexes that are used in these sorts of contracts is the S&P 500. And the way that the contracts essentially work is they will offer different indexes that they will provide crediting towards, and use that index as the barometer for how it works. Nick: So just to super simplify it, what'll happen is they'll say, okay, there are different rates and John's going to different sorts of structures and John's going to kind of get into that. But they'll say, okay, between the time that you open this contract and a year from that period of time, we're going to track the index. In this case, we can call it the S&P 500. We're going to track the performance of that index over time and then we're going to give you a percentage of the performance of that index. And that percentage can change for year to year, and they declare it on each anniversary. Nick: And so that's what provides you with the upside within that contract. However, and this is the reason that many people will use this sort of contract is, if the S&P 500, in this example, let's say it drops 10 or 15% between now and 12 months from now, you're not going to participate in that down portion, that downside, you're just not going to get credited anything. So essentially what ends up happening is that you're flat for the year. Nick: So when these things talk about not having the downside or protecting your principal, that's what they're referring to. So if the S&P 500 is up 10%, you'll get a percentage of that growth and John, we'll talk a little bit about how they may credit that. However, if it's down 10%, you're just going to not lose any money that year. It's going to be flat. Nick: So that's the general principle of how it works and which index is used, how much they credit, that's all the due diligence that happens when people choose which contract to go with, but in a very basic sense, that's how it works. John: Yeah. And to really explain it, I think, let's give an example of that. So if you're in a participation rate, and let's say you start with $100,000, and like Nick said, the most popular one is the S&P 500. And by participation rate, let's say it's 50%. So what that means is you're going to get 50% of the S&P 500 on the upside. So if you're in contract January 1, 2021, they'll look at the S&P 500 on January 1, 2022. If the S&P 500 has gone up let's say, 20%, your contract is going to credited 10%. Again, that's 50% of the 20% gain. So if you start out with 100,000, your account is now at 110, okay? John: A benefit to this is that actually your 110 now is your new floor. So when you get credited, that's actually your floor moving forward. So, example, let's say year two, you're still in a 50% participation in the S&P, S&P goes down negative 10. You're year two, basically what's going to happen now is the 110 is now your floor, you stay at 110. Now you move on to year three to see what the S&P 500 does. John: So that's one crediting method, participation rate. They also have a cap rate. So, that's kind of like a ceiling. So, you could have an S&P 500, again, index that you're monitoring or are kind of shadowing. And your cap is 6%. So what that means is, you're going to get up to 6% of the S&P 500 growth. So same example, 100,000, let's say you have a 6% cap. The S&P goes up 20%, in this scenario, you only get 6% because that's your ceiling, okay? So basically 6% your cap, that's all you're going to get that a hundred thousand now, after the one year, it's going to be at 106, because you got 6%. Year two, again, S&P drops, you stay at your 106. John: So, just important to understand the different crediting methods. There's one more called a spread. This is kind of like a fee, but it's only taken off if there's gain. So a spread could be like 1.5%. And again, let's use the S&P 500. If it goes up by 7%, they take 1.5% off of that gain. In the same idea. You get the credit for that year, it locks in your balance at that point in time, and that's kind of your new floor. John: So important just to understand you have participation rate, cap rate, and a spread. Those are the most popular, they're not the only ones. There's actually a lot more, but those are the three that we typically see. We don't have enough time today to really go through each one, but those are the most common. And I'd say kind of when we're using these strategies, those are typically the ones that we use, because they're just simple to understand. Nick: Yeah. And some of the other things to look out for, if let's say you already have an existing contract and because these insurance companies, they can change those rates that John walked you through from year to year, maybe one year your cap was 6%, but they drop it to 3% on the S&P 500, it may make sense to look at another index. So most contracts have a menu of indexes that you can choose from, from year to year, and they allow you to change your choice on an annual basis. Nick: So what we've seen is people may get complacent and they've had the same index for a couple of years and because they know that there's not really market risk per se, they just leave it. And they haven't realized that those rates have changed and what they've been in, their potential is much lower. And, usually what ends up happening is that they may lower some, but they may increase others or there may be other opportunities and other portions. Nick: So it's important to look at it on an annual basis, take a look and see what changes they've made to the contract and if it makes any sense to make a change. And some of the options aren't just a one-year option, they may offer a two year option. That could have much better rates and that could be an opportunity as well. Nick: So even though it's a vehicle, a tool that can be used, sometimes there's complacency that kicks in because there isn't perceived risk and just like anything else, doing your due diligence each year and adapting to what's happening within the contract can really, really pay off for people and they can try to maximize or take advantage of the opportunities that are within the contract. Speaker 1: It sounds like any financial product where sometimes people just want to set it and forget it. And that's not always the best strategy having. And that's where you can do with reviews and things of that nature, but just kind of checking on these things is certainly a good idea is what I'm hearing. Nick: 100%. 100%. And I will say too, that in our last session on variable annuities, we talked a little bit about some of the riders that are available that can provide people with guaranteed income. And many times there are those writers available on these fixed index annuity contracts as well. So they can be a tool that provides future guaranteed income, but maybe provides options with less fees than a variable contract or higher guarantees than a variable contract, which is something that can be used from a comparison perspective. John: Yeah. And to jump into what Nick was saying about the indexing methods changing, it's important when you're looking at some of these companies that you go with a quality carrier and look at their track record. Because the last thing you want to do, and we've seen this where, one company might be offering a very competitive cap rate, let's say 8% or something like that. And then once you're in the contract with them, they all of a sudden lower their cap rate to four. And it's like, Whoa, now I'm with this company for the next seven years, because that's my surrender period and they've just lowered their rates on me, you know? John: So that's where doing your due diligence on what company am I going with, what's their ratings, what's their track record? Are they a good company I want to be with for the next five, seven years? And that's where it's important, if you're working with an advisor that they're doing their due diligence, and you're doing your own to make sure that if you're going to be with this company that they're going to do right by you, if you're going to be with them for that period of time. John: It may sound like we harp on it quite a bit, but the pitfalls are important to understand. Make sure that the company that you're looking at is a reputable company and has strong financial ratings. Pay attention to the surrender charge period with these contracts, where people have that and tripped up is we've seen people locked into contracts that are 15 years long, 18 years long, which really can be pretty tricky. So making sure that you understand how that's structured. And then, like John said, getting some historical background on how often they change their indexing rates. And if they're really just kind of using teaser rates to get people locked in. John: So just like anything else, it can be a piece of the pie. And oftentimes where it's most appropriate would be for people that are pretty conservative investors looking for a little bit more potential, especially in this current environment where rates for CDs and money market accounts and that sort of thing are so low. Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, when we talk about these things, it's always important to remember and realize that like anything in life, you should always do your own due diligence, as well as when you're working with an advisor, or when you're looking for an advisor to work with. Make sure that you're going through the proper steps, do some of the homework, and then take the time to find out is this product right for you? Don't just jump into anything because it's something you hear on any particular show or a talking head or whatever the case is without seeing how it might relate to your specific situation. Speaker 1: And if you need help with that, whatever type of annuity it might be, or any other financial product, because annuities can be a bit polarizing, have those conversations reach out to John and Nick, they're here to help in the Tampa Bay area 813 286-7776. If you've gotten this email through a newsletter or a blast or something like that, or whatever the case might be, and you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, feel free to do so, certainly would be appreciated. If you'd like to get more content as they come out, you can simply go to pfgprivate wealth.com. You can find the podcast page there, pfgprivate wealth.com. Speaker 1: You can also find a lot of good tools, tips, and resources, and reach out to John and Nick. You can also subscribe through your favorite app or whatever that might be. Just search out retirement planning, redefined, and hit the subscribe button. A lot of times it's a heart or a thumbs up or something like that, search the type retirement planning redefined in the search box, or just call 813 286-7776. Speaker 1: John, Nick, thanks guys for your time in this series on annuities, a lot of good information. They do get a little complicated sometimes, so again, it's really important for people to understand and have a good working knowledge of this, especially if they're considering it. So I appreciate you guys sharing some of your knowledge. John: Cool. Thanks Marc, have a good one. Speaker 1: John, appreciate it, bud. Take care of yourself and we will talk next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG private wealth.

Ep 29: Annuities Breakdown, Part 3

This is the final installment for our annuity mini-series. We will wrap things up by diving into fixed-index annuities. We get more into the finer details of some properties of annuities and also take a look at how these contracts are typically structured. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Speaker 1: Back here for another episode of the podcast. Thanks so much for listening to Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. They are financial advisors serving you here in the Tampa Bay area. 813 286-7776 is how you get ahold of them if you've got some questions or concerns about anything you hear on our show, or really any others when it comes to your retirement plans.   Speaker 1: And this week on the podcast, we're going to continue on with our annuity session. This is part three, and we're going to talk a little bit about indexed crediting strategies as well as indexing methods. And that sounds fancy, so we'll let the guys break it down. But first, we'll say what's going on. John, how are you, my friend?   John: I'm good. I'm good. I was, this morning, just getting some quotes on artificial grass. It was-   Speaker 1: Oh, that sounds fun.   John: ... very interesting to look at the different samples of them.   Speaker 1: The different samples of artificial grass. All right. Who would've thought, right?   John: Not me.   Speaker 1: It's a strange thing you can do. That's for sure. Nick, how are you doing, buddy?   Nick: Definitely not looking at artificial grass, but doing pretty well. Staying busy.   Speaker 1: Good. At the time we're taping this podcast, your Bills won a playoff game, yeah.   Nick: Yeah. Yeah. First time in quite a while. And they continue to take years off of my life, but at least it's a lot more enjoyable to watch now.   Speaker 1: I totally forgot to ask you, because as a Bills fan, you finally get rid of Brady in your division, but he moved to the town you're in.   Nick: Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I mean, I've been in Tampa Bay since '03. I moved down the July after they won the Super Bowl, so they were pretty popular. And then Florida is such a different town from a sports perspective, and Tampa Bay, specifically is obviously all I have experience with. But there's so many people from other areas that it's just different. Whereas, the Bills, in Western New York, are kind of like a way of life. It's been an interesting... The Bucs have a chance, we'll see, to be the first team to play a Super Bowl in their home stadium, which would be kind of interesting. And then if it ended up being against the Bills, that would be double interesting.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Some of those ghosts could be haunting them, so they're probably hoping to not see him once again. But, anyway.   Nick: Yes. Yes.   Speaker 1: We'll get into financial topics and we'll talk sports another time, but I just wanted to ask you about that. So good stuff, indeed. So guys, what am I talking about or what are we talking about here today on this annuity session? What are some of the features and some of the things we need to be thinking about?   Nick: Yeah, this will be the last in the series of the annuities that we talk about. And just like anything else, we view ourselves as informational and educational. And because annuities are such a topic that there's so much information out there about, there's plenty of positives and plenty of negatives, that we want to make sure that we go through these different things.   Nick: And so this session is going to be focused on what are called fixed index annuities, which can be confusing, just like anything else. There are some more moving parts, but we have found over the years that for those people that are pretty conservative and risk averse in looking for opportunities to have some sort of upside from the market, but are not comfortable having much downside, that these are something that can make sense for them. So we're going to spend the session kind of going through and talking about them.   John: To compare these to the last session we talked about, you can expect a higher interest rate than a fixed annuity, over a long-term period. And comparing it to the variable annuity, it doesn't have the same potential because you're tied to a specific index and there's some restrictions to it, which we'll go through.   John: So this is really a good hybrid in between, if you're looking for, like Nick mentioned, you want some principal protection. But the negative to a fixed annuity is, hey, I'm locked into this rate, I can't really get much more. How can I get more? And then this fixed index would actually accomplish that because if the market does go up, there's potential to actually go up with the market to a point.   John: Something to understand with these, again, important in all annuities, understand the fees that you're in. And while typically... Again, I hate using the word, but we have to. Older contracts, we haven't seen fees in these, but there are some newer ones where they are having some fees within the contract. And the way that they explain that is, hey, if we put this fee in here, well actually, there's more growth potential on your crediting methods.   John: So just understand if you're looking at any of these, like anything, you want to look at the surrender period, you want to look at the surrender charge, you want to look at the fees. I mean, those are three important things to look at in any annuity contract, and especially with these.   Nick: So in general, the term index annuity really comes from the structure of how they credit growth inside of these contracts. One of the most popular indexes that are used in these sorts of contracts is the S&P 500. And the way that the contracts essentially work is they will offer different indexes that they will provide crediting towards, and use that index as the barometer for how it works.   Nick: So just to super simplify it, what'll happen is they'll say, okay, there are different rates and John's going to different sorts of structures and John's going to kind of get into that. But they'll say, okay, between the time that you open this contract and a year from that period of time, we're going to track the index. In this case, we can call it the S&P 500. We're going to track the performance of that index over time and then we're going to give you a percentage of the performance of that index. And that percentage can change for year to year, and they declare it on each anniversary.   Nick: And so that's what provides you with the upside within that contract. However, and this is the reason that many people will use this sort of contract is, if the S&P 500, in this example, let's say it drops 10 or 15% between now and 12 months from now, you're not going to participate in that down portion, that downside, you're just not going to get credited anything. So essentially what ends up happening is that you're flat for the year.   Nick: So when these things talk about not having the downside or protecting your principal, that's what they're referring to. So if the S&P 500 is up 10%, you'll get a percentage of that growth and John, we'll talk a little bit about how they may credit that. However, if it's down 10%, you're just going to not lose any money that year. It's going to be flat.   Nick: So that's the general principle of how it works and which index is used, how much they credit, that's all the due diligence that happens when people choose which contract to go with, but in a very basic sense, that's how it works.   John: Yeah. And to really explain it, I think, let's give an example of that. So if you're in a participation rate, and let's say you start with $100,000, and like Nick said, the most popular one is the S&P 500. And by participation rate, let's say it's 50%. So what that means is you're going to get 50% of the S&P 500 on the upside. So if you're in contract January 1, 2021, they'll look at the S&P 500 on January 1, 2022. If the S&P 500 has gone up let's say, 20%, your contract is going to credited 10%. Again, that's 50% of the 20% gain. So if you start out with 100,000, your account is now at 110, okay?   John: A benefit to this is that actually your 110 now is your new floor. So when you get credited, that's actually your floor moving forward. So, example, let's say year two, you're still in a 50% participation in the S&P, S&P goes down negative 10. You're year two, basically what's going to happen now is the 110 is now your floor, you stay at 110. Now you move on to year three to see what the S&P 500 does.   John: So that's one crediting method, participation rate. They also have a cap rate. So, that's kind of like a ceiling. So, you could have an S&P 500, again, index that you're monitoring or are kind of shadowing. And your cap is 6%. So what that means is, you're going to get up to 6% of the S&P 500 growth. So same example, 100,000, let's say you have a 6% cap. The S&P goes up 20%, in this scenario, you only get 6% because that's your ceiling, okay? So basically 6% your cap, that's all you're going to get that a hundred thousand now, after the one year, it's going to be at 106, because you got 6%. Year two, again, S&P drops, you stay at your 106.   John: So, just important to understand the different crediting methods. There's one more called a spread. This is kind of like a fee, but it's only taken off if there's gain. So a spread could be like 1.5%. And again, let's use the S&P 500. If it goes up by 7%, they take 1.5% off of that gain. In the same idea. You get the credit for that year, it locks in your balance at that point in time, and that's kind of your new floor.   John: So important just to understand you have participation rate, cap rate, and a spread. Those are the most popular, they're not the only ones. There's actually a lot more, but those are the three that we typically see. We don't have enough time today to really go through each one, but those are the most common. And I'd say kind of when we're using these strategies, those are typically the ones that we use, because they're just simple to understand.   Nick: Yeah. And some of the other things to look out for, if let's say you already have an existing contract and because these insurance companies, they can change those rates that John walked you through from year to year, maybe one year your cap was 6%, but they drop it to 3% on the S&P 500, it may make sense to look at another index. So most contracts have a menu of indexes that you can choose from, from year to year, and they allow you to change your choice on an annual basis.   Nick: So what we've seen is people may get complacent and they've had the same index for a couple of years and because they know that there's not really market risk per se, they just leave it. And they haven't realized that those rates have changed and what they've been in, their potential is much lower. And, usually what ends up happening is that they may lower some, but they may increase others or there may be other opportunities and other portions.   Nick: So it's important to look at it on an annual basis, take a look and see what changes they've made to the contract and if it makes any sense to make a change. And some of the options aren't just a one-year option, they may offer a two year option. That could have much better rates and that could be an opportunity as well.   Nick: So even though it's a vehicle, a tool that can be used, sometimes there's complacency that kicks in because there isn't perceived risk and just like anything else, doing your due diligence each year and adapting to what's happening within the contract can really, really pay off for people and they can try to maximize or take advantage of the opportunities that are within the contract.   Speaker 1: It sounds like any financial product where sometimes people just want to set it and forget it. And that's not always the best strategy having. And that's where you can do with reviews and things of that nature, but just kind of checking on these things is certainly a good idea is what I'm hearing.   Nick: 100%. 100%. And I will say too, that in our last session on variable annuities, we talked a little bit about some of the riders that are available that can provide people with guaranteed income. And many times there are those writers available on these fixed index annuity contracts as well. So they can be a tool that provides future guaranteed income, but maybe provides options with less fees than a variable contract or higher guarantees than a variable contract, which is something that can be used from a comparison perspective.   John: Yeah. And to jump into what Nick was saying about the indexing methods changing, it's important when you're looking at some of these companies that you go with a quality carrier and look at their track record. Because the last thing you want to do, and we've seen this where, one company might be offering a very competitive cap rate, let's say 8% or something like that. And then once you're in the contract with them, they all of a sudden lower their cap rate to four. And it's like, Whoa, now I'm with this company for the next seven years, because that's my surrender period and they've just lowered their rates on me, you know?   John: So that's where doing your due diligence on what company am I going with, what's their ratings, what's their track record? Are they a good company I want to be with for the next five, seven years? And that's where it's important, if you're working with an advisor that they're doing their due diligence, and you're doing your own to make sure that if you're going to be with this company that they're going to do right by you, if you're going to be with them for that period of time.   John: It may sound like we harp on it quite a bit, but the pitfalls are important to understand. Make sure that the company that you're looking at is a reputable company and has strong financial ratings. Pay attention to the surrender charge period with these contracts, where people have that and tripped up is we've seen people locked into contracts that are 15 years long, 18 years long, which really can be pretty tricky. So making sure that you understand how that's structured. And then, like John said, getting some historical background on how often they change their indexing rates. And if they're really just kind of using teaser rates to get people locked in.   John: So just like anything else, it can be a piece of the pie. And oftentimes where it's most appropriate would be for people that are pretty conservative investors looking for a little bit more potential, especially in this current environment where rates for CDs and money market accounts and that sort of thing are so low.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, when we talk about these things, it's always important to remember and realize that like anything in life, you should always do your own due diligence, as well as when you're working with an advisor, or when you're looking for an advisor to work with. Make sure that you're going through the proper steps, do some of the homework, and then take the time to find out is this product right for you? Don't just jump into anything because it's something you hear on any particular show or a talking head or whatever the case is without seeing how it might relate to your specific situation.   Speaker 1: And if you need help with that, whatever type of annuity it might be, or any other financial product, because annuities can be a bit polarizing, have those conversations reach out to John and Nick, they're here to help in the Tampa Bay area 813 286-7776. If you've gotten this email through a newsletter or a blast or something like that, or whatever the case might be, and you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, feel free to do so, certainly would be appreciated. If you'd like to get more content as they come out, you can simply go to pfgprivate wealth.com. You can find the podcast page there, pfgprivate wealth.com.   Speaker 1: You can also find a lot of good tools, tips, and resources, and reach out to John and Nick. You can also subscribe through your favorite app or whatever that might be. Just search out retirement planning, redefined, and hit the subscribe button. A lot of times it's a heart or a thumbs up or something like that, search the type retirement planning redefined in the search box, or just call 813 286-7776.   Speaker 1: John, Nick, thanks guys for your time in this series on annuities, a lot of good information. They do get a little complicated sometimes, so again, it's really important for people to understand and have a good working knowledge of this, especially if they're considering it. So I appreciate you guys sharing some of your knowledge.   John: Cool. Thanks Marc, have a good one.   Speaker 1: John, appreciate it, bud. Take care of yourself and we will talk next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG private wealth. 

Ep 29: Understanding Annuities - Fixed Index

Ep 28: Understanding Annuities - Variable and Fixed

Ep 27: Understanding Annuities - The Basics

Last episode we talked about the different items to take into account if you are thinking about doing a rollover. John and Nick will discuss how to actually process a rollover and some common mistakes to avoid.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comFor a transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/Transcript of Today's Show:----more----Marc: Thanks for tuning in to Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. We appreciate you tuning back into the podcast. We're following up with our prior session on rollovers, if it's right for you, having the conversation and this session is going to be a little bit more about how to kind of go through that. Some of the differences, some of the biggest mistakes sometimes that people might get themselves into when attempting to do this. So we're going to dive in and get started. We're just going to just hop right in. Marc: Nick, differences between rollovers and transfers. Let's just start there, kind of break it down a little bit for us. Nick: Yeah, I would say, the reality is, is that this space from the standpoint or the perspective of the process of taking your money from one place in a retirement account and putting it into another place in a retirement account, the jargon or the terminology gets intermingled quite a bit. And some of those terms that get intermingled are rollovers and transfers, and we'll talk about it a little bit more, but from the perspective of a direct rollover versus the 60 day rollover. Nick: Just to kind of back up a quick second, when we are discussing or having this conversation we kind of preface it from the standpoint of the money that we're talking about is money that is held in a retirement plan of either a former employer, so maybe it's 401(k) or 403(b), and you are looking to move that money elsewhere. Nick: Your options are typically you can take that money and you can do a direct rollover into either traditional individually held of IRA. Or if the funds are Roth funds, you can move it into a individually held Roth IRA. Or if you are employed with a new employer and you are eligible, you have to check with them, you may be able to move the money into the new plan at work and do it that way. Nick: When you are doing that, usually when you are executing kind of this process, it either has to be done via a form, or via a phone call. Some places require a form and we've seen a lot of people make mistakes on completing the form correctly, so oftentimes we'll help clients with it. And then if it's a phone call, the issue is that you're dealing with somebody and I will say the level of service probably over the last few years at companies has gotten better, but we still see a lot of mistakes. Nick: Oftentimes you are working with somebody that's working in a call center and although it is their job, mistakes happen. When you are kind of doing this process, understanding that the terminology of executing a rollover is when you are moving that money from that retirement account into an IRA or a new plan. A transfer is when you have an existing account that is an IRA or a Roth IRA, and you are moving it from one custodian to another custodian. Nick: I'll use an example just to try to make it a little bit more easily understandable. A direct rollover example is, okay, Mrs. Client, she just got done working at her company and their 401(k) was held at Fidelity. And now Mrs. Client would like to move the money from Fidelity into the IRA that she opened up at Vanguard. She's able to call up and get the process going of processing that roll over from Fidelity, the 401(k) to the IRA at Vanguard. A transfer is you already have an IRA or somebody already has an IRA. We can say at T. Rowe Price and they have a new IRA, they no longer like T. Rowe Price, they have a new IRA at Fidelity, and they want to move that money from T. Rowe Price to Fidelity. That is a custodian to custodian transfer. And the reason that we mentioned that is because there are some limitations on what are technically rollovers. Nick: John, can you give a little bit of an example of exactly what a 60 day roll over it? John: Yeah. There actually kind of two ways to do it where if it's coming from a plan. Let's say if it's coming to you directly. So John Teixeira gets a check from the plan, I have 60 days to put that into my IRA. Or if let's say I have money in my IRA, and for whatever reason, I might need the funds and I pull it out, I have 60 days to put it back into the plan, and that would be a kind of a 60 day rollover period. John: Important if you are processing it that way, definitely keep good records. You want to keep the records of when the money was distributed when you received it, and then when you deposit it, because if you ever were audited, you have to prove that the money went back in within 60 days or else everything is taxable. Nick: And the issue with that 60 day rollover and what kind of give an example of kind of one of the most common ways that we'll see it as a mistake is that you are only eligible to execute I believe it's one of those per calendar year. Is that correct, John? John: Yeah, that is correct. Nick: So if somebody is making a mistake or even doing it on purpose, if they by mistake execute more than one of those in a year, there's some pretty significant penalties that are involved in that, and that's really something that you want to avoid. What we always like to see is the money moving directly from one custodian to the other custodian. And when that happens, the check is made payable from the old custodian to the new custodian. And we'll kind of talk about that in a little bit more detail, but I wanted to give a kind of a quick example of where we see this mistake happen the most often. Nick: The reality is that the majority of the people that are listening to this with how things are set up currently, they may not run into this too often, but where we have seen this issue come up quite a bit is if they are helping their parents with finances. Maybe their parents are in their 70s or 80s. And oftentimes that age demographic loves CDs and they love chasing rates at banks. And there will be confusion from the standpoint of, hey mom has a CD at BB&T Bank, and the CD is actually inside of an IRA. And she goes into the branch to move the CD from BB&T bank over to Bank of America because Bank of America is offering an extra 0.2%. And so she's working with the teller at the bank and she says, "Hey, I want to take out my money because I'm moving it to another bank." Nick: What we've seen happen is that teller will sometimes have that check made payable to the client, to mom, in her name. And at that point it's considered that starts at 60 day window. The reality is that we want that check made payable to the new institution for the benefit of mom. This is where we've seen issues kind of pop up and arise where mom might try to do this a couple of times a year. Now she has done more than one 60 day rollover in a year because it was done incorrectly. It wasn't necessarily her fault and it just creates this total kind of quagmire and tax nightmare. Nick: We always like to kind of bring that up to make sure that people understand that that's an issue. And again, because the terminology is oftentimes intermingled and not done correctly, having that done the proper way is really important. I know John does a good job of explaining the best way that people can make sure that they execute that properly. John: Thank you, Nick. I do a very good job at explaining that, actually. So I appreciate that. So yeah, just kind of walk you through the process of doing a direct rollover. First step is contacting the investment provider for the retirement plan and you need to determine, can they do this over the phone or is it a form as Nick mentioned earlier? Let's just assume it's over the phone and you're putting your money into, let's say TD Ameritrade. TD Ameritrade is the custodian, they're the ones holding the funds. They're like a Fidelity or Vanguard. So you want to make sure that check is made payable to the custodian, and that way you're not the one getting the receipt of the funds, it's the custodian, and that's the main reason why it doesn't kind of execute that 60 day rollover kind of window. John: It's a direct transfer to the custodian and the checks going to be written out to in this example, TD Ameritrade for benefit of you. So if I'm doing it, it's going to be check's going to be made out to the TD Ameritrade for Benefit of John Teixeria. Now, once you receive that check, we were going to say it now, do not sign the check, because it's actually not written out to you, it's written out to the custodian. We do have some people that will say, "Do I sign it?" Or, "I signed it. What do I do?" Don't sign it. There's no need to. John: Once you receive the check, the next step is now it needs to get deposited into your IRA. And if you're working with an advisor, typically you pass it off to him or her. And if you're just working directly with an investment company, you're going to want to go ahead and get it to the investment company and have them deposit into the IRA for you. If you are mailing checks, just some people like to be cautious and kind of make sure it has some type of a tracking number which is something you can request from the retirement provider, not necessarily, but some people just prefer that so they can kind of keep track of where it's at. Marc: Okay. So obviously there's a lot that can go into this and there's mistakes that are going to happen as you just alluded to. So what are some things to maybe avoid, just kind of some simple things to check off for folks? Nick: I would say the first one and we talk about this whole process in the class that we teach. And I have a slide that I bring up and it's a huge picture of a train fire. The biggest mistake to avoid again, is to do a lump sum distribution when the money's paid directly to you. That is the number one. And I know we've kind of harped on it quite a bit, but it can be confusing because especially on some of the forms that companies use. They say, "Hey, I want to take all my money out, because I'm going to move it to this new place. So that's a lump sum distribution, right?" Nick: Well, depending upon where it is, that might mean that that money is coming directly to you, which it enters you into that 60 day window, which is what we want to avoid. Making sure that you do a direct rollover versus a lump sum distribution is really important. That's probably the number one mistake. John: Yeah, and if we see the lump sum, what the 401(k) or whatever, 403(b) provider will have to automatically do. If I were to receive the money directly to me, they would have to withhold 20% automatically. 20% is going to uncle Sam, so that could create an issue if you're trying to get all your money back into another IRA within 60 days. Marc: Well you mentioned 401(k), and then you said another. I would assume that this is kind of the same for several of those alphabet soups, right? Whether it's a 403(b) or TSP, is that same kind of process in general? John: Yes. Yeah. Marc: Okay. John: I mean, yeah, exactly. Employer retirement plans, it's- Marc: Gotcha, okay. Because sometimes people- John: ... across the board. Marc: ... get confused by that, right. They'll think, "Oh, well I don't have a 401(k). I have a 403(b) or whatever." John: Yeah, 401(k), 403(b), 457- Marc: Right. John: [crosstalk 00:11:41] plans. Marc: Right. Yeah. John: All of them. Marc: All of them. Yeah, the whole alphabet soup. Exactly. John: Yeah. Marc: Nick, any other mistakes to avoid anything too that we might've missed as we're kind of winding down here? Nick: I know it's come up a couple of times, but sometimes people will worry about timing. From the perspective of there's... As an example, the last five months really kind of post-Corona market drops, et cetera, et cetera. And people will say, "Hey I've lost a bunch of money in my account, is now the time to move it? Should I wait for it to bounce back?" And the reality is that you want to take a broader perspective and look at it from the standpoint of that you're moving it from market to market. So the goal is to do it as quickly as possible, but the perspective of, hey, should I let this bounce back before I move it? Isn't necessarily always valid because as long as you're in a similar allocation and maybe even a better allocation with a higher level of management, the reality is, is your bounce back could be quicker and/or better potentially by making a change the sooner the better. It all depends, but that's usually a pretty low priority variable in the whole conversation is time. Marc: Okay. All right. Well, there you go, folks. So as always, there could be some moving parts here, it's not always very too complicated, I suppose, maybe is a good word, but it can be, especially if you're not focusing. The best way to do it is to avoid some of those mistakes by reaching out and talking with a qualified professional before you take any action, getting some helpful tips, getting some advice, whatever the case might be. But before you take action, reach out to someone who does this on the regular. So call John, call Nick, give them a jingle at (813) 286-7776, that's (813) 286-7776. When you're talking about doing a rollover and if it's right for you, there's just a lot of questions that they can help you walk through and get you some advice going in the right direction. Also, stop by the website at pfgprivatewealth.com, that is pfgprivatewealth.com. Marc: While you're there, subscribe to the podcast, Retirement Planning Redefined, you can find them on Apple, Google, Spotify, whatever platform you choose. So there you go, that's going to do it for the series here on rollovers guys. Thanks for your time as always. I appreciate it. Obviously, there's so much that goes on in the financial world. It's good to just do these since you're not doing classes right now, doing a lot of things online or podcasts. It's good to go through and kind of get this information out for folks. Nick: Thanks, Marc. John: Thank you. Marc: Appreciate your time. We'll talk to you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick of PFG Private Wealth, and we'll see you next time.

Ep 26: How To Process A Rollover

Company retirement plans can be expensive and many people are considering to rollover their account. But what considerations should be thought about before you take any action? Today John and Nick discuss the fee structures, investment options, and a few more factors when deciding if a rollover is right for you.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comFor a transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/Transcript of Today's Show:----more----Marc Killian: Hey, welcome into the podcast folks. Thanks for tuning in here as we talk about retirement planning redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. What's going on, guys? How you been, Nick? What's up buddy? Nick: Doing pretty well, doing pretty well. Just kind of getting settled back in over the last couple of weeks. With the lockdown going on as long as it's been going on, I decided to take a little bit of a road trip. So I drove up north and stayed up north for about six weeks total. Marc Killian: Oh, wow. Nick: Yeah. So it was pretty cool. The virus situation in my hometown is a little bit better, which is Rochester, New York. Once we knew that we weren't going to be meeting face to face with any clients here anytime soon as the numbers got worse here locally, I decided I needed to take care of my cabin fever and get out of Dodge a little bit. Nick: So I drove up, made some stops. Stopped in Savannah and Pittsburgh on the way up, and then outside of Philadelphia and DC on the way down. Stayed with friends and family and had a good time. It was good to get away. Marc Killian: You couldn't get any more diverse than saying Savannah and Pittsburgh in the same sentence. Nick: Yes, yes, definitely. But I'll tell you what, I was pretty impressed with Pittsburgh. Marc Killian: Oh no, it's actually a nice town. They've made a lot of changes. I used to live not far from there, back in the late 70s, early 80s. I was just a kid, but yeah, I've definitely made a lot of changes. Nick: Yeah. Yeah, it was my first time there so I'll be back. Marc Killian: Very cool. Well, nice extended holiday. John, what about you buddy? I know you got the little one there. Did you do anything with the little baby? John: Yeah, so we normally, the last couple of years, we've gone up to Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg area and rented a house there. But this time, after that last drive with a seven month old for 11 hours, I decided I didn't want to do that again until she was facing front because she doesn't like being in a car. We decided to change and go to Sanibel Island here in Florida. John: So that was nice, actually. I'm not normally a like sit around the beach type person, but we had nothing to do. So it was about a week of just nothing to do where normally on vacation I'm either going up to Boston where I'm from and I'm seeing a bunch of people and doing all this other stuff, or going to Pigeon Forge and just trying to do as much as we can within a week period. But this time it was actually pretty relaxing where we'd wake up and we wouldn't figure out our day until about 10, 11:00. It was a change of pace for me, so it was actually pretty nice. Marc Killian: Very cool, yeah. Well, we're going to talk today about rollovers. Actually, we're going to do a two part series on rollovers and things to know and think about. But I want to ask you real fast, this kind of bit of an extended vacation, did she put the phone down a little bit? Because I got to say for my wife and I, when we can put the digital leash away for a little bit, you just feel so better. Did you get a chance to do that at all? John: I did at Sanibel and it wasn't because I wanted to, I was kind of forced to with the service. Where we were at, the service where we stayed, it wasn't the best. So it kind of forced us to do that, and the wifi was terrible. So, it was nice. Marc Killian: But you wound up saying that you really had actually a great time. I think your words were, "Yeah, I actually really enjoyed it." So that might've been part of it, having that digital lease put away. What about you, Nick? Did you put it down? Nick: So, the first week that I got up to Rochester, I kind of used that as a vacation time and I was a little bit more unplugged. It was really the week of the fourth so it was pretty easy. But then the rest of the time I was still working. It was just that working remote up north versus down here. Marc Killian: That's okay. Nick: Summertime's always a little bit slower, so I would take my time in the morning to knock stuff out and definitely used it less than I normally do, which is normally like a 24/7 schedule. So it was good. Marc Killian: I mean, even a week. So that's my public service announcement to our podcast listeners is even if you can give yourself just a few days from time to time just to put that digital leash away, it does wonders for how you feel. Sometimes we just have to kind of set it down and step away from it. But anyway, I'm glad you guys had a good time. Good, safe, little bit of a holiday break there. Marc Killian: So let's get back to work and let's talk about rollovers. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, we're going to do a two part-er here on some things to know. Deciding on a rollover for your retirement funds, if it's the right thing for you. That's pretty much the first step, right John? Determining if it's in your best interest. John: Yeah. And that will happen. We're getting a lot of questions right now. "Hey, I have a 401k plan at a previous employer or a job change," and the question is, "Should I roll it out and what's the process?" Which next week, Nick will go into details on what the process is. John: There's definitely some factors that you need to kind of go through. I'll say one of the main ones is the investment options in your current plan. So, we work with a lot of different people and we've seen some plans where it's really limited as far as what you can go into. They might only have 15 different options and the selections really aren't that good. We've also seen some other plans where there's 20 or 30 options and there are some good tools within the platform to use. John: So to me, that's the first step is really evaluating, what am I options within this 401k plan or retirement plan at work? And is it enough for me to be efficient and actually build a quality portfolio? Especially in this kind of volatile time period that we're in. Nick: If I were to jump on that a little bit from the perspective of not a lot of people realize that really the size of the plan that they are in is the determining factor for what the fee structure is in the funds that they use. So, sometimes they can be in a fund that costs much more inside of the plan than it would even outside of the plan. So there's a lot of different variables to take into consideration on that investment selection process. Marc Killian: Well, are they limited more so in those types of plans? When you're talking about that, you mentioned the investment options. A lot of times, I do think people feel that they are a bit more limited, and I know advisors think that. Is that how you see it as well? John: Yeah, you're limited to what they are for you, and then also some plans actually limit how many exchanges you can do per year. I'd say nowadays, that might be rare, but it's still out there. So that's something you want to look into where if you're thinking about rolling it over, let's say you go into just an individual retirement account, IRA, really have unlimited investment choices. It's kind of an open architecture platform and there's no limitations and you can almost invest in anything you want to. When you have that open architecture plan, that's where you can really be creative and efficient on your portfolio and making sure that you have the right choices to weather some volatile markets. Marc Killian: Yeah. Well, Nick, you mentioned fees. So let's dive into that a little bit because often that becomes the case for people. When you get down to all the different nuts and bolts, it's the fees that they tend to be most interested in. Nick: Yeah. I mean, we find on a pretty consistent basis that when we tally up the aggregate fee that they're paying inside of the 401k plan and we compare it to what we can do outside of the plan, especially with how prevalent exchange traded funds are these days and with how much lower the costs are, that oftentimes, even if we combine the expenses on the underlying holdings in the portfolios that we manage and add in our investment management fee, they're coming in either equal or under what they were paying fees before. The fees are now more transparent than they were before because oftentimes, as many have come to find out over the years, they don't really understand what fees they're paying in their 401k plans. So many times we're able to reduce the fee and then add on a much higher level of management, as well as roll in additional services like the planning services, et cetera, et cetera. So, quite often you can get a lot more for the money. John: And to go with that, a lot of people don't realize within a 401K plan, there's a lot that goes into it. I mean, there's the advisor that's on the plans getting compensated. There's typically a third party administrator, which basically helps out with the construction of the plan and the filings and stuff like that that gets compensated. The fund company are using. So that's why we see, just to reference what Nick said, the fees can add up in there as important to understand what type of plan you have and what your fees are. Marc Killian: Yeah, definitely. And is this consolidation of accounts, can that help kind of bring all that into, I guess, better focus? Nick: I would say absolutely. So there's a couple of things that I've seen pretty much on a consistent basis from the standpoint of experience working with clients are that number one, obviously, when you consolidate it's a little bit easier to have a good grasp on what your overall allocation is from the underlying investments. Nick: But quite frankly, what I would say is the bigger benefit is that when people have their accounts scattered in multiple places, they tend to just be more anxious about their overall situation in general. They feel like they don't necessarily have a good grip on what they have and what's going on. They don't have a full understanding of what their overall strategy is. There's usually not a plan in place, which is a big indicator of anxiousness and anxiety when it comes to the whole retirement planning conversation. Really what that ends up then leading to are just poor decisions. So, non-coordinated decisions, maybe making a rash decision when we were going through what we were going through a few months ago when the market initially dropped. Nick: So it's really kind of a trickle down, snowball effect where consolidating accounts, building a plan, having a concise roadmap for where you're trying to go with how your investments are managed and making sure that they correlate to your overall plan really helps with your decision making process and peace of mind. Marc Killian: If people want to have someone do this for them, they want to kind of delegate that out, what's some steps to think about? What's some stuff they should be working towards? Things of that nature. John: Yeah, so all the factors we've already gone through is part of that and what we find that when people are near retirement or in retirement, they really don't want to do it themselves anymore or have to check on it on the 401K platform. So what they're looking for is to work with an advisor and have them do it for them in retirement so they don't have to worry about it. It's just kind of something else where it's off their to do list and it provides some peace of mind. John: So we've seen a lot of that where clients and prospects are... No one's monitoring this for me and I definitely need some help and I don't want to do it so I need to hire someone. So that's another reason to consider rolling it out. Marc Killian: For a lot of people. I talk to guys all across the country, guys and gals, and it seems like the level of service sometimes from the providers or from the companies gets pretty frustrating. I mean, even prior to COVID, same kind of thing, right? You feel as though you got to go through this process and it's automated a lot of times, or you're just not getting the answers you want. Nick: Yeah. I would say, because the reality is that inside when the funds are inside of your 401k, it's still your responsibility and your obligation as the account holder to make any investments, decisions and changes. From the standpoint of needing or requiring any sort of guidance, if you're calling a 1-800 number and you're talking to people in a call center, oftentimes those people don't have a good grasp and understanding of your overall situation. If you have gotten to that point where you're looking to make those sorts of changes, you're probably under some sort of stress or duress and having guidance and having somebody that understands what you have going on is a pretty big deal. Nick: We saw that quite evident during the end of quarter one when the market was tanking with COVID and just being able to have conversations with clients, them knowing that, hey, we understand their situation and what's going on, we understand the longterm planning. And them knowing that, as part of our services and when we're managing assets for them, the changes that we make inside of a portfolio are proactive. We're going to automatically make those changes for all of our clients at once versus on a one-to-one, or one off basis, makes for a much more efficient process and a lot more peace of mind. Nick: So it's a much higher level of service. I mean, sometimes we refer to it as, if you use a sports analogy, going from the minor leagues to the major leagues where it's just a whole different service level and engagement level, which we think is really, really important, especially as people get closer to or are in retirement. John: Some other things to consider are, we have seen some people get aggravated with the 401k plan moving to a different company where all of a sudden it might've been Vanguard and they're changing to Fidelity and that requires blackout periods and stuff like that. Some people just don't enjoy that process because now it's time to really keep track of it. John: Or if you move, it's your responsibility to tell basically the human resource where you moved to so they could start sending all the notifications to you. So there's just kind of just some inconveniences with keeping the money yet a retirement plan that you may or may not be aware of. John: I've actually seen one plan where they got audited and no one could touch the funds for a couple of months because they were doing an audit investigation of the plan itself. So it's your money, but at the same time they were auditing so some people's funds were frozen. They weren't happy campers for that month period. Marc Killian: I bet not. That definitely can be a pretty frustrating situation. So hopefully that'll help you out a little bit here, folks on the first part of our series on deciding on rollovers, if it's the right for your retirement funds. Nick, anything you want to add before we sign off for this week? I know we're going to talk more about some things next week. Nick: No, I think this was a good overview and I think the reality is that, in our session next week, we'll get into the details a little bit more of how you actually process these and the things to look out for and that sort of thing. Marc Killian: Fantastic. All right. Well, I'll tell you what, for that we're going to sign off then. So if you've got questions or concerns, again, about doing a rollover or if it's right for you, reach out to John and Nick, give them a call at (813) 286-7776. That's (813) 286-7776, or go to PFGprivatewealth.com. That's PFGprivatewealth.com. Marc Killian: While you're there, subscribe to the podcast, click on the podcast page. You can check out past episodes, you can listen to future episodes. You can subscribe to them on various apps that are out there. Or if you're using Apple, let's say, just type in retirement planning redefined in the search box and you can also just like it that way. So lots of different ways you can find us, and we certainly appreciate it. We'll see you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined. For John and Nick, I'm your host Marc Killian. We'll talk to you next time.

Ep 25: Is A Rollover Right For You?

When it comes to retirement planning, many people focus on filling in an income gap, or making sure they will have enough money to get them through retirement. While this is fundamental to the plan, it's important to make sure your assets are protected. John and Nick will explain what investment vehicles have some sort of protection and will also give a hypothetical example.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comFor a transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/Transcript of Today's Show:----more----Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome in to Retirement Planning - Redefined with John and Nick of PFG Private Wealth, serving the Tampa Bay area. Thanks for tuning into the podcast. As we talk investing, finance and retirement, and we're going to jump in and get started with the conversation. Guys, I hope you're doing well. We were kind of laughing right before we started the session recording here that John's been doing some swim lessons with his kids and it's been going really well. And I wanted to make the joke that Nick, you finally learned how to swim. Nick: Yeah, no, all joking aside, I can swim and swim well, but besides that- John: You're welcome, Nick. We've been doing some Zoom swim lessons [crosstalk 00:00:41]. Speaker 1: Zoom tutorials on swimming. Nick: Yeah. I get in the bathtub with goggles and see what happens. But no, I've been doing well. Things are starting to slowly get back to normal from the standpoint of, I want to say last week I went out to dinner for the first time at a restaurant outside in a few months, so that was pretty cool. So things are slowly starting to get back to normal, although it's going to be interesting is some of the numbers seem to spike here, how things will adapt over time, but no complaints, no complaints here. Speaker 1: Yeah, it will be interesting to see as this cluster bang of a year continues to wobble on. So we're about halfway through 2020 at this point. So we've still got a lot to go, so we'll see how it shakes out. But that's good. Glad to hear that there's some good positive spots here and there. So let's jump into our topic. So let's review the importance of risk management and asset protection. Let's just start with a basic overview, Nick. Nick: Yeah. So for those that are listening that have been through our class that we hold at the local colleges, this will sound a little bit familiar, but we've had a couple of things pop up with clients and questions from friends and things like that. So we thought it would be a good topic to re-review where oftentimes people get focused on the fun or more exciting aspects of planning, which may be investments or talking about retirement and those sorts of things, but really risk management is a super important part of overall planning because really the objective is to increase your probability for success by reducing your risk. And then ultimately, overall the goal by doing that is to do it while keeping your costs down. So when we go through the planning process with clients, we do review their property and casualty insurance. We're looking for how their accounts are titled. We're looking and analyzing things from the standpoint of, "Are we making sure that things are protected?" Nick: So we always like to make sure that people do realize, because it isn't necessarily something that is top of mind and oftentimes, when you talk to people, the reality is that when they're shopping out their homeowners insurance, their car insurance, they end up having been with the company for a long period of time. Usually it's price dependent. So we've seen where people made a change to cut costs, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago and now they're in a completely different financial situation and they haven't made adjustments to correlate to that from a risk management standpoint. So we just kind of want to walk some people through that. Nick: So one of the first things that we review and talk about and help people to understand are that, there are certain assets that are creditor or protected in the state of Florida. This is something, again, we're not attorneys, we're not property and casualty agents, but these are topics that we review. And this is one of the perfect examples of something there where we can provide feedback, give you help, provide you with questions to ask and then help connect you with or you connect with an existing relationship that you have with a property and casualty agent, with an attorney if there are legal documents that need to be involved, that sort of thing. But in the state of Florida, it's important and many people know that you can declare your primary residence as your homestead. Nick: And there are a lot of protections built into declaring your home a homestead. So many people just focus on the tax benefits and that's one thing, but really it provides a creditor protection and asset protection for your home. So that's a big deal. If you own non-qualified annuities and/or have life insurance that has a cash value component to it, those are protected in the state of Florida. Qualified accounts, so in other words, 401k, IRA accounts, those accounts are protected in the state of Florida. One kind of caveat to that where we'll have some people say, "Well, hey, I'm 60, 70 years old and I've got these accounts and my home, why do I need any sort of additional protection?" And one of the things that we like to remind people are that those qualified accounts, you do have to start taking money out at a certain point. And at the time that they go from qualified to non-qualified that becomes something that could be available. Nick: From the aspect of different types of trusts, there are certain types of trusts that can be set up to provide protection for assets that's absolutely 100% in the realm of working with an attorney. John's going to talk about one of the misconceptions that a lot of people have when it comes to trusts. And just a basic thing that is important for people to consider, let's say you own a business and you are not structured as an LLC, you could be putting yourself a little bit of risk from that standpoint. Speaker 1: Yeah. Certainly there's a lot of pieces in there. So again, homestead, annuities, qualified accounts, LLC, certain trusts, some of these things are the protected assets or at least in Florida. John, what are some of the non protected? John: Yeah. So some of the non-protected assets would be cash accounts or your bank accounts, things like that, CDs, non-qualified investment accounts. Someone might have a brokerage account that they're just putting money into monthly, or just maybe just put a lump sum in there. Just understand that just because your retirement accounts are invested and you have investments there and they're [inaudible 00:06:27] protected. If it's in a nonqualified account with investments, it's not protected. John: One other thing with the qualified accounts is to understand that there are limits to what is actually protected. So actually an ERISA plan, which is a 401k, 403(b) type plan, it's typically fully protected, no matter what the amount is and IRA, and this does go up, it used to be a million, and I believe right now it's about 1.3 million if an IRA is actually credit protected. John: And then a recent rule change in the past few years, inherited IRAs are no longer credit are protected. So it's important to understand that if you inherit an IRA from somebody, it is not credit protected at all. Something that will come up, Nick mentioned with the homestead where your primary home is credit protected, any secondary home you have is not. So that's a misconception we see sometimes if you have a rental property, or let's say your, like a second vacation home, it's not credit protected. And then with the businesses, if you're a sole proprietor and you never develop any type of LLC, so example I have a [inaudible 00:07:32], but I'm not LLC, that is not creditor protected. So that's why it's important to, if you're working with an attorney, you want to ask these questions, "Hey, should I create an LLC with the business?" And you definitely want to have them help you draft the documents so they're done correctly. John: One of the biggest questions we get when we're doing planning and part of the planning is we look at the estate side of it. We don't draft any documents, but we are knowledgeable enough to have people ask the right questions and point them in the right direction. But it's with trusts. A lot of people feel like, "Hey, if I set up a trust, does that protect my assets?" And if it's a revocable trust, the answer's no. So a revocable trust basically just get to the meat of it. You still have control of that trust. So you either are owner of it, or you make decisions of it. And basically with that, it's still considered part of your estate [crosstalk 00:08:22] and for that reason it's not credit protected. Nick: Yeah. And just for further emphasis on those protections kind of tend to kick in after you pass and the trust stays, but while you're alive, it's includable in your estate and it doesn't provide those protections. And one other caveat or thing to consider think about are for those non-qualified accounts, non-qualified investment accounts or non IRA, if you hold them jointly in the state of Florida using Tenancy by the entirety for those types of accounts, if you hold it with a spouse, so it has to be with a spouse to use that, that does provide some additional level of protection. Although it's not the same as like a retirement account per se. John: Definitely, as you can tell, it gets confusing. So you definitely want to ask the right questions if you're wanting to know what is and what isn't and just asks the right people and adviser will know enough, and attorney would definitely be the best resource. Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm definitely say if you're working with an advisor, obviously bring the conversation up with them, have them bring the attorney in and so on and so forth. And of course, John and Nick can help you in that arena as well. Now you mentioned property and casualty, so let's do a quick review of that as well. What are some things to consider? Nick: Sure. So the main types of property and casualty policies that people are going to have are going to be their car insurance, homeowners insurance, and maybe an umbrella policy. So one of the examples that we tend to give from the perspective of a car insurance policy is, really just walking you through a scenario. So when you look at your car insurance policy, you're going to see that there are limits that are provided, that are referred to liability, and then you will see a designation for what's called uninsured motorist or UIM. Nick: So the example that we usually use is, let's say John and I are both driving down the highway and we get into an accident. So we're both in our late 30s, business owners, our incomes continue to go up. John has a family, I don't, but if something happens to me, I do have assets going to parents and brother and that sort of thing. So let's say we're driving and we get into an accident and because John likes to multitask a lot, he was texting and it's his fault. So we're going to blame him. So I have the- John: Wait, wait, wait, full disclosure, I never text and drive. I do multitask, but I do not do that. Speaker 1: Good [inaudible 00:10:57]. Nick: That's good. That's good. So we get into an accident. I have damages, fairly serious damages and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to sue him. There's kind of a negative connotation oftentimes with the whole aspect of suing somebody, which the reason that we use this example is because, here we are, we're friends, we're colleagues, in many ways business partners, that sort of thing. But the reality is, is that if there's damages and mistakes happen and mistakes are made, ultimately my responsibility for me and family is to try to become whole again, from a financial standpoint. So I go ahead, I sue him. The first thing that's going to be reviewed and looked at are going to be his liability limits. So the liability limits protect him from lawsuit, from somebody else when he is at fault, essentially. Nick: So let's say he has one of the most common levels of coverage that we see is what's called like 100/300. So what that means is 100,000 per person in the accident, a total of 300,000 in the vehicle. So in this instance, in this situation, I'm the only person in the vehicle, so the maximum amount of his car insurance company is going to pay out that they're going to send their lawyers to deal with this lawsuit, the maximum amount that they're going to pay out is 100,000. If I happen to have other people in the vehicle, that's where that 300,000 limit would come into play. But let's say my damages are 250,000 and the most his insurance company is going to pay out as the 100. So, now what? So at that point, what's going to happen, there's going to be kind of a different phases. So I'm going to have an attorney. And my attorney is going to look at, "Hey, does John have additional assets that are not protected, like we talked about earlier that are available through suit?" Nick: So that's something that he's going to request, some sort of inventory, financial inventory, asset balance sheet via the lawsuit. The other thing that they're going to look at is, "Hey, Nick, do you have uninsured motorist coverage?" And luckily because I do this sort of thing I have planned ahead and I have uninsured motorist coverage. So what uninsured motorist coverage does is it protects me in the case of having damages that are above and beyond what the person who inflicted the damage has. So in this case, my limits for uninsured motorist, let's just say there are 250,000, I can essentially sue my own insurance company to fill in that gap, to get me up to that 250,000, so that coverage has protected me. Nick: So the liability limits protect the person at fault against the person having damages and not having enough coverage. So, because we do see people oftentimes outright reject uninsured motorist coverage, and knowing that, especially in the state of Florida, people are often underinsured or uninsured, having uninsured motorist coverage is something that we think is important to have a level of protection. Nick: So the same scenario, I was injured and John had coverage and I had substantially much more significant damages. Let's say that I was permanently disabled and I wasn't going to be able to work anymore, so the amount that the amount of protection and coverage that I'm looking for is going to be substantially more than the 100,000 that John has, or even the 250,000 that I have in the uninsured motorists. And that's where something like an umbrella policy could come into play. So what an umbrella policy will do is, it's a type of coverage that essentially goes above what you have for the auto coverage. Nick: So an umbrella policy can be both liability and uninsured. So in this example, what we'll use for the example is we'll say, "Hey, Nick has an umbrella policy. And because my damages were a million dollars and John's insurance company has paid out 100,000, my insurance company has paid out 250,000, there's still a gap of 650,000. Essentially, I can go ahead and sue my insurance company from the standpoint of the umbrella to try to fill in that additional gap. So if John had had an umbrella policy, they would have tried to use that for protection. But in this scenario, me having an umbrella policy and being the one that had the damages really comes to the point of being able to protect me in my assets. Speaker 1: Yeah. And certainly it's important to review your risk management, your asset protection, because something like an accident can certainly derail retirement plans, it can really wreak a lot of havoc and other things that you had going on as well. There's countless stories out there along situations like that. So if you've got some questions or concerns about this week's topic, and you need some help, reach out to John and Nick, and of course they can help point you in the right directions for some of the things they don't do as mentioned earlier. It's always important to review and have these conversations about all these little assets. It's not just about income, which obviously that's super important in retirement, but there's all these other little facets. So this week we focused on some risk management and asset protection when it comes to some of the things that are protected in Florida, not protected and a bit about the property and casualty as well. Speaker 1: So reach out to them if you've got questions on these topics at 813-286-7776, to have a conversation about your own situation, 813-286-7776, or share the information with a friend who might benefit from that well and go to pfgprivatewealth.com to learn more about John and Nick and their practice, pfgprivatewealth.com, a lot of good tools, tips, and resources. You can also click on the podcast page, you'll see that right at the top. And you can subscribe to us on whatever platform you like to listen to. And we would certainly appreciate it. Guys, thanks so much for your time this week. As always, I appreciate all that you do to help us out here and continue to do a good job with those swimming lessons there John. John: Thanks. Speaker 1: And Nick, maybe one day, you can take the floaties off, you'll be good. Nick: Hopefully. Speaker 1: All right, guys, have a great week. We'll talk to you soon. Stay safe, stay sane, and we'll see you next time here on Retirement Planning - Redefined.

Ep 24: Importance Of Risk Management & Asset Protection

Financial and retirement planning guidance from Certified Financial Planner John Teixeira and Nick McDevitt of PFG Private Wealth Management in the Tampa Bay, FL area. On this show, you'll learn about how the financial and retirement world has evolved over the past several decades, how to properly plan for your own future, and some of the important pitfalls to avoid.

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