January 7, 2026 • 38 mins
On this episode of Simply Money presented by Allworth Financial, Bob and Brian kick off the new year with the January Financial Stress Test: can your plan weather the unpredictability of 2026? With midterm elections looming, potential interest rate reversals, and market volatility ahead, they explore how to bulletproof your investments with strategies like bond duration diversification, buffered ETFs, and Monte Carlo simulations. Plus, they dive into the realities of long-term care insurance and what most investors miss. They also tackle your listener questions on Roth conversions, RMD strategies, and the best way to unwind concentrated stock positions. Finally, a lighthearted but eye-opening look at how eating out could silently devour your retirement nest egg.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Tonight the January Financial stress Tests Can your plans survive
twenty twenty six? You're listening to Simply Money Presided by
all Worth Financial on Bob Sponseller along with Brian James.
So we're about a week into twenty twenty six, New year,
fresh start. But also, let's be honest, we always have
fresh uncertainties as well. No one really knows where the
(00:31):
markets are headed next, what interest rate policy is gonna be,
so on and so forth. So tonight we're asking can
your financial plan survive twenty twenty six? Are you ready
for it? Before the markets test you, it's time to
test your plan. So we're gonna call this segment a
good old January financial stress test. Brian walk us through
(00:53):
what we mean here.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, let's start with interest rate risk, Bob. That's been
a hot topic for better part of the last seven years.
So right now we're in a falling interest rate environment.
But what does that mean for your investments? Well, if
you're holding long term bonds, well that's great. You've probably
seen some nice price appreciation because bonds tend to move
in the opposite of interest rates. And the reason for that,
by the way, is because is because if rates are falling,
(01:17):
then the value of already existing bonds versus new bonds
becomes becomes greater. Simply supplying demand, what do I want
the higher rate or do I want the new lower rates? Well,
that's why that that relationship moves in that direction. So
what happens if these cuts stall though, or if inflation
rears it's had again and the Fed you know, has
to pause or kind of reverse course of what they've
been doing. So, you know, let's go through an example here. Hypothetically,
(01:40):
we've got a sixty three year old retiree. This isn't
all that hypothetically. This is a lot of our clients really,
we're just putting a name on this. But anyway, sixty
three years old, three and a half million dollars, with
a six hundred thousand dollars bond ladder, and you know,
let's say they switch to longer duration bonds expecting rates
to continue to fall. That's a logical move as long
as that's right, As long as rates can keep dropping,
(02:00):
then that's that's what you would do. But if that
doesn't happen, orf inflation sticks around, those bond values might
take a hit. So so here's the real question, are
you diversified enough across duration and duration is a little
bit different than the than the time to maturity. Duration
is a calculation that takes into account the actual cast flow,
the interest rate you're getting off of something, and in
(02:21):
addition to the time value of it. Though, so should
you be locking that in now or maybe keeping some
powder dry and these shorter term instruments like T bills
or high quality bufferdts. Maybe you're a business owner, real
estate investor, you know you've got some floating rate debt.
Maybe this is the window to refinance. Don't assume you're
gonna have forever because rates don't stay the same. They
can move quickly if economic data surprises us.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, Brian, I mean to your point that I think
you're making here, is as difficult as it is for
anyone to time the direction of the stock market in
the short term. Boy is it really hard, you know,
even more difficult to time the bond mark market in
the movement of interest rates. And that's why laddering or
diversifying you know your duration of your bond portfolio as
(03:07):
long you know as well as your credit quality of
your bond portfolio makes a ton of sense. Because we
literally don't know what's gonna happen. We don't know what
the Fed's gonna do, we don't know what geopolitical stuff's
gonna happen. And to put too many eggs in a
basket in a bond portfolio, especially something that you're buying
it expecting it to stay stable and and and give
(03:28):
you a good interest rate with a lot of volatility,
just make sure that you've spread out your risk, both
credit wise and duration wise, so that you don't take
an unexpected hit. All right, let's move on to stress
testing good old stock market volatility.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Brian, Yeah, So guess what this is a mid term
election year, right, we had we we had one year
after the presidential election. Now we're going to be talking
midterms and that always means policy headlines. It could be
a major shift in control in Congress, h and plumb.
But the point is plenty of market moving noise out there,
and that's going to be you know that that's going
to get ramped up almost immediately here, early in January
(04:07):
as we started, because again we're past the holidays and
it's going to be an election year, so for sure
that that's gonna be there's gonna be a lot of
people out there with bullhorns screaming one direction versus the other.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
So this is interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
We do always hear clients say, oh, I'm a I'm
conservative until the market drops fifteen percent, and then suddenly
they want to go to cash and they're a lot
more conservative than they thought they were.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So this reminds me of that old you know, Mike
Tyson saying that everybody has a plan until they get
punched in the face. That's why we stress test with
Monte Carlos simulations. And so what we want to ask
is what happens if my financial plan is rock solid now,
assuming nothing bad ever happens again? Then what happens if
I lose say twenty to maybe twenty five percent of
my financial network?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Am I still okay? Or do I have to exit?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Do it?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Do I have to change my expectations to what I'm
going to be able to do? So what if that
market has a down year? Are you still doing okay?
So we'll walk through. Go ahead, Bob, No, I just
wanted to throw in here. You know, you talked about,
you know, the midterm election year, and it's a good point.
It's a good time to point out and I talked
about this a few weeks ago on the show, but
it bears repeating. I heard a good interview with a
(05:13):
very respected you know, market analyst and money manager.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Just remind all of us, and this is not an opinion,
This is just data. If you look at historic volatility
of the stock market in mid term elections versus off
year elections, you know, the average drop or mid mid
year volatility of the stock market in a non election
year is about twelve percent, but in a mid term
(05:39):
election year it's nineteen percent. So we should expect volatility,
you know, more than we did in twenty twenty five,
you know, coming up here at some point in twenty
twenty six. And the key point here that I that
I think you're trying to make and doing a good
job of here, Brian, is expect it because it's probably
coming in some way, shape or form, because mid term
(06:02):
elections do introduce uncertainty to the market, and let's face it,
everybody likes certainty.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, So let's let's walk through an example here just
to kind of give everybody a little frame of reference,
that is to how this goes down and what what
should be expected there's nothing. There's nothing crazy going on here.
This is historically you know, what has happened. So here,
here's a hypothetical sixty eight year old couple. Maybe they're
pulling one hundred and twenty thousand dollars ten thousand a
month from their portfolio.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Right now.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
There are seventy five percent stocks, twenty five percent fawns,
and they're really happy with returns because we've had that.
You know, let's face it, the last three years have
been fantastic for the stock market. But we run their
plan through a twenty percent downturn in year one. This
is stress testing, right, So stress testing again is run
it assuming nothing bad ever happens, and then now let's
see what takes to break it. Now, all of a sudden,
there's success rate drops from ninety two percent to sixty
(06:51):
eight percent. You know, from basically a nine out of
ten batting average to a to a maybe two out
of three, which is actually still pretty strong. That is
not a reason to panic, but that could be a
reason to consider rebalancing.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
What that means is that is that maybe.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Their portfolio has too much risk in it, that that
perhaps they don't need so much return as they do
a reduction in the volatility, because it could be one
of these black Swan type years that could ruin them.
But a standard downturn and a more conservative portfolio is
not going to hurt them at all. So again, but
I'm not overly worried when I see that happen in
a financial plan. That's not cause to tell somebody they
(07:26):
have to change their expectations entirely, because time tends to
heal these things in a financial plan. So as long
as we can prevent panic and as long as we
are able to let the market recover.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Now, that is very very.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Hard to do when you are retired and you've got
what you've got. The nest egg is what it is.
It's in place, and it takes a hit. It's a
very difficult thing to say, let's just hang on and
ride it out far different than it was when you
were working. But if as long as you understand that's
the important of stress testing this way, understand what it
could look like, and then you'll get some time to
(07:58):
think about how you will react. If your dollar amount
suddenly look that way, Is that something you can handle?
If not, then that's maybe where you do need to
consider changing your expectations. But the important thing is you
will have done it before it actually happens exactly. And
speaking of putting time on your side, along with maybe
doing a you know, a regular old rebalance of your portfolio,
getting your wrisk tolerance and check, you know, the other
(08:20):
thing is to examine, you know, something we refer to
all the time as a bucket strategy. Maybe have two
two and a half years worth of living expenses in
a very liquid, non volatile asset class, think money markets, treasury,
something like that where you can weather the storm of
even a severe market downturn like at two thousand and
(08:42):
eight and nine scenario, because history shows that even when
we have these big pullbacks or declines or recessions, the
market usually recovers.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
In around three years. But boy, those three years are
tough to stomach if you've got to sell, you know,
assets that are down to pay the bills every month.
So along with just rebalancing and doing a risk assessment
and the Monte Carlo analysis that you referred to, Brian,
you know, just some good old cash management, having some
money put away that you can access if and when
(09:13):
we do get a more severe decline. That could serve
you well. Also, hey, finally, let's talk about just insurance
buffers here. If the market tanks in your income takes
a hit, especially if you're a business owner, you got
to look at how much cash you can access without
having to sell something in a down market. Here's a
(09:33):
real example. A business owner, let's say has a five
million dollar net worth, but three million and that is
tied up in their business and another million and a
half is tied up in their real estate. So you know,
with a five million dollar net worth of only five
hundred thousand dollars of that is really liquid, this could
present a problem if you've got payroll to meet and
(09:55):
other expenses. So this is another reason to just stress
test the overall plan. And in the example that we
want to cite here, we did have an advisor go
in and do that stress test the plan, and they
quickly realize that if the revenue of the business dropped
by say thirty percent, they can't cover their own personal
expenses for more than three months without going out and
(10:18):
taking out a loan. So in this case, the good
advisor recommended, hey, let's get really proactive and diligent about
building that twelvemonth liquidity buffer. Even if it means taking
some chips off the table from you know, a quote
unquote growth asset and insurance can play a role here too,
(10:40):
especially if you're the key income earner in a family business.
You know what happens if something happens to you in
the short term from a health standpoint, Walk us through
what we need to do there, Brian.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, this is where disability insurance comes in, you know,
and disability of course that there's a lot of moving
parts to that. Disability You probably already have through your
your group benefits, through your employer. Uh, but sometimes if
you are the employer that's been that's a little bit different.
You might need to go out and get your own
policy uh there as well, and there are there are
important uh differences between the disability policies, right, you want
(11:14):
something that is triggered by not being able to perform
your own occupation.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Some policies out there look really cheap and if you're
reading the fine print, they're basically only going to kick
in if you are able to unable to perform any occupation,
which that's that's a pretty wide range there, So make
sure you understand if you're looking into disability insurance what
you are covered for.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
And then the other things you want to look into
too is umbrella liability. UH that this these are the
types of things out there that you can that they're
very cheap to cover these risks as they're very rare,
but if they do happen, uh, then they are definitely
ship sinkers. So you can get that through your property
casualty ensure and just to kind of remove the risk,
it's going to cost you maybe maybe six eight hundred
dollars if that even to add on a typical million
(11:56):
dollar umbrella policy. Uh there to uh to to to
reduce the risk of anything else crazy happening. Then of
course there's long term care coverage out there. All this
is part of a stress test because twenty twenty six
it's not just the markets that are unpredictable.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Life is two.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Here's the all Worth advice. You can't control the markets
in twenty twenty six, but you can control how well
your financial plan is prepared to face the uncertainty. Coming
up next, we're gonna break down some nuances of long
term care insurance that even savvy investors often miss. You're
listening to simply money presented by all Worth Financial on
(12:31):
fifty five KRC the talk station. You're listening to Simply Money,
presented by Allworth Financial on Bobsponseller along with Brian James.
If you can't listen to Simply Money every night, subscribing
get our daily podcast. You can listen the following morning
(12:51):
during your commute or at the gym or whatever else
you do in the evenings where you might want a
little bit of financial advice, just search Simple Money on
the iHeart app or wherever you find your podcasts. Straight
Ahead at six forty three it's our ever popular Ask
the Advisors segment, where nuanced advice meets real life wealth decisions.
(13:13):
We talk a lot about risk in retirement, market risk, inflation,
risk taxes, but there's one that often flies under the radar,
the cost of needing long term care. And just because
you might have looked into insurance in the past, or
might even have a policy that's fifteen twenty years old,
that doesn't mean you understand what you're really getting or
(13:35):
what you actually own today. Let's jump into this topic, Brian,
because it is coming up more and more and more.
I don't know about you, but I'm I'm running into
this often now with folks in their mid to late
eighties and the and their children. It's an important topic to.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Cover, yeah, and especially earlier in retirement.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
This doesn't mean you should rush out and buy long
term caricters because we're talking about it, but there are
a lot of topics out there that sometimes we just
need to plan a seed and make sure that the
basics are there and we start thinking about it so
that when the time actually comes, it won't be the
first time you've started learning about these kinds of things.
So and really speaking to those of you who might
be in that kind of weird middle zone where you
too much money to qualify for Medicaid, which is the
(14:16):
that's the uh that's in the headlines a lot lately.
That's what we provide for people who don't have a
lot of resources to cover their healthcare, but at the
same time also not wealthy enough to self ensure, meaning
you've just got enough to pay for whatever comes down
the pike. And so that is where that that middle
zone there, that's where long term care insurance can make
some sense. But there's some things that people often miss.
That's what we want to talk about today. First off,
(14:38):
it's not just nursing homes. We instantly think, as soon
as I'm thinking long term care, that's a nursing home.
Well that's yes, that's of course.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Part of it. But a lot of policies actually cover
in home care, and.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
A matter of fact, the insurance companies prefer it because
in the long run it's cheaper. People are happier and
healthier when they're in their own environments, and so you know,
sending a nurse or somebody there to kind of help
them through the day can be a lot a lot
better for every nobody all around. Also, assisted living, moving
into a facility that you're still pretty much independent, but
at the same time there's medical staff on on on site.
(15:08):
There even adult daycare somewhere you would go once a
day and come home at night. So if your goal
is to stay in your home longer, long term care
insurance can cover those things if you pick the right policy.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
All right, I want to jump in with a couple
of things here. You talked about folks that are in
that middle zone, and Brian, you know, this is the
unfortunate situation that I find, you know, in doing retirement
planning for well over thirty years now, you've got the
folks that you know, they're in danger of running out
of money, and they're they're the ones that are in
danger of having to need to qualify for Medicaid. And
(15:41):
then you've got the folks that have way more than
enough money to self ensure. They're not worried about this
cost because if they need long term care coverage, their
lifestyle economically really isn't going to change in terms of
how much money is spent, you know, every month. It's
those folks in the middle, and that's where things get
challenging because if folks are just trying to get enough
(16:03):
money saved to retire, and their retirement income need or
want is about half of what it would be if
one of the two spouses goes on any kind of
long term care situation. That's the challenge because you can
make people borderline insurance poor by having them buy long
term care insurance. And there's the conundrum, what happens if
(16:25):
you don't get it, you know, in the worst case
scenario happens. That's where it's really critical to sit out
and look at the pros and cons of even doing insurance.
The other thing, you know, and I'm finding this I
have found this for the last ten fifteen years where
I've had clients actually use this stuff or need some
type of care. I mean the claims. The claims data
(16:48):
bears this well over eighty percent of all claims for
long term care coverage or for in home care. People
want to stay in their home, and understandably so, so
remember that when you're looking at this stuff, everybody wants
to stay in their home if possible. It's about getting
the right type of assistance at the right price to
(17:11):
make sure staying in your home is economically feasible, and
most importantly, keeping people safe in that process and not
burning out or overburdening loved ones. So we've got some
assistance coming in.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, So let's talk about some of things that do
trip people up when we're looking at what our solutions
might be for this.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
So, first off, Medicare does not cover it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
There's Medicaid, which is which we'll cover because that assumes
you really don't have enough resources to support yourself. That's
what medicaid is, or the dagen Medicare does not cover it.
So I want to say that a couple of times
Medicare does not cover long term care.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
So it might cover like a rehabs day.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
It'll give you thirty days after some kind of major
medical procedure, but that is limited and it is temporary,
so you can't rely on the government for that.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Premiums do go up even after you buy.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
You know, I think back to thirty years ago when
when I believe it was General Electric was a last
or maybe it John Hand, It doesn't matter, It doesn't
matter anymore. But anyway, somebody was so proud of the
fact that they had never ever ever raised their premiums.
That was in the history of the company, and that
was their big marketing Taglinel. And then all of a sudden
they realized that they too had missedpriced the risk and
weren't able to cover the things that they had taken on.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
So these General Warth policies, yeah, these gener Warth policies.
And this is no slam on General Electric. I mean,
they I think wisely vested themselves being again and it.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
So nobody remembers that Jen Warth is General Electric.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
But Brian, I'm having people every two to four years
or getting these letters in the mail saying, hey, if
you want to keep what you have, great, But the
premiums are going up fifteen to twenty percent. I mean,
this is happening, and I know a lot of our
listeners out there have experienced this happening. It's real, and
because twenty five thirty years ago, when these policies first
(18:50):
came out, there was not a lot of underwriting history
on these things, and they were too inexpensively priced based
on the claims data. So you know, it's dollars in
dollars out from an insurance company standpoint, they got to
make a little bit of profit. But if they pay
way more out in claims than they're taking in in premiums,
they obviously go out of business and then nobody gets
(19:11):
their their benefits. So that's a real situation that has
been happening to people. I didn't mean to interrupt.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
No, it's okay.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
So yeah, and this is something to look at now.
If you wait, you might not qualify. So early sixties,
even late fifties, that's the good window there. There are
policies out there that will let you share benefits with
a spouse. You can pay with health savings accounts, and
there's also something called a hybrid policy that will offer
a death benefit too.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
So lots of moving parts to look at. There.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Here's the all Worth advice. Long term care insurance is
more complicated, but it's also more flexible than most people realize.
Understand the fine print. Now get out in front of
this so that you're not caught off guard later next
why the next few years could present a once in
a generation opportunity to keep more of what you've worked
hard and earned. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
(19:57):
all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC, the talk station.
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial.
I'm Bob Sponsorer along with Brian James, Markets fluctuate and
tax laws of alve Investors are navigating a financial environment
that demands more foresight and examination than ever for those
(20:22):
with significant wealth. These shifts don't just impact annual tax filings.
They carry long term implications for investment outcomes, retirement readiness
and legacy planning. Brian, let's get into some of the
complexities here. What's going on and what should we be
thinking about as we juggle all these balls in the
(20:43):
air about tax efficiency, investment returns and making sure we
don't run out of money in retirement.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Well, That's what it's all about, isn't it, Bob, Just
not letting the bucket run dry. So yeah, lots of
moving parts. People have to think about that they didn't
used to. Because you're a high earner, there's just more
moving part all this. You often hit hit your deductions
and your credit limits faster. And the capital gains income
tax management. So capital gain is one of the biggest
drivers of tax exposure. If I own, if I bought
(21:10):
something for ten and I sold it for twenty, that
means I made ten bucks to share on it or
whatever that is. That means the I r S gets
a chunk of it too, in the form of capital gains.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
And a lot of.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Cases, if I'm a you know, if I'm a high earner,
then i may be in a situation where I've now
got a concentrated stock position. This is where we know
locally it's a lot of Procter and Gamble people and
Kroger people who have been there, you know, spend twenty
thirty years at those large fortune five hundred companies. A
lot of the compensation is made up of stock grants
and or options. That means you ended but with the
giant pile of it, and there's risk in that we
(21:40):
don't have to look too far and that there's nothing
wrong with Proctor, Gamble, Kroger and all that, But there
are plenty of Life is littered with lots of companies
with terrifying stories about how they evaporated, even if it's
in the short term. I was just having a conversation
with somebody last week who's in this exact situation. Procter
and Gamble is, you know, goes through these waves of
laying off people in that kind of thing, So everybody
has to start thinking about what they want to do
(22:01):
and what winds up happening. Is they all remember the
Dirk Yager years from the early two thousand when Dirk
Yager was installed as the CEO. He came up with
his Millennium two thousand plan or whatever it was, and
the market insta hated it and took away about fifty
percent of the value of Procter and Gamble in a
matter of about six weeks.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And that can happen.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
You know, if you make the stock market mad, the
hert is going to stampede and take your retirement with it.
Procter and gambled itself, obviously, is in fine condition today
and it came back roaring and better than ever. But
if you were somebody who wanted to retire from P
ANDNG in two thousand and one, two thousand and two
when that happened, that probably changed your life because you
had so much tied up. And again that has nothing
to do with P ANDNG being a bad company, but
(22:41):
the market can smack anything around in the relatively short term.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah, And that's the unfortunate thing. And we're not calling
a doomsday scenario for Procter and Gamble, a great company,
well run company. But the unfortunate thing, Brian, is these
kind of what i'll call black Swan type of events.
They usually only happened about every twenty to twenty five years.
And the generation that experienced that is way past, you know,
(23:07):
gone and retired, and the folks that are retiring today
don't remember that those days twenty to twenty five years ago.
And history doesn't always repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
And that's where you got to stay, you know, you
got to remember too much of any one thing can
blow up on you, no matter how well managed or
how well intentioned people are, and that get you know,
(23:28):
there's ways to get around this. As far as this
over concentration thing, you can stage it in over time.
You can put collar strategies in place, you can direct index.
There's a lot of things you can do to you know,
responsibly and tax efficiently, unwind a concentrated a concentrated position
in anyone's stock and to say nothing of some of
(23:51):
the charitable you know, opportunities out there with donor advise funds,
charitable remainder trust. There's a lot of things you can
do out there. Let's get into a state gift tax
exemption planning. I mean, I know, with the the new
bill that just got passed that took a lot of
uncertainty out of there as far as you know, making
permanent the large unified credit which will now be up
(24:12):
to you almost fifteen million dollars per person. But there
are some things that you got to plan around, you know,
in that regard to right, Brian.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
You know, one of the more most impactful provisions for
these high network families, that is the preservation of the
pretty high historically speaking, the relatively high federal estate and
gift tax exemptions. Those are going to increase to fifteen
million dollars per person. In other words, what I'm saying
to you out there, dear listener, is that don't worry
about estate taxes unless you yourself individually own more than
(24:41):
fifteen million dollars worth of assets. I mean thirty million
dollars for a for a married couple, if titled properly.
That's its own radio segment. We'll leave that there for now.
But state taxes are not an issue. There was the
threat that it might come back where this all comes from,
as President George Bush the second a long time ago
started the process of incre seeing how much was being
(25:01):
passed through, and I believe it would used to be
six hundred thousand dollars. Anything above that, which is not
that hard of a level to get to anymore. Anything
above that was deemed with the state taxes. But now
that number is fifteen million. So state taxes are not
a thing anymore. That could have gone away, but those
were extended and actually increased as.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
A result of the Big Beautiful Bill and so forth.
So other things out there.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
In your vocable life insurance trust, that's a way to
keep life insurance proceeds out of your estate. And you
can also apply valuation discounts. If you've got a business
or real estate interest, there are ways that the tax
laws will allow you to affect that valuation to make
it a little more different than here's what it is.
If I could if I sold it on the open market,
it's worth this. But there are different things you can
(25:41):
take advantage of the tax code, if you'll understand all
that properly.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
All right, those are some of the kind of what
off unique strategies out there. But I want to talk
about what most people should be doing, and Brian, what
we do every day and we run into this situation
with almost everybody we work with, and that's doing just
good old proactive cash flow and tax planning. What do
I mean by that? During that window between when you
(26:06):
retire and when required minimum distributions kick in, examine whether,
if or when and how much rawth conversions makes sense
for you, factoring in how that's going to impact your
overall tax strategy. You dovetail that with your social security
claiming strategy. How to take some capital gains. There's a
lot of things you can do there if you do
(26:27):
some planning and get with a good CPA financial advisor
or in the best case, scenario, a combination of both
of them working together. Here's the all Worth advice. A
flexible strategy that aligns with your goals and adapts to
policy changes can help reduce risk, boost after tax returns,
and preserve more of your wealth. Coming up next, we
(26:49):
are tackling the real questions that listeners are asking, maybe
even ones you've been wondering about yourself. You're listening to
Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC,
the talk station. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
all Worth Financial. I'm Bob Sponseller along with Brian James.
(27:11):
If 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 there on the iHeart app.
Simply record your question and it will come straight to us.
Speaking of questions, Brian, let's hear from Brad and mount
look up in Mountains.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Please explain what the survivor penalty is? Yeah, Brad, great question.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
So that's that's something that has come up that comes
up all the time. We're talking about taxes and what
happens after you lose a spouse and all of a sudden.
You have to switch from married and set us out
all the emotional that goes of that. You also have
to insult injury switch from married filing jointly to single.
So the reason this is the thing is because the
income thresholds for the tax brackets are much lower for
(27:53):
single filers. Right when I hear the word lower and taxes,
I usually get a good feeling, but this is a
bad one.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Me.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
What that means is that if you hit the threat
usholds sooner because they're lower, that means your taxes go
up quicker, so the survivor can get pushed into a
high tax bracket.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
You also lose.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
The one standard deduction, and so that the standard deduction
in twenty twenty five is around fourteen six versus twenty
nine two for joint filers over sixty five.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
That's a problem.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Single person may get taxed a little more in the
Social Security IRMA kicks in a little sooner because of again,
because of the way all this math works. So again,
this is really the way to avoid this. You can't
change the tax brackets, they are what they are, but
control what you can control.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
This is where roth conversions come in.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
If you have a significant pile of money and a
pre tax IRA, you might look at paying taxes on
then now pulling that taxation forward.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
So that your rmds will be reduced.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
You can also, if it's a concern of draining your
own estate and therefore taking it away from your kids
life insurance, might make some sense to create an estate
at your death to offset some of that. And jo
just make sure you this all starts with what we
always say, Bob. This all starts with knowing where you
are in the first place. So understand where your situation
is now, then you can look what if Heaven forbid
I lose my spouse. Let's move on to Joe in
(29:03):
Blue Ash, who has a question about, Hey, go figure
it roth conversion. How do you balance wroth conversions with
staying under medicare premium cliffs?
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Great question, Joe. Let's talk about what these medicare premium
cliffs are. There's something called IERMA, and I'm not going
to get into it's a big long acronym, but it
basically means what Joe's asking about. If you have too
much earned income, you pay more in premium on your Medicare.
So what we do what it sts with is what
we talk about all the time. You developing an income
(29:34):
strategy and along with that a Wroth conversion strategy. So
when you layer in things like a potential Wroth conversion
along with maybe pension, social Security, other income you've got
coming in, we want to make sure we walk right
up to that line where you take advantage of the
great opportunities that Wroth conversions give you, but don't cross
(29:55):
over that line from an income standpoint and start to
irrevocably drive up your Medicare premiums. There's some great there
are some great tools out there that help us do that.
We sit down and do that with every client. I
know a lot of good CPAs are doing that as well.
But again it comes down to the difference between tax preparation,
which is what eighty to ninety percent of people just do.
(30:17):
They just mail in all their stuff and wait for
the answer to come back from their CPA versus proactive
tax planning where you sit down and run some actual
scenarios on if I do this, what happens over here,
and you balance it out and you maximize your income strategy.
All right, let's hear from Laura and Villa Hills.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I've got a concentrated stock position from a former employer.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
What's the best way to onwind that without triggering a
huge tax bill.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Well, congratulations, Laura, this is a good problem to have.
Concentrated stock means just that I got a lot of
my networth tied up in a stock that is mostly
because of an employment, or perhaps you own the company
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
But so then the risk there if it's.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
A concentrated stock position usually implies that the thing did
pretty well, So congratulations, it must have grown a lot.
But that also means that there's usually capital gains in
the mix here, So that's usually the concern.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
If it is a position that is not inside.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Of a retirement plan, not an IRA, not a four
oh one K, nothing like that, then it's exposed to
capital gains taxes, which actually are slightly more favorable than
income taxes.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
But taxes are still taxes. So what do we do
about that?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Well, the first thing I would look at is if
you are some of the easier things to handle, If
you are already charitably inclined, then you might look at
if you write checks to a church or you know,
some five oh one C three type organization every single year,
then First off, you may have lost your deduction on
that a few years ago twenty seventeen when the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act increased the standard deduction and therefore
(31:44):
losing the deduction or just getting it for free basically.
So that's a case where you might donate some of
that stocks, just donate the shares. If you do that
donation of appreciated shares, then will you're passing the gain
on to an entity that doesn't pay taxes Anyway, you
get the deduction and for the full dollar amount whatever
it was worth a day you donated it, that five
OHO one C three will turn around and immediately sell
(32:05):
it and you use it for whatever their purposes are,
they will not pay any capital gains. So matter of fact,
I run across people all the time that are writing
checks to these organizations, which to me is a waste
of everybody's tax dollars because they could simply give the
shares if five oh one C three gets the same
amount of money and no sacrifice by really by anybody.
But if that's not what you have in mind, then
(32:26):
you're going to be looking at something called an exchange
fund or a swap fund. This is where if I
have a big pile of PNG. I can band together
with people who have a bunch of Kroger, or a
bunch of IBM, or a bunch of Apple and Video,
whatever it is. We all throw our shares into a pile,
and then we each take a proportionate share of the
resulting pile of stuff. This is not a sale. It's
not nearly as simply as I'm making it right now.
(32:47):
It's not a sales, so it doesn't trigger taxes. But
I do have now I have a representation of a
lot of different companies. It's a way to spread that
risk out. So those are two you're either charitab being inclined,
or you want to spread out of diversification, and sometimes
both of those can help. Bill and Mason is retired
and has got some questions about rmds.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
My wife and I are retired and we don't need
our rm ds to live on. What's the smartest options
for putting our money to work?
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Well, Bill, I obviously don't know whether you're retired and
not yes yet at RMD AGE or whether you're already
at rmd AD, so the answer is slightly different depending
on what situation you're in. So let's brief the cover
both if you're tired and not yet at that RMD age,
there's where the opportunity is and a big one. You know,
(33:33):
you just retired, your income is lower, and you've got
an opportunity to do these WROTH conversions that we've been
talking about. You know, you sit down and sketch that
out and try to get as much money moved into
roth IRA's at the lowest possible tax rate. You can.
Wonderful strategy there if you're already at RMD age. And
I run into this a lot with folks that are
(33:55):
in their late seventies and are still writing checks to
their church. If you're charitably inclined to tie to your church,
you give other money to other ministries or other charities.
A lot of people are still making cash gifts where
they could be taking IRA money beginning at age seventy
and a half and diverting that IRA money directly to charity.
(34:17):
And if you do that, the amount of that charitable
gift does not even hit your ten forty and is
not even counted as taxable income. You don't get a
deduction for that gift. But it's even better, the RMD
does not hit your tax returns taxable income. So that's
those are two scenarios you can look at. And then
(34:37):
if worst case scenario, if you don't need the rm ds,
you've maxed out what you want to give to charity,
you just convert whatever is left in those rm ds
over to a taxable investment account. Because you brought up
keeping that money, you know, working for you and putting
it to work. Put it in a taxable, tax efficient
brokerage fund and let it grow long term for your
kids and grand kids. Coming up next, why you could
(35:00):
be eating your retirement literally eating it one mimosa brunch
at a time. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC the talk station.
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial
on Bob Sponseller along with Brian James. So get this Brian.
(35:21):
MarketWatch recently published an article that got our attention. If
a couple spends one hundred dollars a day eating out
or just fifty dollars a person over the course of
forty years, which is you know which is I guess
a long but not out of the question retirement shold.
Now they'll have spent nearly two million dollars just on
(35:43):
restaurant meals. Something to keep an eye on here. Two
million dollars is a lot of money, Brian, and that
can make or break the viability of one's retirement plan.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah, and that that one hundred bucks a day eating out.
That used to sound like a lot. Remember when a
hundred dollars meal that meant you were celebrating somebody's birthday
or graduation or whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
It was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
But now you know, if I'm eating lunch and dinner
out there, and I'm a married couple, well then that's
fifty bucks apiece, that's twenty five bucks apiece per meal. Well,
that's that's lunch of skyline, love my skyline. But that's
where that's about where they are now. And so again
that all sneaks up, and that's two million dollars, right,
this is the problem with the snowball and so forth.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
That's before you factor in the.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Tip if that's a thing, and maybe that extra glass
of wine and all that stuff. You know, where the
two million dollars that that's a nest egg for a
lot of people. So again, one hundred bucks a day
eating out over forty years is going to add up
a lot. So you can apply this to a lot
of different things, but different expenses that maybe you can
seem to be fairly innocuous but end up sneaking up
on us. So if you've done the right things and
(36:45):
you built up a solid nestick, it's probably not a
major concern.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
It's more of an expensive hobby.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I think, yeah, I think the key here, and we
can make fun of, you know, one hundred dollars skyline
bill and eating out and all that, But I think
the point we're trying to make here is when you
examine your retirement budget, what you're actually going to spend
or want to spend. And what I what I always
tell people Brian, is I don't need to know how
(37:10):
much you spend on a pack of gum or something
like that, but numbers that start to add up to,
you know, in the hundreds of dollars per month, it's
worth taking a look at, especially if you're on the
margins in the area being able to viably retire, and say, hey,
are there things that we can trim back on just
a little bit without ruining our life and taking all
(37:33):
the fun out of our life. As opposed to just
letting it rip, do whatever we want and hoping it
works out in the end. That's really what we're talking
about here, Brian.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Yeah, and again this is not at all about stop doing.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I always tell my clients everybody comes in wanting to
build a retirement plan, and most people who have built
something are relatively frugal people to begin with. So they'll
walk in and they'll say, we're gonna build a vegetable
garden in the backyard. We're gonna eat out of that,
and we're never gonna leave the house. And I always say, no,
you're not going to do that. You'd have done it already.
That sounds awful, and it sounds like a terrible retirement.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
I just keep working.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
If that's your plan, So let's not start there. Let's
figure out what you do now. If eating out is
a social thing, if that's an important thing, that's important
stuff it is. No, we're not on this planet's to
stare at a growing pile of money. We are here
to enjoy each other's company and help out where we can,
and so on and so forth. So understand what your
life is like and then build your financial plan around that.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, if you really love eating out and you want
to keep doing that, great, Maybe just trim back from
having four paid movie subscriptions or streaming services to maybe two.
There's always a way to skin the cat here. Here's
the all Worth advice. You've saved, well don't. You don't
need to skip the stake, just maybe skip the third course.
Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Simply Money, presented
(38:46):
by all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC, the talk
station
Tonight the January Financial stress Tests Can your plans survive
twenty twenty six? You're listening to Simply Money Presided by
all Worth Financial on Bob Sponseller along with Brian James.
So we're about a week into twenty twenty six, New year,
fresh start. But also, let's be honest, we always have
fresh uncertainties as well. No one really knows where the
(00:31):
markets are headed next, what interest rate policy is gonna be,
so on and so forth. So tonight we're asking can
your financial plan survive twenty twenty six? Are you ready
for it? Before the markets test you, it's time to
test your plan. So we're gonna call this segment a
good old January financial stress test. Brian walk us through
(00:53):
what we mean here.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, let's start with interest rate risk, Bob. That's been
a hot topic for better part of the last seven years.
So right now we're in a falling interest rate environment.
But what does that mean for your investments? Well, if
you're holding long term bonds, well that's great. You've probably
seen some nice price appreciation because bonds tend to move
in the opposite of interest rates. And the reason for that,
by the way, is because is because if rates are falling,
(01:17):
then the value of already existing bonds versus new bonds
becomes becomes greater. Simply supplying demand, what do I want
the higher rate or do I want the new lower rates? Well,
that's why that that relationship moves in that direction. So
what happens if these cuts stall though, or if inflation
rears it's had again and the Fed you know, has
to pause or kind of reverse course of what they've
been doing. So, you know, let's go through an example here. Hypothetically,
(01:40):
we've got a sixty three year old retiree. This isn't
all that hypothetically. This is a lot of our clients really,
we're just putting a name on this. But anyway, sixty
three years old, three and a half million dollars, with
a six hundred thousand dollars bond ladder, and you know,
let's say they switch to longer duration bonds expecting rates
to continue to fall. That's a logical move as long
as that's right, As long as rates can keep dropping,
(02:00):
then that's that's what you would do. But if that
doesn't happen, orf inflation sticks around, those bond values might
take a hit. So so here's the real question, are
you diversified enough across duration and duration is a little
bit different than the than the time to maturity. Duration
is a calculation that takes into account the actual cast flow,
the interest rate you're getting off of something, and in
(02:21):
addition to the time value of it. Though, so should
you be locking that in now or maybe keeping some
powder dry and these shorter term instruments like T bills
or high quality bufferdts. Maybe you're a business owner, real
estate investor, you know you've got some floating rate debt.
Maybe this is the window to refinance. Don't assume you're
gonna have forever because rates don't stay the same. They
can move quickly if economic data surprises us.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, Brian, I mean to your point that I think
you're making here, is as difficult as it is for
anyone to time the direction of the stock market in
the short term. Boy is it really hard, you know,
even more difficult to time the bond mark market in
the movement of interest rates. And that's why laddering or
diversifying you know your duration of your bond portfolio as
(03:07):
long you know as well as your credit quality of
your bond portfolio makes a ton of sense. Because we
literally don't know what's gonna happen. We don't know what
the Fed's gonna do, we don't know what geopolitical stuff's
gonna happen. And to put too many eggs in a
basket in a bond portfolio, especially something that you're buying
it expecting it to stay stable and and and give
(03:28):
you a good interest rate with a lot of volatility,
just make sure that you've spread out your risk, both
credit wise and duration wise, so that you don't take
an unexpected hit. All right, let's move on to stress
testing good old stock market volatility.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Brian, Yeah, So guess what this is a mid term
election year, right, we had we we had one year
after the presidential election. Now we're going to be talking
midterms and that always means policy headlines. It could be
a major shift in control in Congress, h and plumb.
But the point is plenty of market moving noise out there,
and that's going to be you know that that's going
to get ramped up almost immediately here, early in January
(04:07):
as we started, because again we're past the holidays and
it's going to be an election year, so for sure
that that's gonna be there's gonna be a lot of
people out there with bullhorns screaming one direction versus the other.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
So this is interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
We do always hear clients say, oh, I'm a I'm
conservative until the market drops fifteen percent, and then suddenly
they want to go to cash and they're a lot
more conservative than they thought they were.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So this reminds me of that old you know, Mike
Tyson saying that everybody has a plan until they get
punched in the face. That's why we stress test with
Monte Carlos simulations. And so what we want to ask
is what happens if my financial plan is rock solid now,
assuming nothing bad ever happens again? Then what happens if
I lose say twenty to maybe twenty five percent of
my financial network?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Am I still okay? Or do I have to exit?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Do it?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Do I have to change my expectations to what I'm
going to be able to do? So what if that
market has a down year? Are you still doing okay?
So we'll walk through. Go ahead, Bob, No, I just
wanted to throw in here. You know, you talked about,
you know, the midterm election year, and it's a good point.
It's a good time to point out and I talked
about this a few weeks ago on the show, but
it bears repeating. I heard a good interview with a
(05:13):
very respected you know, market analyst and money manager.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Just remind all of us, and this is not an opinion,
This is just data. If you look at historic volatility
of the stock market in mid term elections versus off
year elections, you know, the average drop or mid mid
year volatility of the stock market in a non election
year is about twelve percent, but in a mid term
(05:39):
election year it's nineteen percent. So we should expect volatility,
you know, more than we did in twenty twenty five,
you know, coming up here at some point in twenty
twenty six. And the key point here that I that
I think you're trying to make and doing a good
job of here, Brian, is expect it because it's probably
coming in some way, shape or form, because mid term
(06:02):
elections do introduce uncertainty to the market, and let's face it,
everybody likes certainty.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, So let's let's walk through an example here just
to kind of give everybody a little frame of reference,
that is to how this goes down and what what
should be expected there's nothing. There's nothing crazy going on here.
This is historically you know, what has happened. So here,
here's a hypothetical sixty eight year old couple. Maybe they're
pulling one hundred and twenty thousand dollars ten thousand a
month from their portfolio.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Right now.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
There are seventy five percent stocks, twenty five percent fawns,
and they're really happy with returns because we've had that.
You know, let's face it, the last three years have
been fantastic for the stock market. But we run their
plan through a twenty percent downturn in year one. This
is stress testing, right, So stress testing again is run
it assuming nothing bad ever happens, and then now let's
see what takes to break it. Now, all of a sudden,
there's success rate drops from ninety two percent to sixty
(06:51):
eight percent. You know, from basically a nine out of
ten batting average to a to a maybe two out
of three, which is actually still pretty strong. That is
not a reason to panic, but that could be a
reason to consider rebalancing.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
What that means is that is that maybe.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Their portfolio has too much risk in it, that that
perhaps they don't need so much return as they do
a reduction in the volatility, because it could be one
of these black Swan type years that could ruin them.
But a standard downturn and a more conservative portfolio is
not going to hurt them at all. So again, but
I'm not overly worried when I see that happen in
a financial plan. That's not cause to tell somebody they
(07:26):
have to change their expectations entirely, because time tends to
heal these things in a financial plan. So as long
as we can prevent panic and as long as we
are able to let the market recover.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Now, that is very very.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Hard to do when you are retired and you've got
what you've got. The nest egg is what it is.
It's in place, and it takes a hit. It's a
very difficult thing to say, let's just hang on and
ride it out far different than it was when you
were working. But if as long as you understand that's
the important of stress testing this way, understand what it
could look like, and then you'll get some time to
(07:58):
think about how you will react. If your dollar amount
suddenly look that way, Is that something you can handle?
If not, then that's maybe where you do need to
consider changing your expectations. But the important thing is you
will have done it before it actually happens exactly. And
speaking of putting time on your side, along with maybe
doing a you know, a regular old rebalance of your portfolio,
getting your wrisk tolerance and check, you know, the other
(08:20):
thing is to examine, you know, something we refer to
all the time as a bucket strategy. Maybe have two
two and a half years worth of living expenses in
a very liquid, non volatile asset class, think money markets, treasury,
something like that where you can weather the storm of
even a severe market downturn like at two thousand and
(08:42):
eight and nine scenario, because history shows that even when
we have these big pullbacks or declines or recessions, the
market usually recovers.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
In around three years. But boy, those three years are
tough to stomach if you've got to sell, you know,
assets that are down to pay the bills every month.
So along with just rebalancing and doing a risk assessment
and the Monte Carlo analysis that you referred to, Brian,
you know, just some good old cash management, having some
money put away that you can access if and when
(09:13):
we do get a more severe decline. That could serve
you well. Also, hey, finally, let's talk about just insurance
buffers here. If the market tanks in your income takes
a hit, especially if you're a business owner, you got
to look at how much cash you can access without
having to sell something in a down market. Here's a
(09:33):
real example. A business owner, let's say has a five
million dollar net worth, but three million and that is
tied up in their business and another million and a
half is tied up in their real estate. So you know,
with a five million dollar net worth of only five
hundred thousand dollars of that is really liquid, this could
present a problem if you've got payroll to meet and
(09:55):
other expenses. So this is another reason to just stress
test the overall plan. And in the example that we
want to cite here, we did have an advisor go
in and do that stress test the plan, and they
quickly realize that if the revenue of the business dropped
by say thirty percent, they can't cover their own personal
expenses for more than three months without going out and
(10:18):
taking out a loan. So in this case, the good
advisor recommended, hey, let's get really proactive and diligent about
building that twelvemonth liquidity buffer. Even if it means taking
some chips off the table from you know, a quote
unquote growth asset and insurance can play a role here too,
(10:40):
especially if you're the key income earner in a family business.
You know what happens if something happens to you in
the short term from a health standpoint, Walk us through
what we need to do there, Brian.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, this is where disability insurance comes in, you know,
and disability of course that there's a lot of moving
parts to that. Disability You probably already have through your
your group benefits, through your employer. Uh, but sometimes if
you are the employer that's been that's a little bit different.
You might need to go out and get your own
policy uh there as well, and there are there are
important uh differences between the disability policies, right, you want
(11:14):
something that is triggered by not being able to perform
your own occupation.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Some policies out there look really cheap and if you're
reading the fine print, they're basically only going to kick
in if you are able to unable to perform any occupation,
which that's that's a pretty wide range there, So make
sure you understand if you're looking into disability insurance what
you are covered for.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
And then the other things you want to look into
too is umbrella liability. UH that this these are the
types of things out there that you can that they're
very cheap to cover these risks as they're very rare,
but if they do happen, uh, then they are definitely
ship sinkers. So you can get that through your property
casualty ensure and just to kind of remove the risk,
it's going to cost you maybe maybe six eight hundred
dollars if that even to add on a typical million
(11:56):
dollar umbrella policy. Uh there to uh to to to
reduce the risk of anything else crazy happening. Then of
course there's long term care coverage out there. All this
is part of a stress test because twenty twenty six
it's not just the markets that are unpredictable.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Life is two.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Here's the all Worth advice. You can't control the markets
in twenty twenty six, but you can control how well
your financial plan is prepared to face the uncertainty. Coming
up next, we're gonna break down some nuances of long
term care insurance that even savvy investors often miss. You're
listening to simply money presented by all Worth Financial on
(12:31):
fifty five KRC the talk station. You're listening to Simply Money,
presented by Allworth Financial on Bobsponseller along with Brian James.
If you can't listen to Simply Money every night, subscribing
get our daily podcast. You can listen the following morning
(12:51):
during your commute or at the gym or whatever else
you do in the evenings where you might want a
little bit of financial advice, just search Simple Money on
the iHeart app or wherever you find your podcasts. Straight
Ahead at six forty three it's our ever popular Ask
the Advisors segment, where nuanced advice meets real life wealth decisions.
(13:13):
We talk a lot about risk in retirement, market risk, inflation,
risk taxes, but there's one that often flies under the radar,
the cost of needing long term care. And just because
you might have looked into insurance in the past, or
might even have a policy that's fifteen twenty years old,
that doesn't mean you understand what you're really getting or
(13:35):
what you actually own today. Let's jump into this topic, Brian,
because it is coming up more and more and more.
I don't know about you, but I'm I'm running into
this often now with folks in their mid to late
eighties and the and their children. It's an important topic to.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Cover, yeah, and especially earlier in retirement.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
This doesn't mean you should rush out and buy long
term caricters because we're talking about it, but there are
a lot of topics out there that sometimes we just
need to plan a seed and make sure that the
basics are there and we start thinking about it so
that when the time actually comes, it won't be the
first time you've started learning about these kinds of things.
So and really speaking to those of you who might
be in that kind of weird middle zone where you
too much money to qualify for Medicaid, which is the
(14:16):
that's the uh that's in the headlines a lot lately.
That's what we provide for people who don't have a
lot of resources to cover their healthcare, but at the
same time also not wealthy enough to self ensure, meaning
you've just got enough to pay for whatever comes down
the pike. And so that is where that that middle
zone there, that's where long term care insurance can make
some sense. But there's some things that people often miss.
That's what we want to talk about today. First off,
(14:38):
it's not just nursing homes. We instantly think, as soon
as I'm thinking long term care, that's a nursing home.
Well that's yes, that's of course.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Part of it. But a lot of policies actually cover
in home care, and.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
A matter of fact, the insurance companies prefer it because
in the long run it's cheaper. People are happier and
healthier when they're in their own environments, and so you know,
sending a nurse or somebody there to kind of help
them through the day can be a lot a lot
better for every nobody all around. Also, assisted living, moving
into a facility that you're still pretty much independent, but
at the same time there's medical staff on on on site.
(15:08):
There even adult daycare somewhere you would go once a
day and come home at night. So if your goal
is to stay in your home longer, long term care
insurance can cover those things if you pick the right policy.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
All right, I want to jump in with a couple
of things here. You talked about folks that are in
that middle zone, and Brian, you know, this is the
unfortunate situation that I find, you know, in doing retirement
planning for well over thirty years now, you've got the
folks that you know, they're in danger of running out
of money, and they're they're the ones that are in
danger of having to need to qualify for Medicaid. And
(15:41):
then you've got the folks that have way more than
enough money to self ensure. They're not worried about this
cost because if they need long term care coverage, their
lifestyle economically really isn't going to change in terms of
how much money is spent, you know, every month. It's
those folks in the middle, and that's where things get
challenging because if folks are just trying to get enough
(16:03):
money saved to retire, and their retirement income need or
want is about half of what it would be if
one of the two spouses goes on any kind of
long term care situation. That's the challenge because you can
make people borderline insurance poor by having them buy long
term care insurance. And there's the conundrum, what happens if
(16:25):
you don't get it, you know, in the worst case
scenario happens. That's where it's really critical to sit out
and look at the pros and cons of even doing insurance.
The other thing, you know, and I'm finding this I
have found this for the last ten fifteen years where
I've had clients actually use this stuff or need some
type of care. I mean the claims. The claims data
(16:48):
bears this well over eighty percent of all claims for
long term care coverage or for in home care. People
want to stay in their home, and understandably so, so
remember that when you're looking at this stuff, everybody wants
to stay in their home if possible. It's about getting
the right type of assistance at the right price to
(17:11):
make sure staying in your home is economically feasible, and
most importantly, keeping people safe in that process and not
burning out or overburdening loved ones. So we've got some
assistance coming in.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, So let's talk about some of things that do
trip people up when we're looking at what our solutions
might be for this.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
So, first off, Medicare does not cover it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
There's Medicaid, which is which we'll cover because that assumes
you really don't have enough resources to support yourself. That's
what medicaid is, or the dagen Medicare does not cover it.
So I want to say that a couple of times
Medicare does not cover long term care.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
So it might cover like a rehabs day.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
It'll give you thirty days after some kind of major
medical procedure, but that is limited and it is temporary,
so you can't rely on the government for that.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Premiums do go up even after you buy.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
You know, I think back to thirty years ago when
when I believe it was General Electric was a last
or maybe it John Hand, It doesn't matter, It doesn't
matter anymore. But anyway, somebody was so proud of the
fact that they had never ever ever raised their premiums.
That was in the history of the company, and that
was their big marketing Taglinel. And then all of a sudden
they realized that they too had missedpriced the risk and
weren't able to cover the things that they had taken on.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
So these General Warth policies, yeah, these gener Warth policies.
And this is no slam on General Electric. I mean,
they I think wisely vested themselves being again and it.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
So nobody remembers that Jen Warth is General Electric.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
But Brian, I'm having people every two to four years
or getting these letters in the mail saying, hey, if
you want to keep what you have, great, But the
premiums are going up fifteen to twenty percent. I mean,
this is happening, and I know a lot of our
listeners out there have experienced this happening. It's real, and
because twenty five thirty years ago, when these policies first
(18:50):
came out, there was not a lot of underwriting history
on these things, and they were too inexpensively priced based
on the claims data. So you know, it's dollars in
dollars out from an insurance company standpoint, they got to
make a little bit of profit. But if they pay
way more out in claims than they're taking in in premiums,
they obviously go out of business and then nobody gets
(19:11):
their their benefits. So that's a real situation that has
been happening to people. I didn't mean to interrupt.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
No, it's okay.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
So yeah, and this is something to look at now.
If you wait, you might not qualify. So early sixties,
even late fifties, that's the good window there. There are
policies out there that will let you share benefits with
a spouse. You can pay with health savings accounts, and
there's also something called a hybrid policy that will offer
a death benefit too.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
So lots of moving parts to look at. There.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Here's the all Worth advice. Long term care insurance is
more complicated, but it's also more flexible than most people realize.
Understand the fine print. Now get out in front of
this so that you're not caught off guard later next
why the next few years could present a once in
a generation opportunity to keep more of what you've worked
hard and earned. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
(19:57):
all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC, the talk station.
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial.
I'm Bob Sponsorer along with Brian James, Markets fluctuate and
tax laws of alve Investors are navigating a financial environment
that demands more foresight and examination than ever for those
(20:22):
with significant wealth. These shifts don't just impact annual tax filings.
They carry long term implications for investment outcomes, retirement readiness
and legacy planning. Brian, let's get into some of the
complexities here. What's going on and what should we be
thinking about as we juggle all these balls in the
(20:43):
air about tax efficiency, investment returns and making sure we
don't run out of money in retirement.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Well, That's what it's all about, isn't it, Bob, Just
not letting the bucket run dry. So yeah, lots of
moving parts. People have to think about that they didn't
used to. Because you're a high earner, there's just more
moving part all this. You often hit hit your deductions
and your credit limits faster. And the capital gains income
tax management. So capital gain is one of the biggest
drivers of tax exposure. If I own, if I bought
(21:10):
something for ten and I sold it for twenty, that
means I made ten bucks to share on it or
whatever that is. That means the I r S gets
a chunk of it too, in the form of capital gains.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
And a lot of.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Cases, if I'm a you know, if I'm a high earner,
then i may be in a situation where I've now
got a concentrated stock position. This is where we know
locally it's a lot of Procter and Gamble people and
Kroger people who have been there, you know, spend twenty
thirty years at those large fortune five hundred companies. A
lot of the compensation is made up of stock grants
and or options. That means you ended but with the
giant pile of it, and there's risk in that we
(21:40):
don't have to look too far and that there's nothing
wrong with Proctor, Gamble, Kroger and all that, But there
are plenty of Life is littered with lots of companies
with terrifying stories about how they evaporated, even if it's
in the short term. I was just having a conversation
with somebody last week who's in this exact situation. Procter
and Gamble is, you know, goes through these waves of
laying off people in that kind of thing, So everybody
has to start thinking about what they want to do
(22:01):
and what winds up happening. Is they all remember the
Dirk Yager years from the early two thousand when Dirk
Yager was installed as the CEO. He came up with
his Millennium two thousand plan or whatever it was, and
the market insta hated it and took away about fifty
percent of the value of Procter and Gamble in a
matter of about six weeks.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And that can happen.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
You know, if you make the stock market mad, the
hert is going to stampede and take your retirement with it.
Procter and gambled itself, obviously, is in fine condition today
and it came back roaring and better than ever. But
if you were somebody who wanted to retire from P
ANDNG in two thousand and one, two thousand and two
when that happened, that probably changed your life because you
had so much tied up. And again that has nothing
to do with P ANDNG being a bad company, but
(22:41):
the market can smack anything around in the relatively short term.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah, And that's the unfortunate thing. And we're not calling
a doomsday scenario for Procter and Gamble, a great company,
well run company. But the unfortunate thing, Brian, is these
kind of what i'll call black Swan type of events.
They usually only happened about every twenty to twenty five years.
And the generation that experienced that is way past, you know,
(23:07):
gone and retired, and the folks that are retiring today
don't remember that those days twenty to twenty five years ago.
And history doesn't always repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
And that's where you got to stay, you know, you
got to remember too much of any one thing can
blow up on you, no matter how well managed or
how well intentioned people are, and that get you know,
(23:28):
there's ways to get around this. As far as this
over concentration thing, you can stage it in over time.
You can put collar strategies in place, you can direct index.
There's a lot of things you can do to you know,
responsibly and tax efficiently, unwind a concentrated a concentrated position
in anyone's stock and to say nothing of some of
(23:51):
the charitable you know, opportunities out there with donor advise funds,
charitable remainder trust. There's a lot of things you can
do out there. Let's get into a state gift tax
exemption planning. I mean, I know, with the the new
bill that just got passed that took a lot of
uncertainty out of there as far as you know, making
permanent the large unified credit which will now be up
(24:12):
to you almost fifteen million dollars per person. But there
are some things that you got to plan around, you know,
in that regard to right, Brian.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
You know, one of the more most impactful provisions for
these high network families, that is the preservation of the
pretty high historically speaking, the relatively high federal estate and
gift tax exemptions. Those are going to increase to fifteen
million dollars per person. In other words, what I'm saying
to you out there, dear listener, is that don't worry
about estate taxes unless you yourself individually own more than
(24:41):
fifteen million dollars worth of assets. I mean thirty million
dollars for a for a married couple, if titled properly.
That's its own radio segment. We'll leave that there for now.
But state taxes are not an issue. There was the
threat that it might come back where this all comes from,
as President George Bush the second a long time ago
started the process of incre seeing how much was being
(25:01):
passed through, and I believe it would used to be
six hundred thousand dollars. Anything above that, which is not
that hard of a level to get to anymore. Anything
above that was deemed with the state taxes. But now
that number is fifteen million. So state taxes are not
a thing anymore. That could have gone away, but those
were extended and actually increased as.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
A result of the Big Beautiful Bill and so forth.
So other things out there.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
In your vocable life insurance trust, that's a way to
keep life insurance proceeds out of your estate. And you
can also apply valuation discounts. If you've got a business
or real estate interest, there are ways that the tax
laws will allow you to affect that valuation to make
it a little more different than here's what it is.
If I could if I sold it on the open market,
it's worth this. But there are different things you can
(25:41):
take advantage of the tax code, if you'll understand all
that properly.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
All right, those are some of the kind of what
off unique strategies out there. But I want to talk
about what most people should be doing, and Brian, what
we do every day and we run into this situation
with almost everybody we work with, and that's doing just
good old proactive cash flow and tax planning. What do
I mean by that? During that window between when you
(26:06):
retire and when required minimum distributions kick in, examine whether,
if or when and how much rawth conversions makes sense
for you, factoring in how that's going to impact your
overall tax strategy. You dovetail that with your social security
claiming strategy. How to take some capital gains. There's a
lot of things you can do there if you do
(26:27):
some planning and get with a good CPA financial advisor
or in the best case, scenario, a combination of both
of them working together. Here's the all Worth advice. A
flexible strategy that aligns with your goals and adapts to
policy changes can help reduce risk, boost after tax returns,
and preserve more of your wealth. Coming up next, we
(26:49):
are tackling the real questions that listeners are asking, maybe
even ones you've been wondering about yourself. You're listening to
Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC,
the talk station. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
all Worth Financial. I'm Bob Sponseller along with Brian James.
(27:11):
If 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 there on the iHeart app.
Simply record your question and it will come straight to us.
Speaking of questions, Brian, let's hear from Brad and mount
look up in Mountains.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Please explain what the survivor penalty is? Yeah, Brad, great question.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
So that's that's something that has come up that comes
up all the time. We're talking about taxes and what
happens after you lose a spouse and all of a sudden.
You have to switch from married and set us out
all the emotional that goes of that. You also have
to insult injury switch from married filing jointly to single.
So the reason this is the thing is because the
income thresholds for the tax brackets are much lower for
(27:53):
single filers. Right when I hear the word lower and taxes,
I usually get a good feeling, but this is a
bad one.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Me.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
What that means is that if you hit the threat
usholds sooner because they're lower, that means your taxes go
up quicker, so the survivor can get pushed into a
high tax bracket.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
You also lose.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
The one standard deduction, and so that the standard deduction
in twenty twenty five is around fourteen six versus twenty
nine two for joint filers over sixty five.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
That's a problem.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Single person may get taxed a little more in the
Social Security IRMA kicks in a little sooner because of again,
because of the way all this math works. So again,
this is really the way to avoid this. You can't
change the tax brackets, they are what they are, but
control what you can control.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
This is where roth conversions come in.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
If you have a significant pile of money and a
pre tax IRA, you might look at paying taxes on
then now pulling that taxation forward.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
So that your rmds will be reduced.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
You can also, if it's a concern of draining your
own estate and therefore taking it away from your kids
life insurance, might make some sense to create an estate
at your death to offset some of that. And jo
just make sure you this all starts with what we
always say, Bob. This all starts with knowing where you
are in the first place. So understand where your situation
is now, then you can look what if Heaven forbid
I lose my spouse. Let's move on to Joe in
(29:03):
Blue Ash, who has a question about, Hey, go figure
it roth conversion. How do you balance wroth conversions with
staying under medicare premium cliffs?
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Great question, Joe. Let's talk about what these medicare premium
cliffs are. There's something called IERMA, and I'm not going
to get into it's a big long acronym, but it
basically means what Joe's asking about. If you have too
much earned income, you pay more in premium on your Medicare.
So what we do what it sts with is what
we talk about all the time. You developing an income
(29:34):
strategy and along with that a Wroth conversion strategy. So
when you layer in things like a potential Wroth conversion
along with maybe pension, social Security, other income you've got
coming in, we want to make sure we walk right
up to that line where you take advantage of the
great opportunities that Wroth conversions give you, but don't cross
(29:55):
over that line from an income standpoint and start to
irrevocably drive up your Medicare premiums. There's some great there
are some great tools out there that help us do that.
We sit down and do that with every client. I
know a lot of good CPAs are doing that as well.
But again it comes down to the difference between tax preparation,
which is what eighty to ninety percent of people just do.
(30:17):
They just mail in all their stuff and wait for
the answer to come back from their CPA versus proactive
tax planning where you sit down and run some actual
scenarios on if I do this, what happens over here,
and you balance it out and you maximize your income strategy.
All right, let's hear from Laura and Villa Hills.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I've got a concentrated stock position from a former employer.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
What's the best way to onwind that without triggering a
huge tax bill.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Well, congratulations, Laura, this is a good problem to have.
Concentrated stock means just that I got a lot of
my networth tied up in a stock that is mostly
because of an employment, or perhaps you own the company
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
But so then the risk there if it's.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
A concentrated stock position usually implies that the thing did
pretty well, So congratulations, it must have grown a lot.
But that also means that there's usually capital gains in
the mix here, So that's usually the concern.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
If it is a position that is not inside.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Of a retirement plan, not an IRA, not a four
oh one K, nothing like that, then it's exposed to
capital gains taxes, which actually are slightly more favorable than
income taxes.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
But taxes are still taxes. So what do we do
about that?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Well, the first thing I would look at is if
you are some of the easier things to handle, If
you are already charitably inclined, then you might look at
if you write checks to a church or you know,
some five oh one C three type organization every single year,
then First off, you may have lost your deduction on
that a few years ago twenty seventeen when the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act increased the standard deduction and therefore
(31:44):
losing the deduction or just getting it for free basically.
So that's a case where you might donate some of
that stocks, just donate the shares. If you do that
donation of appreciated shares, then will you're passing the gain
on to an entity that doesn't pay taxes Anyway, you
get the deduction and for the full dollar amount whatever
it was worth a day you donated it, that five
OHO one C three will turn around and immediately sell
(32:05):
it and you use it for whatever their purposes are,
they will not pay any capital gains. So matter of fact,
I run across people all the time that are writing
checks to these organizations, which to me is a waste
of everybody's tax dollars because they could simply give the
shares if five oh one C three gets the same
amount of money and no sacrifice by really by anybody.
But if that's not what you have in mind, then
(32:26):
you're going to be looking at something called an exchange
fund or a swap fund. This is where if I
have a big pile of PNG. I can band together
with people who have a bunch of Kroger, or a
bunch of IBM, or a bunch of Apple and Video,
whatever it is. We all throw our shares into a pile,
and then we each take a proportionate share of the
resulting pile of stuff. This is not a sale. It's
not nearly as simply as I'm making it right now.
(32:47):
It's not a sales, so it doesn't trigger taxes. But
I do have now I have a representation of a
lot of different companies. It's a way to spread that
risk out. So those are two you're either charitab being inclined,
or you want to spread out of diversification, and sometimes
both of those can help. Bill and Mason is retired
and has got some questions about rmds.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
My wife and I are retired and we don't need
our rm ds to live on. What's the smartest options
for putting our money to work?
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Well, Bill, I obviously don't know whether you're retired and
not yes yet at RMD AGE or whether you're already
at rmd AD, so the answer is slightly different depending
on what situation you're in. So let's brief the cover
both if you're tired and not yet at that RMD age,
there's where the opportunity is and a big one. You know,
(33:33):
you just retired, your income is lower, and you've got
an opportunity to do these WROTH conversions that we've been
talking about. You know, you sit down and sketch that
out and try to get as much money moved into
roth IRA's at the lowest possible tax rate. You can.
Wonderful strategy there if you're already at RMD age. And
I run into this a lot with folks that are
(33:55):
in their late seventies and are still writing checks to
their church. If you're charitably inclined to tie to your church,
you give other money to other ministries or other charities.
A lot of people are still making cash gifts where
they could be taking IRA money beginning at age seventy
and a half and diverting that IRA money directly to charity.
(34:17):
And if you do that, the amount of that charitable
gift does not even hit your ten forty and is
not even counted as taxable income. You don't get a
deduction for that gift. But it's even better, the RMD
does not hit your tax returns taxable income. So that's
those are two scenarios you can look at. And then
(34:37):
if worst case scenario, if you don't need the rm ds,
you've maxed out what you want to give to charity,
you just convert whatever is left in those rm ds
over to a taxable investment account. Because you brought up
keeping that money, you know, working for you and putting
it to work. Put it in a taxable, tax efficient
brokerage fund and let it grow long term for your
kids and grand kids. Coming up next, why you could
(35:00):
be eating your retirement literally eating it one mimosa brunch
at a time. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC the talk station.
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial
on Bob Sponseller along with Brian James. So get this Brian.
(35:21):
MarketWatch recently published an article that got our attention. If
a couple spends one hundred dollars a day eating out
or just fifty dollars a person over the course of
forty years, which is you know which is I guess
a long but not out of the question retirement shold.
Now they'll have spent nearly two million dollars just on
(35:43):
restaurant meals. Something to keep an eye on here. Two
million dollars is a lot of money, Brian, and that
can make or break the viability of one's retirement plan.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah, and that that one hundred bucks a day eating out.
That used to sound like a lot. Remember when a
hundred dollars meal that meant you were celebrating somebody's birthday
or graduation or whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
It was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
But now you know, if I'm eating lunch and dinner
out there, and I'm a married couple, well then that's
fifty bucks apiece, that's twenty five bucks apiece per meal. Well,
that's that's lunch of skyline, love my skyline. But that's
where that's about where they are now. And so again
that all sneaks up, and that's two million dollars, right,
this is the problem with the snowball and so forth.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
That's before you factor in the.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Tip if that's a thing, and maybe that extra glass
of wine and all that stuff. You know, where the
two million dollars that that's a nest egg for a
lot of people. So again, one hundred bucks a day
eating out over forty years is going to add up
a lot. So you can apply this to a lot
of different things, but different expenses that maybe you can
seem to be fairly innocuous but end up sneaking up
on us. So if you've done the right things and
(36:45):
you built up a solid nestick, it's probably not a
major concern.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
It's more of an expensive hobby.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I think, yeah, I think the key here, and we
can make fun of, you know, one hundred dollars skyline
bill and eating out and all that, But I think
the point we're trying to make here is when you
examine your retirement budget, what you're actually going to spend
or want to spend. And what I what I always
tell people Brian, is I don't need to know how
(37:10):
much you spend on a pack of gum or something
like that, but numbers that start to add up to,
you know, in the hundreds of dollars per month, it's
worth taking a look at, especially if you're on the
margins in the area being able to viably retire, and say, hey,
are there things that we can trim back on just
a little bit without ruining our life and taking all
(37:33):
the fun out of our life. As opposed to just
letting it rip, do whatever we want and hoping it
works out in the end. That's really what we're talking
about here, Brian.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Yeah, and again this is not at all about stop doing.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I always tell my clients everybody comes in wanting to
build a retirement plan, and most people who have built
something are relatively frugal people to begin with. So they'll
walk in and they'll say, we're gonna build a vegetable
garden in the backyard. We're gonna eat out of that,
and we're never gonna leave the house. And I always say, no,
you're not going to do that. You'd have done it already.
That sounds awful, and it sounds like a terrible retirement.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
I just keep working.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
If that's your plan, So let's not start there. Let's
figure out what you do now. If eating out is
a social thing, if that's an important thing, that's important
stuff it is. No, we're not on this planet's to
stare at a growing pile of money. We are here
to enjoy each other's company and help out where we can,
and so on and so forth. So understand what your
life is like and then build your financial plan around that.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, if you really love eating out and you want
to keep doing that, great, Maybe just trim back from
having four paid movie subscriptions or streaming services to maybe two.
There's always a way to skin the cat here. Here's
the all Worth advice. You've saved, well don't. You don't
need to skip the stake, just maybe skip the third course.
Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Simply Money, presented
(38:46):
by all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC, the talk
station
Simply Money News
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