Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Live from the wgy iHeart Studios. Welcome to Retirement Ready
with your host Dave Kopek from the Retirement Ready Show.
Every week, Dave and his team discuss the waste They
can help people make informed decisions about a wide array
of retirement planning information that can support you and developing
a more certain financial future for you and your family.
(00:21):
Now it's time for Dave Gopec WGY's retirement planning specialists.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
All Right, Happy Saturday, October fifth. Hard to believe we
are already into the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four.
First and foremost, before I get into today's show, which
is always a topic specific, and today we're talking about
(01:02):
pension planning. But I want to send my heartfelt thoughts
in prayers to all of our clients and loved ones
that are in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee. The devastation
has been extreme, it's been horrific. My cousin lost her
(01:23):
house in tarp And Springs, so it's affected my family
and probably a lot of people that are listening to
today's show. So I want to get that behind me.
But our thoughts and prayers are with you and make
a donation to the American Red Cross. They are aggressively
(01:43):
going out trying to facilitate and help the people that
are in need. So, you know, a blink of an eye,
it's been a horrible, horrible time down in that region
of the United States. We have a lot of clients
in Florida, and I can't tell you how hard it
(02:04):
is for me sometimes to go through even some of
the areas that have still not recovered from the previous
hurricanes and events that have happened. So we are with you,
we support you, and we're praying for you. We have
a lot of clients. I think we're in twenty eight
(02:26):
states now, but we also have a lot of people
that listen to us on iHeartRadio, and I thank you
for that. We get a lot of emails and contacts
and people that like to listen to the show. As
you're quite well aware, we do multiple shows here on iHeartRadio.
We have the Retirement Planning Show. We also have this
topic specific program which is called Retirement Ready, And all
(02:50):
we try to do is focus in on one topic
for the entire program. So today's topic is one that
is constantly discussed over and over and over again, and
it's the question what do I do when I retire
(03:13):
and I have to basically create a check, not receive
a check, but create a check for the rest of
my lifetime, not only for myself, but also usually there's
a spouse involved, or a loved one or a significant other.
It's a daunting task and it's one that you have
(03:36):
to give great consideration to in discussion. And as I've
said multiple times throughout radio, our presentations, our workshops. We've
been on radio now for twenty five years, and I've
always said over and over and over again, make sure
(03:56):
you're selecting the correct option. The days of the Golden Watch,
the check, the parachute, the healthcare, those days are over.
For most of us, the ninety percenters, We're gonna have
to take our life savings. We're gonna have to take
(04:17):
the money that we've accumulated in our lifetime. Maybe there's
gonna be a wealth transfer that's gonna help us out
to buffer some of this expense and cost. But the
bottom line gets down to is that when you think
about creating income that could pass hopefully with longevity over
(04:39):
the next thirty to forty years, right sixty five years old,
the American College says for financial planning, you got a
plan for age one hundred, now age one hundred, so
I got thirty five years. I got over three decades.
(05:00):
Some of the data that's out there right now with
this AI that they're saying is that if you live
another five or ten years, you've got a very good
chance of living past the age of one hundred. Because
what it's going to do in order to solve a
lot of our problems in healthcare, so we're I'm going
to talk about what I consider to be some of
(05:22):
the most crucial mistakes that people make. I'm going to
talk about the pinocchios, the things that you hear that
you shouldn't listen to. And I'm also going to talk
about what I consider to be the red zone. Five
years before you retire are critical. I want to say
(05:45):
that again, the five years before you retire are critical.
On a one to ten, it's a ten plus. You've
got to make sure that you determine or have a
pretty good idea of what you can afford during your
(06:06):
retirement years when you quit working and there's no more
check coming in from the employer, and now you have
to determine and create your own check with the money
that you've accumulated in your lifetime. Are you ready? Are
(06:26):
you prepared? You know, we talk about the red zone
at the retirement Planning Group consistently, not only with our
existing clients that haven't retired yet, but with prospective clients.
I just had some people in this past week and
(06:46):
a long chat with them. He's sixty years old. He
wants to retire in the next five years. I said
to him, you've got to start building out your buckets
of money. Now here's one of the key bullet points.
I have three or four then I'm gonna go over today.
The number one is this, once you reach the age
(07:11):
of fifty nine and a half, fifty nine and a
half critical number, most of your qualified plans four oh
one k's, et cetera will allow you to do what
we call an in service distribution. What does that mean?
That means that all that money that's in that pot
(07:31):
at four oh one K, I can now get that money,
do a IRA rollover. It's a non taxable event. And
now I start building out my own investment plan, not
the ones that have been selected through my four oh
one K provider, but the ones that I want the
(07:52):
ones that I think are going to be the ones
that I want to have during my retirement years. Half
is critical, but because it allows you to take an
in service distribution. It goes trustee to trustee transfer right.
(08:12):
If it goes from Vanguard, you can go to Fidelity,
you go to Vanguard, to go to Schwab and go
to all the other custodians that are out there, but
you don't touch it. It's a trustee to trustee transfer.
That means one of the money gets transferred over to
a self directed I Ray. You got a whole big
bunch of cash there now, and now you're going to
(08:34):
start building out your buckets of money, and we're going
to talk about the most crucial one bucket one bucket one.
Why is it crucial. It's crucial because of point of entry.
Point of entry means, am I going into the financial
(08:55):
services market with my hard earned assets, money that I've
accumulated in my lifetime in a bull market or a
bear market or a flat market. If it's a bull market,
I'm kicking my heels up and I'm dancing in the street.
If it's flat, I can probably still sleep at night.
(09:17):
If it's the bear, I'm gonna have a hard time
sleeping because that means I'm entering into the financial services
industry when the markets are deteriorating, they're selling off, and
not only am I receiving income, but I'm also losing money.
(09:39):
Not fun. Not fun. And after doing this for forty
three years, I can tell you one thing for sure,
most of you will do exactly what I just said.
You won't plan it out, you won't do it in
service distribution. You'll leave your job, you'll take the money,
(10:00):
You'll go to the guru, the local guy, the national guy,
whoever it may be, that has all the answers, and
you won't build out your buckets of money, and you
won't do all the other things that need to get
done in order to facilitate what I considered to be
the sleep at night retirement. Everybody wants to have the
(10:24):
touchdown account, the touchdown account, always up, never down. So
if you want to retire in five years, you got
to know some certain things, and I'm going to talk
about those things today on Retirement Ready. The last five
(10:45):
years before you retire is probably the most critical, without
a doubt, critical time when it comes to your retirement plan.
Say that again. The last five years before you retire
(11:05):
is probably the most critical time before you retire, and
we're going to discuss it in detail today on Retirement Ready.
I'm Dave Kopek, your host, President of the Retirement Planning Group.
We're going to be right back after this quick message
the eighty six percenters. Do you know that eighty six
percent of the population has no defined benefit pension plan.
For most of us, we have to take our life
(11:26):
savings and create a paycheck for the rest of our
lives in retirement. What is your plan for retirement income distribution?
How you manage your assets during the most critical years
of your lifetime. Nobel Prize winning economist William Sharp has
called retirement income distribution the nastiest, hardest problem in finance.
He points out that investment, uncertainty, and mortality can derail
(11:48):
the most careful laid out retirement income plan. Call our
offices today to start the process of building a retirement
income distribution plan. After forty one years of being in
the financial services business, you need to start taking action
to start building your own personal retirement income distribution plan.
How do you do that? To take action? Five one
eight five eight zero one nine nine. That's five one
(12:09):
eight five eight zero one nine one nine or RPG
retire on the web. Don't procrastinate, motivate to start building
your retirement income Distribution Plan five one eight five eight
zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
If you have questions on maximizing your savings, navigating healthcare costs,
or preparing for your dream retirement lifestyle, We've got you covered.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Listen weekly to Dave Kopek from the Retirement Planning Group
right here on WGY Saturdays at seven am for the
Retirement Planning Show, and also on Saturdays at noon and
Sundays at eight pm for Retirement Ready. And remember you
can listen to PASS shows anytime anywhere on the iHeartRadio.
App Appointments are available by calling five one eight five eight.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
All Right, you got the top down, you got the
motor running, get in in gear and let's go. That's
a good song. Way to go to Zach. All right,
we're talking about red zone planning. We're talking about pension planning.
We're talking about are you retirement ready? Are you financially
(13:37):
prepared to move forward in your retirement? You know, I
played sports my whole life, my children did I coached
for a while, and you always have a game plan right.
Sometimes you got to modify it, sometimes you got to
(13:59):
just Sometimes you get your buck kicked. Sometimes you go
go back to the drawing board and figure out what
you did wrong was retirement planning. If you do it
wrong out the gate, you might be in big, big
trouble if you are not prepared, and if you're not
set up properly, it could be devastating. So we always
(14:22):
tell people this when they first come in and they
have a chat with us. If you are not prepared,
you might not like our answers. You might have to
work longer, you might have to make modifications to how
you live right. Your retirement lifestyle might have to be
adjusted with what you expect you can do. But we
(14:44):
also have what we call an action plan game plan,
and we use this in order to determine your level
of readiness for your retirement in this five year stretch
what I call the five year dash, because we all
know what can happen. You hear that. That's my finger clicking.
(15:06):
That's how quick time goes by. I just said, we're
October of twenty twenty four. It seems like it just
started for me. So here's some key points that I
want you to think about, especially those individuals that are two, three, four, five,
(15:27):
seven years away from retirement. If you want to retire
and you want to go into your retirement years feeling good,
it's time for you to sit down with a financial team,
whether it's the retirement planning group or somebody and do
a realistic, realistic retirement needs analysis. What does that mean.
(15:55):
We have a software package called e money. E Money
allow us to do some calculations and some future projections.
If you are fortunate enough to have a pension benefit,
we put that in there. Social Security we put that
in there. The pool of money that you currently have,
we do some assumptions what we think we can grow
it to over the next four or five years. Then
(16:17):
we do what we call baseline income projections. We want
to know how much can we spend? What is my budget?
I don't want to know your bills, okay, because I
might tell you take your piece of paper and your
bills and throw it out the window. Because I want
(16:38):
to know what your budget is and what you can
expect to receive and guess what you might have to
modify your budget. You might have to modify your lifestyle.
You might have to get rid of the BMW and
go out and buy yourself a Chevy. You might have
to downsize, you might have to move to another state
(16:58):
that's more affordable. And then once you do that, you
want to take your expenses and you want to match
it up to your retirement income that you can hear.
Here's the word reasonably reasonably expect to have on a
monthly basis. These are my expenses. This is how much
(17:24):
I feel comfortable taking off my portfolio. This is how
much I have in Social Security. This is my small
pension that I have. This is what I can expect
net after taxes in order to have quality of life.
Then we ask you a question, because we're all quite
(17:47):
well aware of what's happening. If you haven't heard it,
hear this. The greatest wealth transfer in the history of
mankind will happen over the next twenty to thirty years.
Our children, our grandchildren are going to receive somewhere between
(18:08):
eighty to eighty five trillion dollars. Now, believe it or not,
I have clients. My oldest client is one hundred and two,
soon to be one hundred and three. He will be
at my galfouting on Thursday of this coming week. You're
going to live a hell of a lot longer that
you anticipate some of us. And if that is the case,
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do you have adequate assets to ensure that you're going
to basically handle the L word, the L word. Yes,
the L word which a lot of people will talk
about in great detail in the years to come, and
(18:55):
that's called longevity. Longevity and sequence of returns are probably
the most critical part of retirement planning that Dave Kopek,
(19:16):
mister Einstein, mister screaming monkey, miss screaming monkey, the gurus
on Wall Street have no answer to because they can't
come up it. Nobody can predict the future. Nobody can
predict the future, thank god. Right, So, longevity and sequence
(19:39):
of returns leads us down to a path as far
as how much of my money do I want to
have allocated into non guaranteed assets? I'll say that again,
how much of my money do I want to have
allocate into non guaranteed assets? I don't care if it's Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab,
(20:15):
any of your major investment banking firms. They all say
the same thing. You should have a certain percentage of
your portfolio on top of your Social Security benefits that
will ensure you guaranteed income for the rest of your lifetime.
(20:40):
But most of the financial advisors out there don't talk
about it. You'll hear all the negatives, all the things
that you know. They're so smart, they do such a
great job managing money. Don't ever put yourself in a
position that you're having guarantees. And the reason for that,
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to be honest with you, I can't answer it because
I honestly believe from the bottom of my heart they're
doing a major disservice to you as the consumer of
financial products and also someone that has to have guaranteed
income possibly for decades, thirty forty years. But the big
(21:23):
thing is is that we all shoot for the moon.
We all shoot for the moon. And when I say that,
here's the thing that I always say over and over again.
And sometimes my staff and my associates don't like to
hear this, but I'll tell people face to face across
the table over ring Central Zoom, whatever it is, any
(21:48):
of our offices that we have, we can't satisfy the
income that you're looking for for the quality of life
based off of the pool of money that you have.
You are shooting at an unrealistic expectation. So as they said,
(22:10):
you're going to have to make some changes to your
lifestyle or just your retirement horizon, because at age sixty
five you said you wanted to retire. You're not there.
What do you mean by that, Well, you have an
(22:33):
unrealistic expectation. Some people think I can take eight, nine,
ten percent off my portfolio. Oh that's what the stock
market did. Really, do you understand sequence of returns? Do
you understand how you allocate money in your retirement years
versus how you allocate money during your accumulation years. So
(22:58):
how much money will you need? How much money will
you need? I'll help you. People come in even say
it all the time. How much money will I need?
I don't know. I can't tell you that I know
how long you're going to live. I have no idea
(23:18):
right now what your lifestyle is, no idea. Are you
struggling right now pre retirement to pay your bills or
you're kind of dancing in the street and you're doing okay?
And what kind of retirement do you want post retirement?
And at the most basic level, at the most basic level,
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an analysis of your retirement needs might consist of all
the tools in the toolbox. What do you mean by that?
All the tools in the toolbox? At the retirement planning group,
we believe in open architecture. That means that we do
(24:03):
have a bias. We do not pooh pooh any type
of investment because our perception of investments should not filter
into your perception and your needs for your retirement years,
which unfortunately is not the case for a lot of
(24:24):
people now in the financial services industry, because you'll hear
advertisements over and over and over and over and over
and over and over and over and over again that
annuities are the worst things since sliced bread. Well, I'll
take the other position on that we've done hundreds of
millions of dollars of annuity business in the forty three
(24:46):
years that I've been in business, and that one person
ever came back to me and said, I wish I
never did this. It makes up a very very small
percentage of my business. But these are individuals that needed
to create what i'd say at the beginning, a pension benefit.
They needed a pension, They needed guaranteed income for both
(25:07):
spouses for an extended period of time, and they like
to sleep at night. They don't like to stare at
the fan. So that's what we're going to talk about
when you come back. How to create the pension. What
are the options that are available to me? They gave
you a lot of meat. I'm gonna give you some
potatoes and some vegetables when we come back. But as always,
(25:30):
anything I'm discussing, check us out on the web rpgretire
dot com. Rpgretire dot com. The name of the company
is the Retirement Planning Group. I'm Dave Kopek. I'm the
president WG WISE Retirement Planning Specialists. We are heard on
over eight hundred stations nationally on eight Heart iHeartRadio. We'll
(25:53):
be right back after this break. All right, we are back.
(26:30):
This is retirement Ready. I'm Dave Kopeck, your host and
in the business now for forty three years, which is
hard to believe. And hopefully, if I have the longevity
of my good friend mentor gentlemen that I have a
lot of respect for, I've got many, many, many, many
many more years to go. So pension benefits in retirement.
(26:54):
Nine out of ten of us don't have pensions we
got to add up all the buckets. The IRA is,
the four case, the non qualified money, the equity in
the house possibly, and we got to ask ourselves how
am I getting to my destination? And the other part
of the equation is too for some of you, which
is important some of you won't be important. Do I
(27:20):
want a legacy, a transfer of wealth to the next generation?
You know, life expectancy now is pretty amazing. I spent
a lot of time in Florida because we have a
lot of households in Florida. I also have a daughter
that goes to college in Florida now, so I will
(27:40):
be back and forth to Florida quite a bit. And
because of that, I'm amazed that the people are down
there in their seventies and eighties and nineties that you
would think they're in their forties and fifties and sixties.
So while you're expecting to live a long life, which
all of us do, you also want to consider whether
(28:02):
your family has been prone to illness, right bad genes, DNA.
Sometimes we get a package that we don't want that's
inherited through our bloodline that should be considered too. So
when you're ensuring that you're going to have adequate amounts
(28:25):
of retirement assets, which is number one on the list.
You also have to take in consideration, folks, which is
the demon out there right now, the boogeyman in the closet,
healthcare cost and long term care. And I speak from experience,
and I also speak from someone that's doing it every
(28:48):
single day. Long term care insurance, long term care health
insurance is a major issue for retirees today. Our mothership, Fidelity,
which we clear all of our business through, released their
(29:10):
twenty and twenty four retire healthcare cost estimate. A sixty
five year old person today is expected this has nothing
zero to do with long term care. So, sixty five
year old couple today, you're expected to have out of
(29:33):
pocket health care expenses estimated to be three hundred and
thirty thousand dollars over your retirement. Here's another bullet point
from that report. Fifty half of you that are listening today,
whether you're here in the Capitol District region or throughout
the United States, that you're approaching retirement, expect to feel
(29:58):
overwhelmed or confused about how to select Medicare coverage. Does
this resonate right making you feel warm? And fuzzy. Healthcare
(30:19):
costs are probably the most unpredictable expense when it comes
to retirement planning without a doubt, and as we approach
what we call the fall enrollment period for healthcare benefits,
it's a great time for you, the consumer to be
(30:42):
proactive with your overall efforts and needs to try to
plan for those healthcare costs long, long, long before they occur.
Because if you're going to retire at sixty five and
you're going to get a Medicare that it cares up,
(31:02):
you better know the apple that you're picking off the tree. Now.
I have found, because of my very young age of
sixty nine, that it's difficult to maneuver through this, especially
if you travel within states, which I do, and education
(31:28):
sometimes is difficult to find and receive. But I have
found an individual that I feel very comfortable with locally
here in the Capitol District region of New York, that
I feel comfortable with that she is giving me guidance
as far as these cost for healthcare. Now I emphasize healthcare.
(31:56):
Here's the second component. What happens if there is a
long term care event. Because we talk about retirement income planning,
we talk about the cost of insurance, but we don't
talk about when the bus comes off the road and
there's problems. And I've seen too much of it over
(32:18):
the last few years that I try to overemphasize this.
Sometimes in my office they think I try to overemphasize
it too much. But I've literally seen people go through
almost their entire life savings facilitating taking care of a
loved one. Go try to find one. Go try to
(32:40):
find a home care provider right now. Typically it isn't
someone that you find is Typically it's someone in your
family that becomes a caregiver. And that, to me is
probably one of the most difficult things in life to do,
is to become a caregiver. So when we talk about
(33:03):
building a pension plan and building out a retirement income
distribution plan, and we talk about all the options that
are available. To please understand when I say this to you,
there's two things that are critical. And after doing this
for such a long time, The first and foremost, know
(33:26):
what your zip code is going to be. Where am
I going to live? Because the rules and the regulations
are different in Florida than they are in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Tennessee.
All of these options that I'm discussing with you, you
need to understand exactly where are you going to live,
(33:47):
and what is the support system and what are you
trying to achieve in regards to your health and your
financial goals. Your health and your financial goals. You know,
Fidelity has been a great partner for us at the
Retirement Planning Group. I'm actually going to a conference in
(34:10):
October in Boston for a three day conference on retirement planning,
and my personal feeling is is that Fidelity with their
financial strength, also has the ability, because of that financial strength,
to bring a lot of data, a lot of information
(34:32):
as far as how to better deliver financial services to
our clients in the businesses that we serve. When you're
talking about a multi trillion dollar I believe somewhere fourteen
to fifteen trillion dollars of money they currently manage. They've
(34:52):
been in business a long time. But here's the key,
because everybody will say this to you, no one has
a crystal ball in the future. If you had told
me that a husband and wife that would walk into
my office as he just did this week, age sixty
(35:13):
that are now paying eighteen hundred dollars a month for healthcare.
They basically recreated their pension benefit. They don't have a pension,
but they do have a pension. It's called healthcare. I'd say,
you're smoking that wacky weed and you land it on
a different planet. But that's the world that we live
in today. Where does an end? Where does this insanity end?
(35:37):
How much longer can people afford to pay these unbelievable
costs for health care, long term care, prescription drugs, etc.
I wish I had the answer to it. I've got
a lot of friends that are in the financial services
business and also individuals that are in the insurance industry.
(36:00):
I was told years ago from a gentleman one of
my best friends, Dave Wilkie from Wilkie and Associates, that
we were at just at the tip of the iceberg
with this problem. Now here's the question I'll ask you,
and don't you know, turn a radio up loud, because
I want you to hear this one loud and clear.
In New York State, US taxpayers are on the hook
(36:26):
for healthcare costs for retirees and also a lot of
the school teachers that have retired, which will last for decades.
So when you look at your tax bill and you
look at what I just paid out in September. The
end of September, my payments had to go out from
(36:47):
my two homes, and you know, I caught my breath,
and I remember what Dave Wilkie said, is that, you
know what, it's only going to go up. And you
know what, Dave Wilkie was one hundred percent right. We
are on the hook taxpayers. Now. Listen, my wife just
(37:10):
retired as a teacher. She spent twelve years in the
school district, and I applaud her and I basically understand
how difficult it is to work in a school system.
I don't think anywhere people have no idea the pressure
that are on these teachers today. But the cost that's
(37:32):
associated with living in a state that has very lucrative
benefits is going to ultimately, in my opinion, this is
my opinion, it's going to drive more people out of
here because we're just talking about the tip of the
iceberg unless there's major changes. So when we build a
(37:54):
pension plan and we build out cost, what are we
supposed to assume for inflation, for insurance, for taxes, for healthcare,
for food, fuel, close your eyes and think what was
(38:15):
all that fifteen twenty years ago. Well, it was a
hell of a lot less. It was a hell of
a lot less. We're paying almost four times higher today
in fuel than we paid in nineteen ninety nine. I
know that for effect, four times four hundred percent. Nineteen
(38:36):
ninety nine it was about eighty nine cents right now
locally here in the Capital to sut region where I
live three twenty five three forty three sixty. So we're
going to talk about ways for you to structure your
investments in order to deal with this. But sometimes if
(39:00):
you have undersaved, it's our belief at the Retirement Planning
Group that the well being of our clients is to
basically give you hard facts and then ultimately you're going
to have to make a decision whether you feel comfortable
(39:22):
with the selection of the investments that we choose and
the protection that we provide you on your estate. These
are different times. These are times that for a lot
of us, we never thought we would be in. But
(39:42):
there's a lot of people out there that are hurting.
There's a lot of people out there that have a
hard time paying their bills. There's a lot of seniors
out there right now. One of the big things that's
going on right now, which I just heard when I
was down in Florida on a podcast, there's a lot
of seniors that are moving in with one of them
another cohabitating because they can't afford to basically live on
(40:06):
their own. You will live longer than you expect, and
you need to heed my advice. You need to understand
the selections that you make and don't make them the
day that you walk out of retirement into retirement. Make
(40:29):
them in the red zone. Some we hear some three
to five minimum, as high as seven. You've got to
start building out the plan. I'll be right back, your
partner for success. David kopekair WG WISE Retirement Planning specialists
(40:50):
the Retirement Planning Group. We understand that retirees face many
important decisions that can affect their long term financial success.
Some of these decisions around making investments that will help
create a hedge against outliving their assets, the impact of inflation, taxation,
and rising healthcare costs. Most of our clients like the time,
(41:11):
the desire, or the experience to manage their own investment portfolios.
We consider it to be an honor and a privilege
to help our clients make sound investment decisions that will
contribute to a secure financial future for them. Because over
ninety percent of our clients or retirees with similar concerns,
we are in the best position to approach such challenges
(41:32):
with experience and skill. Give us a call today at
five one eight, five eight zero one nine one nine
five one eight five eight zero one nine one nine
or RPG Retire on the web.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
If you have questions on maximizing your savings, navigating health
care costs, or preparing for your dream retirement lifestyle, We've
got you covered.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Listen weekly to Dave Kopek from the Retirement Planning Group
right here on WGY Saturdays.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
At seven am for the Retirement Planning Show, and also
on Saturdays at noon and Sundays at eight pm for
Retirement Ready. And remember you can listen to past shows
anytime anywhere on the iHeartRadio. App Appointments are available by
calling five one eight five eight.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
All right, let's listen to some tunes. All right, let's
talk about how we get our income. How do we
get our baseline, That's what we call it at the
Retirement Planning Group. Baseline. We want to know the minimum
(43:25):
amount that's going to command. Where do you start. Well,
for most of us, we know we're going to get
sold security right, so we start with solid security and
we do a guestimate where we think we're going to
be pretty pretty accurate. Numbers are pretty accurate. So we
call social security, or we get the statements from the
clients and we look at our social security. We'll put
(43:45):
that into e money, our software package. And then some
of our clients have pensions or had a pension and
then it was frozen and then they're going to have
X number of dollars going to be paid out to them,
So we take the pension income. We try to do
some current analysis on that. Some of your corporations now
(44:09):
are saying, listen, take the money and run. Does it
make sense? I use National Grid as an example. We
do a lot of work with National Grid. National Grid
has two plans. They have the cash balance account and
they have their four and one K account. The cash
balance account they can turn into a pension. What is it.
(44:31):
It's an annuity. So we look at the annuity, what
the payment is going to be. Then we take the
four and one K program and we put that in
and we run calculations what we estimate that we can
get income off of that, and then we make a
decision do we want to take the pension the annuity
(44:56):
or do we want to take the cash? Rolling into
an eye, but say that probably ninety nine percent of
the time we take the cash. Why do we take
the cash Because if you live a short life and
your wife does or something happens to you prematurely, where
does all that money go. It goes back to the company,
(45:19):
doesn't go to you, your family, your loved ones, So
you've lost out. So if we can supplement, if we
have to supplement with the four oh one K in
what are two bridge to the benefit that they're providing you,
or put in a provision where we're going to basically
(45:41):
take a certain dollar amount and pay it down over
a period of time in the four oh one K.
Because R and D requirement of distribution, it's just it's
very particular and specific to the client what you're trying
to achieve. I am not a big believer in taking
the company annuity, Never have been, never will be. And
(46:02):
the reason for that is because I've worked all those
years busting my hump. I want to control the money.
I want to have my hands on the wheel. I
want to basically direct that money. And when I passed away,
I want to go to my loved ones. That's the
main one right there. I want the money to go
to my family, not back to the company. So you
(46:27):
take the pension, the four to one K, You take
any savings that you have outside of non qualified assets
real estate, royalties, etc. Etc. Rental properties. We've got a
lot of clients that have rental properties. And once you
have that baseline income, right then we start doing calculations
(46:48):
as far as when does it make sense for you
to receive the Social Security because we'll look at it
at sixty two, as sixty five, sixty seven, and it's
seventy and then we say, you know what, because of
your particular situation, go get it. Because of your particular situation,
(47:09):
waight to age sixty seven or wait to age seventy.
It all depends and how important it is in order
for you to have assets that are not burdened by taxation.
IRA assets are probably the biggest Achilles hill for all
of US four oh one k New York State deferred compensation.
(47:31):
Those moneies are all pre tax money the government has
a plan. There's twenty trillion dollars out there in IRA assets,
forty trillion dollars in qualified assets, and they're just waiting
for you to do nothing because all that money is
going to be taxed as ordinary income when it comes
out the door, and when you pass away. Typically what
happens the kids say, give me the money, cash it out,
(47:58):
and then what happens at h RMD eight seventy three
right now for requirement of distributions, The government has a
plan for you. That plan is that we want you
to start taking distributions whether you need it or not.
And it depends on your age, the uniform lifetimetable, the divisors,
(48:18):
and I'm not going to get into that because a
little warrior, But the bottom line gets down to is
that qualified money, as Natalie Choate says, is the mortgage
on your IRA, Federal, state and possibly a state tax
depending on your zip code can basically really take a
(48:39):
major hit on the value of those accounts. So I've
talked a lot about pension benefits, creating pension benefits. The
dynamics of what's happening in the retirement arena. Your zip
code important, It is we're but here's the big thing. Okay,
(49:07):
hopefully you call us. If you don't call somebody, because
I can tell you right now it's complicated. Had a
gentleman called me this morning that basically said take action.
He came in with his wife, had a great conversation.
They're wonderful people, and he basically said, I've been listening
(49:29):
to you for years. I should have taken action sooner.
But you've got to do the math. If you're going
to retire within five years, get going. Okay, get going.
(49:51):
If you expect twenty years in retirement, then do some
calculations on twenty years in retirement making one hundred thousand
dollars a year. Husband and wife, Let's try to figure
out how do we try to keep you there based
on the assets that you've accumulated over your lifetime, with
the selection of social security and pension benefits. You're fortunate
(50:14):
enough to have a pension. There's no secret formula. As
I said at the beginning of today's show, I played
sports my whole life. I coached. It's probably the best
(50:35):
thing that I think I could have done to prepare
to be into this industry, the financial services industry, because
in sports. To excel, you have to be dedicated and
focused in this business. Here's a number that will shock you.
Within the first five years, ninety five percent of the
(50:58):
individuals that come into the financial services industry are going
ninety five percent. That means only five percent of us
make it. Let's stay on track. So here's the good part.
We do the analysis. If you're on track, we dance,
(51:23):
we do high fives, we congratulate one another, and we
throw confetti up in the air. If you're not on track,
then we're going to recommend to you what you have
to do in order to get on track. It's that easy.
Changes and modifications are easy to make. They're not so
easy to make once you're out the door. So if
you want some help, you want to start building a
(51:44):
retirement plan, a wealth management plan for your retirement. That's
what we do with the Retirement Planning Group. Give us
a call. Our office telephone number is five one eight
five E to zero one nine nine. Check us out
on the web RPG retire dot com. God bless, be
safe and I'll see you next week for another Retirement Ready.
Thank you for.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Listening to Retirement Ready, hosted by Dave Kopek, w G
wise Retirement Planning specialist. If you'd like to talk with
Day or someone of the Retirement Planning Group, call five
one E five EID zero nine nine that's five twenty
five eight zero nine one nine during business hours, or
visit rpgretire dot com. The Retirement Planning Group has five
(52:28):
convenient offices located in Albany, Malta, Glens Falls, Syracuse.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
And Oneana.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Tune in again next week for retirement planning strategies with
Dave Kopek right here on WG wise Retirement Ready. The
information or services discussed on this show is for informational
purposes only and is not intended to be personal financial advice.
The investments and services offered by US may not be
suitable for all investors. If you have any doubts as
to the merits of an investment, you should seek advice
(52:56):
from an independent financial advisor,
Live from the wgy iHeart Studios. Welcome to Retirement Ready
with your host Dave Kopek from the Retirement Ready Show.
Every week, Dave and his team discuss the waste They
can help people make informed decisions about a wide array
of retirement planning information that can support you and developing
a more certain financial future for you and your family.
(00:21):
Now it's time for Dave Gopec WGY's retirement planning specialists.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
All Right, Happy Saturday, October fifth. Hard to believe we
are already into the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four.
First and foremost, before I get into today's show, which
is always a topic specific, and today we're talking about
(01:02):
pension planning. But I want to send my heartfelt thoughts
in prayers to all of our clients and loved ones
that are in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee. The devastation
has been extreme, it's been horrific. My cousin lost her
(01:23):
house in tarp And Springs, so it's affected my family
and probably a lot of people that are listening to
today's show. So I want to get that behind me.
But our thoughts and prayers are with you and make
a donation to the American Red Cross. They are aggressively
(01:43):
going out trying to facilitate and help the people that
are in need. So, you know, a blink of an eye,
it's been a horrible, horrible time down in that region
of the United States. We have a lot of clients
in Florida, and I can't tell you how hard it
(02:04):
is for me sometimes to go through even some of
the areas that have still not recovered from the previous
hurricanes and events that have happened. So we are with you,
we support you, and we're praying for you. We have
a lot of clients. I think we're in twenty eight
(02:26):
states now, but we also have a lot of people
that listen to us on iHeartRadio, and I thank you
for that. We get a lot of emails and contacts
and people that like to listen to the show. As
you're quite well aware, we do multiple shows here on iHeartRadio.
We have the Retirement Planning Show. We also have this
topic specific program which is called Retirement Ready, And all
(02:50):
we try to do is focus in on one topic
for the entire program. So today's topic is one that
is constantly discussed over and over and over again, and
it's the question what do I do when I retire
(03:13):
and I have to basically create a check, not receive
a check, but create a check for the rest of
my lifetime, not only for myself, but also usually there's
a spouse involved, or a loved one or a significant other.
It's a daunting task and it's one that you have
(03:36):
to give great consideration to in discussion. And as I've
said multiple times throughout radio, our presentations, our workshops. We've
been on radio now for twenty five years, and I've
always said over and over and over again, make sure
(03:56):
you're selecting the correct option. The days of the Golden Watch,
the check, the parachute, the healthcare, those days are over.
For most of us, the ninety percenters, We're gonna have
to take our life savings. We're gonna have to take
(04:17):
the money that we've accumulated in our lifetime. Maybe there's
gonna be a wealth transfer that's gonna help us out
to buffer some of this expense and cost. But the
bottom line gets down to is that when you think
about creating income that could pass hopefully with longevity over
(04:39):
the next thirty to forty years, right sixty five years old,
the American College says for financial planning, you got a
plan for age one hundred, now age one hundred, so
I got thirty five years. I got over three decades.
(05:00):
Some of the data that's out there right now with
this AI that they're saying is that if you live
another five or ten years, you've got a very good
chance of living past the age of one hundred. Because
what it's going to do in order to solve a
lot of our problems in healthcare, so we're I'm going
to talk about what I consider to be some of
(05:22):
the most crucial mistakes that people make. I'm going to
talk about the pinocchios, the things that you hear that
you shouldn't listen to. And I'm also going to talk
about what I consider to be the red zone. Five
years before you retire are critical. I want to say
(05:45):
that again, the five years before you retire are critical.
On a one to ten, it's a ten plus. You've
got to make sure that you determine or have a
pretty good idea of what you can afford during your
(06:06):
retirement years when you quit working and there's no more
check coming in from the employer, and now you have
to determine and create your own check with the money
that you've accumulated in your lifetime. Are you ready? Are
(06:26):
you prepared? You know, we talk about the red zone
at the retirement Planning Group consistently, not only with our
existing clients that haven't retired yet, but with prospective clients.
I just had some people in this past week and
(06:46):
a long chat with them. He's sixty years old. He
wants to retire in the next five years. I said
to him, you've got to start building out your buckets
of money. Now here's one of the key bullet points.
I have three or four then I'm gonna go over today.
The number one is this, once you reach the age
(07:11):
of fifty nine and a half, fifty nine and a
half critical number, most of your qualified plans four oh
one k's, et cetera will allow you to do what
we call an in service distribution. What does that mean?
That means that all that money that's in that pot
(07:31):
at four oh one K, I can now get that money,
do a IRA rollover. It's a non taxable event. And
now I start building out my own investment plan, not
the ones that have been selected through my four oh
one K provider, but the ones that I want the
(07:52):
ones that I think are going to be the ones
that I want to have during my retirement years. Half
is critical, but because it allows you to take an
in service distribution. It goes trustee to trustee transfer right.
(08:12):
If it goes from Vanguard, you can go to Fidelity,
you go to Vanguard, to go to Schwab and go
to all the other custodians that are out there, but
you don't touch it. It's a trustee to trustee transfer.
That means one of the money gets transferred over to
a self directed I Ray. You got a whole big
bunch of cash there now, and now you're going to
(08:34):
start building out your buckets of money, and we're going
to talk about the most crucial one bucket one bucket one.
Why is it crucial. It's crucial because of point of entry.
Point of entry means, am I going into the financial
(08:55):
services market with my hard earned assets, money that I've
accumulated in my lifetime in a bull market or a
bear market or a flat market. If it's a bull market,
I'm kicking my heels up and I'm dancing in the street.
If it's flat, I can probably still sleep at night.
(09:17):
If it's the bear, I'm gonna have a hard time
sleeping because that means I'm entering into the financial services
industry when the markets are deteriorating, they're selling off, and
not only am I receiving income, but I'm also losing money.
(09:39):
Not fun. Not fun. And after doing this for forty
three years, I can tell you one thing for sure,
most of you will do exactly what I just said.
You won't plan it out, you won't do it in
service distribution. You'll leave your job, you'll take the money,
(10:00):
You'll go to the guru, the local guy, the national guy,
whoever it may be, that has all the answers, and
you won't build out your buckets of money, and you
won't do all the other things that need to get
done in order to facilitate what I considered to be
the sleep at night retirement. Everybody wants to have the
(10:24):
touchdown account, the touchdown account, always up, never down. So
if you want to retire in five years, you got
to know some certain things, and I'm going to talk
about those things today on Retirement Ready. The last five
(10:45):
years before you retire is probably the most critical, without
a doubt, critical time when it comes to your retirement plan.
Say that again. The last five years before you retire
(11:05):
is probably the most critical time before you retire, and
we're going to discuss it in detail today on Retirement Ready.
I'm Dave Kopek, your host, President of the Retirement Planning Group.
We're going to be right back after this quick message
the eighty six percenters. Do you know that eighty six
percent of the population has no defined benefit pension plan.
For most of us, we have to take our life
(11:26):
savings and create a paycheck for the rest of our
lives in retirement. What is your plan for retirement income distribution?
How you manage your assets during the most critical years
of your lifetime. Nobel Prize winning economist William Sharp has
called retirement income distribution the nastiest, hardest problem in finance.
He points out that investment, uncertainty, and mortality can derail
(11:48):
the most careful laid out retirement income plan. Call our
offices today to start the process of building a retirement
income distribution plan. After forty one years of being in
the financial services business, you need to start taking action
to start building your own personal retirement income distribution plan.
How do you do that? To take action? Five one
eight five eight zero one nine nine. That's five one
(12:09):
eight five eight zero one nine one nine or RPG
retire on the web. Don't procrastinate, motivate to start building
your retirement income Distribution Plan five one eight five eight
zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
If you have questions on maximizing your savings, navigating healthcare costs,
or preparing for your dream retirement lifestyle, We've got you covered.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Listen weekly to Dave Kopek from the Retirement Planning Group
right here on WGY Saturdays at seven am for the
Retirement Planning Show, and also on Saturdays at noon and
Sundays at eight pm for Retirement Ready. And remember you
can listen to PASS shows anytime anywhere on the iHeartRadio.
App Appointments are available by calling five one eight five eight.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
All Right, you got the top down, you got the
motor running, get in in gear and let's go. That's
a good song. Way to go to Zach. All right,
we're talking about red zone planning. We're talking about pension planning.
We're talking about are you retirement ready? Are you financially
(13:37):
prepared to move forward in your retirement? You know, I
played sports my whole life, my children did I coached
for a while, and you always have a game plan right.
Sometimes you got to modify it, sometimes you got to
(13:59):
just Sometimes you get your buck kicked. Sometimes you go
go back to the drawing board and figure out what
you did wrong was retirement planning. If you do it
wrong out the gate, you might be in big, big
trouble if you are not prepared, and if you're not
set up properly, it could be devastating. So we always
(14:22):
tell people this when they first come in and they
have a chat with us. If you are not prepared,
you might not like our answers. You might have to
work longer, you might have to make modifications to how
you live right. Your retirement lifestyle might have to be
adjusted with what you expect you can do. But we
(14:44):
also have what we call an action plan game plan,
and we use this in order to determine your level
of readiness for your retirement in this five year stretch
what I call the five year dash, because we all
know what can happen. You hear that. That's my finger clicking.
(15:06):
That's how quick time goes by. I just said, we're
October of twenty twenty four. It seems like it just
started for me. So here's some key points that I
want you to think about, especially those individuals that are two, three, four, five,
(15:27):
seven years away from retirement. If you want to retire
and you want to go into your retirement years feeling good,
it's time for you to sit down with a financial team,
whether it's the retirement planning group or somebody and do
a realistic, realistic retirement needs analysis. What does that mean.
(15:55):
We have a software package called e money. E Money
allow us to do some calculations and some future projections.
If you are fortunate enough to have a pension benefit,
we put that in there. Social Security we put that
in there. The pool of money that you currently have,
we do some assumptions what we think we can grow
it to over the next four or five years. Then
(16:17):
we do what we call baseline income projections. We want
to know how much can we spend? What is my budget?
I don't want to know your bills, okay, because I
might tell you take your piece of paper and your
bills and throw it out the window. Because I want
(16:38):
to know what your budget is and what you can
expect to receive and guess what you might have to
modify your budget. You might have to modify your lifestyle.
You might have to get rid of the BMW and
go out and buy yourself a Chevy. You might have
to downsize, you might have to move to another state
(16:58):
that's more affordable. And then once you do that, you
want to take your expenses and you want to match
it up to your retirement income that you can hear.
Here's the word reasonably reasonably expect to have on a
monthly basis. These are my expenses. This is how much
(17:24):
I feel comfortable taking off my portfolio. This is how
much I have in Social Security. This is my small
pension that I have. This is what I can expect
net after taxes in order to have quality of life.
Then we ask you a question, because we're all quite
(17:47):
well aware of what's happening. If you haven't heard it,
hear this. The greatest wealth transfer in the history of
mankind will happen over the next twenty to thirty years.
Our children, our grandchildren are going to receive somewhere between
(18:08):
eighty to eighty five trillion dollars. Now, believe it or not,
I have clients. My oldest client is one hundred and two,
soon to be one hundred and three. He will be
at my galfouting on Thursday of this coming week. You're
going to live a hell of a lot longer that
you anticipate some of us. And if that is the case,
(18:33):
do you have adequate assets to ensure that you're going
to basically handle the L word, the L word. Yes,
the L word which a lot of people will talk
about in great detail in the years to come, and
(18:55):
that's called longevity. Longevity and sequence of returns are probably
the most critical part of retirement planning that Dave Kopek,
(19:16):
mister Einstein, mister screaming monkey, miss screaming monkey, the gurus
on Wall Street have no answer to because they can't
come up it. Nobody can predict the future. Nobody can
predict the future, thank god. Right, So, longevity and sequence
(19:39):
of returns leads us down to a path as far
as how much of my money do I want to
have allocated into non guaranteed assets? I'll say that again,
how much of my money do I want to have
allocate into non guaranteed assets? I don't care if it's Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab,
(20:15):
any of your major investment banking firms. They all say
the same thing. You should have a certain percentage of
your portfolio on top of your Social Security benefits that
will ensure you guaranteed income for the rest of your lifetime.
(20:40):
But most of the financial advisors out there don't talk
about it. You'll hear all the negatives, all the things
that you know. They're so smart, they do such a
great job managing money. Don't ever put yourself in a
position that you're having guarantees. And the reason for that,
(21:01):
to be honest with you, I can't answer it because
I honestly believe from the bottom of my heart they're
doing a major disservice to you as the consumer of
financial products and also someone that has to have guaranteed
income possibly for decades, thirty forty years. But the big
(21:23):
thing is is that we all shoot for the moon.
We all shoot for the moon. And when I say that,
here's the thing that I always say over and over again.
And sometimes my staff and my associates don't like to
hear this, but I'll tell people face to face across
the table over ring Central Zoom, whatever it is, any
(21:48):
of our offices that we have, we can't satisfy the
income that you're looking for for the quality of life
based off of the pool of money that you have.
You are shooting at an unrealistic expectation. So as they said,
(22:10):
you're going to have to make some changes to your
lifestyle or just your retirement horizon, because at age sixty
five you said you wanted to retire. You're not there.
What do you mean by that, Well, you have an
(22:33):
unrealistic expectation. Some people think I can take eight, nine,
ten percent off my portfolio. Oh that's what the stock
market did. Really, do you understand sequence of returns? Do
you understand how you allocate money in your retirement years
versus how you allocate money during your accumulation years. So
(22:58):
how much money will you need? How much money will
you need? I'll help you. People come in even say
it all the time. How much money will I need?
I don't know. I can't tell you that I know
how long you're going to live. I have no idea
(23:18):
right now what your lifestyle is, no idea. Are you
struggling right now pre retirement to pay your bills or
you're kind of dancing in the street and you're doing okay?
And what kind of retirement do you want post retirement?
And at the most basic level, at the most basic level,
(23:43):
an analysis of your retirement needs might consist of all
the tools in the toolbox. What do you mean by that?
All the tools in the toolbox? At the retirement planning group,
we believe in open architecture. That means that we do
(24:03):
have a bias. We do not pooh pooh any type
of investment because our perception of investments should not filter
into your perception and your needs for your retirement years,
which unfortunately is not the case for a lot of
(24:24):
people now in the financial services industry, because you'll hear
advertisements over and over and over and over and over
and over and over and over and over again that
annuities are the worst things since sliced bread. Well, I'll
take the other position on that we've done hundreds of
millions of dollars of annuity business in the forty three
(24:46):
years that I've been in business, and that one person
ever came back to me and said, I wish I
never did this. It makes up a very very small
percentage of my business. But these are individuals that needed
to create what i'd say at the beginning, a pension benefit.
They needed a pension, They needed guaranteed income for both
(25:07):
spouses for an extended period of time, and they like
to sleep at night. They don't like to stare at
the fan. So that's what we're going to talk about
when you come back. How to create the pension. What
are the options that are available to me? They gave
you a lot of meat. I'm gonna give you some
potatoes and some vegetables when we come back. But as always,
(25:30):
anything I'm discussing, check us out on the web rpgretire
dot com. Rpgretire dot com. The name of the company
is the Retirement Planning Group. I'm Dave Kopek. I'm the
president WG WISE Retirement Planning Specialists. We are heard on
over eight hundred stations nationally on eight Heart iHeartRadio. We'll
(25:53):
be right back after this break. All right, we are back.
(26:30):
This is retirement Ready. I'm Dave Kopeck, your host and
in the business now for forty three years, which is
hard to believe. And hopefully, if I have the longevity
of my good friend mentor gentlemen that I have a
lot of respect for, I've got many, many, many, many
many more years to go. So pension benefits in retirement.
(26:54):
Nine out of ten of us don't have pensions we
got to add up all the buckets. The IRA is,
the four case, the non qualified money, the equity in
the house possibly, and we got to ask ourselves how
am I getting to my destination? And the other part
of the equation is too for some of you, which
is important some of you won't be important. Do I
(27:20):
want a legacy, a transfer of wealth to the next generation?
You know, life expectancy now is pretty amazing. I spent
a lot of time in Florida because we have a
lot of households in Florida. I also have a daughter
that goes to college in Florida now, so I will
(27:40):
be back and forth to Florida quite a bit. And
because of that, I'm amazed that the people are down
there in their seventies and eighties and nineties that you
would think they're in their forties and fifties and sixties.
So while you're expecting to live a long life, which
all of us do, you also want to consider whether
(28:02):
your family has been prone to illness, right bad genes, DNA.
Sometimes we get a package that we don't want that's
inherited through our bloodline that should be considered too. So
when you're ensuring that you're going to have adequate amounts
(28:25):
of retirement assets, which is number one on the list.
You also have to take in consideration, folks, which is
the demon out there right now, the boogeyman in the closet,
healthcare cost and long term care. And I speak from experience,
and I also speak from someone that's doing it every
(28:48):
single day. Long term care insurance, long term care health
insurance is a major issue for retirees today. Our mothership, Fidelity,
which we clear all of our business through, released their
(29:10):
twenty and twenty four retire healthcare cost estimate. A sixty
five year old person today is expected this has nothing
zero to do with long term care. So, sixty five
year old couple today, you're expected to have out of
(29:33):
pocket health care expenses estimated to be three hundred and
thirty thousand dollars over your retirement. Here's another bullet point
from that report. Fifty half of you that are listening today,
whether you're here in the Capitol District region or throughout
the United States, that you're approaching retirement, expect to feel
(29:58):
overwhelmed or confused about how to select Medicare coverage. Does
this resonate right making you feel warm? And fuzzy. Healthcare
(30:19):
costs are probably the most unpredictable expense when it comes
to retirement planning without a doubt, and as we approach
what we call the fall enrollment period for healthcare benefits,
it's a great time for you, the consumer to be
(30:42):
proactive with your overall efforts and needs to try to
plan for those healthcare costs long, long, long before they occur.
Because if you're going to retire at sixty five and
you're going to get a Medicare that it cares up,
(31:02):
you better know the apple that you're picking off the tree. Now.
I have found, because of my very young age of
sixty nine, that it's difficult to maneuver through this, especially
if you travel within states, which I do, and education
(31:28):
sometimes is difficult to find and receive. But I have
found an individual that I feel very comfortable with locally
here in the Capitol District region of New York, that
I feel comfortable with that she is giving me guidance
as far as these cost for healthcare. Now I emphasize healthcare.
(31:56):
Here's the second component. What happens if there is a
long term care event. Because we talk about retirement income planning,
we talk about the cost of insurance, but we don't
talk about when the bus comes off the road and
there's problems. And I've seen too much of it over
(32:18):
the last few years that I try to overemphasize this.
Sometimes in my office they think I try to overemphasize
it too much. But I've literally seen people go through
almost their entire life savings facilitating taking care of a
loved one. Go try to find one. Go try to
(32:40):
find a home care provider right now. Typically it isn't
someone that you find is Typically it's someone in your
family that becomes a caregiver. And that, to me is
probably one of the most difficult things in life to do,
is to become a caregiver. So when we talk about
(33:03):
building a pension plan and building out a retirement income
distribution plan, and we talk about all the options that
are available. To please understand when I say this to you,
there's two things that are critical. And after doing this
for such a long time, The first and foremost, know
(33:26):
what your zip code is going to be. Where am
I going to live? Because the rules and the regulations
are different in Florida than they are in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Tennessee.
All of these options that I'm discussing with you, you
need to understand exactly where are you going to live,
(33:47):
and what is the support system and what are you
trying to achieve in regards to your health and your
financial goals. Your health and your financial goals. You know,
Fidelity has been a great partner for us at the
Retirement Planning Group. I'm actually going to a conference in
(34:10):
October in Boston for a three day conference on retirement planning,
and my personal feeling is is that Fidelity with their
financial strength, also has the ability, because of that financial strength,
to bring a lot of data, a lot of information
(34:32):
as far as how to better deliver financial services to
our clients in the businesses that we serve. When you're
talking about a multi trillion dollar I believe somewhere fourteen
to fifteen trillion dollars of money they currently manage. They've
(34:52):
been in business a long time. But here's the key,
because everybody will say this to you, no one has
a crystal ball in the future. If you had told
me that a husband and wife that would walk into
my office as he just did this week, age sixty
(35:13):
that are now paying eighteen hundred dollars a month for healthcare.
They basically recreated their pension benefit. They don't have a pension,
but they do have a pension. It's called healthcare. I'd say,
you're smoking that wacky weed and you land it on
a different planet. But that's the world that we live
in today. Where does an end? Where does this insanity end?
(35:37):
How much longer can people afford to pay these unbelievable
costs for health care, long term care, prescription drugs, etc.
I wish I had the answer to it. I've got
a lot of friends that are in the financial services
business and also individuals that are in the insurance industry.
(36:00):
I was told years ago from a gentleman one of
my best friends, Dave Wilkie from Wilkie and Associates, that
we were at just at the tip of the iceberg
with this problem. Now here's the question I'll ask you,
and don't you know, turn a radio up loud, because
I want you to hear this one loud and clear.
In New York State, US taxpayers are on the hook
(36:26):
for healthcare costs for retirees and also a lot of
the school teachers that have retired, which will last for decades.
So when you look at your tax bill and you
look at what I just paid out in September. The
end of September, my payments had to go out from
(36:47):
my two homes, and you know, I caught my breath,
and I remember what Dave Wilkie said, is that, you
know what, it's only going to go up. And you
know what, Dave Wilkie was one hundred percent right. We
are on the hook taxpayers. Now. Listen, my wife just
(37:10):
retired as a teacher. She spent twelve years in the
school district, and I applaud her and I basically understand
how difficult it is to work in a school system.
I don't think anywhere people have no idea the pressure
that are on these teachers today. But the cost that's
(37:32):
associated with living in a state that has very lucrative
benefits is going to ultimately, in my opinion, this is
my opinion, it's going to drive more people out of
here because we're just talking about the tip of the
iceberg unless there's major changes. So when we build a
(37:54):
pension plan and we build out cost, what are we
supposed to assume for inflation, for insurance, for taxes, for healthcare,
for food, fuel, close your eyes and think what was
(38:15):
all that fifteen twenty years ago. Well, it was a
hell of a lot less. It was a hell of
a lot less. We're paying almost four times higher today
in fuel than we paid in nineteen ninety nine. I
know that for effect, four times four hundred percent. Nineteen
(38:36):
ninety nine it was about eighty nine cents right now
locally here in the Capital to sut region where I
live three twenty five three forty three sixty. So we're
going to talk about ways for you to structure your
investments in order to deal with this. But sometimes if
(39:00):
you have undersaved, it's our belief at the Retirement Planning
Group that the well being of our clients is to
basically give you hard facts and then ultimately you're going
to have to make a decision whether you feel comfortable
(39:22):
with the selection of the investments that we choose and
the protection that we provide you on your estate. These
are different times. These are times that for a lot
of us, we never thought we would be in. But
(39:42):
there's a lot of people out there that are hurting.
There's a lot of people out there that have a
hard time paying their bills. There's a lot of seniors
out there right now. One of the big things that's
going on right now, which I just heard when I
was down in Florida on a podcast, there's a lot
of seniors that are moving in with one of them
another cohabitating because they can't afford to basically live on
(40:06):
their own. You will live longer than you expect, and
you need to heed my advice. You need to understand
the selections that you make and don't make them the
day that you walk out of retirement into retirement. Make
(40:29):
them in the red zone. Some we hear some three
to five minimum, as high as seven. You've got to
start building out the plan. I'll be right back, your
partner for success. David kopekair WG WISE Retirement Planning specialists
(40:50):
the Retirement Planning Group. We understand that retirees face many
important decisions that can affect their long term financial success.
Some of these decisions around making investments that will help
create a hedge against outliving their assets, the impact of inflation, taxation,
and rising healthcare costs. Most of our clients like the time,
(41:11):
the desire, or the experience to manage their own investment portfolios.
We consider it to be an honor and a privilege
to help our clients make sound investment decisions that will
contribute to a secure financial future for them. Because over
ninety percent of our clients or retirees with similar concerns,
we are in the best position to approach such challenges
(41:32):
with experience and skill. Give us a call today at
five one eight, five eight zero one nine one nine
five one eight five eight zero one nine one nine
or RPG Retire on the web.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
If you have questions on maximizing your savings, navigating health
care costs, or preparing for your dream retirement lifestyle, We've
got you covered.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Listen weekly to Dave Kopek from the Retirement Planning Group
right here on WGY Saturdays.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
At seven am for the Retirement Planning Show, and also
on Saturdays at noon and Sundays at eight pm for
Retirement Ready. And remember you can listen to past shows
anytime anywhere on the iHeartRadio. App Appointments are available by
calling five one eight five eight.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
All right, let's listen to some tunes. All right, let's
talk about how we get our income. How do we
get our baseline, That's what we call it at the
Retirement Planning Group. Baseline. We want to know the minimum
(43:25):
amount that's going to command. Where do you start. Well,
for most of us, we know we're going to get
sold security right, so we start with solid security and
we do a guestimate where we think we're going to
be pretty pretty accurate. Numbers are pretty accurate. So we
call social security, or we get the statements from the
clients and we look at our social security. We'll put
(43:45):
that into e money, our software package. And then some
of our clients have pensions or had a pension and
then it was frozen and then they're going to have
X number of dollars going to be paid out to them,
So we take the pension income. We try to do
some current analysis on that. Some of your corporations now
(44:09):
are saying, listen, take the money and run. Does it
make sense? I use National Grid as an example. We
do a lot of work with National Grid. National Grid
has two plans. They have the cash balance account and
they have their four and one K account. The cash
balance account they can turn into a pension. What is it.
(44:31):
It's an annuity. So we look at the annuity, what
the payment is going to be. Then we take the
four and one K program and we put that in
and we run calculations what we estimate that we can
get income off of that, and then we make a
decision do we want to take the pension the annuity
(44:56):
or do we want to take the cash? Rolling into
an eye, but say that probably ninety nine percent of
the time we take the cash. Why do we take
the cash Because if you live a short life and
your wife does or something happens to you prematurely, where
does all that money go. It goes back to the company,
(45:19):
doesn't go to you, your family, your loved ones, So
you've lost out. So if we can supplement, if we
have to supplement with the four oh one K in
what are two bridge to the benefit that they're providing you,
or put in a provision where we're going to basically
(45:41):
take a certain dollar amount and pay it down over
a period of time in the four oh one K.
Because R and D requirement of distribution, it's just it's
very particular and specific to the client what you're trying
to achieve. I am not a big believer in taking
the company annuity, Never have been, never will be. And
(46:02):
the reason for that is because I've worked all those
years busting my hump. I want to control the money.
I want to have my hands on the wheel. I
want to basically direct that money. And when I passed away,
I want to go to my loved ones. That's the
main one right there. I want the money to go
to my family, not back to the company. So you
(46:27):
take the pension, the four to one K, You take
any savings that you have outside of non qualified assets
real estate, royalties, etc. Etc. Rental properties. We've got a
lot of clients that have rental properties. And once you
have that baseline income, right then we start doing calculations
(46:48):
as far as when does it make sense for you
to receive the Social Security because we'll look at it
at sixty two, as sixty five, sixty seven, and it's
seventy and then we say, you know what, because of
your particular situation, go get it. Because of your particular situation,
(47:09):
waight to age sixty seven or wait to age seventy.
It all depends and how important it is in order
for you to have assets that are not burdened by taxation.
IRA assets are probably the biggest Achilles hill for all
of US four oh one k New York State deferred compensation.
(47:31):
Those moneies are all pre tax money the government has
a plan. There's twenty trillion dollars out there in IRA assets,
forty trillion dollars in qualified assets, and they're just waiting
for you to do nothing because all that money is
going to be taxed as ordinary income when it comes
out the door, and when you pass away. Typically what
happens the kids say, give me the money, cash it out,
(47:58):
and then what happens at h RMD eight seventy three
right now for requirement of distributions, The government has a
plan for you. That plan is that we want you
to start taking distributions whether you need it or not.
And it depends on your age, the uniform lifetimetable, the divisors,
(48:18):
and I'm not going to get into that because a
little warrior, But the bottom line gets down to is
that qualified money, as Natalie Choate says, is the mortgage
on your IRA, Federal, state and possibly a state tax
depending on your zip code can basically really take a
(48:39):
major hit on the value of those accounts. So I've
talked a lot about pension benefits, creating pension benefits. The
dynamics of what's happening in the retirement arena. Your zip
code important, It is we're but here's the big thing. Okay,
(49:07):
hopefully you call us. If you don't call somebody, because
I can tell you right now it's complicated. Had a
gentleman called me this morning that basically said take action.
He came in with his wife, had a great conversation.
They're wonderful people, and he basically said, I've been listening
(49:29):
to you for years. I should have taken action sooner.
But you've got to do the math. If you're going
to retire within five years, get going. Okay, get going.
(49:51):
If you expect twenty years in retirement, then do some
calculations on twenty years in retirement making one hundred thousand
dollars a year. Husband and wife, Let's try to figure
out how do we try to keep you there based
on the assets that you've accumulated over your lifetime, with
the selection of social security and pension benefits. You're fortunate
(50:14):
enough to have a pension. There's no secret formula. As
I said at the beginning of today's show, I played
sports my whole life. I coached. It's probably the best
(50:35):
thing that I think I could have done to prepare
to be into this industry, the financial services industry, because
in sports. To excel, you have to be dedicated and
focused in this business. Here's a number that will shock you.
Within the first five years, ninety five percent of the
(50:58):
individuals that come into the financial services industry are going
ninety five percent. That means only five percent of us
make it. Let's stay on track. So here's the good part.
We do the analysis. If you're on track, we dance,
(51:23):
we do high fives, we congratulate one another, and we
throw confetti up in the air. If you're not on track,
then we're going to recommend to you what you have
to do in order to get on track. It's that easy.
Changes and modifications are easy to make. They're not so
easy to make once you're out the door. So if
you want some help, you want to start building a
(51:44):
retirement plan, a wealth management plan for your retirement. That's
what we do with the Retirement Planning Group. Give us
a call. Our office telephone number is five one eight
five E to zero one nine nine. Check us out
on the web RPG retire dot com. God bless, be
safe and I'll see you next week for another Retirement Ready.
Thank you for.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Listening to Retirement Ready, hosted by Dave Kopek, w G
wise Retirement Planning specialist. If you'd like to talk with
Day or someone of the Retirement Planning Group, call five
one E five EID zero nine nine that's five twenty
five eight zero nine one nine during business hours, or
visit rpgretire dot com. The Retirement Planning Group has five
(52:28):
convenient offices located in Albany, Malta, Glens Falls, Syracuse.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
And Oneana.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Tune in again next week for retirement planning strategies with
Dave Kopek right here on WG wise Retirement Ready. The
information or services discussed on this show is for informational
purposes only and is not intended to be personal financial advice.
The investments and services offered by US may not be
suitable for all investors. If you have any doubts as
to the merits of an investment, you should seek advice
(52:56):
from an independent financial advisor,
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