Retirement Planning Show 5-3-25 on WSYR

May 3rd, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Live from the ws iHeart Studios. Welcome to the Retirement
Planning Show with your host Dave Kopak from the Retirement
Planning Group. Every week, Dave Kopak and his team discuss
the ways they can help people make informed decisions about
a wide array of retirement planning information that can support
you in developing a more certain financial future for you

(00:25):
and your family. No, it's time for the Retirement Planning Show.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
All right, we are live. No music today. I guess
not tapping my foot here. So I'm Dave Kopek. I'm
your host. This is the Retirement Planning Show. It's a
special show today because I got two of my main
dogs with me today.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I'm not bargaining. What kind of dog would Chris be? Poodle?

Speaker 4 (01:09):
I was thinking more German shepherd. Remember you when you're
dressed up Golden retriever. Remember when you dressed up for
Halloween and you're dressed up like a buddy rabbit or a.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Poodle bunny rabbit something. You had fur on your head
and all that stuff. It doesn't sound like, Yeah, there's
a picture somewhere maybe when I was four and you
were dressing.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Hands on that picture. Yeah, I don't remember this outfit.

Speaker 5 (01:32):
I think it was. Wasn't that the time that we
dressed you up like a girl?

Speaker 3 (01:36):
I do remember that?

Speaker 5 (01:41):
All right? This is the Retirement Planning Show. I'm Dave Kopek.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I'm here with my son Christopher and Nicholas Dumas and
we're gonna be talking a little bit about some of
the things that are going on in the marketplace right now.
And UH we are the Retirement Planning Group. We have
an office now in uh Syracuse Carrier Circle. We've got
five little locations in New York State, and Syracuse has
been a boom for us. We're doing extremely well, meeting

(02:06):
a lot of great people, opening up a lot of
new accounts. Will be there Monday. Back in Syracuse. We're
out there quite a bit now. If you would like
to commend anything that we're discussing today, we offer a
complementary consultation. And how do they get a hold of us, guys.
You can call the office at five eight five eight

(02:28):
zero one or www dot RPG retire dot com.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
I saw us something about Syracuse the other day in
the news. I think one of the kids had he
had a four home run day in baseball, real baseball team.
I don't know that's present. I think I thought I
saw that someone can confirm that, you know, and get
back to me. Yeah, that's a good day.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
They know that we're sports fans because they're listening. I
talk about sports all the time.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
You know, you know that.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I'm not a big believer in the NIL. I think
it's deteriorating and it's a huge negative on sports.

Speaker 5 (03:08):
When you're paying kids all sorts.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
What do you guys think of this millions of dollars
being given to eighteen year old kids.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
I think it there's got to be like parameters on it.
I think just saying all right, you can make you know,
we're gonna pay all this money and make all this
money it it's definitely gonna take a hit on some
of the schools.

Speaker 5 (03:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
But on the flip side, I mean, I think the
kids if they're selling like you know, jerseys and stuff
with their name on it, like they should get a
piece of that. But as far as like getting a
full on salary or millions of dollars, like, I don't know,
I think that's a little overboard.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
They'll figure it out.

Speaker 5 (03:43):
Well.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
I think they're going to have to figure it out
because the mid majors are going to be a think
of the past, all.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Right, So okay, it was the Chiefs. So the Syracuse Chiefs.

Speaker 5 (03:53):
Which is their semi protein.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, their farm team. He hit four home runs, Michael
Aubrey the.

Speaker 5 (03:59):
Other day, I did five.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
One imagine four home runs in one game I did.

Speaker 5 (04:04):
I did five. I did five one game like umbers.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
You see, so Soo hit his first home run. It's
about time, right, as a Matt Good we got rid
of them.

Speaker 5 (04:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
This is a financial show game, not a sports show,
you know. So we're going to talk a little bit
about asset allocation and how you're managing your money during
your pre and post retirement years. We're big believers to
put the pedal to the metal if you can absorb
the shock of the volatility of the markets when you're younger,

(04:37):
and some of the things that we're going to talk
a little bit about today or ideas ideas, don't do
it unless you sit down with the financial team.

Speaker 5 (04:47):
But we'll let Nico.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Start off talking a little bit about how to allocate
your money and the right asset allocation based on what
you're trying to achieve, which also includes your age.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, I think age is a crucial factor in how
you design your investment portfolio. Right, younger you are the
more aggressive typically you can be if you're someone that
you know has the ability to go through different swings
in the market. But again, when you're younger, you want

(05:22):
to be a little more aggressive. You could take risk.
You have a longer time horizon, so a longer time
frame until retirement, so you can go through these different
spans in the market. You know, two thousand and eight happened,
We're what fivefold that now, so again, swings happen. You
just can stay invested long term. You know, for those
older folks that are getting closer to retirement or already retired,

(05:43):
it's going to be a completely different strategy than someone
that's twenty five or thirty five years old. Right, Once
you get closer to that fifty five sixty five years
old and you're retiring, you know, you want to start
shifting the portfolio more towards income management if that's what
you need. Some people they don't need income off these accounts,
and they're just sitting there invested, right, they have pensions

(06:03):
coming in, they have social Security coming in, so they
have these income sources and they don't need the investments
that they've accumulated. We might manage those differently, or we
might start coming up with a game plan for those
accounts now rather than just letting them grow pre tax
throughout your retirement years and giving the kids a taxiability
at your death. So there's different strategies, there's different portfolios,

(06:25):
there's different investments for every single person out there, and
that's what we try to do at Retirement Planning Group.
No one shoe fits all here.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Well, I guess the big thing is that, you know,
we do a lot of work with National Grid, and
of course there's been a lot of dissatisfaction with the
our target date funds. So if that is the case
and you're trying to do an analysis for those individuals
based off of the target date fund, the gidea up

(06:53):
has been is that the target date fund is really
based off of a general general perception as far as
how you should allocate your money, not specific to you.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
Right, Yeah, it's a set it and forget it style investment.
It's really catered more towards the companies themselves. They don't
suitability wise, they can just offer these actively managed target
date funds. They don't really have to set up meetings
or get an advisor for their four to one K plans.
It's it's not to say that target date funds are
a horrible investment style, because you can still have good

(07:28):
returns in them. It's just they might not be catered
specifically to individual needs.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
They don't create cash either. Those target date funds don't
start creating cash and accounts for distributions right. They might shift,
you know, so they might be a little more conservative
once you approach that date, but it's still going to
fluctuate a little bit, and you're not creating income within
the account for distribution at you know, a retirement. So
you know, our target date funds right for you? Probably not?

(07:57):
You know, you want to sit down with a financial
advice and go through all the plan options that are
available to you and make the best decision for your future.
The sooner you do that the better. Right Procrastination is
not your friend. Stop sitting on the sideline and start
taking control of your investment accounts.

Speaker 5 (08:14):
And I agree agree with you on thousand percent.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
You know, the bottom line gets down to is that
no one but your own how to allocate it. Properly
sitting down with your team. You know, I'm not too sure.
There's a lot of people that work with their plans
and they're really not getting a lot of assistance. We
will sit down with you. We have a software package
that it's called e Money that allows us to basically

(08:37):
give you a pitcher of where you are, where you
want to go, and what you're going to have to
do in order to meet that goals. You know, you've
heard me say this over and over again a million times.
If you don't have a plan, any destination will do.
Plans are extremely important, folks, and whether you're a pre
or post retirement, planning not only the accumulation side, but

(08:59):
all so the distribution side is almost as critical, especially
if you need to get healthcare or long term care.
And if you don't have your assets set up properly,
you can basically impoverish your spouse and you can be
in a very bad situation with the money going down
to the long term care facility and not going to
your family. So, you know, we try to overemphasize not

(09:22):
only managing your assets, but also how to title them
and the type of titling that you want to have
during your different stages of life. So we're going to
talk about this in greater detail. But as I always say,
this is not babble radio. This is talk radio, and
we welcome your phone calls, and if you'd like to

(09:44):
call in, you can give us a call. We're going
to take a quick break and we'll see on the
other side of this break. Will you run out of
money in retirement? Will your investments provide income for possibly decades?
How do you navigate the two greatest risk retirement sequence
of returns in longevity? At the Retirement Planning Group, our

(10:04):
Bucket of Money approach addresses these concerns and we offer
a complimentary consultation to discuss this with you. Call our
office today for a free complimentary consultation to develop your
own personal retirement income distribution plan at five eight five
eight zero one nine nine. That's five eight five eight
zero one nine.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Friday night.

Speaker 6 (10:27):
I crashed yall apology Saturday, I said, I'm sorry, Sunday
game trash.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
Me out again.

Speaker 6 (10:38):
I was only having fun, wasn't hurting any.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
All Right, you're back to join the weekend.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I'm Dave Kopek, your host, President of the Retirement Planning
five locations. We have a new location in Syracuse. Glad
to be there. We love Syracuse, love Syracuse sports, and
uh as I said, we'll be back out there on
Monday at our location. This is talk radio, this is

(11:12):
not Babbel Radio. So if you have any question about
your own specific retirement, about investments, about long term care planning,
about IRI distribution planning, mutual funds, ETFs three one five
four to two one ninety seven ninety seven. That's three
one five four to two one ninety seven ninety seven.
That's three one five four to two one w s YR.

(11:35):
Any question at all, as long as it's something that
we can try to answer for you. If not, we'll
get back to you usually what we do. If we
don't have the answer for you, we'll follow up next
next week when we do the show. But again, three
one five four to two one ninety seven ninety seven.
All right, So we're finding out we found out today

(12:00):
that or not today this week. That's some of these
financial organizations and some of these companies are allowing you
to get your money out before fifty nine and a
half NCO.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah, some unions Local seven specifically, you are able to
do an in service withdrawal or rollover to an IRA.
Would not would not advise taking that money and putting
it into a bank account. That would be a tax
liability and you'd have an early withdrawal penalty. So again,

(12:31):
you can take money out of your four oh three B,
four oh one K, whatever the account might be, and
roll it into an IRA account. What does that do?
It gives you a lot more investment options. Right right now,
you've got you've got a choice of maybe fifteen to
twenty funds to pick from through your employer. Through your employer,
they give you a menu. Just like you go to

(12:52):
a restaurant. Right You've got your options that you can
choose from. But if you want the seafood and you're
at a steak place, you can't do that in your
four one K plan. You can do that in an IRA.
You can invest in pretty much anything you want in
the market, depending on where that custodian is and what
the rules are. With us, we're a complete open architecture,
so we can invest in pretty much any mutual fund,

(13:15):
ETF individual stock that's in the market other than penny stocks.
That's not something that we would do. We're not going
to do that it's not really advisable either. Like plug,
that's a dollar not a penny. Stock.

Speaker 5 (13:32):
There's a little throwing curveball at Niko here.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
They got to risk it to get the biscuit.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
But make a long story short, we're going to try
to go over some ideas and concepts with you today
some of the things that you should be looking at
or at least considering. The first is to make sure
that your asset allocation is correct and you're already automatically
adjusting it. That means that if you get a bear
or bull and you get out of your whack as
far as your percentages, you want to be able to

(14:00):
get back into that profile that you originally started with.
How do we do that, Chris Copec.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
You structure the portfolio to your risk tolerance, so you know,
depending on where the current market environment is. Right now,
we're seeing a lot of uneasy miss in the market,
you know, uncertainty. So just knowing you know how allocated
you want to be in equities versus bonds or income
focused investments and is something that you know you could structure,

(14:33):
talk to your advisor about and the portfolio you know,
is completely customized to how you want your investments structured.
You know, right now we're seeing a lot of hazy
waters with what's going to go on with tariffs and
his inflations kind of looming around. We look good, you know,
good economic numbers are coming out, So how is the

(14:54):
market going to react? You know, we've been preaching dollar
cost averaging to folks as far as you know, wanting
to get into the market, not trying to time it,
but getting in at different intervals as far as you know,
over a three month span, six month span, you know,
whatever timeframe they feel comfortable with. We're just buying in
at different periods so that you know, at different portions

(15:15):
and time frames in the market, you're still getting into
these investments, but you're giving the market, you know, time
to work its kinks out, and if it does go down,
you're buying in at a lower cost, averaging your your
share price down.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
You know, I just saw there's an article in Today's Barrens.
But you guys will try to probably take a look
at either today or sometime tomorrow where it says the
headlines target date funds are getting riskier. Should you be worried?
And it basically talks about where a lot of the
portfolio managers are aggressively, you know, putting larger percentage on

(15:50):
the equity side and also getting in more involved than
international and emerging markets.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah, you see that a lot too in these target
date funds that you're doing a lot of international exposure.
Because a lot of times on your statements or on
your website, it will show you your asset breakdown. Even
though you're in a target date fund, you're only in
one fund, it will still show you, you know, domestic
international stock and then bond or fixed income side of

(16:16):
the portfolio. So you're able to get a feel for
how these asset managers are actually investing the fund, you know,
and sometimes you get a fact sheet on them and
you can see the actual investments within the within that
target date fund. Also, generally it's a mix of mutual funds, right,
So that target date fund has mutual funds in it.
Is that what they do, Yeah, mostly not individuals.

Speaker 5 (16:35):
So there's there's sleeves of mutual funds.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, funds are ETFs or a combination mutual funds.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
And then what we will do is in an IRA account,
we're just gonna invest in mutual funds, right, Right, And ETFs,
We're not gonna invest you in something even you know,
you're diversifying diversified assets right with the target date funds,
So I think you're getting way too much exposure. You know,
you don't have any significant concentration in anything to out

(17:02):
outperform the market, right, So I think that's a concern.
Also with these target date funds is that they're very,
very diversified, so maybe that's why they're lagging in performance.

Speaker 5 (17:13):
Also, Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Chris.

Speaker 4 (17:16):
I was just gonna say, yeah, like historically, the numbers
that we see within these target date funds, you'll see
that compared to like a large cap growth fund that
is offered through a company's investment plan or four one
K plan. You know, if that's doing twelve thirteen percent
year over year for the last five years, their target
date fund will be around like nine or ten. But

(17:36):
you know that those aren't exact numbers. But we've just
seen that, like historically, these target date funds tend to
lag if you just self manage your own investment allocation
and get into you know, your own sectors of the
market that you like.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Here's something I found staggering and when I saw it,
this morning, I fell off my chair. I thought the
number was incorrect. And it talks about the financial stress
that people are feeling right now managing assets for retirement.
I don't know, I don't know if you've heard this
or not. An ego or Chris, I'll say it again.
Many people are feeling the pressure to keep up with

(18:14):
every day expenses. According to a recent survey by Equitable,
eighty percent of Americans eighty regardless of their income level,
are worried about the affordability of everyday living costs.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
One hundred bucks every time I go out to dinner,
one hundred bucks.

Speaker 5 (18:33):
Absolutely, go to lunch, it's forty oli bill.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah, lunch, thirty bucks.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Get a cup of soup, you get something to drink,
and you get a sandwich.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
Big max ten bucks.

Speaker 5 (18:41):
Yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (18:44):
And according to the twenty twenty four study from the
Morning Start which Everybody knows Morning Star Center for Retirement
and Policy studies, almost half of American's households that decide
to retire at age sixty five will run short of
money during retirement.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yeah, fifty Inflation's real. We'll get the cost of a
truck right now. Get the cost of a vehicle.

Speaker 5 (19:08):
What do you want to I just want a vehicle.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Ford Broncos fifty thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Pickup truck is seventy five to eighty. If you get
all the bills and whistles, it's one hundred grand.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
Well that's just the thing. Then you have all these
people paying down debt. That's why debt is so high.
In credit card debt is every year it hits new
all time highs. In twenty twenty four, I guess they
did a survey that was saying that sixty five percent
of consumers reported living paycheck to paycheck, indicating that a
significant portion of individuals feel financially strained.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
See it all the time, Yeah, you see it all
the time. And again, this is not Babbel radio. This
is talk radio. If you have a question about your
own personal situation, they'll be bashful. Three one five four
ninety seven ninety seven is the telephone number at WSYR
to call in ask a question. Three one five four
to two one ninety seven ninety seven. I got myself,
Dave Kopak, Nicholas Dumas, certified financial planner, my son Christopher,

(20:01):
he's got a bachelor degree in financial planning from Sianta College.
Got a lot of a lot of firepower here today, folks.
So if you've got a question or comment three one, five, four,
seven ninety seven.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
I find it staggering.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Student loan debt too, one point seven trillion student loans
one point seven trillion dollars.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
And they're coming back and they want their money. The
Trump the Trump administration basically says, we want our money.
You're going to have to start you know, they're going
to get notices in the mail that you stop paying
your payments. You had that, you know, reprieve because of COVID.
Now you gotta start paying again. One point seven trillion dollars.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, these kids are going to struggle, you know, student
loan debt, credit card debt, potentially buying a house. You know,
there's areas in the you know, there's areas out there
that are struggling.

Speaker 5 (20:52):
There's no doubt. There's no doubt. Then.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
One of the things that I told my kids is
that as long as you go to school, I'll pay
for it. So when you leave college, you're not going
to have any debt. And fortunately I've been able to
do that. My daughter's still at FAU Florida Landing University.
She's got two years left and it better be two years,
not three years.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
Her and I could have a chase around the house
with a bat.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
She's going to be a doctor, I heard, Yeah, she
wants going for another five I know she wants.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
To be a school psychologist, which you know she's going
to have a few more years after getting her undergraduate
the gate. So but you know it's these are these
are stressful times. And when we say stressful times, one
of the things that we like to talk about is
how can you eliminate that stress? How can you put
yourself in a better position that you're not feeling overwhelmed.

(21:43):
And if you're in a situation where you feel like
your investments now you're looking at the screen constantly, you
get basically a wheezy, horrible feeling when you look at
the statement and you're down fifteen, eighteen, twenty percent, you
still got to take your distribution. Chances are you might
be in the wrong type of portfolio. In the second

(22:04):
half of today's show, we're going to talk about building
out retirement income distributions portfolios. This is things that we've
been doing. I've been doing it now for forty three
years in the financial services business. But it's never fun
to have stress. And if stress is causing you to
have you know, financial health stress, meaning that you're having

(22:33):
anxiety depression, you're not feeling good. Most likely you're worrying
about stuffs that can be fixed. And it's just what
we try to do at the Retirement Planning Group is
to put you in a situation where we educate you
on all the opportunities out there in regard to retirement

(22:53):
income distribution. And I think it's critical that you understand
that there's ways for you to set up pension benefits
that will allow you to have safety net underneath your portfolio.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:05):
Yeah, there's a lot of different options out there, you know,
through diversifying your portfolio, through you know, different model investment
strategies that we have, as well as utilizing different insurance
products like you mentioned some of them offering pension benefits
that yeah, just act as like underlying you know, guarant

(23:26):
income in retirement, so you're supplementing your your own pension,
which a lot of people don't have nowadays, and utilizing
soul security that self funded pension and then you know
any other distributions off the the IRA or roth IRA
whatever retirement assets that they saved up.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
If you added credit card debt and you add in
student loan debt, it's well over three trillion dollars swell
over three swell over three trillion.

Speaker 5 (23:59):
So bottom line.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Gets down to is that you know there are some
things that you need to do in order to facilitate
you know, the ability for you to sleep at night,
and you know there's a lot of debt out there
that basically has to be addressed. And for people that
are on these thirty percent credit cards that show up
on a monthly basis, the quicker you can get rid

(24:23):
of them, the better off you're going to be long term,
because short term it's going to cause you a lot
of anxiety. So I'm just curious, Kels, what how long
do I have before I have to take a break here?

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Dear?

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Also, I still got forty five seconds. So again, we
offer a complimentary consultation at any of our offices, specifically Syracuse.
If you want to come in and have a chat
with us about your own personal situation, whether you're pre
or post retirement, you can do it by dust dialing
eight eight eight five eight zero one nine nine. That's

(24:59):
toll free. Eight eight eight five eat zero one nine nine.
We're more than happy to sit down with you and
see if we can facilitate what you're looking for. And
a lot of people are looking for that ability to
build out a plan that gives them comfort during their
retirement years and that's what we try to do with
the Retirement Planning Group.

Speaker 5 (25:19):
So again, if you'd like to talk to us.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Eight eight eight five eat zero one nine nine eight
eight eight five eight zero one nine one nine, we'll
be right back after the news and.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
One o six nine FM.

Speaker 6 (25:33):
Well you win out town riding in your amouzine to
you find pomp davigeos you have the dark hair and
out and your hand and scoot up.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
News when you wake up in the bride we.

Speaker 6 (25:48):
Are back five and you ask you got it?

Speaker 2 (25:52):
See I got my hair on fire called it the
dom comp.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Do you watch that movie rocket Man? No, it's a
pretty good movie. I thought it was good.

Speaker 5 (26:06):
Chris watches little movies in our house.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
I am a movie guy. I didn't see that one,
though I saw the Queen one. That one was good. Yeah, yeah,
that was good. The Freddy Mercury one.

Speaker 5 (26:17):
Yeah, we watched that with you.

Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah, that was really good. You did a good job.
If I had a Freddie Mercury mustache.

Speaker 5 (26:24):
How you would you like one?

Speaker 3 (26:27):
How would you feel about it?

Speaker 5 (26:28):
Go knock yourself out?

Speaker 3 (26:31):
You heard it? All right? All right? What are you
looking up? He used to have a mustache, he did.

Speaker 4 (26:41):
He used to have a Freddy Mercury mustache, except they
came in red.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Oh you'd read facial red facial. You are a little irish.
Were talking about that earlier something. But anyways, this is
the retirement planning. Uh show it? How do you Where
did you get that? What are you doing?

Speaker 5 (27:04):
You said that to me?

Speaker 3 (27:08):
My id? Folks? Ye Manuel l I had a big
old beard.

Speaker 5 (27:13):
Going Manuel, you grow beard on them out two days?

Speaker 3 (27:16):
It gets cold cold up earth.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
You're one of these guys. I'll tell you what. Never
lose your raisor because we won't be able.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
To find you, I'll be somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Oh boy, Well listen, folks, we're going to be talking
about some topics that hopefully will resonate with you. But
this is talk radio. It's not babble radio. We always
like questions. You guys are late to the switch today.
So three one five, four to two, one ninety seven
ninety seven. We've always had quite a few phone calls today.
I don't know what's going on. Everybody must be sitting

(27:51):
home chilling out. Three one five, four to two one
ninety seven ninety seven. If you have a question, we
would love to have the opportunity to answer it for you.
Three one five I have four ninety seven.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Well, no one's calling in. I want to get back
to what you were talking about. With the rm ds
coming out, and if your portfolio is down eighteen percent,
you're taking rm and ds off. You know, the way
we design portfolios are around that rm D. So we
want to make sure we have enough cash to where
it doesn't matter when you take the distribution. Throughout the year,
a lot of people will hold off and hope the

(28:23):
market comes back before they take their required minimum distributions.
But with us, you know, generally we'll build up enough
cash to where, hey, you need it for this trip
you're going on in June. All right, we'll send it
out in June. And a lot of the income portfolios
that we've been putting together are yielding six and a
half seven percent. Yeah, that should take care of rm

(28:45):
ds straight through eighty six. From what I'm looking at,
that's the percentage for your rm D at eighty six.
So anyone under eighty six from seventy three to eighty six,
you know we got the interest right now to where
we can provide the R and D without selling anything.

Speaker 4 (29:00):
Right, and if rates do stay higher for longer these
income model portfolios, you know that we've built out. If
we're getting anywhere from seven or six and a half
to seven and a half percent off this income model,
you know it's it's looking pretty good as far as
you know, kicking all those distributions into the money market.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Position. And then you know clients.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
Pull from it for their monthly distribution if they want
to satisfy their arm by that way and be done
that way too.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
I think an important thing for people to listen to
here is when we build out income portfolios, we don't
send the income out to you. We send a certain
amount out to you, and then what we do is
we allow you to basically control your distributions, meaning that
if we send you six seven eight percent out and
you're only spending three, kind of defeating the purpose as
far as the tax liability for you. So a lot

(29:46):
of times we will build out portfolios. When we talk
about the buckets of money, bucket, won is our cash bucket.
And that's what these guys are talking about, is the
dividends are being swept in the bucket.

Speaker 5 (29:55):
Won.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah, right, yep. And a lot of people don't know.
The first twenty thousand dollars off these plans are not
state taxable, So there's just a state tax exclusion on
the first twenty thousand you take off per per count,
per individual, per year, per year, right, So twenty thousand
dollars you can get away with taking off the IRA

(30:17):
or four to oh one k with no tax liability there.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
And you know, you add that up if Trump goes
through with his proposal where there will be no taxation
on Social Security benefits, and then you get the twenty
thousand dollars per individual. I mean, that's a pretty attractive
distribution as exempt from taxation.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
In state purposes, state purses.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, and then you know, then depending on what you know,
what state does as far as you know or not
the state, what the federal does in regards to if
they do give that exemption. He's talking about tips social
Security and there is one other thing that I can't
think right now, as far as the exclusion, I know
that they're the big debate right now with the salt,
state and local taxes is the ability to write that off.

(31:01):
It's limited now, but you know, I think you're gonna
find next year you're gonna have more money in your pocket,
which is good for your purchasing power, plus the quest
of all you have to do. I said, you know,
today to sixty seven for gasoline Ballston Spot.

Speaker 5 (31:17):
It's cheap, you know, compared to what we've had recently.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yeah, I got to go to that place. Yeah, all right,
I just paid.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Three bucks Stuarts.

Speaker 5 (31:27):
You're gonna spend twenty hours to.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
Stuarts and Syracuse sures out there?

Speaker 5 (31:32):
Absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
I haven't seen one yet. I've just been focused on Tullies.

Speaker 5 (31:37):
Well Brooklyn, Brooklyn Pickle Tullies.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
We got to go to Delmonico's or Frederick Francisca's, Francesca. Yeah,
and then we got to go to Delmonico's, all right
for a big old steak. So all right, So in
with the old, no, out with the old, in with
the new. And what that means is that for a

(32:01):
lot of us, we have insurance products that we purchased
in our lifetime during our accumulation years that are really
not valid during our retirement years, such as high cash
value life insurance policies. So you want to talk a
little bit about what we do with high cash value
life insurance policies for people that don't need them anymore.

Speaker 5 (32:20):
We don't terminate them. What do we do with them?

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yeah, we see what makes the most sense. You can
do ten thirty fives from the cash value insurance into
some sort of annuity product. If that makes sense, You
can do a ten thirty five into a new insurance
product that might provide a better death benefit for you.
The issue is a lot of people walk in with
these insurance policies and they have no idea what they own. Right.
The main thing we want to do is get a

(32:43):
hypothetical illustration and see what is this going to do
over the next twenty five years if we don't do
anything at all, and then we start looking at alternatives. Right,
so we're able to see if this thing's going to lapse,
how that cash value is accumulating, what the death benefits doing,
and what's guaranteed on it. Right, Because a lot of
times we see folks walk in and this thing's going
to lapse in two years.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
You know.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
We had a woman that works with us now and
she was seventy five, and she had a million dollar
policy that was going to go away in two years
if we didn't start paying some additional premiums on anything.
And she had no idea. You know, it's very scary
some of the insurance policies that people carry and they're
not taking advantage of, you know, what they've accumulated within

(33:24):
those accounts.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
So if you know what a ten thirty five is,
it allows you to transfer the cash value of your
life insurance policy into an annuity. The annuity can't go
into life insurance, but cash vy and it's a non
taxable event. It's just like a ten thirty one exchange
that you do with real estate, except you're doing it
with insurance products. The other part of this is too,
is that for some people. I use one client an example,

(33:49):
his parents bought him a fifty thousand dollars policy years ago,
and when he came in to talk to us, there
was almost fifty thousand dollars in cash. I was in
his sixties, So I said, listen, surance company has very
little risk here. Let's take the cash value and see
if we can get insured with one of these linked
benefits products. So what it was is that it was
a policy that basically increased the velocity of his death

(34:12):
benefit up to two hundred thousand dollars, but it also
paid him eight thousand dollars a month for twenty five
months for long term care. So we went through the insurability,
they found out he was insurable. We took the fifty
thousand dollars out, transferred it over to the new policy
at eight thousand dollars a month of long term care benefit.
The horrific part of the story is what he died.

(34:33):
He died, but instead of his wife getting a fifty
thousand dollars benefit, she ended up getting a check for
two hundred thousand dollars, simply tax free, simply by just
simply filling out paperwork.

Speaker 5 (34:43):
And doing the exchange.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Right.

Speaker 4 (34:45):
Yeah, figuring out what the purpose was of your life insurance,
you know, reassessing is definitely something that we see a
lot of. You know, some people come in and they're like,
you know, I don't even remember why I got this.
They're like, oh, we got it for debt repayment on
our mortgage for our house. And you know, now we're older,
the kids are older. You know, we don't really have
a use for this anymore. So figuring out why you

(35:08):
have what you own and if it needs to be
restructured in any way to fit your current goals, it's
definitely something to sit down and reevaluate.

Speaker 5 (35:18):
What are the two.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Most problematic assets for medicaid as far as people assets
that people have that are non inside of trust.

Speaker 5 (35:25):
What are they?

Speaker 3 (35:26):
The house and non qualified assets?

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Right and cash, high cash value life insurance policies, non
qualified annuities in your house, Because the first two questions
on the Medicaid application is do you have a home,
do you have high cash value life insurance policy? And
do you have any non qualified annuities? So who should
only who should own those assets?

Speaker 3 (35:48):
The trust is depending on irrevocable trust right that would
be a Medicaid trust. A lot of people out there
come in with revocable trusts because the attorney didn't know
their left hand from the right ones drawing these things up.
We're not here to shame any attorneys. We're not here
to shame you, but bringing those legal documents will take
a look and we'll figure out what makes the most sense.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
The other part of the other part of is too
is that your zip code is critical in retirement. We
talk about it all the time. Where are you going
to live? Certain states exempt I raise in your home
from a medicaid spend down.

Speaker 5 (36:21):
Some don't.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
So if you live in New York and you're transferring
yourself to the Carolina's Massachusetts, Tennessee down to Florida, make
sure you understand exactly because sometimes the expense that you
go through doing an irrevocable trust rather than revocable is
for naught because the state that you're moving to protected.
That's exactly right. You don't have to have the irrevocable.
Just a irregular revocable trust, not an irrevocable is more

(36:47):
than satisfactory. In order to settle the estate and have
little if nothing go through.

Speaker 5 (36:54):
You should have nothing go through probate.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Some irays iras are protected in some states also, But
if you want to get a whole of us are
office numbers five one eight, five eight zero one nine
one nine. Again that's five one eight, five eight zero
one nine one nine. We're gonna take a break. We'll
be back right after this.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Why are the greatest risk in retirement? Most of us
have no plan for We're insurance to cover the expense.
A long term care event can impoverish a spouse, drain
your life savings, and cost stress and anxiety on your family.
What is your plan and how will you pay for
a long term care event? Call the Retirement Planning Group today.
Discuss options you should consider to protect your estate and

(37:31):
have choices and independence. Take action Call today five one eight,
five eight zero one nine nine or RPG Retirement.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
This is the.

Speaker 5 (37:52):
Retirement Planning show. That's my cousin.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Brought my cousin into saying, if you want to have
a chat with us, it's pretty simple to do.

Speaker 5 (38:09):
All you have to do is.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Dial eight eight eight five eight zero one nine one
nine eight eight eight five eight zero one nine one nine.

Speaker 5 (38:15):
If you want to have a.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Chat with us today, if you have a specific question,
it's three one five four to two one ninety seven
ninety seven three one five four two one ninety seven
ninety seven. That's three one five four to two one
w S y R on either your investments, acid protection, annuities,
mutual funds, legacy planning, stretch iras. Irays are probably the

(38:38):
biggest to kill the seal.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
For most people, it's usually their their largest asset, right
it's all pre tax.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
Age seventy three.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
The government forces you to liquidate it, you pass it
on to your children, your loved ones. You're not having
a step up and basis, you're leaving ird income and
respect it to the decedent. So you're leaving a tax liability,
You're not leaving a legacy.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
They can just add whatever's left, right, That's what usually
what people say. So that's ninety five percent of the
people that walk in. You know, they're not too worried
about what they're leaving their kids. But at the end
of the day, you might just be giving them money
to the state. Right, especially if your kids are in
their highest earning years when you're giving them these assets
and they only have a ten year window to withdraw

(39:21):
that that money, you know, what's to say, they don't
shorten that rule. You know it's ten years right now,
for trusts it's five. So if a trust is a
beneficiary in that IRA, it's got to be transferred out
of the IRA within five years. So again, you know
what you're doing, know how you have your money allocated
and start creating some tax diversification as well.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Tax preference is key, you know. One of the things
that we try to overemphasize to people during their accumulation
years is what rough.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah, get as much as you can into you know,
tax preference money. And we always discuss that, you know,
we sit down in meetings and assess what prospective clients have. Well,
we'll tell them, you know, this is your IRA is
going to be your least preference money coming out the door.
You're going to be taxed on it. And then whoever
inherits this is going to have the ten year rule

(40:14):
on top of being fully taxable to them as well.
So load up on WROTH and fund you know, non
qualified accounts as well, like the brokerage accounts or trusts,
because they'll get a step up in cost basis at
least on the non qualified and then the WROTH they
don't have to really worry about, you know, being taxed.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Well, they're going to force to be liquidated, but who
cares because it's tax right.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Right, exactly, Be strategic while your spouse is alive too, right, right,
If you design it to where there's a couple individual
TOD accounts with the spouse's beneficiary. You can get real
savvy and get step up in bases from one partner
to the other, right right. Instead of having just a
joint with rights of survivorship account, that might make sense
having some sort of individual TOD money for the older

(40:59):
spouse or the with a worse health situation going on,
and then you know the other spouse is going to
step up in basis and be able to use those
non qualified dollars tax free.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
The three assets that you don't want to pass on
to the next generation or what gentlemen.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
Series E bonds, non qualified annuities, and iras, those are the.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Ones you don't want to pass on because you're not
passing on a legacy, you're passing on a tax liability.
So just remember with the wroth for O one k,
if you're still working, there's no income requirements. If you
make a gazillion dollars, you can put money into a
wroth for O one k. If you are trying to
fund traditional roths, then you are going to have the
income limitations. But if you have the ability to do

(41:46):
the row through work, you're crazy not to do it.
Take the match through your traditional and then the wroth
any additional money put it in there, because right now
Fidelity's saying is that you're going to have to have
somewhere around three hundred to three hundred and thirty thousand
dollars husband and wife, healthy sixty five year old couple
in order to satisfy your needs for healthcare requests, and

(42:10):
that does not include long term care.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Yeah, it's expensive. The landscape has changed drastically on the
health insurance field, and it's the new mortgage going into
early retirement for a lot of folks out there. So
if you're not sixty five and you don't qualify for
Medicare yet, then you're gonna have a health insurance expense,
whether that's one thousand and two thousand dollars a month,
if you have some kids, you know, maybe you have

(42:34):
some kids later on in life, maybe you have some
dependence on the on the plan also, so it's going
to be more expensive for you. So you want to
plan for that. Three hundred and thirty thousand dollars is
a lot of money, folks, and you want to have
an idea. Health savings accounts for younger people out there,
I think.

Speaker 5 (42:51):
Are the greatest thing since slice bread.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeah, since bread started getting chopped into pieces. Details saves
accounts grow tax free. You could use them for health
insurance premiums. You can use them for fordic medical costs.
You know, you get a real tax benefit with these
health sames accounts. They're just like a wroth, just on
the on the health side of the on the health

(43:17):
side of the field.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
And they just get a card, right, they just give
you like a debit card, right, Yeah, but when you
go to use them, it's just like a debit card.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (43:25):
We can manage them now through Fidelity too, which is great.
We had a woman roll over hers.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
Yeah. We want to make sure there's some in cash
so if they do go to the doctor, they could
swipe it, right, and they want to cover their copais
and all their medical expenses that they need.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
All right, And I'm gonna off the telephone number more
time three one five foe ninety seven three one five
four two one ninety seven ninety seven. You have a question,
We're here to answer it. This might be the first
week that we never got a phone call voodoo.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
I think it's because we're talking a lot. I think
we're good topics. I think they're just battle They're.

Speaker 5 (44:00):
Just they're just flabbergasted by our intelligence.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
They're just taking a back you know, they're taking a
back seat to the show.

Speaker 5 (44:09):
All Right, you're Roy m McRoy fan.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
I love Rory. I think Rory is awesome. Yeah, I'm
a Scottie fan. He got arrested, my guy.

Speaker 5 (44:20):
My wife loves Scotty.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
I think Scotty's awesome. I like Joel Dame Domon.

Speaker 4 (44:26):
Oh yeah, he blew up after that Netflix special they
did with him Full Swing.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
That's a good show. Where they Where are they this weekend?
They're not.

Speaker 5 (44:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
I didn't even look.

Speaker 5 (44:39):
Well.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
All I know is watch out boys. They get those
new clubs on the on the on the course, you
guys are mince meat.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
Instead of losing ten balls, you'll lose eight. I don't
know why I need clubs. Just use your foot. That's
what I use both. You know, my best club is
my pencil, right yeah, keeping score. So all right, we're
gonna summarize a little bit some of the things that
we talked about. What we do with the Retirement Planning Group.
If you had to say what we do, what do
we do with ECO we do it all, you know

(45:12):
for me to z the anything financial. Uh, we do insurance.
We do a lot of insurance work, sitting down seeing
what you have. We were talking about it earlier in
the show. We run what are called the hypothetical illustrations.
Make sure that the policies you have are good policies,
or we start talking about changing those into something else
based on where you're at now in life. We talk

(45:32):
about the estate side of it. I think that's somewhere
we specialize, I would say compared to your average Joe
investor or financial advisor. We get into the weeds on
titling of assets, your basic legal documents, making sure those
are done, and then also any sort of trust that
might make sense for you, Medicaid law. You know, we

(45:53):
talk about quite a bit. So, Uh, the investment side,
I think we go through Fidelity quite a bit. It
so Fidelity Investments is our custodian, so that's who holds
our client's accounts, and we're able to place trades through Fidelity,
and uh, you know, just our technology piece as well
with account performance, and it's.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
So easy to move money from a four one K
that's at Fidelity directly to us it takes what a
couple hours max.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Good day, day day. We never you know, you're not
gonna lift a finger. Lisa Stefano's are operations manager, and
she does a great job of making sure everything gets
done and processed efficiently, efficiently and smoothly. So you know,
the only thing we need from you is accurate information
on what you're looking to accomplish, and we'll try to
make that happen.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
And any Money wants you summarize the money or software
package that they have access to.

Speaker 4 (46:45):
Yeah, the money is just a good way for us
to kind of you know, show clients where they're at.
It's a good compliment to our you know, holistic financial
planning approach that we have, you know where we're covering
a lot of areas. Like Nico just discussed, e money
is great in highlighting, you know, where you're at and
then giving a projection on what retirement could look like.

(47:06):
It's something that you know, we grant clients' access to
so they can go in and link any accounts that
they may have or you know, go in and run
projections on their own retirement. So it's it's something that
we utilize all the time in every follow up appointment.
We're utilizing it, putting clients information into the system and
then showing them different hypotheticals and approaches to retirement based

(47:29):
on what their goals and objectives are.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
What I like about it, it's a dashboard. You get
an accurate value of exactly where you stand. You can
be as in depth as you want to be, and
you can keep it as simplistic as you want to be.
But what I like about it is that I've used
the analogy the people that we manage assets for in Florida,
they got devastated by the hurricanes, and you know, they
lost everything, everything that they have, all of their documents,

(47:56):
all of this could be stored through e money. You
don't have to worry about your life insurance policies, your wills, trust.
But it's something that will definitely be of assistance to
you if there is a catastrophic event. And the world
that we live in today, you know, especially down south
with some of these I mean I look at the
Midwest right now, some of these tornadoes and stuff. They

(48:19):
go back to the house and they basically say, where
did all my stuff go?

Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, it's something that you can just utilize. A vault space.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
It's a shared space that we can upload documents to,
or they can upload their own personal documents to it.
You know, when tax season comes around, we can always
upload those as well help them out with ten ninety
nine's in any other forms that they may need from
US performance reports. So it's just a good you get
what you you know, how you utilize it really, you know,
some people don't use it.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
Some people use it to the fullest extent.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
So I think we should have a three on three
challenge to some of our listeners.

Speaker 5 (48:52):
Yeah, you playing any hoope at all anymore? You just
want to.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
Crush I've been doing six miles on the bike. All right,
I'm ready to go. All right, I could do it.

Speaker 5 (48:59):
You're ready to go?

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Stamina?

Speaker 5 (49:01):
Are you dunking any game?

Speaker 3 (49:02):
Like? Four games?

Speaker 5 (49:03):
Are you dunking.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
Any I get I'm that serious. I can dunk.

Speaker 5 (49:13):
Every day. You used to always say I'm going to
be dunking. I'm gonna be dunking.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
You remember the joke from last night dunking. I'll tell you.

Speaker 5 (49:21):
After the show, who did you guys see again? What's
the guy's name?

Speaker 3 (49:24):
Shane gillis Shane Giles.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
But the guys said you guys said he was hilarious. Yeah,
he killed it all right, Uh, all right. To summarize,
we are the Retirement Planning Group. We have an office
now right off a carrier Circle. We would love to
have the opportunity to sit down with you see if
we can be of assistance to your pre and post
retirement planning. Five locations in New York State, either plane, train, boat,

(49:50):
whatever it takes in order to facilitate our meeting. Zoom
Ring Central. How are we doing with rings Center on
the Mohawks. Absolutely? Absolutely, train. I just looked up the train.
You know you take a train. Yeah, take a train
in Syracuse. Absolutely, either that. I'll just get my boat
thrown in the water. There you go, You'll float on
down the river. Take us few the hell all the

(50:12):
time trying to get it out of the lake, George
trying to figure out how to get it out of
the bulog. But to make a long story short, we
like to have fun, we'd like to laugh, but we
also know this is serious business. I've been doing it
for forty three years and uh, I know, you know,
I've seen a lot of bumps in the road. So
twenty five years on radio, it's our silver anniversary. So
if we can be of assistance, like I said, eight

(50:35):
eight eight five eat zero one nine nine eight eight
eight five eat zero one nine nine, I can't say that,
say it again. Eight eight eight five eat zero one
nine when nine to set up your complementary consultation and
Jim Jim's home studying.

Speaker 5 (50:50):
Yeah, yeah, Jimmy's home study.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Good for him.

Speaker 5 (50:55):
That's an inside joke, folks. But is it time to
say goodbye? Mid dear? It is goodbye. We'll see you
next week.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Thank you for listening to The Retirement Planning Show hosted
by Dave Kopec. If you would like to talk with
Dave or someone at the Retirement Planning Group, called eight
eight eight five eight zero one nine one nine. That's
eight eight eight five eight zero one nine one nine
during business hours, or visit RPG retire dot com. The
Retirement Planning Group has five convenient offices located in Syracuse, Audianta, Albany,

(51:32):
Malta and Glen Falls. Tune in next week for retirement
planning strategies with Dave Kopec right here on WSYRS. The
Retirement Planning Show. Right here on WSYRS. The Retirement Planning
show