On the Money with Secure Money: Episode 62

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Video Transcript

Cynthia de Fazio – 00:20

And welcome to On The money with secure money. My name is Cynthia De Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian Quaranta. He is founder and president of secure money advisors. Brian, how are you?

Brian Quaranta – 00:30

Cynthia, how are you today?

Cynthia de Fazio – 00:31

I am fantastic. Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to see you. Yeah. So let me ask you, How is your family? Right?

Brian Quaranta – 00:37

I’m doing good. Yeah, we’re doing very good. Obviously, we, you know, we got this little guy that we’re expecting soon here very shortly. So it’s exciting that we’ll be adding another addition to the family. So yes, very busy between home and work. Very, very busy. Yes.

Cynthia de Fazio – 00:51

Now is Maddox excited about being a big brother? Yeah,

Brian Quaranta – 00:55

I think he understands it as much as he can it to an app. Yeah. So you know, he’ll point to mommy’s belly and say, baby, oh, and so, you know, I, we were around some, some cousins we were we were actually skiing in Lake Placid. And Maddox, I got skiing at the age of one and a half. And then so this year at two and a half he scheme for the second time, and he was doing incredible. But some of our cousins and relatives had some a newborn. And he seemed to do very well with a newborn. So he’s kind of excited about it. So we’ll see how this goes. I I am a big brother. I have a little brother. So I know how special that relationship can be. Because I’m very close to my brother. So I’m excited for him to have that type of relationship that I do with my brother.

Cynthia de Fazio – 01:43

Oh, I love that. I love that. Brian. I love happy news. Yeah. So you’re so passionate about helping people retire with confidence, retire with peace of mind, if you will, the passion for helping others retire comfortably. Let’s talk about where does that come from? In case someone is tuning in for the very first time today?

Brian Quaranta – 02:00

Yeah, well, you know, do you remember my gum rewards? I do. So my father had to make gum rewards catalog store. Now that’s that was the amazon before Amazon, right? remember going to the catalog store, putting your order in and then going and picking it up? Oh, yeah. My dad had that store through the 80s. And I was working at the store. My dad was doing really, really well. I can remember one Christmas, we had all these big tractor trailers coming into the back of the building, dropping off these big gray bins of dolls. And there was a very popular doll being sold called the cabbage patch. Oh, gosh, I

Cynthia de Fazio – 02:37

Oh, gosh, I remember

Brian Quaranta – 02:38

I couldn’t get that thing anywhere, right. But there would be a line out the door of all these people, you know, coming in to get their dolls. And it was it was it was chaos. But my dad, my mom and dad were doing really well with the store. They were in the middle of building a new house and in the middle of building a new house, Montgomery Ward’s files for bankruptcy. And so one minute my dad woke up, everything was fine. And next minute, he goes to bed and wakes up to a nightmare. And now he’s got three little kids, right? He’s got no health insurance, no savings, no nothing. And so my family struggled financially for a long time. And so the conversations that would dominate our household, especially late at night, when I would be what my parents thought were in bed, and I was actually up listening, you know, they were arguing about finances, and it was a tough time. And so that really started me on this path about money. And that it just would always stick with me that money created such a problem for such a long time in my household that I took an interest in it. And you know, of course, then I got a scholarship to go to school in Pittsburgh at Robert Morris University had an opportunity to play football there. Graduated My family’s from New Jersey, I thought I was gonna go back to New Jersey and work on Wall Street. But I wound up staying in Pittsburgh, and working with a big firm in Pittsburgh and had some great success very early on in my career, and then went on to open up my own independent practice. But watching my mom and dad go through what they went through, drove me to learn about money. And the one takeaway that I took from my mom and dad’s situation is how important it is to have a plan. Because you never know when life is gonna show up. You know, and the problem was, is that a lot of people have money that they’re saving maybe in a bank account or retirement accounts, but there’s no plan. And when you have a plan when a situation like what happens when my mom and dad shows up, life shows up like that. They can be less stressful if you’ve had the opportunity to build out a well defined plan to help you through those periods of time. Sure. So so that’s where the passion comes from, because I know how important it is to be organized financially, and to know all the things that you need to know and all the variables, all the I’s and T’s dot all the i’s, any dotted all the T’s that need cross when it comes to retirement planning?

Cynthia de Fazio – 05:02

Well, Brian, let me ask you what are the components of a retirement plan in case someone is wondering in the audience, maybe they’ve gone to their mailbox, they’ve grabbed the statements. But that’s not a plan. But when you’re designing a well constructed plan, yeah. What are you factoring in for for the future for these people?

Brian Quaranta – 05:17

Yeah, well, number one, and most importantly, is income. Because the income is the driving force behind the plan, you really can’t make decisions on what to invest in, how much to contribute to your plan, what rate of return you need, what level of risk you need to take, until you figure out how much income you’re going to need. Now, that could be you know, someone that’s retiring in five years, 10 years, 15 years, take myself for example, you know, when I build Kate nice retirement plan, which I do, and I updated all the time, I’m always working backwards, figuring out how much income do we want to generate, and then I can figure out what my contributions need to be, what rate of return that I need to make sure that I get right. And this way, when I arrive at retirement, I know it’s going to work. Even if there’s market volatility, I know it’s going to work, because market volatility is part of the planning process, right? Because you can build that into the model, so that you arrive successfully at your destination. And by having that target point right to shoot at now, you’re you’re able to walk through the rest of the planning process, which is making sure that you have a tax strategy, making sure that you have a well defined investment strategy and philosophy, making sure that you have a good health event strategy. So, you know, we all need health insurance. But what happens if a health event were to show up, right? How are you going to pay for the cost of care if it’s needed, you’re going to take care of each other home. And of course, when the good Lord decides to take you home? Does estate planning documents are really important, because if you don’t have those taken care of you could wind up leaving the IRS as your largest beneficiary. So again, you know, we came around a lot on the show and on my radio show, and we talked about, you know, people just having a pile of stuff, which we call the POS. Right. And that, unfortunately, is not a plan. You know, I think we we are a little bit misled on the fact that Oh, you have a 401k you have a retirement plan, then and no, that’s not a retirement plan to retirement plan focuses on the five key areas income taxes, investments, health care, and estate planning. And that’s what defines a well rounded plan.

Cynthia de Fazio – 07:18

Brian, how long does it take you to come up with a retirement plan for someone? And seven days? Is it weeks? How long? Yeah,

Brian Quaranta – 07:25

well, I’ve been obviously doing this for 23 years now. You know, you’re getting experience when you work with me. So me problem solving for somebody can be relatively expedited quickly, right? Because I know where to look, I know where the red flags are. And I know where the best solutions are. So typically, if we’re working with somebody, though, if I’m meeting them for the very first time to the point to where they become on boarded. If I meet with them, let’s say this week, and we move to a second meeting the next week, we may be able to implement a plan after that meeting, or it may take one other meeting beyond that. So because of the amount of work that we we condense into our meetings, we’re able to accomplish a lot in a very short period of time.

Cynthia de Fazio – 08:10

Okay. All right. Excellent. Well, Brian, I know there’s a very special offer you’re going to be presenting to the viewers. Let’s talk about what that is. And then open the phone line.

Brian Quaranta – 08:19

Yeah, the right track retirement review, really, this was designed with you in mind. Because every year people would come to our office, they would ask Brian, am I on the right track? Am I doing the right things with my money? What else should I be doing? And so I’ve found through talking with people that a lot of people didn’t know whether or not they were on the right track. And I always thought, well, if you weren’t on the right track, when would be a good time to know that most people will say to me, I’d like to know now. So our right track retirement review is an analysis that will do for you. In the five key areas that you heard Cynthia and I just talking about income, taxes, investments, health care and estate planning. When you come in, we’ll spend about 45 minutes to an hour with you, understanding what your primary concerns are, and then help you problem solve and figure out how to get from point A to point B successfully. So for the next 10 callers who call in right now we’re going to give you a complimentary right track retirement analysis. All you got to do is call 1-888-382-1298. And schedule with us today.

Cynthia de Fazio – 09:23

Brian, thank you so much to the viewers at home. The phone number on your screen is the one to call that number is 888-382-1298. We know you have a lot of questions for Brian about how to plan your perfect retirement. All you have to do is take advantage of picking up the phone and calling in today. Again, the number is 888-382-1298. We have to take a very short commercial break when we come back. I’m going to talk to Brian a little bit more in depth about how to plan your perfect retirement. What are those steps look like? We’ll be right back.

Brian Quaranta – 09:52

So everybody can tell you how to invest your money. There’s not a lot of people out there and a lot of firms that can teach you how to use your money Most people will also tell you that they’re scared. And the reason they’re scared is because they’re afraid of running out of money.

Neil Major – 10:06

The last thing you want to do is have a really good job and your 60s retire, be looking for work again, in your late 70s.

Brian Quaranta – 10:14

The average person might say, well, a good portfolio would be a good mix of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, planning. A good portfolio is all designed around the five key areas, income, taxes, investments, health care and legacy planning,

Neil Major – 10:29

which we’re not just product pickers here. What we do best here as we build retirement plans,

Brian Quaranta – 10:34

nine out of 10 people when they walk through the door with ask us, we just want to know if we’re on the right track. And I always say, if you’re not on the right track, when would be a good time to know it? Probably now,

Neil Major – 10:44

people you know can actually see a vision once we start to really build out their plan.

Brian Quaranta – 10:50

This is about you, if you’re not getting what you need. And you feel that when you walk out of the advisors office, it’s time to get a second opinion. And you can’t get a second opinion from the person that gave you the first the difference at secure money advisors. As a fiduciary firm, we help you manage the risk, build the income, and give you the retirement.

Cynthia de Fazio – 11:22

And welcome back to on the money with secure money. My name is Cynthia De Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian co entre he is president and founder of secure money advisors. Brian, I wanted to ask you a question because a lot of people in the viewing audience today they might be thinking about how do they plan their ideal retirement? So what does that look like? How do you help someone assess what amount they would need to retire comfortably?

Brian Quaranta – 11:45

Yeah, it starts with figuring out what we call the income gap. That’s just a fancy term for how much money are you going to need above and beyond what you might get from Social Security, where other any other income sources you have in retirement like a pension or rental properties or whatever it might be. So let’s just take a very simple situation, you know, I’ll share with you, I had a single woman come to my office last week, she’s a nurse at one of the local hospitals, she’s got 35 years and as a nurse and she wants to retire, the only source of income that she will have is going to be a social security check. Okay, the Social Security check is going to be about 28,000 to $29,000 a year when we turn it on, and she’s going to need about $50,000 a year to maintain her lifestyle. So that means Social Security is going to provide 30,000, let’s just say it’s going to provide roughly 30,000 what we need. So that means we have to get $20,000 from somewhere. Now, she has a 403 b which is very similar to a 401k that she’s accumulated a sum of money in right now 100% of that money is invested in the stock market now. That’s okay during her working years, because she doesn’t really need the money during her working years. But if she wants to retire, and she needs the $50,000, a year that we’re talking about, and Social Security is only going to provide 30 of that, well, that means we’re going to have to start withdrawing money from the retirement accounts. Now here’s where it can get scary, because most people will try to just generate the income that they need by pulling it out of their stock portfolio. Okay. And as long as the market cooperates and as long as the markets going up, there’s no problem. But what happens when the market gets volatile? What happens when you’re pulling money out and the markets going down? What happens is it depletes the portfolio at a more rapid pace. Because not only do you have the money coming out, but you have losses that you’re incurring, so it compounds the problem. So for her what we needed to do was take the money that she had in that retirement account and structure it for distribution. What do I mean by that? Well, there’s two phases of retirement, there’s the accumulation phase, and there’s the distribution phase, the accumulation phase is very simple, that’s when we grow our pot of money, right? The distribution phase is when we start using our money. So in order to get the distribution we need, because she doesn’t have to have a pension, we have to create a pension. So we do this through the use of more safe and secure accounts. Some of those accounts can be tactic that tactically manage portfolios that have very little or no loss to them that we could generate income from. It could be us utilizing an annuity where it guarantees and protects the principle and we can generate income. And a lot of annuities in the marketplace today are also relatively good for some growth in the market. Because if the market goes up with some of these types of annuities, you can make money, but if the market goes down, you don’t lose any money. So they become a really nice source to put money that you need to generate income from. And then of course, we always will need stock market money but in order to be successful with stock market money, we have to create a long term time horizon with that money so the only the way that you’re able to do that is to take some money, and you split it into two buckets, one bucket becomes your income. And that can generate income for about 15 to 20 years, that will deplete itself down over time. But that’s okay. Because we’re giving your stock market money 15 to 20 years to grow undisturbed, right, we’re not going to touch it. So it just, it’s going to do what it does. And it’s going to grow. And as this one’s coming down, this one will be filling back up. And this is and then we just repeat the process. And this is how we get through retirement very successfully, and mitigate the volatility of the market and give the client peace of mind. Because nobody wants to retire, and turn the TV on and see pandemonium on Wall Street, and be walking on eggshells wondering if they’re going to be able to stay retired, and have to potentially go back to work. Nobody wants to build a retirement that way. And that’s why protecting a portion of your money in retirement is so important.

Cynthia de Fazio – 15:59

I have to ask you a question. How do you help discover someone’s risk tolerance, if you will? Is there a program that you use? Brian,

Brian Quaranta – 16:06

we do? And I’m glad you asked that question. Because the traditional way of determining risk tolerance was through a questionnaire. And you know, this, you would see at any of the big brokerage firms. And when I started my career, 23 years ago, you would have a conversation with the client to determine the risk level. So a lot of people will tell you, Well, I don’t I don’t want to lose money, but I still want to grow my money. Right? It’s kind of like, I want to have my cake and eat it too. Right. So but the point is, is that when when we’re when we’re building it out, we we want to we want to grow it in a way that is going to be where was I going with this?

Cynthia de Fazio – 16:45

We’re going to talk about risk tolerance. Oh, yeah.

Brian Quaranta – 16:49

So so our risk, so the risk questionnaire, will will only tell you kind of are you moderately conservative, aggressive, whatever, we have a program called Riskalyze that actually quantifies the Risk Number, right? So this is really good for people, because they’ll say to me, Well, I’ve asked my advisor to put me in a relatively conservative portfolio. And what’s nice about Riskalyze is there’s no opinions, right? So when you’re getting a when you’re having somebody look at your stuff, you don’t want opinions, you know, in the mix, you just need data, you just need facts. So what Riskalyze does, it says, are you really in a conservative portfolio, because it’s going to take all of the financial data from all of the stock positions, mutual fund positions you have and calculate a risk score from one to 99. So a lot of times, what you’ll see is somebody says, I want to be conservative, well, conservative Risk Number would be like 45 or less, okay? A lot of times those people that think they’re conservative will come back with a risk score of 75 or higher. And when you show them through the modeling how much money they can lose, the market goes down. They say I had no idea that I was this risky, and a lot of people don’t, they have no idea because until this program came upon into the marketplace, there was no way to truly quantify the risk except for opinions. You follow me? Yeah, it was opinions that was determined the risk, and you would rely on the advice. Now we can quantify it into a number. And it takes all the opinions out of it. And it makes it very easy for the client to be able to see where they are and where they really need to go. Yeah, yeah,

Cynthia de Fazio – 18:24

absolutely. Thanks

Brian Quaranta – 18:25

for saving me there. Oh, it was disappearing. I don’t know what happened.

Cynthia de Fazio – 18:29

I pulled it back together. Well, Brian, I know that you have a very special offer to present to the viewers at home. Let’s talk about what that is and then reopen the phone line. Yes.

Brian Quaranta – 18:38

So the right track Retirement System was truly designed with you in mind to help get you on the right track for years I would have people come in they often say, Brian, am I on the right track? Are we doing the right things? Are we in the right investments? Are we going to be able to retire? If you weren’t on the right track? When would you want to know most people say Brian, I want to know now whether or not I’m on the right track or not. And that’s why I created the right track retirement system. So for the next 10 callers who call in we are going to give you a complimentary right track retirement review. You’re going to come into our office, we’re gonna spend about 45 minutes to an hour. We’re going to go through just about everything Cynthia and I are talking about here today, but you got to do your part. You’ve got to call us and schedule that appointment today. It’s 1-888-382-1298.

Cynthia de Fazio – 19:23

Brian, thank you so much to the viewers at home the phone number to call us once again on your screen. That number is 888-382-1298 We have to take a very short commercial break bowl we come back we have viewer questions. One of those could be yours. So stay tuned.

Brian Quaranta – 19:39

If I could help you increase your income if I could help you pay less taxes if I could help you potentially maximize the returns of your investments while reducing risk reducing fees if I can help you prepare for a health event or more importantly, when the good Lord decides to take you home to make sure that the money you’ve accumulated over your lifetime goes to your family and to your charity. rather than the IRS would that be worth the time to come in and get a second opinion.

Cynthia de Fazio – 20:09

And welcome back to on the money with secure money. My name is Cynthia De Fazio. And I’m joined today by Brian quanta. He is founder and president of secure money advisors. Brian, I love this part of the show. This is always my favorite because we have viewer questions and we never know what someone’s thinking until they actually call in and leave that question for you. Yep. Can I jump right into it? Let’s do okay. Yes, this is a great question says Brian, what are the advantages? Or I’m sorry? What advantages do exchange traded funds have over mutual funds? Good

Brian Quaranta – 20:38

question. So I kind of look at this as old technology versus new technology. So think about it, like flip phone versus smartphone. Okay, so you remember how limited your flip flops at the time you thought your flip phone was just the coolest thing ever, I could do everything. Now, if you were to use a flip phone, you would realize the limitations of it. And that’s the same thing with mutual funds and ETFs. So mutual funds are kind of the flip phone of the world. And your ETF is your smartphone of the world. Okay, and the reason is, is this. First off, mutual funds have what we call a net asset value pricing, which basically means that if I want to buy a mutual fund or even sell a mutual fund, when I put that order in, I don’t get the I don’t get the price of that mutual fund until the end of the day. So that means I could think I could want to get out of this mutual fund right now. And it might be up right now in the morning. But the time I get out of it in the afternoon, because I don’t get the I don’t get this to actually execute the sale till the end of the day, I could lose money, whereas an ETF has an actual real time stock price. So if I were to trade a stock right now, let’s say Apple stock. And I’m making this number up, because I don’t know where Apple stock is right now. But let’s say let’s say it’s at $150. And all of a sudden it hit $160. If I were to sell it right now I’d get the price of $160. That doesn’t happen with a mutual fund. Okay, if a mutual fund could be $100, right, it could go to $106. And I say I want to sell it and the time the sale goes in at four o’clock, it’s at $140. So that’s one really big difference. The other big difference is that mutual funds cost a heck of a lot more money to have. And they’re more expensive from an operating standpoint, where ETF is a much cheaper way less fees, right, which is good for the client, because less fees means more return for you, that makes so those are big, big differences. And most of the big, you know, most of the planning firms, you know, like ours, and there’s a lot of great independent planning firms out there, because a lot of guys are getting away from the big firms. One because they don’t have the freedom to do what they want for their clients. And all of us that truly want to do what’s in the best interest of the client don’t want the big firms telling us what we need to recommend, what product product vendors we need to use, we have no interest in that anymore. That’s the old way. And that’s why the advantage of working with an independent fiduciary allows you to get good pricing, good fee structure where it’s tough to do if you’re with the big brokerage firms, but ETFs are also much cheaper than mutual funds. ETFs are also very tax efficient versus a mutual fund, and ETF properly manage can actually create 98% tax neutrality where a mutual fund is taxable. So this has probably happened to people before you ever own a mutual fund. And it actually went down in value, and you had to pay taxes on it that year. That’s usually because the fund manager probably sold off some positions that they had some gains in, even though the mutual fund was down, that those gains got passed on to the investors and they had to pay taxes even though their investments were down. And every time they want to make a change within a mutual fund, it creates a taxable event ETFs with the proper structure can be about 98 to 99% tax efficient. And so portfolio managers can change the investments within the ETFs and not create a taxable event for the client, which tax efficiency for your money is very, very important. And that could be an advantage with working with ETFs.

Cynthia de Fazio – 24:13

Brian, thank you so much. Excellent answer to that question. This is a great question. This is Ruby, she’s calling in asking, Can I use my 401k to buy whole life insurance?

Brian Quaranta – 24:23

Can she use her 401k To buy whole life insurance? She sure could. However, she’s got to keep in mind in order to do that, she’s going to have to take a withdrawal. So you know, so if let’s say her whole life insurance is going to cost, I don’t know. $3,000 a year? Well, that means she’s gonna have to withdraw $3,000 A year from her 401k pay taxes on it and then she could pay the premium. So she certainly can do that. There’s really no advantage, you know, to doing what she’s doing, she’s probably better off paying for it out of her own earnings or her pocket versus her 401k Because her 401k Every time she takes a withdrawal is gonna create A taxable event where maybe taking money out of her, you know, checking account might not create a taxable event. Well, it won’t, because it doesn’t happen that way. So, so sure she couldn’t do it. I just there’s real no advantage in it. Okay, no advantage in it.

Cynthia de Fazio – 25:13

Perfect. I think we have time for just one more question. It says, Brian, can you explain what does period certain mean, on an annuity contract? The complex language of this contract is tough to understand. A look at payout options look like there’s a cut off age, and I don’t have a current advisor with the annuity company. Yeah,

Brian Quaranta – 25:30

yeah. So period, sir. As you’ll see, there are a lot they’re very common with annuities are very common with pensions. So period certain just basically means, let’s suppose that I had an option through an insurance company to choose a five year period certain? Well, what that would mean is that when I this is all about generating income from the annuity, right. So when you’re want to receive monthly income from the insurance company, they’re going to say, if you want to annuitize, you need to pick a period certain or life option or something, but period certain is very simple. For whatever time period it is. So in this case, let’s say you chose a five year period, certain it would mean that that and that annuity is going to be guaranteed to pay for five years, even if you die. Okay, so that means if you started taking income from that annuity, okay, and you turn the income on, and you lived one year, and then you died. That means that annuity would continue to pay the beneficiary for four more years, right, meaning five years certain, well, what happens if you’re still alive after the fifth year? Well, as long as you’re still living, they’re going to continue to pay you, it just means the death benefit is guaranteed for that five year for whatever time is left of that five year period. Same thing with a 10 year, right. So if you buy a 10 year period, certain the die after the first year, it’s going to pay to the beneficiary for nine more years. And this is where it could get very confusing for people because you’ll see this on pension option choices that people have to choose, they go, I don’t know which one’s the right one for my spouse and I so and this is why having an advisor that you can work with, that’s well diverse. And all of the financial products like secure money visors is makes the life of the client a heck of a lot easier in the planning process, because we have the knowledge to be able to guide you through all of these different variables that you have to deal with when it comes to the uniqueness of each financial product and each financial strategy. So anyway, right track retirement review, folks, get it today. Call us next. 10 collars. 1-888-382-1298 you can schedule a complimentary right track retirement view. Take advantage of it again. 1-888-382-1298 To schedule your appointment today.

Cynthia de Fazio – 27:41

Brian, thank you so much to the viewers at home most specifically. Thank you for spending time with us today. That number is 888-382-1298 Be safe. Be happy, be blessed. We’ll see you next week.