Retirement Planning Show

July 29th, 2023

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Yeah, Welcome to the Retirement PlanningShow with host Dave Kopak. In the
financial services business for over thirty fiveyears. Their Retirement Planning Group LLLC is
a registered investment advisor. David M. Kopak is also a registered representative of
persh kaplan Sterling Investments Incorporated PKS intheir separate capacities. A registered representative of

(00:22):
PKS, David M. Kopac mayrecommend the implementation of securities through PKS instead
of Retirement Planning Group LLC. PersCapitlan Sterling Investments and Retirement Planning Group LLC
are not affiliated companies. Now it'stime for the Retirement Planning Show on wgy
iHeartRadio Music You Should Know featuring MorganWallen, Whiskey Glasses Foo Foo me the

(00:47):
drink because I don't want to steala thing no more. Hell now,
I just want to sit to thebay wares of me. Good morning,
Good morning morning, Wake up,Wake up, San Francisco. This is
the Retirement Planning Show. Hello.My name is Nicholas Thomas, financial planner

(01:08):
with the Retirement Planning Group. We'rean independent firm. We are located right
here in upstate New York. Ourmain office is in Malta two six nine
one State Route nine. I wantto swing by and say hello, I'd
love to see you. We've alsogot a few more offices in the area.
I went down in Albany if youwant to meet down that way,

(01:30):
and then went out in Oiana andfor those folks up in the North Country,
we can meet you up in Glen'sFalls. So we also do house
calls and going to to a fewhigh clients houses recently. For a lot
of those older folks that maybe theydon't drive or they just want to sit
down have a cup of tea athome, be more than happy to come

(01:51):
out there and h and do thatbecause I do love tea. So but
no, we've had a lot ofgreat appointments this year, a lot of
great folks w GI. So Ireally appreciate everybody calling in and starting to
get their their wheels in motion onretirement planning, asset protection legacy, so
the legacy that you wish to leaveyour loved ones, and a lot of

(02:15):
work on wealth replacement for the survivingspouse. You want to make sure that
when you're making those elections for yourpension, your social security amount of withdrawals.
You're taking off your portfolios. Youhaven't mind that of your spouse,
and you're thinking about their future aswell when you're making these decisions, especially
if especially if you like them.If you don't like your spouse, that's

(02:38):
a different conversation, but we canhave that. But no, our number
at the office if you want tocall us and come in and sit down
with us, it's five one eightfive eight zero one nine one nine.
Again, that's five on eight fiveeight zero one nine one nine. This
week, Dave is traveling, soyou're not gonna hear from the here from

(03:00):
the Big Cheese this week unless hecalls in. But we've got Frank Lang
coming on. I believe he's comingin at seven thirty here, so we'll
be able to go through the estateside of things a little bit, and
I'm excited. I've yet to dothe show with Frank, so I think
it'll be very educational. I'll beasking them a lot of questions, a
lot of questions that I see fromfolks from just sitting down with them when

(03:22):
they come in. They have alot of questions on their estate, whether
they have everything structured properly, ifthey need to change anything, they need
to add beneficiaries to their accounts,what should they do with a special needs
child as far as maybe a specialneeds trust. And then also they might
have children that have some issues andthey don't want them to receive a large

(03:44):
inheritance right away. So it's aboutstructuring the estate in a way that they
might receive an income stream for therest of their lives or on a monthly
basis, or whatever the case maybe, maybe for weddings, first time
home purchases. So we go througha lot of customed estates for folks.
And again, I mean we workwith folks of all sizes, all shapes,
and from wherever they are. Wejust need to make sure we have

(04:09):
a plan for that person and it'ssuitable. So all right, some uh,
let me get some dirty some laundryout of the way. The markets
the five day, the SMP wasup about point eight percent this week.
A year to date, we're lookingat the SMP five hundred being up twenty
percent. The Dow was up aboutpoint six five percent this week, and

(04:30):
then year to date on the Dowit's up about seven So it's been it's
been lacking a little bit compared tothe other indexes. And then with technology,
we've got the NAZ deck. Sofar on the on the year to
date, it's up about thirty eightpercent. So technology has been been doing
really well this year. M it'sbeen on a on a very fast run.
Here u NAZ deck for the fiveday it was up almost two percent

(04:54):
this week, so one point sevenpercent. The bonds have been pretty flat
this year, so the aggregate bondindex is flat on the year. The
five day it's down about half apercent, so but it's kicking off yields.
I mean, you have a lotof bonds out there right now.
They're getting pretty attractive yields. Lastyear, specifically the beginning of last year,

(05:17):
there was nowhere to be found.I mean you couldn't find yield in
a in a corporate or and treasuryease or CDs. But then you're seeing
over time here the Fed just increasedrates again last week another twenty five basis
points a quarter of a percent,and now we're starting to see even more

(05:39):
attractive yields. I mean, ifyou look at the one year treasury as
of Thursday or Friday I was lookingat it was five point three percent for
a one year. Those don't issuecoupons while you hold them. It says
zero coupon type of holdings, soyou buy them at a discount, and
then once they mature you get thatfive point three percent. It's a math

(06:00):
problem with a lot of those.You know what you're gonna get over that
time frame. There's treasury bonds aswell treasury notes, so you can go
longer than a one year anything oneyear or shorter that's going to typically be
a treasury build. So there's optionsout there. There's multi year guaranteed annuities
gigs that are that are getting someattractive yields as well. If you want

(06:25):
something for a longer period of time, so maybe a three year or a
five year or a seven year guarantee, then you'd probably look towards these products.
You can also take income off ofthese products on an annual basis,
so each year you could take theinterest that's earned off of that contract and
use it for discretionary income or whateveryou whatever you want to use it for.

(06:48):
So I think there's great options thereas well. I think the five
year was around four point seven percentlast I checked. So again, if
you want us to get more intothe weeds if you want us to look
at these options for you. Ifyou're someone that's more conservative, you don't
want to bear a lot of marketrisk in your portfolio, I think these
would be options that we'd bring tothe table. There's also some some minuity

(07:12):
products that have parachutes on them,so if the market's not doing too well,
they have a guaranteed growth associated withthem. It's also buffered products.
There's a lot of different items thatwe could take a look at specific to
your situation. I was a CFPcandidate for a while now, and going
through my studies with the with theCFP program M, it taught you that

(07:36):
you really need to take into accountthe current client you're sitting down with.
Where are they, what have theybeen through UM, start discussing goals objectives
with that client and h and startevaluating their current path on what they're doing.
What are they contributing to UM,what what buckets of money do they

(07:56):
have earmarked for this event? Whatbuckets of money do they have earn't for
future retirement income? And what's theircurrent contribution rate? What are they contributing?
What is a company matching? Ifthey have a match available to them?
Are they contributing just to pretax?Do they have some post tax accounts
to have flexibility? Do they haveliquidity in their portfolio? So there's a

(08:18):
lot of conversations around that you needto evaluate their current path and start discussing
alternative options that have a higher successrate, that might have a higher percentage
of being successful. Some folks Isee them walk in the office and they're
in their sixties, maybe they're sixtyfour or sixty five. They plan on

(08:39):
retiring this year. They have onehundred percent of their wealth and inequities in
a five hundred index. How's thatgoing to start kicking off income for you
in retirement? Are you just goingto start drawing off the off of those
assets and start diminishing that principle.I mean, yes, if you get
market returns and you can take thegains each year. But if we have

(09:00):
some down years, you're you're sellingout of shares when they're down. You
need to have an income plan associatedwith your portfolio. So again we talk
about income. I think it's oneof our major strengths for a lot of
the folks that come in and meetwith us. I think retirement income is
probably one of your most important thingsto discuss because you need to make sure

(09:22):
that you're you're planning properly. Sowhen we talk about retirement income, you
got to bring up social security.So we've done a lot of work in
the social security field as far aselecting when to start taking. Some folks
that make sense to take right atsixty two, other folks that might make
more sense to delay, maybe delaytill you're sixty seven. For a lot

(09:43):
of folks that's their full retirement agenow or seventy, continue to delay that
and to maximize your benefit. Ifthere's just one spouse that was the primary
breadwinner, whether it be the husbandor wife, generally you want to delay
that that breadwinner's social Security and tryto access other accounts so that you receive

(10:07):
the higher social Security for not onlythe rest of your life, but also
your spouses in case something should happento you, because that would be the
survivor's benefit with social Security. Soit's important to look at. It's important
to think about if you're someone that'sin your maybe forties or fifties, you
should be able to log into SocialSecurity's website get a statement of where you're

(10:31):
at. As far as a monthlyamount that would be available to you at
sixty two versus sixty seven versus seventy, because you're not getting any younger and
you're getting closer to that that retirementstage of your life, and it shouldn't
be a stressful time on trying topick and choose when to take your Social
Security. It should be more ofa stress free point of your life.

(10:54):
You're not retiring from You're retiring two. So you're retiring two stress free retirement
hopefully. And we have a lotof folks that I've seen them change over
time. When they're going through theretirement phase or right before retirement, they're
a little stressed out. And thenonce they do finally retire and start seeing

(11:16):
that their portfolio is providing appropriate cashflow for them. They've got social Security
coming in, maybe maybe they havesome sort of pension, They've got income
streams that they know are going tobe there, and we have them invested
in a way where they're not havingto stare at the market every day.
They can kind of sit back andkind of you just check it on their

(11:39):
monthly statements. So life is stressful, you want to make it as as
you want to make it the leastamount of stressful as possible. So are
we running up on a break here, guys? Yeah, all right,
so I'm gonna take my first breakhere. But again, this is a
calling show. Also if you wantto call in you have question or if

(12:01):
you just want to say hello,the numbers one eight hundred talk WGUI and
that's one eight hundred talk W guy. We're gonna have Frank Lang on at
seven thirty, and then when wecome back, I'm want to talk a
little bit more about income and thenI want to talk about a client situation.
I had this fast week, Soeverybody, we're gonna take quick break.
I'll be back right after this.The eighty six percenters, do you

(12:22):
know that eighty six percent of thepopulation has no defined benefit pension plan.
For most of us, we haveto take our life savings and create a
paycheck for the rest of our livesin retirement. What is your plan for
retirement income distribution? How will youmanage your assets during the most critical years
of your lifetime. Nobel Prize winningeconomists William Sharpe has called retirement income distribution

(12:43):
the nastiest, hardest problem in finance. He points out that investment, uncertainty
and mortality can derail the most carefullaid out retirement income plan. Call our
offices today to start the process ofbuilding your retirement income distribution plan. After
forty one years of being in thefinancial services business, you need to start
taking action to start building your ownpersonal retirement income distribution plan. How do

(13:07):
you do that? To take action? Five one eight five eight zero one
nine one nine. That's five oneeight, 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 oneeight five eight zero one nine one nine.
If you have any questions, pleasecall in now at one eight hundred

(13:28):
eight two five fifty nine forty nine. That's one eight hundred talk WGY one
eight hundred talk w g Y.We are live in studio to answer your
questions. I haven't thrown mantel whiskey? How to give my money back?

(13:52):
Almost said? It turns memory anew one day yet a sippingpping, buzz,
shooting doubles like it's nothing nothing,make you go I need something you

(14:13):
and we are back. Song MorganWell, Morgan in the morning, Morgan
in the morning like that. Iwas supposed to go to Nashville last month.
We did not end up going,so it was kind of sad.
But I think we're planning for November. I've been talking to my parents about
it. I'll head out there withthem. Were my cowboy hat Zack's coming

(14:37):
with me. He's gonna wear hiscowboy boots. We're gonna we're gonna go
rope some cattle. Eh. Ohgod, he's dancing back there. But
we get a sidetrack. If youwant to call ins a calling show,
it's twenty hundred talk w g Yand it's oney hundred talk w g Y.

(15:01):
If you want to call in,you want to ask a question,
I'd be more than happy to answerit for you. Try to answer it
for you. Um. So wewere talking about it income a little bit
before break there, but I wantedto. I wanted to kind of go
through a situation we had with awith a client recently at least, it's
been working really hard to try toget this done over the last week here

(15:24):
for us. But um we gota client that came in. He had
a get a non qualified so notin IRA, not a WROTH. It
was just a non qualified So it'slike you take, you took money from
the bank and purchased this product.It was in non qualified annuity contract,
so it was in his name,and then he had a beneficiary on that.

(15:48):
Let's just say it was his wife. But but again it was just
in his name. It's non taxqualified um. And we had the situation
where he purchased it quite a whileago. Let's say, just for illustration
purposes, he put in four hundredthousand dollars and now the contract has grown

(16:10):
to six hundred thousand dollars. Sothis non qualified annuity, there's no riders
on it, so there was noguarantee for growth, There was no guarantee
for a certain amount of income ata certain age. So he didn't purchase
any of these riders on this nonqualified contract. But it grew, so

(16:33):
it's done well over the years.And now he's he's looking at this contract
and I'm looking at it with him, and he's taking a certain amount of
income off of it. Let's sayit's about two thousand a month, and
we're going through it, and Isay, you know, client, you
do have options here. I mean, if you were to liquidate this,

(16:55):
that'd be a big no no,because then you're going to see a huge
capital gain. You're gonna experience atwo hundred thousand dollars capital gain in this
illustration, so four hundred and it'sgrown to six hundred. If you liquidate
that put it back in your bank, you're going to see two hundred thousand
dollars tax liability there. So Italked to him. I said, hey,
there's some there's probably some better optionsavailable to you out there. Now.

(17:19):
There's some options with more investment choices. So we're using one type of
product that has well over three hundreddifferent investment options within a non qualified annuity.
Now, I'm a big advocate forfolks to utilize these non qualified annuities
as a tax sheltered vehicle. Imean, if you had that money in

(17:42):
a typical brokerage account and you're tryingto be more active with those dollars and
managing the account, you got towatch out when it comes to capital gains
tax. You start making too manytransactions within the account throughout the year,
and there's green so the accounts up. You've got positions that have gained value,

(18:04):
you start selling those. That's thetax liability in the year that you
do it. With these now unqualifiedannuities, you can park the money in
these accounts, make transactions you wantto be more tactical. Again, the
one I'm talking about has more thanthree hundred investment choices that you can you
could pick and choose from and builda pretty diverse, diversified portfolio within there,

(18:26):
which is great. I was lookingthrough all the investment options last week
and there's a number of different mutualfund companies investment companies that you can choose
from their funds. A lot ofthem are best in class. So we
were able to talk to the clientabout doing a ten thirty five exchange from
the old contract into this newer contractthat's available in the market, and in

(18:52):
doing the ten thirty five exchange,he's not going to realize any capital gains.
It's a like to like train foras long as you fill out the
paperwork properly. You've got to gothrough suitability concerns so Reg sixty and it's
a replacement, so you need tomake sure that you actually look at the

(19:15):
benefits of the client making that transaction. So going from the current holding and
is non qualified annuity to the newnon qualified annuity and it needs to make
sense or else our compliance or actuallyour broker dealer who is actually perch Caplan
Sterling on that side, they needto review it for us and they need

(19:36):
to approve it. So you needto make sure you have a good argument
on why it makes sense. AndI think it made a lot of sense
for this client because it's more investmentoptions. It's immediate I don't want to
say liquidity, but there's no surrendercharges, so you can immediately start drawing
income off this contract, which theclient is looking to do. He was
taking and come from it before,so again to make sure there's no surrender

(20:00):
charges for this client and you didn'tneed to increase the amount of investment options
available to him. So that's justone situation that we were going through last
week. But I think it makesa lot of sense for a lot of
folks out there to have that conversation. If you have one of these older
annuities that you purchased fifteen, twentyyears ago and it's kind of just sitting

(20:21):
there and you don't know what todo with it, there might be newer
I mean you look at cars orless twenty years they've came they've they've developed
some new technology. They've come sofar. I mean every car you look
at now as a computer in thein the middle of the middle of the
dashboard. So um. But there'snewer products out there. There's ones that

(20:44):
have unique features, their structured aspecific way to accommodate what you're looking for.
When a client comes to me withwhat they're looking for and what they're
trying to do, then I reachout to these different a new companies or
um, these strategic partners that wehave and say, hey, this is
what the client's looking for. Whatdo you guys have over there. I'm

(21:07):
not only calling that strategic partner,but I'm also calling three other strategic partners,
four other strategic partners to try toget the best product that's available out
there for our client. And that'swhat we do for every every person that
walks in the excuse me, thatwalks in the office. We're trying to

(21:29):
figure out what the best product andthe most suitable product for you is and
we spend a lot of time doingit. So but again, if you
want to call our office, thenumbers five on eight five eight zero one
nine one nine. If you wantto check us out on the web or
websites. RPG Robert Paul Griffin,RPG retire dot com and that's www dot

(21:51):
RPG retire dot com. Each weekwe put articles up, So there's a
couple of articles usually right there onour own page, and then a calculator
and then they usually a video shortvideo you can watch and kind of um
it's mostly topic specific, so ifyou want to go in there and check
it out, feel free to dothat. You can also see my ugly

(22:11):
mug on there and the rest ofour staff. Everyone's right on that front
page. I think you hit teamand then I'll bring you to that team
page. You can go through everybodytheir experience, any designations, and uh,
I think it goes through I wentto Sea College, so it talks

(22:32):
about that a little bit. Part. I participated in their majorgalan fund.
I was a student managed fund backin the day. I think they still
do it. And someone actually contributedreal money to this fund and we were
able to go in and invest inthe real market and then h we would

(22:52):
do some stock reports, would doa lot of small cap, but yeah,
we would. We would pitch stocksto the to the class us and
then we would say we'd have avote on whether or not we would buy
it. You could also short positions. We went through a lot of derivatives.
It was learned a lot and seeingit was a great college down there,
and uh, we'll go visit visitit soon. But are yelling at

(23:14):
me over there? Oh we gota minute left? Okay? Yeah,
So again, we've got Frank Langcoming on here. Guys, I think
he might be here. It's aboutseven thirty. Maybe he's not. He
might be running a little late,and that's fine when he gets here.
He gets here, but we shouldbe going through the estate side of things
when he does roll into the officehere. I've got some questions for him.

(23:36):
I've got some meetings that, uh, questions have come up, and
I'd like to discuss for them aswell. And I've never done it with
him before, so I'm kind ofexcited about this. But if you want
to call our office numbers five oneight five eight zero one nine one nine,
I've got any questions on the estateside of things, start thinking of
him. Now. We're only gonnabe here for another hour and a half

(23:56):
and hopefully Frank's walking through that doorover there. But again, the number
here is twenty hundred talk W guy, And that's twenty hundred talk W guy.
If you want to call in youhave a question, feel free to
do that. Lena, take abreak, we'll be back right after this.
Kick the dust up call all weeklong. It's a farming town.

(24:26):
They're making them money. Grown tractors, plows with flashing last back in up
in two lane rooms. They takeone last lap around that son of hide
gloes down and then it's on commongirl to get on back Z seventy one.

(24:49):
Like a candid land, we goaway out. Well, there ain't
no bad. We turn this andwe are back. For those of you
just waking up, good morning,good morning, good morning. It's a
good Saturday. I think they've gotthe Jim Dandy up at Sarahtoga if I

(25:11):
heard that correctly, a little horserace going on. Um, I haven't
been up there yet. I've beenup to the race track. Maybe all
go check it out today. Ifyou see me, I'll be the guy
with the little bat blue light inmy hand. But um, but now
it's it's been a great summer sofar, a little bit too much as
far as rain. But um,we're kicking, we're rolling and it's warm

(25:36):
out, so I can't complain toomuch. But Ku happened to stumble and
going on, frank, how areyou good? Good? Thank you?
Got that mic going over there?But um, but yeah, but sarahtoga.
They've got the track season going.I went through there, um yesterday
way home from golf with a fewclients, and it was it was buzzing.

(25:56):
There's a lot of people up thererunning around and um, I think
that's always how it is during trackseason. But good morning over there,
Good morning. Can you hear me? I can. How're you doing that?
I'm good, I'm good. Iwas talking you up the first half
hour, so great, trying notto disappoint. How great of a guy
you are over there? And hI've been doing a lot of work,

(26:18):
a lot of work the last fewmonths here, I think specifically as you
guys makeping me very busy. Iappreciate it. Yeah, you appreciate it.
I do probably want to pound yourhead off the wall a couple of
times, a couple of times.Yeah, it's been it's been a little
crazy, but yeah, yeah,it's the alternative. Yeah, I think
busy is good. So I thinkwe're doing a lot of work. We're

(26:40):
helping a lot of folks. Um, yeah, I mean, I just
wanted to go through. I knowyou probably got some stuff you want to
talk about, but um, Ijust want to go through kind of the
process of when you sit down andmeet with somebody, what you're looking for,
what you're asking them or they dothe most of talk and what is
that first appointment you ually look likefor you, it's it's primarily let's they

(27:03):
get to know each other kind ofthing. So I want to find out,
you know, what's going on intheir lives, how how they're doing
health wise, m what the whattheir plans and goals are long term,
and how they want their a stateto be distributed after they're gone. And
in the meantime, I want totry to make sure that we're protecting them
so that if one spouse gets sickand ends up having to go into a

(27:26):
nursing home, we're not wiping theother person out by paying that nursing home
bill, because you know, nobodyever wants to go to a nursing home.
But the only thing worse than thatis paying seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars
a month for the privilege of beingthere. So we want to try to
figure out how we can structure theirassets so that they don't lose control of
the money that they have, butthat they're also positioning their money so that,

(27:48):
if you know, we get abad health outcome, we're still going
to be able to get them qualifiedfor medicaid to pay for that long term
here and so that so that wecan preserve their family wealth for the infitted
the other spouse or for the kids. Yeah, yeah, which is great.
And uh, I mean as faras like the biggest red flags,
like people people may maybe people don'thave their basic will, healthcare proxy,

(28:11):
power of attorney, durable power ofattorney right, correct. I know you're
a big, bigger app kit fordurable. Do you think a lot of
folks that walk in they don't evenhave those basics set up? Some of
them don't, some of them.Some of them have documents that were done
a long time ago. And oftentimesI'll find people who are very they say,
oh, I haven't haven't done mypower of attorney, you know,

(28:33):
in fifteen years. I'm sure ithas to be updated. And I tell
them no, the fact of thematter is Near State has revised the Power
of Attorney forms in two thousand andnine, two ten, two thousand and
twelves, and every time they didit they made him worse. So so
if you've got one of those oldones, it's like gold. You know,
they don't ever get rid of those. Because back in back be four,
two thousand and eight, I couldsay I want my agent to have

(28:56):
all the powers that I would havefor myself, and there's no question that
that my espouse or my children havethe authority to do stuff on my behalf.
The new power of Attorney forms don'tlet us do that anymore. So
they'll say, here are the basicthings that the legislature was identified that we
think you would want to do,you know, real estate transactions, you
know, buying and selling stuff.It's more limited. Yeah, it's much

(29:18):
more limited. Limited. And nownow we actually have to say, if
we want more power than that,we have to we have to specify what
that is. Okay, and Ithink I'm a reasonably smart guy, but
nobody's that smart. How do Iknow? You know, imagine, you
know, ten years ago did Ieven know what cryptocurrency was? So so
my power of Attorney form doesn't sayanything about and you can trade my crypto

(29:41):
account because it didn't exist, youknow. So now we have to go
through and specify all that stuff.And I wish the legislature would just say,
you know what, you really wantyour Asian to be able to do
exactly what you could do if wecould bring you to that moment of lucidity
and have you to do it.So why why can't we just said,
yeah, you know, and it'sit's not you know, the fact that

(30:03):
I have to that I have tospecify each and everything doesn't make it any
more likely or any less likely thatan agent is going to abuse their authority
and do something that they shouldn't havedone. Yeah, you know, but
but but it is a problem ifI'm trying to move money back and forth
between spouses to get one of themeligible for Medicaid, and then the Department
of Social Services comes in and says, you can't do that because you're you

(30:26):
didn't grant your agent the ability tomake gifts and if we're transferring money for
no consideration, that's a gift.Yea. Yeah, so so it's got
a lot more technical. It soundslike, uh so those older power of
attorneys they hold up Yeah, well, yeah. So, yeah, and
I tell people if you let's say, let's say your old power of attorney
said I I appoint my spouse,but it doesn't say anything about your kids.

(30:48):
And now I want to do anew power of attorney that says spouse
first, kids second. We'll dothat for you, but don't get rid
of that old one, because theold one, there's no question that you
have that your agent has the authority. So making that new one doesn't cancel
out. It doesn't even cancel outanother one. Now, how would you
cancel it? Would you have to? You can? There's a there's a
form that you can fill out thatsays, on such a such a date,

(31:12):
I created a power of attorney andI hereby revoke it. And then
and then you serve a copy ofthat to each bank or broker that you
have, so you know that,under no circumstances is somebody who's gonna walk
in the door with the wrong powerof attorney. Yeah, and use it,
but especially if that person is nolonger part of your life. Correct
or maybe that person passed away,right, but that's it. Yeah,

(31:32):
It's like if I if I justgot divorced from my spouse, chances are
I don't want them very continue tobe my power of attorney. Yeah,
no, sometimes sometimes sometimes I seefunny stuff. I had a client down
to myoni onto office and who hadbeen divorced for quite a while, and
he named his spouse the trustee ofhis trust. And then about three weeks

(31:57):
later she came in and saw meand named him as the trust of her
trust. Really because sometimes, yeah, sometimes people are still pretty good civil
So yeah, we get that alot too, with even beneficiaries. If
you look at like four one kys, they'll have their ex spouses the beneficiaries
still. I don't think that's onpurpose yeast probably not, but or their
parents. They have their parents asthe beneficiaries still, and maybe their parents

(32:20):
passed away since then. So yeah, that's one of the things that we
do is try to take a lookat what everything is and make sure that
things are titled correctly, because oneof my big goals and estate planning is
to avoid wasting time in sarroget's courtand so and so. You can avoid
that by you know, using atrust, but you can also avoid that
just by being careful about how you'veyou've titled your assets. Most people don't

(32:43):
realize that. You know, ifthere is a marriage couple and they have
children, that they can have ajoint account with each other, but they
can still name their children as aspays on that account. Yeah, so
I can have a joint account buthave it payable on death to my kids
and that way regard are thoselves theorder in which we die, that doesn't
matter. There's always going to bea name beneficiary. Yeah, so then

(33:05):
the joint owner of the account wouldassume ownership and then from there, if
they passed away, then it wouldbe passed on to the content, not
contingents, but the actual beneficiaries onthe account. Correct, because the ownership
would be would be joint. Butyeah, so it's always a conversation about
who are the proper beneficiaries. Thebest way to avoid probate having beneficiaries on

(33:27):
those accounts as far as the irasthe roths, your typical brokerage accounts.
So you want to make sure you'reyou're checking that continuously because things change.
We've had children develop maybe drug addictionsor gambling issues. Maybe you have a
special needs child, so you needto align something for them as well.

(33:49):
So there's a lot of different conversationsaround the estate and settling the estate.
I think I've been getting a lotmore questions during appointments. I think that's
why you've seen quite an uptick inmeetings over the last few months here.
But a lot of great folks fromw g Y too. If you want
to call in, this is acall in show one eight hundred Talk w
g Y one eight hundred Talk wg Y. If you have a question

(34:10):
for I got Frank Gwin for thenext hour and fifteen now, uh,
feel free to call in. He'sa You get free attorney questions right now,
absolutely, so take advantage of it. But I've got my coffee going
this morning. I think we gota couple more minutes before the break.
But when we get back, Ido want to talk about um in test
date. So if in a statesettles with no will healthcare product, we

(34:34):
don't need the health at that point, but no will, no trust what
happens to it. And I thinka lot of folks out there have that
as their plan. And I thinkand I think once they find out what
New York States in test states successionplan is for them, they're gonna want
it, get it will Yeah,Yeah, I completely agree with you.
Read a lot about it when Iwas at CFP candidate over the last couple

(34:57):
of years. Here, um,what specifically happens to all those those assets
and how they're distributed, well,how the state plans on distributing the assets.
So I think it'll be a goodconversation. But again, if you
want to call our office, wewant to meet with US members five eight
five eight zero one nine one nine. Again that's five one eight five eight
zero one nine one nine. Youcan visit us on our website rpg retire

(35:21):
dot com and it's rpg retire dotcom. Feel free to call in.
Initial consultation is always free. Sowe'll sit down and have a chat with
you, map out a game plan. We'll see where you're at, see
what you've been doing as far ascontribution wise, what you have, as
far as accounts, we can puteverything in e money. We go through
e money with folks. Usually thesecond appointment, that first appointment will sit

(35:45):
down, go through a questionnaire thatwe mail you and kind of get a
feel for who you are. Youdo a lot of the talking that first
appointment. I'll ask you questions likean interview, but it's always nice and
I love meeting with folks, myselfand Dave, and we've got a great
staff Jim. Jim always welcomes youwith open arms. I'll give you a

(36:07):
couple of pickleball stories, but thenthen I'll bring you into the office and
we'll sit down like your situation,see where you're at, and talk about
potential alternatives. Try to provide youwith a path that might have a higher
success rate in retirement, and makesure that we account for the income streams
you have coming in. Any moneydoes a great job of that. So

(36:29):
feel free to give us a callagain the numbers five and eighty five,
eight zero, one nine, onenine, or you could call us right
now and ask us a question onea hundred talk w GUI. We're gonna
take a break. We'll be backright after this. The eighty six percenters,
do you know that eighty six percentof the population has no defined benefit
pension plan? For most of us, we have to take our life savings
and create a paycheck for the restof our lives in retirement. What is

(36:51):
your plan for retirement income distribution?How will you manage your assets during the
most critical years of your lifetime?Nobel Prize Winning economists Illiam Sharpe has called
retirement income distribution the nastiest, hardestproblem in finance. He points out that
investment, uncertainty, and mortality canderail the most careful laid out retirement income

(37:12):
plan. Call our offices today tostart the process of building your retirement income
distribution plan. After forty one yearsof being in the financial services business,
you need to start taking action tostart building your own personal retirement income distribution
plan. How do you do that? To take action? Five one eight
five eight zero one nine one nine. That's five one eight five eight zero
one nine one nine or RPG retireon the web. Don't procrastinate, motivate

(37:37):
to start building your retirement income distributionplan five one eight five eight zero one
nine one nine. If you haveany questions, please call in now at
one eight hundred eight two five fiftynine forty nine. That's one eight hundred
talk WGY one eight hundred talk WGY. We are live in studio to answer
your questions. Oh, I've gotthat real good, feel good stuff up

(38:08):
unto the seat of my big blackjack truck rolling on thirty five, the
girl by my side. You gotthat son, Dan skirt man waiting on
you man. We are back way. Good morning, Good morning, big

(38:28):
black jacked up truck I got.I got one of those in the park
line with her. Do you seethat, Zach? You see my ford
I got out there. I'm gonnarun over your little miles day you got
probably what's it? Zach? Driveover there? But uh no, good
morning, good morning. I'm sorry, I'm I had a couple of coffee,
so now I'm getting all uh getall excited here to talk about esteate.

(38:52):
Um, we got Frank Lang forthose who just tuning in. Frank
Lang's on the on the radio withme this morning. Dave's out playing cowboy
in Texas, so he's roping cattle. He's ryan horses around. But he'll
be back next week. But ifyou have a question, got an attorney

(39:14):
here, one hundred talk w guy. You can speak to Frank, you
speak to myself. If you havea question on the asset side, the
asset management side, I love tolove to try to answer that question.
I bet ten other people out ofthe same one, So feel free to
call in for the break. Ikind of brought it up. I wanted
to go through what happens to ina state that settles intestate. Okay,

(39:36):
so if you're intestate, it meansthat you don't have a will or you
don't have a valid will that canget admitted to probate. And so if
you die without a will, yourproperty is going to go exactly where the
New York State legislature thought you wouldwant it to go, which is bizarre
because I've never once had somebody tocome in and say, gee, you

(40:00):
know, if I'm married and Ihave kids, I want the first half
of my estate to go to mywife and I want to other half of
my estate to get divided between mykids. But that's what the New York
State legislature imagines that you blond.Yeah, so it's it's crazy. So
if I died tomorrow, my wifegets the first fifty thousand dollars as a
spousal set aside. Then half ofmy estate goes to her, and the

(40:22):
other half of my estate goes tomy daughters. And you know that's I
mean, ninety nine point nine percentof the time people come into me and
to do a you know, awill, and they say, I want
it all to go to my spouse. If my spouse is living if not
I wanted to go to my kidsand equal shares. And then usually the
biggest question as well, in thestatistically unlikely but still possible case that one

(40:46):
of your children died before you,do you want that child's share to go
to his or her kids if theyhave kids, or do you want it
to go to your surviving children?And you know, and like I said,
I always hate to ask that questionbecause nobody everyone wants to imagine that
their kid is going to die beforethem. But those are the kind of
things that we have to think aboutwhen we're game planning out the strategies to

(41:07):
make sure that stuff goes where youreally wanted to go. Yeah, and
then so that's p perturpiest would beis the Latin term that means to the
route and that and so and sothat would go to your kids or to
their grandchildren, as opposed to percapita, which means we're just going to
count pads at that level. Andso if I had three kids and then

(41:28):
one of them died, then it'sjust going to go fifty fifty to my
surviving kids. That's per capita ifrather than following the bloodline correct for the
other child. So that's pretty interesting. Yeah, the purse turpies. I
was reading about that um and thenper capita, so that would be divided
amongst the surviving correct children's correct.So intest it intestate. Sorry, I

(41:49):
can never pronounce it. I'm notan attorney. That's right. Um,
So the state decides how long doesit typically take? You think that process?
Well, so, so whenever youwhenever you're in pro whether you have
a will or not, it's probablygoing to take a couple of years to
play out, okay, because youhave to you file all their original paperwork.
You have to give notice to yourdistributees or the people who would have

(42:15):
inherited from you if you didn't haveavailable will. So we have to first
track on who those people are andthen make sure that we serve them with
a proper notice. Then once thewill or once the intestate succession plan has
been improved by the court, creditorshave a period of seven months within which
to file a claim. So youcan't distribute the assets out. You have

(42:37):
to wait until you have to holdback and off. Let's put it that
way, to cover whatever those potentialclaims would be. Folks can contest it
too, absolutely and that's a publicknowledge. Yeah, that's the big problem
is I had I had a clienta few years ago. I had done
medicaid planning for her husband. Soshe'd been in my office six or seven

(42:58):
times, and she was sharp asattack. She you know, was completely
had it together. And she hadten siblings, and she and she and
she decided that she was going toleave her assets too, because she didn't
have kids to her five surviving siblingsand she was not going to leave anything

(43:19):
to their grandchildren. And and andthe day after she died, all their
grandchildren like popped up and they alllived in California. She told me,
I wouldn't know. There's people Itripped over him. I don't even get
a Birthday card from them, anddon't get a Christmas card from them.
So so, but but as soonas she died, they popped up and
filed objections and the and the firstobjection was that isn't her signature. Now

(43:44):
since since I notarized her signature,yeah, I'm pretty sure it was her
signature. But they just they justobjected everything in the world that isn't her
signature. If it was her signature, she didn't know what she was signing
she was she had dementia, youknow, And and the problem was that
they filed all these friblous objections,but all of her she was ninety two

(44:04):
when she died, and her allof her siblings were in their nineties,
and these grandchildren came in and filed, and it's just stopped everything in its
tracks. And the surviving beneficiaries said, all they have to do is drag
this out a couple of years andI'll be dead, you know. So
so we end up having to settlewith them, which which I was very
unhappy about. But they that's theproblem when you go to it's very easy

(44:30):
to contest the will in the NewYork state. It's not easy to win
that contest, but it's very easyto start it, and you can really
put the brakes on things. Andso that's why a lot of people contest
wills, not because they think theyhave a real chance of getting it set
aside, but just because they canmake themselves enough of a nuisance that you'll
throw a little money at them tomake them go away. Really yeah,
oh well, so in New Yorkstays pretty simple. I mean, people

(44:51):
could just contest the will. Really, no downside, right, I mean,
well, other than pay the attorney, you're gonna pay and turn it
to do it. But but yeah, it's it's that's one of the reasons
that I favor using a trust becausein a trust we don't have to get
noticed anybody. The trust is justyou know, when I die, the
trust is going to read my trustagreement to stribute my assets out the way

(45:13):
that I put down on the page, and none of my potential you know,
beneficiaries are if you're going to knowabout it. Yeah. So so
now instead of saying, can Igo in and make enough of a pain
in the knack of myself that they'llpay me some money to go away?
Now they have to decide do Ireally want to pay an attorney five hundred
bucks an hour to contest this whenI know that there's no chance I'm going

(45:36):
to win it? Exactly? Yeah. And um, I mean also that
wouldn't be public information at that pointif it's in trust, correct, So
your your assets aren't out out therefor people to see. Um, which
is nice. And now when whenpeople contest is that like, um,
you have to actually go to courtto settle it. Yeah, you got
to go to surrogate's court and um, so yeah, anytime I can,

(46:00):
anytime I can avoid setting foot andstart, it's quarters a good day.
Often. How often do you goto court? You think today? Well,
now, I don't go at all. Really. Yeah, this is
one of the benefits of having adaughter who practices a lot, so she
goes. Yeah. So I ifthere's a state administration stuff, I refer
it to my daughter Caroline, becauseshe's really good at that and she likes,

(46:22):
she likes putting up with that.She to me, it's I find
it very bureaucratic and frustrating. Toher, it's just it's like a game,
and she navigates it really well andshe and she just has fun doing
it. Thinks quick on her feet. Yeah. Yeah, I've been watching
a lot of attorney shows on Netflix. Yeah. I don't know if you've
watched any of the Uh, there'sthe Lincoln Lawyer. Oh, I love

(46:45):
that show. Yeah. I lovedit with Mickey Yeah, Mickey ro or
whatever his name is. And thenthere was a Better Call saw Owne was
all right, but hye, Ilove that Lincoln Lawyer show. I think
it's awesome. The ever watching suitsI've watched Yeah, we just started suits.
Yeah, that's a that's a goodshow. I'm through four or five
ups of Harvey. Harvey's the Man. Yeah, so I might go get

(47:05):
I might go for the bar nowthat the CFP is over, So Frank,
you'll be seeing me, h mewalking around with my attorney had h
so. But but again, thisis a this is a talk show,
so feel free to call in numbersone, eight hundred, talk w GUI.
We want some questions from you guystoo. I want to know what's
going through your minds. We've gotFrank here for the next hour, so

(47:29):
feel free to call in if youhave some questions, we'd we'd love to
talk to you about them. Butin the first half of the show today
I was talking about a little bitof the estate or actually the investment management
side of things. Where the marketis. UM. I just want to
reiterate, stay diversified, stay withyour plan. UM. It's a tough
market environment out there. This yearhas been nice. If you didn't stay

(47:50):
invested, you might have missed outon some potential returns depending on how you're
invested last year. UM. Butyou want to have a long term plan.
You want to have a long termgoal and what we do as we
build portfolios for folks that can withstandthe different market conditions on the long term
basis, we don't want to seea lot of volatility for our retirees,
so we had to design portfolios thatare more focused on income. And we're

(48:14):
at a point now with the highestwith the higher interest rate environment where we
can design this income with not alot of risk. You always you're always
gonna have some risk if you arelooking for a six seven eight percent yield
when guarantees are around five, Soyou do need to obtain some risk in
the portfolio. But at the endof the day, I think we can
get you a pretty pretty consistent return, especially in today's world with where interest

(48:37):
rates are. So again, ifyou have a question, call in one
eight hundred talk w guy and that'sone eight hundred talk to w GI.
You can also call our office numbersfive on eight five eight zero one nine
one nine. You can take outa pen. It's five eight five eight
zero one nine one nine. We'vebeen listening to Morgan Wallen this morning in

(48:57):
between breaks, so we get Zachand uh, Zack's back there kicking the
board. So um, Sarah togahas been U been pretty pretty hot this
year. I think I might goup there today, Frank, you go
up to the race track at all? I usually go once a year,
once a year. Yeah, didyou go already? No? No,
we're going up to Sarah Toga afterthis maybe. Uh but yeah, I

(49:21):
always like I usually we go uponce a year. But all my friends
went two weeks ago. It wasthe weekend before I had the exam,
so I was a good boy.But uh, but now that I'm out
of my cave, I might headup there. I don't know. You
got the gym dandy today. Ithink that's a big race up there.
But I'm not too big on thegambling side of it. I like to

(49:42):
kind of just hang out and I'llhave a couple of beers. Watch.
Yeah, check out the hats.They always have a lot of food trucks
up there too. It's like goodfood you can relax for the day.
But uh, but again, thisis the Retirement Planning Show. We're a
local office. We also have someoffices. One in Albany, went up
in Glens Falls, and I think, Frank, let's just use the one

(50:05):
out Noniana for those folks out there. And then yeah, if you want
to come in and meet with usor Frank. Frank comes to Malta and
he's got to you gotta lat themoffice too, right, Yeah, our
main office is in Latham. We'vegot a settling office and one Anta and
then lately I feel like I've beenliving at your office. I know.
Yeah, we've seen you quite abit, which is good. I mean,
it means we're doing a lot ofwork. So cleaning up a lot

(50:28):
of the estates. A lot offolks out there haven't done it yet,
and they're getting to the ages wherethey should be. So if you want
to sit down and start talking aboutyour estate, start talking about your asset
management. The retirement plan is alot of aspects to it. You want
to make sure you cover all yourbases, from a risk management side of
things, to an investment management sideof it, straight through the estate planning

(50:52):
side, and then also legacy.If you want to leave a legacy or
some short some sort of wealth replacementfor the surviving spouse, we could that.
We can definitely get into that.So again, our office numbers five,
eight, five, eight, zeroone nine one nine. If you're
gonna call in speak to Jim Corcoran. If you're an initial, if you
want to come in and have achat with us and just kind of get
a feel for what we do andwho we are. Again, that's five

(51:14):
on eight five eight zero one nineone nine. Jim can do that with
you. You might get a coupleof pickleball stories and maybe talk about as
golf swing. But at the endof the day, we'll get you in
there and we'll meet you everyone.We're gonna take a break. We'll see
on the other side of the hour. Yeah, Welcome to the Retirement Planning
Show with host Dave Kopak. Inthe financial services business for over thirty five

(51:35):
years. Their Retirement Planning Group LLLCis a registered investment advisor. David M.
Kopak is also a registered representative ofpersh kaplan Sterling Investments Incorporated PKS in
their separate capacities. A registered representativea PKS, David M. Copack may
recommend the implementation of securities through pksinstead of Retirement Planning Group LLLC, purs

(51:57):
Capitan, Sterling Investments and Retirement PlanningGroup I'll see are not affiliated companies.
Now it's time for the Retirement PlanningShow on w g y, I've had

(52:22):
a lord and my past, bust, a couple of beautiful girls, tall,
make your back trucks, breakdown,down, run off politicians, labby,
Good morning one Mike, listen tosong all day? I don't know.
Good morning, good morning those areyou just tuning in as the Retirement

(52:43):
Planning Show? My name is NicholasThomas, financial planner with the Retirement Planning
Group. Goodbye nico um where youcan call me whatever you want. I've
been called words probably so if youwant to call in, this is a
call in show. So we're talkingtoday. We got Frank lang On,
an attorney that we've been sending quitea few of our clients too to get

(53:04):
the estates buttoned up. The callin numbers one eight hundred, eight two
five, five, nine, fournine. It's one eight hundred talk w
guy. If you want to callin, you have a question, We're
here to answer it. We're hereto try to answer it now again for
those you just tuning in. We'rea local firm r right out of Malta.
So we want to come in havea chat with us or Frank,

(53:27):
you can meet us in Malta.I've got some offices in Albany Latham area,
and then up in Glens Falls.For those folks in the northern country,
those folks up there on Lake Georgeparty in this weekend. We do
have an office up in Glens Falls, so feel free to give us a
call and then out in Oneanna.I know this radio station reaches pretty pretty
far, so if you're someone outin the western direction from us, we

(53:50):
can meet out in Oneanna. I'venever been out there. It's a beautiful
town. You got a nice littleoffice out there. Yeah, that's that's
Yeah. It's nothing fancy, butit's right in downtown. It's easy to
get too. And I also dohouse squalls these day. So if I
figure if I'm going to drive anhour to Oneonta, I'll drive an hour
in ten minutes and come right toyour house. Yeah. Yeah, so
Oniona. I don't think I've everbeen there. It's a nice little town.

(54:12):
It's a yeah, it's a it'sa very historic, old fashioned kind
of place, but very friendly.A lot of the colleges are one of
the big employers there, so there'sa Sunni and then there's Hartwick College,
and so I do a lot ofwork with a lot of alumni and professors.
Well, yeah, I think Iwent out there with the next girlfriend.

(54:35):
She was checking out. I thinkit was Oneana and then I remember
seeing Hartwick right there. Yeah,and I had a couple friends. You
go to Hartwick, they played footballout there, so U but yeah,
I mean it's a I love theCapital District. I think we have a
great region, a great area.If you want to get out, you
got the Adirondecks up to your northum and get up there. And I'm

(54:57):
a Scatticoke boy Melrose, so uhgrew up with a barn on the property.
But h but again, if youwant to call our office and set
up an appointment, it's five eightfive eight zero one nine one nine.
So I got Frank here for thenext hour. I don't want to waste
his time. We've got got quitea bit to discuss. Um I wanted
to talk about I raise this,uh this segment. If you wanted to

(55:22):
kind of talk about what happens tothem in case someone went into a nursing
home, sure, um, asfar as the individual's IRA and then maybe
the spouse's assets as well. Ifyou kind of just want to go through,
um, what's at stake or whatcould potentially um happen. I think
that would benefit a lot of folksout there. Okay, Well, when
when somebody is looking to get eligiblefor Medicaid to pay for their long term

(55:45):
care costs, um, there's there'stwo different things that the state takes into
account. The first one is whatkind of assets you have. So if
if if I'm married and uh andI'm going into the nursing home, I'm
considered the institutionalized spouse, and thenmy spouse at home is the community spouse.

(56:06):
The institutionalized spouse can have thirty thousanddollars worth of accountable assets and still
be eligible, and then the spouseat home it can have a house,
in a car and about one hundredand twenty thousand dollars and still be eligible
for Medicaid. So if you're ifyou're below that level, then we're not
going to have a problem with gettingsomebody initially eligible for Medicaid. And if

(56:30):
you're above that level, we canmake exempt transfers between spouses. So if
I had never done any kind ofplanning and then I got sick suddenly,
I could just transfer all my assetsto my wife and still would get me
eligible for Medicaid right away. Butthen if she had to go into the
nursing room, she can only shelterthirty thousand, So eventually we would get
wiped out. But the state doesn'tcount everything. So if you have an

(56:53):
IRA or four oh one K that'salready in payout mode, they don't count
that against you when determining your Medicaideligibility. So when you say payout mode,
does that just mean they're taking amonthly Yeah, mandatory minimum distribution?
Okay, So rmds rmds or ifit's a ROTH, if you if you
make an irrevocable election to take theequivalent of your RMDS if it was a

(57:17):
regular traditional IRA, if you're overseventy three, But what if you're below,
if you're no, if you're below, you can just say, look,
even though I'm not required to takemandatory minimum distributions, I want you
to start making those distributions as ifI was seventy three and as if this
was a traditional as long as itgoes into payout mode, now, they're

(57:38):
not going to count the value ofthat account against me when determining my eligibility.
They are going to count they aregoing to count that income that I'm
getting from the rmds as income tome, and so I may end up
having to contribute some of that income. But so, I mean, it

(57:59):
might not be that bad honestly atfirst. Yeah, it's and there there
are options that we have. Soif if we got somebody who had a
very large IRA and then uh,they were gonna you know, they were
had some condition that's getting them intothe nursing home when they're relatively young and
we know that they're going to livea long time, we might just say,

(58:20):
you know what, we're going tocast the IRA and and then we're
going to make an exact transfer ofthat asset to your spouse. Because that
way we're not going to have tokeep contributing the income. Because if you
if we have a situation where itlooks like you're going to be in the
nursing home for a long time,eventually, is that income that's paid in
it's going to go to the nursinghome. So so there are always some

(58:42):
you know, emergency steps that wecan take if we have to. It's
like we got a caller and we'vegot John from Oklahoma. Hey, John,
you're with me? Today, BigTall John. Do you guys on
Johnny, Well, listen. Youknow I've been listening to you guys this

(59:04):
morning. Always a great show.I'm in Oklahoma, Grand Lake, and
the reason why I wanted to qualityyou know what I noticed, Frank.
I went to a house party lastnight that my brother in law, my
brother in laws and sister in law, and they live in a community Frank
called Grand Lake. And nothing resonatedmore with me than most of the people

(59:28):
that are here are probably well overthe age of sixty, you know,
either retired or going to retire ina very short period of time. But
the thing is is that, Frank, they're from all different states. They're
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, they're fromIowa, they're from South Dakota, all
over the place. But they comehere because it's kind of like they get
the best of both worlds. Greatweather. It was only one hundred and

(59:52):
three yesterday, just what do youguys know, only one hundred and three.
But the thing is, Frank,what I'm noticing is that a lot
of people are two homes. Theygo back to where they originated from,
but this is really their primary.So the thing is that you think of
Florida, and you think on theEast coast, you know, maybe the

(01:00:15):
Carolinas, But this is really herein the Midwest, a lot of people
from a lot of people from Canadatoo. So if you're in that situation,
Frank, how do you research it? How do you find out?
Because I talked to my brother inlaw and system law, we're listening right
now on the radio. How doyou figure out that situation? You know,
I know you're not going to bein New York, You're not going

(01:00:37):
to be in the States. Butdo you find an attorney locally here in
this area? You should if you'regoing to be there for an extended period
of time. It's always good tohave a local attorney who understands the layout
and understands the local customs. BecauseI can I can do I have a

(01:00:57):
power of attorney, healthcare proxy trustthat are all New York State friendly.
But if I but if I'm goingto spend half the year or close to
it in Florida or the Carolinas,I should have a power of attorney that's
you know, local to their state. Because if I walk in and show
a bank a New York State powerof attorney for them, they're going to
say, what the hell is this? You know, yeah, you want

(01:01:20):
to have you want to have thelocal documents. So if for for people
who go back and forth, Isay, you know, yeah, you
can do your you're planning with me, But if you're going to spend a
significant amount of time in a differentstate, get yourself a local attorney and
make sure that you've got the localversion of everything. Yeah. And the
other thing. The other question wasis that you know the other problem.
I know that Nico knows this.A lot of the wealth here, a

(01:01:44):
lot of the people of the humulatedsignificant amount of money in I raise in
four oh one ks, and that'salways you know, what do we do
with that? You know, youknow, how do we handle that for
state planning purposes? And I say, well, that's your achilles hial that's
the giddy up. That's the giddyup that you're going to have to try
to figure out. Because the governmenthas a plan. Do you want your
plan? Yeah? Exactly. Theywant they want you to save so that

(01:02:07):
they don't have to worry about youbeing too poor in retirement. But then
they also want you to spend thatmoney so they can tax it. So
it's it's it's yeah, we didtoo good a job. The Congress wanted
us to save, and now they'resaying, oh, they did such a
good job saving, now we're gonnamake us spend it. Yeah, exactly.

(01:02:28):
All right, man, listen,you guys, keep up the great
work. I'm heading the big Dallastomorrow where I think it's only like one
hundred and nine. Oh my gosh, well they saved. Do you bring
you did you bring your cowboy hat? Yeah? Absolutely, in my boots.
Boots. Yeah, you're going tothe rodeo tomorrow night. I'm the

(01:02:49):
only I'm the only Polish cowboy inthe state of Oklahoma right now. Yeah,
all right, guys, Bye,Thanks, Thanks Steve, We'll see
you all right. So that's prettygood. I think we're running up on
a break here, so we're goingto break. We will be back right
after this. The eighty six percenters, do you know that eighty six percent

(01:03:12):
of the population has no defined benefitpension plan? For most of us,
we have to take our life savingsand create a paycheck for the rest of
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Prize winning economists William Sharpe has calledretirement income distribution the nastiest, hardest problem

(01:03:32):
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(01:03:55):
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(01:04:17):
That's one eight hundred talk w GY one eight hundred talk w G
Y. We are live in studioto answer your questions. Sunday morning,
man she up five man mown itoning home at the time I had in

(01:04:40):
my tusday. You could say thatgirl's good is gone. Now when Thursday
came a round, now it wasall alone. So I for the drive
to Clare my minding it and weare back. It's get sorry. Lucoms.

(01:05:08):
He was at a MVP arena.Me and Lisa went there. We
went there for the concert. Itwas us and Mark and Kendra and we
had a good time. We wentdown there at dinner before and we went
to the show and uh, yeah, it was fun. I like the
MVP Arena. It's a nice Uh, it's a nice spot. You've got

(01:05:30):
what they had March Madness there inMarch. I went a couple of those
games. But uh, there's alot to do in the area. A
lot of folks in New York,a lot of folks leave in New York.
Though, I'm starting to see aninflux of money up here. I
think a lot of folks from thecity are coming up to this area.
It's cheaper for him and also,what's a gorgeous area. So we're starting

(01:05:53):
to see people around the lakes.We sacking Daga. I've seen a lot
of people looking at property out thereup in Lake George. Clearly we've got
a lot of clients who've bought propertyup there, and Dave's got the Lake
George property also, I haven't seenit yet. I'll go up there.
He invited me a few weeks ago, but I think we're busier when that
was the week we were sick.So we can go up there. But

(01:06:15):
but no, it's been a it'sbeen a nice summer so far. It's
warm. It's been rainy though prettyrainy in July. But all right,
let's get too, let's get towork over here. What were we talking
about before, Dave, we weretalking about as far as iras so roth
traditional if you have an IRA accountand going to a nursing home, Um,

(01:06:36):
what's accessible, what's not? We'retalking about distributions that they that you
take off the accounts and how thoseare counted into Medicaid. Um, you
want to just go over that again? Sure, so again, if if
if you're retirement account is already inpay out modes, if you're taking mandatory

(01:06:58):
minimum distributions, or if you justelect to take distributions as though you were
seventy and a half or seventy threeand required to take them, then the
Medicaid regulations say that the Department ofSocial services cannot take that account into consideration
when they're determining your eligibility for Medicaid. Now, once you get eligible for

(01:07:19):
Medicaid, the regulations say you haveto contribute all your net available monthly income.
So to the extent that you're takingdistributions from your IRA, that's going
to increase your income a little bit, and so that will increase the amount
that you contribute to the nursing howmanch months to partially pay your cost of
care, but it's still a lotless than you know, being told that

(01:07:41):
you have to spend down your IRAbefore you can become eligible for medicaid unless
you have a significant significant amount ofwealth and an iraman you're the first arm
do You're looking at a divisor abouttwenty six twenty six and a half,
so right, four percent of theaccount. So you get a million dollar
accounts probably forty thousand dollars. It'scoming off base on your age, but

(01:08:01):
that would be used to pay forcare, right, and so you would
contribute that each month to you know, to the nursing home and then uh,
but Medicaid would pay the vast majorityof what your expenses are. Yeah,
yeah, so iras are protected toa certain extent, correct, And
and even if we got in abad situation where again, if we had

(01:08:24):
somebody who was relatively young going intothe nursing home, but we knew that
they were going to live for along time in the nursing home, then
we might actually cast the IRA in, pay the tax on it, make
an exempt transfer of that money tothe spouse, just to make sure that
that they couldn't eventually bleed it allout by you know, taking the income

(01:08:44):
every year and the spouse can onlyhave one hundred and twenty thousand, Well
that's what that's what the Department ofSocial Services will tell you. In reality,
the spouse would have millions as longas they're willing to sign a form
that says I refuse to make myaccess resources available to my spouse house and
that's called a spousal refusal form um. But but the interestingly, the Department

(01:09:05):
of Social Services won't even acknowledge toyou as as a you know, as
a potential applicant that you can makea spousal refusal. So that's yeah,
this one I had. I usedto give speeches to local community groups and
a few years ago they went toa local group in Latham, and they

(01:09:27):
told me, oh, you know, next week somebody's coming from the Department
of Social Services to talk to us. I said, okay, asked them
about spousal refusal and then tell mewhat they said. And so she called
me back and she said, youknow, I asked, I asked the
representative from DSS about spousal refusal andshe said and there it was just like
silence for about thirty seconds and thenand then the representatives said, we're not

(01:09:50):
allowed to talk about that. Soyou got them a little trick up your
sleeve. But uh no, that'sit's pretty interesting. So the spouse refuse
to pay for care for their fortheir spouse exactly being a nursing home,
and we protect a lot of assetsthat way. Yeah, and you know,

(01:10:11):
and occasionally people get upset when theythey hear that, and they say,
well, aren't you're just gaming thesystem? You know, you're you're
you're playing it And the answer aswell, are you the same person who
told me last year that you didn'tcare that GE hasn't paid any corporate tax
since nineteen sixty two, because whenwe had that conversation, you said,

(01:10:31):
well, that's because Gee has goodlawyers. Okay, well, okay,
so now I have a good lawyer, it's gonna make me eligible for medicaid
without making me a pauper. Soif it's if it's okay for ge to
get away without paying taxes because theyknow all the loopholes, why isn't it
okay for me to play by therules and get eligible for medicaid? Because,

(01:10:54):
after all, it's my money that'sin that system. You know,
I've paid my taxes every year.And if if I get to the situation
where I'm eligible to have their governmentpay for my healthcare, why shouldn't the
government pay for my healthcare? Exactly? Why can't the individual have a good
attorney that's working on their side anduh not allow the state to impoverish you

(01:11:15):
or put you into poverty so thatyou can qualify for medicaid. Um,
start protecting those assets because you probablywant to set up some form of legacy
as well, and maybe you wantthose dollars going to your children rather than
the state correct going to pay foryour care. So yeah, like you
were saying, a lot of folksthey have extended days, extended days in
nursing homes. So they're there fora long time. You can spend down
a lot of assets if you don'thave them structured properly m or if you

(01:11:39):
just start listening to these UH socialwas the Social Justices, the Department of
Social Services, Social Services Department,and and I mean, I don't want
to pick on the DSS employees becausea lot of them are they're not attorneys
that they they're lucky if they get, you know, a couple of weeks
of training before they're put into thisposition handed to UH rule on whether your

(01:12:02):
medicaid application is appropriate or not.Um. But but that's why, you
know, it's it's a it's agood idea to have a law firm assistant
when you're making that application because thereare a lot of loopholes out there and
there are a lot of things thatyou know, occasionally the Department Social Services
gets things wrong, and if theydo, there's a procedure to take a

(01:12:26):
fair hearing, which is an administrativelaw proceeding, and we can go in
and argue that they misinterpreted their regulationsand that that you were wrongfully denied and
we can and we can get youproved um. But it's a it's a
it's a fairly complicated set of rulesand regulations, and unfortunately, with any
kind of administrative law setting, thepresumption is that the agency knows how to

(01:12:49):
correctly interpret its own regulations. Soit's an uphill fight to we don't have
to just prove that they're wrong.We have to prove that they were arbitrary
and capricious in their decision making.On the other hand, you know,
our batting average is pretty good.So that's why Dave calls you the Barracuda.
Exactly right, betting it's pretty good. You're ready to go at the

(01:13:12):
drop of a dime. But no, So we've been talking this morning about
state, so protecting your state.I do want to kind of start the
conversation on property on your homes,whether you have one or two, and
what the laws around that are.Okay, something we're to happen. Yeah,
So, so we have two concernsusually when we're looking at real estate.

(01:13:35):
One is how are we going toget that property transferred to your ultimate
beneficiaries after you're gouan with the leastamount of must and fuss, right,
And so oftentimes we're going to lookat using a trust get that property.
Did it into the trust and thenafter you're gouan the trust agreement says what

(01:13:55):
is supposed to happen to that property? And so rather than go to circuits
court, pay a final, paya lawyer a lot of money to shuffle
paperwork around. Now if we're ifthat property is in the trust, the
trustee is just going to feed theproperty to whoever your ultimate beneficiary was,
or is just going to sell theproperty, throw the sales proceeds into the
pot, and then divide up thepot. However, the trust agreement said

(01:14:16):
it was supposed to be divided.Yeah, but it's going to save us
a lot of a lot of timeand energy yep, and money potentially correct
from shuffle and the papers around.I like that. As far as the
property, if you if you didnot put it into a trust and you
went into a nursing home, whatwould the well, So first of all,

(01:14:38):
first of all, the value theproperty is going to count against you.
It's going to be accountable resource,so that may render you ineligible for
medicaid. And what we may endup having to do is sell the house
and then spend down the sales proceedson your nursing home care until until you're
down to where you only have thirtythousand dollars left, and then we can
apply for Medicaid. But but inthe process, we've wiped out your equity

(01:15:00):
in the house. Equity in thehome. Yeah, I was reading about
that last week. Actually, they'dmake you put a lean against the property.
Well, that's it's funny because theyused to the Department of Social Services
used to say, Okay, ifyou're not able to sell the house,
we'll just put a lean against thehouse for and then and then come out
of the state or come out ofthe state. But now the Department of

(01:15:20):
Social Services doesn't want to do thatanymore. Now they want to say no,
sorry, you're just not eligible.So they're going to make you sell
a house. Really yeah, especiallyright, I mean you can definitely sell
a house right now. Yeah,but yeah, it's it's so so we
can avoid all that if we ifwe do a little long term planning and
so what we want to do insteadis we want to get your house at

(01:15:43):
least five years prior to the datethat you think you're going to need nursing
home care. We want to getyour house into a trust. And the
nice thing about a New York Stateirrevocable trust, because these trusts have to
be irrevocable in order to protect yourassets. But new York State, your
revocable trust can be revoked whenever youfeel like it. And I mean it
sounds crazy when I've been practicing lawfor six years in Chicago before I moved

(01:16:08):
back to New York's not in anyother state. No, this is a
unique to New York States. NewYork State. Yeah, and you can
revoke an irrevocable trust as long asthe beneficiaries consent. But we can also
give you the power to change thebeneficiaries whenever you feel like it. So
I wanted these trusts, and mydaughters are the beneficiaries of it and the

(01:16:29):
trustees of it. But if mywife and I want to get money out
of our trust, I'm going tohand a beneficiary form to my daughters.
Sign here, they're going to handit back to themselves as trustees, and
now they're authorized to pull that moneyout of my irrevocable trust and give it
back to me. Well, andI know they're going to sign the form
because they're my daughters and they loveme. And by the way, if
they don't sign the form. I'mgoing to remove them, beneficiary, you
can fire them. Yeah so,but yeah, so we'll talk a little

(01:16:53):
bit more about that. I wantto talk about properties a little a little
deeper, maybe some strategies around it. But again, if you have any
questions, is on show one eighthundred eight two five five nine four nine.
Again it's one eight hundred and eighttwo five five nine four nine.
We're gonna take a break. We'llbe back right after this. I never

(01:17:16):
stay in long place, too long, A dead road singing me a siren
song. I gotta find a field. I need to spend my wheels.
I got an anchor, red fourwhite tires and no, I can't help.
It's the way I wired. Boy. You get too close. Boy,

(01:17:40):
you need to know. I gota heart like a truck. It's
been drug runs on dreams and gassme looking all the key gotta and we
are back. We are back.Laney Laney's coming to us back. She's

(01:18:05):
coming to sarah Tooga Performing Arts Center. I think August seventeenth or an Eric
Church. Well, I see youthere, No, I uh, I
gotta get some tickets. My parentsare going, so I'll see them there.
I'll get Kendrew up there. Butum, but now, uh,

(01:18:26):
we got a good show going today. I want someone to call in.
Someone's out there. Pick up yourphone and uh and call in. We
need some questions here. Five fivenine four nine. I got Frank Frank
with me this morning and we're talkingabout the state side of things. Before
the break, we're talking about propertya little bit. I was just talking

(01:18:47):
to Frank over over the break thereand uh, talking about maybe transferring the
property to the to the spouse andsomehow maybe then they could do spousal refusal.
Yeah, exactly. So if Ihadn't done any kind of planning at
all, and I got sick andhanded go into the nursing home tomorrow,
I would just transfer all my assets, including the house, to my wife,

(01:19:11):
and that would be an exempt transferredbetween spouses that would not affect my
eligibility for medicaid. And then sofirst they would look at my side of
the equation and they'd say, oh, you don't have anything, Okay,
you're eligible. Then they would lookat her side of the equation and say,
oh, wait, she has toomuch money, so now I'm not
eligible again. But then she justsigns the spousal refusal for him. That
says, even though I have accessresources, I refuse to make them available

(01:19:34):
for Frank. And now I'm eligiblefor Medicaid again. But now the problem
is if she'd stop there and didn'tdo anything else, if she went to
a nursing No, no, it'sworse than that. It's so a year
later, maybe she would get asnippy letter from the Department of Social Services
that said, Okay, Frank's beenin the nursing home for a year and

(01:19:55):
now we've spent one hundred and eightythousand dollars on his care. Pay us
back out of your access resources.And she would have to pay them back.
Really. Yeah, So the waythat we avoid that is on the
day that they approve my Medicaid application, they're going to issue what we call
the budget letter that says, youknow, this is the amount of income
that I have to contribute each month. On that same form, they're going

(01:20:16):
to say and buy our calculations thecommunity spouse has excess resources of X.
So they're going to determine at theDECO what they think correctcess resources are.
And now, when we get thatbudget letter, if we're doing our planning
correctly. She's going to take whateverthat amount of access resources is and put
it into a Medicaid trust. Yeahokay, because now when a year later,

(01:20:40):
when she gets that letter from themand says, pay me back out
of your access resources, she canhonestly say, I don't have any access
resources. They're in my Medicaid trust. And that's day one, dollar one.
Yeah, with the medicaid trust.Yeah, is that a form of
irrevocable Yeah, it's an irrevocable trustand you'revocable. Yeah, it's a neurovocat
medicaid trust. Yeah. Well,and that's the sort of term of art
that we used for New York State. Irrevocable trusts are referred to as Medicaid

(01:21:03):
trust because they're they're designed to getyou eligible for Medicaid. Okay, but
then settling the estate, I mean, they're good for avoiding probate. If
you could do that with a revocable, revocable correct trust as well. Yeah.
So yeah, so if yeah,if if for instance, if we've
got clients who already have long termcare insurance and they like their long term
care insurance and they want to keepit, then we still might look at

(01:21:26):
doing a revocable trust to avoid Yeah, which makes a lot of sense.
And yeah, I mean most ofthe time typically we're doing medicaid trusts.
You're irrevocable. Do you do revocableor is it revocable? You can say
it either way. I like revocablebetter. I can pronounce it easier.
Yeah, but yes, for somefolks, the revocable trust, can you

(01:21:49):
can still access those dollars too,while you're alive. I mean even in
New York State. Oh, absolutely, irrevocable you can access. But the
revocable is more it's it's just moreloquid. Yeah, it's an alter ego
of you. You can be yourown trustee. So if if I had
a revocable trust to grant or retained, yes I can. I have complete

(01:22:10):
access to the income and principle Ican do I can treat those assets as
though that were my personal assets.Well, whereas with an irrevocable trust,
there's a layer somebody else other thanme has to be the trustee and and
there has to be a layer ofseparation there. But the grantur it could
still take income from an irrevocable yeah, or anybody really really Yeah. So

(01:22:32):
typically typically the irrevocable trust says allof the income generated is available to the
grant our, so it won't changeyour income at all. But it also
says that the trustee is prohibited fromgiving your principle of the trust. And
if we stopped reading at that point, it would look as though the assets
that went into that irrevocable trust.Yeah, and that's what that's why it

(01:22:54):
protects you for medicaid purposes. Butthe truth is, under New r State
trust law, any trusting and irrevocabletrust can be revoked if the beneficiaries consent.
So what we're doing is we're engineeringa world where you can essentially force
the trustees or force the beneficiaries toconsent. Wow, which is pretty pretty
powerful New York State. I mean, I feel like New York State has

(01:23:15):
very favorable trust laws and um aspart of a part of a irrevocable I
mean, it's not so ear itsounds like that's that's a great way to
put it. And as far asthe assets that are in the irrevocable trust,
if you do partial revocation take someout um the remaining assets, they're
still protected, correct, correct,So so you can actually access some of

(01:23:38):
the dollars and still maintain protection onthe other piece exactly. Oh, we've
got Tim from cat Skill. That'swhere I got my cats. Good more
and Tim Nico, Hey, goodmorning. How are you. I'm doing
well. I knew you'd call.I was gonna say calling, but I
knew anyway. But I actually havean a leg legitimate question. So you

(01:24:02):
would Frank, you're talking about um, you know, sort of making it
look like you don't have any funds, kind of depleting your funds. Um,
what does that do to choices offacilities? I mean, if you
are it looks like you're dirt poor, it would seem to me that you

(01:24:23):
would not be able to get intoa facility of choice. Is that true?
Well, there's there's there's a hintof truth in that. Um.
Legally, the law is very clearthat if if a nursing home accepts one
Medicaid patient, then they have toaccept any Medicaid patient. So so it's

(01:24:45):
against the law for them to discriminatein admissions based on your ability to pay.
But the problem there is how exactlywould I prove that the reason they're
telling you that there's no bet availableit is legit you know, sort of
suing them, taking discovery, examiningtheir records and finding out that in fact,

(01:25:09):
they did have an available by thatday, but they were holding it
for some private pay patient that theythought they could make more money on.
It's very difficult for us to provethat, so so and we have clients
who are concerned about that. Sooftentimes what we'll do is this, We'll
we'll leave enough money outside of thetrust to make them look attractive, to

(01:25:30):
make them look as though they're goingto come in and be a private pay
patient, and then and then we'lljust make an exempt transfer to the spouse,
have the spouse sign of spousal refusal, because once you're in the door,
they can't kick you out, Sowe may give them the illusion that
they have more funds available and thensnatch it away from him at the last

(01:25:51):
second. Kind of like Lucy withthe football. But it's like the worm,
the worm in front of them.So so what kind of number do
you have to have on the sidelines. I mean, I remember having a
conversation briefly with Davey years ago aboutthis, and he said, you would

(01:26:13):
keep like forty or fifty thousand dollarson the sidelines when you're applying, but
you would actually have to spend thatyou couldn't, as you say, snatch
it away from them. Well,again, there's there's a reason Dave has
a nickname for me because I'm alittle bit more aggressive than most people are

(01:26:34):
when it comes to playing these games. But if we if we have a
spouse available that we can make thatexempt transfer to, we're going to do
it. In the worst case scenario. In the worst case scenario, we
would just say, you know what, I'm going to spend that fifty thousand
dollars knowing that I'm getting into thenursing home that I really want to be

(01:26:56):
in. Right, So, butis that go ahead? Frank? Sorry,
I was just I was just gonnasay, you know, you would
you would you put that money onthe sideline, you disclose that it's available,
and then if there, if thereis a legitimate EXAMPT transfer to be
made, then we're going to makethe exampt transfer and we're gonna save that

(01:27:17):
money if we can. If wecan't. Um, that's a that's a
personal choice that the client makes.Do I want to expose this money because
I think it'll give me a betterchance to get into the nursing home I
want to get into. Or amI going to just am I just gonna
apply to? Uh, you know, the Medicaid people are going to make

(01:27:39):
us apply to like ten different facilities. Okay, Now, if I live
if I live in Albany, that'sokay, because there are at least ten
good facilities that I wouldn't mind beingin. But if but if I'm in
Delaware County or at Sego County andthey tell me I got to apply and
take the first bed that becomes available, I don't want to play that game
because there aren't ten good facilities outthere, and there are some bad facilities

(01:28:00):
out there, and I don't wantto get stuck in one of the bad
ones. Yeah yeah, so,um so it's the way it works,
is the first bed that becomes availableyou have to accept if you're if you're
going in as a Medicaid patient,okay, But if you're going in as
a private pay patient, you cantake your time and wait and once you

(01:28:21):
get in, now they can't everkick you out. And so now once
so I go in as a privatepay patient, I private pay the first
month. Then uh, once I'min the door, then I'm going to
transfer all of my assets to myspouse. She's going to do a spousal
refusal. And now I got intothe nursing home that I wanted to get
into, and they can't kick meout. So they see you as a

(01:28:43):
private pay initially accept you. Thenyou transfer the assets out to the spouse,
which yeah, okay, So andthen because what are they going to
say, Oh, if I hadknown, if I had known that you
were coming in, that's a bigyeah. They can't say it all low
discriminating against, so they can't reallycomplain about it. Right, well,
that's right, right, and allof this is done last minute, really

(01:29:06):
right correct? All right? Okay, so I'm cutting you off. I'm
cutting you off. I appreciate it, though, I appreciate the call in.
We've got to we've got to takea break here. Then we got
Diana that called in, so wegotta get to her. But Tim,
give me a callum on day.I haven't spoken to you in a while,

(01:29:27):
all right, I think here,Yeah, got all right, We're
gonna take a break. Everybody,if you have questions one, eight,
two, five, five, nine, four nine, Diana, just stay
in the line here we'll get toyou on the other side, the eighty
six percenters. Do you know thateighty six percent of the population has no
defined benefit pension plan. For mostof us, we have to take our
life savings and create a paycheck forthe rest of our lives in retirement.

(01:29:49):
What is your plan for retirement incomedistribution? How you manage your assets during
the most critical years of your lifetime. Nobel Prize winning economists William Sharpe has
called reti vironment income distribution the nastiest, hardest problem in finance. He points
out that investment, uncertainty, andmortality can derail the most careful laid out

(01:30:10):
retirement income plan. Call our officestoday to start the process of building your
retirement income distribution plan. After fortyone years of being in the financial services
business, you need to start takingaction to start building your own personal retirement
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(01:30:30):
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procrastinate, motivate to start building yourretirement income distribution plan. Five one eight
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call in now at one eight hundredeight two five fifty nine forty nine.
That's one eight hundred talk WGY,one eight hundred talk WGY. We are

(01:30:53):
live in studio to answer your questions, and we are back. I don't
want to leave Diana out there inlimbo too long. Hey, Diana,
can you hear me? Yes?Good morning? Can you hear me?

(01:31:15):
YEA good morning? How are yougood? Johnny Mew I'm doing well.
I'm doing got a question for us. Question is, Yeah, if we
have a home in an irrevocable trustin the names of our children, and
it had equity once it's in thetrust, can you actually get a home

(01:31:40):
equity line or mortgage against it?So that's an interesting question. Um.
In New York State, for reasonsthat escaped me, banks seem to be
reluctant to lend money to an irrevocabletrust, and it puzzles maybe because when

(01:32:00):
I started my practice in Chicago,everybody who owns property in the state of
Illinois owns it in an Illinois landtrust because you get favorable tax treatment for
when you transfer property that's in atrust. And there's no there's no logical
reason why banks can't loan, andsome local banks here will if they have

(01:32:24):
a customer relationship with you, willstill loan to any irrevocable trust. But
sometimes we end up having to takethe property out of the trust in order
for you to get your mortgage,and then we can put it right back
into the trust. It's a painin the knack to start a new five
year yeah, and it starts anew five year O clock running, so

(01:32:44):
we don't like to do that.But yeah, it's it's there's there's no
reason that I can ascertain why abank shouldn't or couldn't loan to any irrevocable
trust, but the fact is thatthey seem reluctant to do it. So
could you take half the property outof the trust? Or do you have
to take the full? Yeah,you gotta take it all out? You

(01:33:04):
can't, yeah, and and andso well. Oftentimes what we'll do is,
you know, when when we sitdown with you, we'll ask you,
do you think that you're going tobe refinancing. We're wanting to have
a home equity line of credit.And if you do, what we may
do is we may do your houseinto the trust and just not record the

(01:33:25):
deed, because if we haven't recordedthe deed yet, then as far as
your bank is concerned, you're stillon the property. So you can you
can go ahead and mortgage it anddo whatever you want to do with it.
But um, if if five yearslater you get sick and have to
go into the nursing home, nowwe can run out and record your deed
as long as we have proof thatit was delivered to the trustees initially.

(01:33:47):
Um. The the the rules formedicaids say that they're going to treat your
house as though it was transferred onthe day that you had that deed signed
and no rised. So so wecan just delay recording it and give you
the flexibility to continue to finance theproperty. But then if we have to

(01:34:08):
run out and record the dude atthe end, well, then answer your
question, Diana, that's great,yes, and and and the same as
if we already have a lean againstit, you can you still put it
in a trust. You can.You can because these trusts are considered a
grand tour style trust, which meansthat you, as the creator or a

(01:34:30):
grand tour of the trust, havethe right to the use and occupancy of
the property and the UH and theright to U to utilize the property or
to mortgage the property. Because ofthat, it's not it's not a sale.
It's not a transfer to another personbecause you still have a retained life
interest in the property, so thatwon't trigger ad on sale clause in your

(01:34:55):
mortgage. Okay, thank you.More questions if we are currently building that
house now, is it better towait until the house is built or yeah,
I would You can go ahead andyou can go ahead and have the
dude to your kids or the dudesyour trust, but just don't record it.

(01:35:19):
Okay, thank you very much.You're welcome. Thank you, Diana,
have a great Saturday. Next,we have Rhoda from Scotia. If
I'm pronouncing that correctly, Rhoda,how are you today? I'm good?
How are you? I'm doing well? What do you got for Frank?
Um? The reason calling is Iwas just wondering if you could talk a
little bit more. There was aprevious choler who talked about nursing home placement

(01:35:43):
under Medicaid. Um. I thinkyou were talking about Medicaid rules or regulations,
and I'm a little confused around that. On how does Medicaid dictate what
nursing home you go to? Okay, So, and for full disclosure,
I'm a trained geriatric social workers.I'm a little confused about this, Okay.
So so if I'm if I amcoming into to an emission office at

(01:36:10):
a nursing home, they're they're decidingwhether or not they want to take me.
Okay, I'm more attractive to themif they look at me and I've
got one hundred thousand dollars cash sittingaround because they know I'm going to comment
as a private pay patient and theywould earn more money, and they would
if I was on Medicaid. Soif they right, I understand that.

(01:36:31):
Yeah, okay, So so ifthey if they if they see that I
have available funds, I'm more likelyto get the bed if they see that
I'm that I'm coming in as aas a medicaid patient to start with.
There is a chance that they maydecide to pretend that they don't have an
available bed for me, so thatthey can hold it for somebody who they

(01:36:54):
would make more money in m andcorrect and so people who are people who
are concerned about that may make thechoice to have available funds that they're willing
to spend to private pay to ensurethat they get into a facility that they
want to get into. Correct,and that's very well known in the industry.

(01:37:16):
I'm just wondering how to medicate impactthat because it sounded like you were
saying that Medicaid decides that you haveto take the first available dead and that's
not necessarily accurate. Okay, Sokind of to have some clarification around that,
because it sounds, you know,it sounded pretty scary. You know
that Medicaid is going to say,oh, you have to go to nursing
home X, Y and B whenyou're perfectly safe at home with homecare and

(01:37:38):
you're just starting to go to anursing home at some point, right.
So so again, if if itwas an emergency situation, then and I
was definitely going to have to gointo a skilled nursing home and I and
I went to the what the localDepartment of Social Services is going to tell

(01:38:00):
me is that I need to applyto at least ten different facilities and I
have to take the first bed thatbecomes available. That's not necessarily accurate either.
Usually that's the scenario if you're inthe hospital and you're looking at discharge,
they're going to tell you that youneed to apply to nursing homes.
Usually they just send out your prand your replication just blanket to through effects

(01:38:26):
through too many nursing homes, andthen the hospital comes back and the discharge
planner says you need to take thefirst available bed. At that point you
can say, I think I'm goingto wait, you know, and see
if there's another bed that becomes available. You don't necessarily have to take that
first available bed. Even if you'reon alternate care levels. If you're in
the community, you can keep refusingany bed you want and still continue to

(01:38:47):
receive those community care services. Correct. Correct, And again I'm not saying
I'm not saying that the Department ofSocial Services is right. I'm saying that's
what they're going to tell you asit can or that you have to take
the first available bed. And mostpeople, if they don't have lawyers,
aren't going to be in a positionto challenge that. They're going to believe

(01:39:08):
that that the department is telling themthe truth, whether that's actual you know,
you're correct or not. But sothat exactly so, I think that's
that's important. For people to understandthat, you know, what the Department
of Social Services tells you isn't actuallywhat's what's what's under their rules and regulations.
Correct, And I appreciate that clarification. Thank you for that. Yeah,

(01:39:30):
thanks Rhoda for for calling and Ithink that was really beneficial. So
we got to go to the nextone. We got one more on the
line, and then I think we'redone for the day. Bill from Northville.
Can we switch over to Bill?Bill? How are you today?
Sorry for keeping on also along overthere, buddy, ain't no problem.
I'm enjoying listening to the answers.Mine is pretty quick. Um, listen,

(01:39:54):
if you've got available resources, Let'ssay you're financially well off and you
pick up nursing home that you likebecause of quality of it, You're going
to probably also pick a private payroom, right if it if the nursing

(01:40:14):
home, Well, okay, whenyou say private pay room, what exactly
do you mean you're the only occupantof that room. You don't have to
share it as in a semi privateroom, gotcha? Yeah? And so
yeah, if you're if you're goingin private pay you can take whatever option
you want, so right, SoNow, if you go in with all

(01:40:35):
this money that you're dangling out andyou pick a private pay room and then
you switch to Medicaid, they're probablygoing to put you in a semi private
room, right I would think.So, yeah, okay that was my
question. That was a great question. Okay, thanks you guys. Ever
a good day. Okay you too, Thank you, Bill and h Yeah,

(01:40:57):
we're coming to the back end ofthe show today. I just want
to thank you, Frank. Ithink it was a really good show this
weekend. Thank you so thanks forgetting up and chatting with me this Saturday
morning. Always happy to you.Got anything planned this weekend. I'm just
in case my neighbors are listening.Yeah, I'm really going to cut my
lawn. It's been so wet.My lawn is like four feet high now,

(01:41:18):
and I'm sure my neighbors are angry. You gotta push more? Or
do you? You got a driver? I got it's a power assist,
so yeah, I push it,but but the front wheel drives pulls it
along a little bit, so it'seasier for me to get up the hill.
Yeah yeah, yeah, definitely.Where do you live? I live

(01:41:39):
in Slinger Lens, Slinger LANs.Yeah, okay, it's not too far.
Yeh, not bad, although althoughyou know, the the bridge over
U Root D five is out,so so there's a detour. And if
anybody's listening at the State, youknow, why didn't you go to the
point of putting in a left handturn arrow if you're never going to turn

(01:42:02):
it on? Just saying, justsaying, just putting it out there.
He made Frank five minutes late tothe show today exactly. But but no,
it was a it was a pleasureof having you. We always appreciate
it, and we're glad to havean attorney as a strategic partner like you.
You do a great job and wealways know what we're sending our clients
to the right to the right place. So if you want to call our

(01:42:24):
office numbers five one eight, fiveeight, zero one nine one nine,
if you want to sit down withus, if you want to meet with
Frank, we'd be happy to facilitatethat as well. Come on, we
gotta keep them busy, folks,so let's let's get them right in trusts,
drawn wills and doing those power ofattorneys and making sure you've got your
estate buttoned up. So again,that's five one eight, five eight zero

(01:42:45):
one nine one nine. Or youcan visit us on our website www dot
rpg retire again, that's rpg retiredot com on the web. You can
meet in any of our office locations. We've got one right Malta two six
nine one State Route nine. That'sour headquarters. That's where you can meet
with us, and you can meetthe whole staff if you really want to.

(01:43:08):
Everyone is up there usually for theday. We also meet in some
satellite offices down in Albany out inOneana. We're up in Glens Falls.
So again numbers five eight, fiveeight zero one nine one nine. Everyone,
thanks for listening today. We'll beback again next week. The information
provided is for educational informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice,

(01:43:30):
and it should not be relied onas such. It should not be considered
a solicitation to buyer or to offera sales security. It does not take
into account any investors particular investment objectives, strategies, tax status, or investment
horizon. You should consult your attorneyyour tax advisor. Thank you for listening
to the Retirement Planning Show hosted byDavid Kopeck. If you would like to
talk with Dave or someone at theRetirement Planning Group, call five one eight

(01:43:51):
five eight zero one nine one nine. That's five one eight five eight zero
one nine one nine during business hours, or visit us at RP retire dot
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and Glens Falls. Retirement Planning GroupLLC is a registered investment advisor. David
M. Kopek is also a registeredrepresentative of Pershcaplin Sterling Investments Inc. PKS

(01:44:15):
in their separate capacities. A registeredrepresentative of PKS, David M. Kopeck
may recommend the implementation of securities throughpks instead of Retirement Planning Group LLC.
Pershcamplin Sterlin Investments and Retirement Planning GroupLLC are not affiliated companies. Tune in
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