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October 1, 2025 41 mins
On this episode of Simply Money presented by Allworth Financial, Bob and Brian unpack the “smart-sounding” money advice that can quietly sabotage your future—from skipping Roth conversions and “going broke safely” in cash, to one-fund DIY investing without a plan, estate-planning myths that lead to probate messes, and being sold permanent life insurance instead of building a tax-smart strategy. They also dig into FINRA’s move to loosen the Pattern Day Trader rule, what record-setting stock buybacks really signal (and what to watch beyond P/Es), and career expert Julie Bauke joins to help you decide whether to retire, go part-time, or test-drive your next chapter. In Ask the Advisor, they tackle oversized RMDs, executor pitfalls with business interests, smarter stock-option exercises, and whether to migrate from mutual funds to ETFs or direct indexing.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quite disturbing and disgusting more than ever listen as often
as plaus fifty five krs.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
He the talk station.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Tonight the worst financial advice you could ever receive. It
seems to make sense on the surface. You're listening to
simply money presented by All with Financial on Bob Sponseller
along with Brian James.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Well, bad advice is everywhere, things like.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Put all all you need to do is put all
your money in tech stocks focused on AI, or you're
really not that rich, therefore you don't need an estate plan,
things like that. But tonight we're not talking about laughable
bad advice. We're talking about the advice that sounds smart
and even feels safe, but can slowly sabotage your financial future.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Let's get into a couple of examples tonight.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Brian, Yeah, Bob, A lot of a lot of times
this this comes from a standpoint of doing nothing is
better than doing something, and that's that's not that's not
usually the case.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
So let's take a quick example.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Here, a couple of retires with about four million dollars,
maybe half of it in traditional iras, meaning pre tax dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
They've never paid income taxes on they've.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
Worked hard, save well, feel pretty confident about their situation,
and well they should. They've built a good nest egg there.
But here's the bad advice they got. We hear this
from time to time. The accountant told them they don't
worry about roth conversions. Nobody wants to pay taxes any
sooner than they have to just wait until you got
to take your rm ds.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
There's no need to mess with that.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
And yeah, on on the surface, that sounds like good
conservative advice, right, don't take any don't take any unnecessary risks,
and so forth. But what happens is by following that
advice and continuing to do nothing, they missed out on
years of low tax opportunities in early retirement. So when
those rmds finally requirementum distributions, by the way, is what
we're talking about, that's when you are either seventy three

(01:50):
or seventy five and you have to start taking money
out to keep the irs happy. So when those finally
kick in on their two million dollar portfolio, their taxable
income all of a sudden spikes that and that robs
them of flexibility. It results in higher Medicare premiums and
they can't do any efficient legacy planning. So they missed
an opportunity. They celebrated the fact that they were in
the lowest brackets of their lives right after they we retired,

(02:11):
before social Security kicked in, before requirement of distributions kicked in,
and they ended up paying for it in the long run.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, Brian, I want to make sure we're not throwing
accountants under the bus here with our hypothetical example.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
I mean, what I find this is a specific situation.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Oh okay, all right, Well what I find happens a
lot of times, Brian, and feel free to disagree, is
you know, the clients go to the account and when
it's time to file the tax return, and by then
it's too late. You know, now it's time to file
the return, spit out the answer, tell me how much
I'm getting back or how much I owe. And you know,

(02:49):
if that's the time when people are asking about these
planning questions, it is too late, and I can understand
why the accountant might react in that way. What I
have found in practic this is when folks have a
good fiduciary advisor working in tandem with the CPA, we
can do some actual proactive planning, get out in front
of this thing. And I find that virtually every accountant

(03:12):
I've dealt with is very open and very frankly excited
about looking at some of these possibilities. But you got
to come to them in advance, so everybody has time
to run some numbers and do some planning.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
That's all I wanted to point Bobby.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
And yeah, and people should not assume that they're going
to get this kind of advice prior to the run
up or during the run up to tax time in
April or October. If you're on an extension during that window,
your accountant is doing everything they can to get the
taxes filed on time.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
For everybody, they don't have time to do the planning.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
So planning is going to be if you're gonna work
with your account it's going to be a separate engagement.
Look for him in the summer or maybe early November
or something like that. That's when their window will open
up a little bit. But yeah, you're right, I think
more brains are better than none. Have a fiduciary financial
advisor in position who can work hand in hand with
your advisor.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, well, again, these accountants from you know, between February
and April, they're working eighteen hour days just trying to
spit out tax returns. So yeah, it's a very very
busy time. Yeah, let's get into example number two. We
got a retired executive with five million dollars in assets.
He's conservative by nature, but not financially naive. Also, he

(04:22):
retired in his fifties, and his longtime golfing buddy or
friend says, hey, you got enough money, don't take any chances,
don't take any risk, just put it somewhere safe, and
that's what he does. He parks it all in CDs,
money markets, short term bonds. He doesn't lose money, he
doesn't experience any market volatility. I'm sure he sleeps well

(04:44):
at night. But the money doesn't grow, and over time,
inflation just quietly chips away at the purchasing power of
that five million dollars. And that's where problems can crop
up in maybe the seventies and eighties, where purchasing power
is declined and then low and behold, a long term
care situation might come up, and this person that thought

(05:08):
he was safe in his fifties is suddenly realizing, wow,
inflation really is a thing. And it is eaten away
at what I thought was my safe nest.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Eak, Yeah, going broke safely.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
As our old friend ed think you to say in
these very airwaves for a long time, There's there's more
to it than just just making sure your pile of
money doesn't move. If your pile of money doesn't move,
then so does your your so does your spending ability.
And you've got to be able to make sure you
can keep up with with the lifestyle you've you've built
for yourself. That's gonna cost more money over time, not
to mention if we've got situations like long term care, as.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
This individual specifically ran into. So something's got to be grown.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
You got to find to find a way to carve
out something to let it, let it ride the roller
coach a little bit. And this has everything to do
with let's start with figuring out what pile of my
money does not have to grow like that.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
That's my emergency find.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
If I've got that in place, then that freeze up
the other assets for more growth.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
So okay, well let's move into it.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
Now. We got a third example here, an another business
owner late fifties, recently sold his company for about five
million dollars. He's got a golf buddy who basically tells him, now,
you don't need to pay anybody to manage your money.
Just sit on index funds and let it ride. That's
all you got to do. Just buy s and P
five hundred and chill and ignore it.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
So that's what he does.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
No advisor, no a state attorney, just a spreadsheet that
he eventually stops updating because there's just not much point
in updating something he's got on and he gets on
statements every month.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Anyway, fast forward five years.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
Now he's paying more in taxes than he has to
triggering capital gains, and he's still got zero estate structure
in place. Yeah, his pile of money grew, right, So
the you know, a low cost index fund is the
only holding isn't the worst idea in the world, but
it's not protected in any way, and it's also not
aligned with his goals because he never sat down to
figure out what his goals were. He simply operated off

(06:51):
the structure that I just need a bigger pile of
money and all my other problems will be solved. The
interesting thing about that is, yeah, it solves a lot
of problems, but at the same time, it brings along
a line lot more. Now you've got an asset that
you're always going to be hesitant to sell because it's
got such a low cost basis. I'm working with a
situation right now with some people who maybe twenty twenty
five years ago just began piling up money into a

(07:11):
single index fund, and it's got a really low cost basis.
Every bit of it that they sell is going to
trigger capital gains. We're slowly working them into an equity
indexed portfolio, meaning that they are direct indexes. When I'm
referring to their meaning that now from here on out,
as it grows, we'll be able to do.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Some tax loss harvesting along the way.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
That's never an opportunity they've had, and it would have
been super useful for them over the prior twenty years.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial
on Bob Sponseller along with Brian James. All right, let's
get into an example number four. A couple in their
early seventies with about three and a half million dollars. Modest,
comfortable and family focused couple. After a family dinner, the
husband's brother who has read one financial book declares, you

(07:58):
don't need an estate plan. That's stuff simply for the
ultra wealthy. So they never create a trust, they don't
update beneficiaries. They just assume that everything's gonna be hunky
dory with their three and a half million dollars and
just leave where it passes, you know, to chance, and
then lo and behold the husband passes away unexpectedly and
everything is tied up.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
For probate for nearly a year.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Obviously, it creates stress, legal bills, resentment among the kids,
all because someone casually told them that they weren't quote
unquote unquote rich enough to do an estate plan.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Brian, Yeah, So the interesting point here is that least
these folks consciously, at least at in some moment in time,
consciously thought about a trust and decided not to create one,
which might not have been the right idea.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
The trust is not always necessary.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
But they also didn't take any steps to update beneficiaries,
which that's the root purpose of a trust, at least
named beneficiaries and stuff. However, we do run across situations
somewhat frequently where somebody does create a trust because you know,
the brother in law, the sister in laws and attorney
and was happy to do it for him, but nobody
circles back to make sure the trust owns anything, So
thousands of dollars get spent on a document that ultimately

(09:08):
does nothing because nobody ever retitled assets into the trust
or named the beneficiaries on all.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
The other assets to the trust. So there are extra
steps that need to happen here.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
Even if you're not going to get into an elaborate
estate plan, and there's no law that says you have to,
you do need to name beneficiaries. If you don't name
beneficiaries on every asset that can clearly have a beneficiary
named against it, then you are setting up your heirs
for a lengthy probate stay, and that's going to be
a lot of stress and bills and all that other stuff.
So there are very simple steps you need to take

(09:38):
before you should consider an estate plan.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Once you've done that, then you should look is this
enough for me? Do I have it?

Speaker 4 (09:44):
Is there is there anything complicated about my estate? Do
I have kids that I'm not sure can handle the
money all at once, or maybe there's a spouse out
there of one of my kids that I don't quite trust.
Perhaps there's a disability something like that. All those things
would indicate the need for a much more elaborate structure
than simply naming beneficiars. All right, example number five last ones.
We got a sixty year old couple, Bob. Both of

(10:05):
them are still working, about six million in net worth,
investment accounts, business and some real estate, the whole shebang, And.

Speaker 5 (10:11):
What is Their insurance agent tell them, Bob, take a
big chunk of money and buy a permanent life insurance
policy because it's tax free, it grows, and you'll never
have to worry about it again.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
What could possibly go wrong? So they follow the advice.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
They park about three quarters of a million dollars into
some complex life insurance product they never understood in the
first place. It has high fees, it has poor liquidity,
it has surrender charges, and it isn't necessarily aligned with
their actual estate needs because nobody really cared to ask
what their comprehensive financial plan in estate needs even were.

(10:48):
And when we come along and review it later, they
definitely had alternatives to that complex life insurance product, like
wroth conversions or tax loss harvesting. Things that must that
certainly would have kept their situation much more liquid and flexible.
But again they were sold to product, not given a plan.

(11:10):
And Brian, we see this happen happen all too often.
Somebody comes along and just sells a product rather than
builds a comprehensive plan for someone.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
Yeah, in this case, is the nobody dug deep enough
to understand, really truly, what are my goals here? Is
it better to take that seven to fifty and stick
it in a place where I, as the owner of
the Grand tour, if you will, can't touch it ever again?
Because there's no point in dipping into a life insurance
policy if the goal was to buy death benefit in
the first place. And what else could have been done

(11:42):
with that money? You know, this is somebody who had
a six million dollars net worth. There's an awful lot
of pre tax dollars buried in there that really probably
would have been better off taking some of that, at
least some chunk of that seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
lower the life insurance and pay some taxes on rough
conversions make the whole thing more efficient. But like you said,
this was they walked walked into a hardware store and
said give me a hammer, and we're sold a hammer. Meanwhile,

(12:04):
they're trying to cut a board in have so nobody
asked the question of what are you trying to accomplish
from a big standpoint, and then we will figure out
which tools are necessary in this case.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Here's the all Worth advice.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
The worst financial advice often comes from people who don't
see the whole picture or even care to. When you've
built real wealth, you need more than quick tips. You
need a comprehensive tax smart financial plan, preferably built by
a fiduciary advisor and team of advisors. Coming up next,

(12:35):
regulators are about to make day trading easier while big
corporations are buying backstock at record levels.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
How should you react? We'll discuss it next.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial
on fifty five KRC the talk station.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Stuff happening military occupation in our city. Well we're going in.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
I'm seeing government shutdown and you got a lot of
stuff to do, work stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
You can't sports stack stuff around the house.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
So we'll stuff at all into news updates.

Speaker 6 (13:02):
People are wise to this stuff, you know, at the.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Top at the bottom of the hour, for store, law
and order, public health, a change in the weather. President
of Booten, he knows where I stand.

Speaker 7 (13:11):
Check you in.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Often it's a new day, It's a different day for
all this stuff you need to know. Fifty five the talk.

Speaker 8 (13:17):
Station all Worth Financial a registered investment advisory firm. Any
ideas presented during this program are not intended to provide
specific financial advice. You should consult your own financial advisor,
tax consultant, or a state planning attorney to conduct your
own due diligence.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
You're listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial
on Bob Sponseller along with Brian James.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
If you can't.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Listen to Simply Money live every night, subscribe and get
our daily podcasts. And if you think your friends or
family could use some financial advice, tell them about us
as well. Just search Simply Money on the iHeart app
or wherever you find your podcast. Straight ahead of six
forty three RMD Surprises, stock options, tax traps, and what

(14:04):
to do with an inherited home. All of that coming
up next in are Ask the Advisor segment Coming up
ahead all Right. Regulators are working to loosen something called
the pattern day Trader rule. That's kept a lot of
smaller accounts, people with very small accounts from actively day trading. Brian,

(14:26):
We're just gonna, you know, hand the candy bowl to
the children and hope they don't eat too much. I
guess that's where we're headed here.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
Right, So I'm not sure exactly what problem we're solving
as a society and as a regulatory body here.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
But here's how this works.

Speaker 4 (14:41):
Under the current rule, if you make four or more
day trades in five business days, right, that's so day trade,
of course is in and out in the same day,
and those day trades make up more than six percent
of your trading activity, you're gonna get tagged by your custodian,
which is your your fidelities or your swabs or whoever
whoever is holding your actual money. You're gonna get tagged
as a pattern day trader. They are responsible regulatorially to

(15:02):
make sure that they know who their day traders are.
And once you have that tag, you're required to maintain
at least twenty five thousand dollars in a margin account
or face restriction. So this has the people who are
into this, this has them scrambling to find any liquid
dollar they can throw into that account, even if they
don't intend on trading it. It's got to sit there
so that they can do the day trading of their
little nickels and dimes.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
So Finrow, of course, has voted to update that.

Speaker 4 (15:26):
Finra, by the way, is the regulatory body behind the
stock trading industry. So that plan is to replace that
fixed minimum equity requirement with a more flexible intra day
margin rule. So what that means is that your buying
power during the day would need to be tied to
margin calculations rather than a flat twenty five thousand dollars threshold.
In other words, basically, you can borrow some of that
twenty five thousand dollars to qualify.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
For that rule.

Speaker 4 (15:47):
Again, I don't know who was being truly harmed that
this rule was in place. It's kind of there to
not be enough rope so that somebody can hang themselves.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
So my spidy sense is tingling here.

Speaker 4 (15:57):
I'm not exactly sure what the opportunity is here and
how this is going to help people.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
What do you think, Bob, Well, it.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Seems like a solution in search of a problem. I mean, yeah,
twenty five thousand dollars threshold might not apply to everybody.
I get that, and I guess they're trying to let
people with smaller accounts participate more and more in day trading.
And you know, I think choice is a good thing.
Freedom is a good thing. But when you've that margin

(16:25):
requirement moves around every single second based on the amount
of cash you have in your account and the value
of any securities that you've bought. So it's just one
more watch out here, you know, kind of danger.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
Will Robinson.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
The funeral rules give you an opportunity, but it's more
of an opportunity to hang yourself, and hang yourself quickly
if you don't know what you're doing. And most people
that venture into this world of day trading quickly exit
and exit with fewer dollars in their pocket.

Speaker 4 (16:59):
Brian concerned that the people who do get truly into
this stuff are trying to make a bunch of money
overnight to really get themselves started. It tends to be
younger people, and I would really jump up and down
and encourage build a core portfolio first before you get
into this other stuff on the side.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, and maybe get a job. Well, I'm sent me
there is a job. Let's not throw everybody under the
bus here.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
All right, you're listening to Simply Money presented by all
Worth Financial. I'm Bob Sponsller along with Brian James. All Right,
we're also following some new data that shows that S
and P five hundred firms have authorized and are executing
buybacks stock buybacks at historic levels.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Brian, this is some interesting data.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, so let's talk about first real quick, what is
a buyback? Well, basically, what that means is that a
company can go out on the on the markets and
buy its own shares, just like you and I can.
It's a publicly traded market, so anybody can buy. What
that does if they take those shares out of circulation,
then think about it, that's less dividend they have to pay.
Every dollar that they earn is spread less thinly across

(18:03):
a bunch of shareholders. So share buybacks are a corporate
strategy that has been in place for a long time.
So what's going on now is these buy back announcements
from corporate America this year have reached a trillion dollars
as of August twentieth. That's the fastest pace ever going back,
going all back to nineteen eighty two. That information comes
from Barnian Associates who pays attention to this stuff. But again,

(18:26):
so that will mechanically boost their metrics. Earnings per share
goes up because there's fewer shares out there, return on
equity and so on, So that can be an instant
way to lift the share performance, to lift the share
price without really necessarily improving business fundamentals. Doesn't mean they
invented a new product or found a new market. Simply
means that they rejiggered the numbers so that the share
price would go up, which isn't any nefarious by any means.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
It's just how the math works.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
But it's a little different than growing organically to make
the valuations a little better. So what kind of things
should we be watching for? Is is this all bad news?

Speaker 7 (18:58):
Bob?

Speaker 3 (18:59):
It's it's not all bad news.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
I mean, you know, their company might have different reasons
for doing this. They might love the value of their stock.
They might not like the alternatives that they have, you know,
in front of them of what to do with that cash.
They might have already done a lot of capital investment
in their company and they want to just let the
let the business work for a while. It's not all bad.

(19:21):
But I think some people are just fixed fixated on
price earnings ratios. You know, anybody that reads, you know,
introductory books on investing in buying stocks, they tend.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
To, you know, dial in on that pe ratio.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
And I think this is this is a reminder to
also look at sales growth. Companies that are truly growing,
truly building their business. It doesn't take a genius to
figure out that they have growing revenues. Their sales are
going up. So if the sales are slowing down, but
yet those earnings are going up, that can be a

(19:56):
caution signal that hey, there's just maybe some window dressing
going on here through these buybacks, and that game can't
last forever. Sooner or later, if you're not generating more
revenue in your business, you know, it's it's a signal
that the stock price might be headed down because you

(20:16):
can only buy back stock for so much for so long,
sooner or later, you got to actually grow the business organic, organically.
As you mentioned, here's the all Worth advice. When companies
are buying their stock, dig a little bit deeper. Value
isn't the same as appearance. Here's a question you might
have asked yourself should I quit, retire or go part time?

(20:38):
Coming up next, decision making tools for when you're financially
ready but professionally unsure. You're listening to Simply Money, presented
by all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC, the talk station.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Did you say your name?

Speaker 9 (20:53):
Five KRC an iHeartRadio station.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
You're listening to Simply Money because I know by all
Worth Financial. I'm Bob sponsorer along with Brian James, joined
tonight by our career expert Julie Balki.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Julie on the job.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Julie, first of all, thanks for making time for us tonight,
and we've got an interesting topic to cover with you, you know,
some open ended question here here for you just to start.
And I know you deal with a lot of people
that are going through this question. You know, should I
retire altogether, meaning just quit and hang it up and
retire or go part time?

Speaker 3 (21:32):
And how what goes into making those kinds of decisions.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
So we're interested in your thoughts on that, Julie, as
you navigate these complex questions with your clients all the
time in your practice.

Speaker 9 (21:45):
The first thing, the analogy I always like to use
when it comes to this is you know how we
all use Google maps or ways. So when you think
about when you're trying to get when you want to
get where you're trying to go with those With those apps,
you put a destination so you know exactly where you're
trying to go. The problem with so I like to
use that analogy to say, to really be successful getting someplace,

(22:09):
you've got to have some general idea of where you're
trying to go. So the first question I would ask
someone is, if you're financially ready, If that's not an issue,
how do you feel about the work you do right now?
If you say I absolutely hate it and I can't
wait to get out, then I think I think you
throw the baby and the bathwater out and start with

(22:29):
a fresh sheet of paper and say, Okay, I'm going
to create something for the next stage of my life.
The next option be like, Okay, I.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Like parts of it.

Speaker 9 (22:37):
There's parts of it I'd love to keep doing. And
in that case, I recommend you talk to your leaders
about is there a way that you could go part
time maybe just doing the things that you're uniquely qualified
and skilled at doing. Just make sure you don't expect
part time pay for full time work. So what what

(22:57):
pieces of what I do now can I carve out
in order to make that transition from forty plus hours
a week zero hours a week much smoother. And then
there are times when we can't. We say, you know what,
I want to keep doing what I'm doing now, but
I only want to do it for another year or so.
And so in that case, what can you start doing

(23:18):
to start filling up that other life bucket, let's call it.
So getting clear on what your situation is today and
what your possibilities are. You might work for a company
that says, naw, we need you full time or not
at all. Okay, well that's going to tell you what
you need to do, and you at that point it's like, okay,

(23:38):
now I need to start planning for the day when
the retirement party. They've taken the streamers in balloons down
and now it's time for me to go do something else.
It is a wildly underestimated, under talked about stressful process
to retirement.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
So okay, well let's talk about that.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
So yeah, yeah, is very stressful, and you get to
hear a lot of stories. So, but Bob and I
have our own war stories from the financial side, right,
So how do we make the numbers work from all this?
What are some of the stories that you hear, But
you're more on the day to day career side. So
let's say you sense that somebody is they're really kind
of ready to go, but maybe there's not a little bit.
What if somebody pulls the trigger a little bit too soon?

(24:21):
What are the biggest regrets you tend to hear from
people who may be hung it up too early.

Speaker 9 (24:26):
Yeah, the biggest regrets come from people who hung it
up too early because they've not jumped at something that
they're excited about. In other words, the dislike for what
they were doing over road their patients. So they might say,
you know what, I'm going to go be a volunteer
full time, or I'm going to go play golf until

(24:48):
I can't stand it anymore, or I'm going to go
do more, you know, spend more time on a hobby.
I actually had a client several years ago who was
on the road so much that when he got to
the point that he could retire, he quit cold Turkey
and he went moved to Florida. Golf, pickleball, tennis, racketball.
He said so much of it that he hurt his shoulder,

(25:10):
and he's like, now, I said, I jumped from one
hundred and twenty percent at one thing to one hundred
and twenty percent at another. And he realized at that
point that that life of one hundred percent at leisure,
while tantalizing in concept, was not only not good for
his body, but it also wasn't good for his mind.
And so he went back to work doing some consulting.

(25:30):
And so it's it's you know, you have to know
if your identity is tied up in your job, then
you are going to have a harder part. You're going
to have a harder time of this, or if you
don't have anything that you're interested in. I've been talking
about this with people recently, and with men it's especially
hard because they generally don't have the friend and support

(25:54):
network that women do. And so now you're sixty some
years old and you're trying to find people to do
stuff with and wives are saying, we don't really want
to be your one hundred percent entertainment.

Speaker 4 (26:06):
And so how my wife would never say that she
loves every minute.

Speaker 9 (26:12):
She just spit her coffee out right now she's looking
at but a realist. Yeah, you have to get realistic
about all the pieces of your life. If things are really, really,
really bad and you feel like you're being pushed out,
and then it can be worth it to just stop,
pull turkey, take up for rest, and then rebuild something new.

(26:34):
But if you generally like what you do a portions
of what you do, the smarter play can be a
slower exit, or you get a chance to try some
things on the other end and to build on the
other end before before you go full time. Because some
of the things you think you're gonna enjoy doing in
retirement you won't, and you're going to discover some new
things once you allow yourself to be really open minded

(26:56):
around that that you do choose to pursue. It's it's
so it can be a really wonderful time, but it's
not an easy time because you're also dealing with the
mental piece, which is, oh my gosh, this is that
last portion of my life, which is really quite you know,
quite sobering, and so you're you're dealing with a lot
of that kind of stuff as well, maybe some regret,

(27:18):
maybe you know, all that stuff that comes with a
major transition, and so be realistic, Be realistic, about who
you are, what your support systems are, which your hobbies
and interests are, and you have to get out there
and be bold and vulnerable a little bit and know
that you're really, in a lot of ways building a
brand new stage of life.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
All right, Julie.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
In the minute we got left here, one of the
best ideas I've heard on this topic, and I think
the idea actually came from you in one of the
prior segments we've done with you. And that's once you
get to that point where you know you're going to
probably retire in a year or a year and a
half or what have you, that's the time to maybe
take that one or two week they canation and actually

(28:01):
trial run retirement. Now that takes some planning, right, Julie,
But pretend that you're retired on your vacation and actually
plan out what you think you're going to want to
do to make sure that that's really what you're going
to enjoy.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
Am I on the right track there?

Speaker 9 (28:16):
Yeah? Absolutely, you've got to try things out. You've got
to get out of your head. You've got to say, look,
if my goal is to give back or contribute more
in my community, maybe you take time to figure out
what is it, what is the way you want to contribute,
Then start researching organizations that do that and figure out
what your role might be. And so you have to

(28:38):
take this on like a project and you're the project.
And that's the stuff that's really really uncomfortable for us
because it causes us, It causes a bunch of other
stuff to surface that maybe we haven't dealt with.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
You've been listening to Simping Money, presented by all Worth
Financial on fifty five KRC.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
The Talk Station, Mark Levin.

Speaker 6 (28:58):
You know, America spend an awful lot of time in
this country responding to an unreality created by the people
who hate America, created by people who get sucked into
the narratives that are pushed out there each and every day.
And they're posting, and they're posting, and they're posting, and
they'll move on to the next thing, and the next
thing and the next thing.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
That's what the media enemy do.

Speaker 7 (29:19):
Mark Levin tonight at ten oh six on fifty five
KRS the Talk Station.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Bad Breath is a confidence tear.

Speaker 9 (29:26):
Why do we keep letting thousands of people come over
and do nothing about it?

Speaker 2 (29:30):
My family's safety is at risk. Fifty five KRC. The
talk station.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
You're listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial.
I'm Bob Spondseller along with Brian James. Do you have
a financial question you'd like for us to answer. There's
a red button you can click while you're listening to
the show right on the iHeart app. Simply record your
question and it will come straight to us. All right, Brian,
John and Madeira says, are required minimum distributions are going

(30:01):
to be much larger than our actual spending needs. What
strategies can help us avoid a huge tax bite?

Speaker 4 (30:09):
We have very common question, John, Thanks for sending it
in and thanks for trusting us with to provide you
some feedback there.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Well, what we don't know John's age.

Speaker 4 (30:16):
He talks about RMD's REQUIREMENTUM distributions in the future ten,
so we're assuming he's not quite there yet. That's the case,
and he's got a couple of alternatives. John, you can
be looking at roth conversions. And the window for this
is the most ideal window for this is when you're
in the lowest bracket you'll ever see. So perhaps you're retired,
maybe you haven't turned on Social Security or pension benefits yet,
so there's no income generating tax taxation there, and obviously

(30:39):
you're not at required minium distribution age, so those are
That's probably the lowest bracket that you've seen in decades,
So you might want to look at roth conversions here,
or even if maybe that's not on the table, or
maybe you got other things going on, another thing you
can do is just start accelerating withdrawals. Don't rule out
the IRA when you do need money for that vacation,
the next car or whatever.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Remember you're in the lowest bracket of your life.

Speaker 4 (31:01):
If you take a chunk out, you can calculate what
the bracket will be and get an idea for how
you'll stay below whatever bracket you want to avoid. But
don't always avoid the IRA, because you know it's income taxable.
Spread that out more distributions over a longer period of
time is going to stretch it out into more tax years,
therefore less taxes percentage wise. So we will move on

(31:21):
then to our next question here, which comes from Jerry
and Levin, and Jerry says he's the executor for his
father's estate and he's got business interests. Well, congratulations, Jerry,
that's going to be a couple of curved balls for
you to go chase down. What steps does he need
to take, Bob to avoid some personal liability as he's
selling this estate.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
This is a tough one.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Well, it is a tough one, Jerry, and with you know,
with I take these questions literally and based on the
lack of information contained in the question. That's not your fault,
that's just the way you ask the question. Here's my advice.
Hit the pause button immediately, don't do anything, and go
network around a little bit and find it a good

(32:01):
qualified attorney, someone that specializes in both business planning and
estate planning.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
They're out there.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Just network around a little bit and find one and
don't take any action. Don't do anything until you have
consulted with a good attorney. Perhaps it's your father's attorney,
you know, who might be well skilled in these things.
And if that person has retired or moved on or
is no longer active, talk to your your friends and

(32:28):
colleagues and find a good attorney. That's my best advice
because if you're involved in making decisions on behalf of
the business or operating the business in any way after
your father's passing. You want to be real careful, you know,
to protect yourself, So get some good legal counsel here.
I know it'll cost a little bit of money to

(32:50):
do that, but my experience has been you know, a
good attorney is worth his or her weight in gold
and can help you avoid some possibly significts.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
That's the best advice I could give, all.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Right, Kevin and Erlinger Brian He says, I've accumulated stock
options through work. What's the smartest way to exercise them
without triggering a massive tax bill all at once?

Speaker 4 (33:15):
Okay, so this is another good one here, some complicated
features here to a very popular benefit plan that some
employers share with their employees. So your stock options are
going to fall one of two categories. They're either ISOs
incentive stock options, or they're nqsos non qualified stock options,
big differences between them. If they happen to be of
the incentive variety, then you cane a little bit of

(33:37):
a tax benefit there. If you hold those shares exercise,
and hold the shares one year from the exercise in
two years from the grant, then you should qualify for
long term capital gains tax, which is the most favorable
kind of tax. If we got to pay it, that's
the one we want. But you want to watch out
for alternative minimum tax. We can do a whole fascinating,
boring show on the alternative minimum tax. We can't get

(33:57):
into that here, but just be aware that if it's
insane of stock options, that's something you're going to want
to be paying attention to. On the other hand, if
it's non qualified, those are going to be taxed as
income at exercise, So you're going to pay ordinary income
tax on the spread, which is the difference between the
market price whatever everybody would pay for it on the
open market, and whatever the strike price was which you
were given the time of the grant, and then any

(34:18):
further appreciation after you exercise this that's taxes capital gains
when you sell. So if you want to if you
want to avoid this, you can spread it out over
multiple years. Try to wait or if you can, wait
until you have a lower income year. For example, let's
say you're planning on retiring at the end of this year, awesome,
don't exercise anything now, wait until January if you've got.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
That ability through your employer.

Speaker 4 (34:38):
And also there may be options for cash less exercises,
which basically means that you liquidate the whole thing. You
don't have to lay out any cash. They'll they'll pull
the purchase value right out of the proceeds. And also,
as always, you can consider some charitable giving to offset taxes.
If you're already doing some of that anyway, then there
may be a way to combine these things. So get
with a fiduciary financial advisor and they'll help you put

(34:59):
these puzzle pep together. Next question, This one comes from
Mark and Indian Hill, and Mark says they've saved steadily,
but they've mostly used mutual funds and he's wondering if
exchange traded funds ETFs or direct indexing might be a
better option for them at this stage.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Well, Mark, I would say, all things being equal, of
course ETFs and direct indexing are more tax efficient than
having everything in mutual funds. But you know, first of all,
congratulations for saving steadily and building a nice portfolio of
mutual funds, because you know, I'm assuming you've done this
over years and decades and that that was the only

(35:36):
game in town. So you did, you did right, You saved,
you accumulated. The industry has evolved over the years, to
have these ETFs and direct indexing and tax loss harvesting strategies,
so it's good that you're aware that those are out there.
My advice would be, have a good fiduciary advisor sit down,
look at your portfolio and there might be spots where

(35:59):
you can gradually move into some of these more tax
efficient strategies without causing you to just dump all your
mutual funds or most of them and pay a huge
capital gain tax bill in the process. So it's important
to look at the details, have a good advisor sit
down with you that could give you good fiduciary advice
and help you transition responsibly into some more tax efficient strategies,

(36:25):
you know, moving down the road. Coming up next, I've
got my two cents on how maybe to evaluate what
kind of financial advice you really need based on your situation.
You're listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial
on fifty five KRC, the talk station.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
News when it happens, Breaking news tonight.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
We are coming to you.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Live news when you need it. You're going to want
to listen to this news when you least expected.

Speaker 8 (36:52):
Have you never quite seen anything like this?

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Cheaping you up today? On what's happening. This is going
to be quite the event tonight.

Speaker 5 (36:58):
You're gonna want to make sure you leave the house extra.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Early, locally, nationally, everywhere in between. I don't know what
I would do without it. Fifty five krs the talk
station his Ryan Tummus here for foreign exchange. Even if
the news isn't always good.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
There will be days of bad news.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
It's always a good day.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
This is a good day to be informed.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Today is definitely a good day. Oh day, we learned
a lot today. Start your day on today is a
good day day.

Speaker 9 (37:28):
Traffic looking good right now, getting a good look how
this weather will impact your day.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
And check in throughout the day. What's good for our city,
a good story to tell, A good place to be.

Speaker 7 (37:37):
I'm having a good KQ fifty five krs The talk station.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
You're listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial,
Lombob sponsorer along with Brian James all Right. We started
off tonight's show by giving four or five different examples
of you know fairly well to do. Families that had
gotten some bad vice and kind of went to sleep
on not doing some important things.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
I want to bring this back.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Brian to kind of real world how should these people,
how should these people be evaluating their situation and what
I'm talking about here, And I run into this quite often.
A lot of times people don't need or want a
professional advisor to help them with everything. They might already
have a good estate plan, they might be very comfortable

(38:28):
self managing their portfolio, but there's some of these things
like tax efficiency or more complex estate planning or distribution
strategies that they haven't even thought of, and it can
really move the needle in their overall financial plan from
a tax standpoint and from a legacy standpoint to their

(38:51):
families and chosen charities. And so my message tonight is
be open to sitting down with somebody and be a
little self aware about what you haven't covered or you
might not know or might not want to do, because oftentimes, Brian,
we don't do every single thing for clients, but there's
one or two value added things we can add to

(39:14):
somebody's situation really move the needle for them and they
walk away feeling glad that they worked with us or
with another good fiduciary advisor. That's my message tonight is
have an open mind. You know is you evaluate comprehensive
advice and comprehensive planning.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah, and I would add to that.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
I would add this that one of my favorite times
as an advisor is when I come across something where
I can educate somebody using an actual, real example, because
I think people are very comfortable knowing that they're not
alone in whatever weirdness they're facing. Sometimes it can be
good weirdness, right, just unfortunately, I've got a lot of
money that provides a lot of opportunities.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
What do other people do in my situation?

Speaker 4 (39:54):
And sometimes it's terrifying stuff, you know, where where maybe
there's a healthcare problem or something in the mix. And
I think the value that any advisor brings is the
ability to say, I've been through this before. Here's how
other people who look just like you have responded to it,
Here's the techniques they used, Here's the results that they
that they got out of it, Here's the pros and
cons of all the decision options that they had. And
then everybody can move forward having made a confident decision.

(40:15):
But it helps an awful lot to have somebody who
is an independent bystander on arms length away who can
kind of guide you sort of the docent in the museum,
if you will, of here's how things have worked for
other people historically, and here's how it can work for you.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
Yeah, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
It doesn't mean that you have to do what everyone
else does. But to your point, Brian, just knowing what
some of your options are and maybe hearing some real
life examples, three or four ways to possibly skin the cat. Oftentimes,
you know, the bells and whistles go off in people's
brains to say, yeah, I never thought.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
About it that way.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
I like that idea's let's explore how that might impact
my plan. So yeah, keep an open mind, keep an
open mind to working with advisors, but advisors properly so
that they're actually operating in a fiduciary role, operating in your.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
Best interest, not theirs. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
You've been listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth
Financial on fifty five KRC the talk station Mark Levin.

Speaker 6 (41:17):
Probably the people who should be listening aren't, but there
are a lot of people who tune in by accident.
Let me start listening. I get this wherever I go listen.
I listened for a week. I listened to two I said.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
I like this guy. I like what he has to say.

Speaker 7 (41:28):
Mark Levin tonight at ten oh six on fifty five KRZ,
the talkstation.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
You ever wonder why Verizon charges

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