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Video Transcript
Cynthia De Fazio – 00:21
And welcome to retirement UTV My name is Cynthia de Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian Quaranta. He is otherwise known as Brian q president and founder of secure money advisors. I love just saying, Brian Q.
Brian Quaranta – 00:37
Sounds. Thank you though. I know. Last Name is, it’s quaranta. But it’s a very, very tough last name to say yes. I love it. I love when you say quaranta. Brian, good to see you. It’s good to see you again.
Cynthia De Fazio – 00:54
Well, thank you for taking the time to come to the show, I know that you’re so busy, you’ve had so many new calls coming in and a lot of client appointments. So the fact that you’re able to take the time to still meet once a week is just an amazing blessing. Thank you, Brian. Yeah,
Brian Quaranta – 01:08
well, you know, it’s, I appreciate it, you know, and I’m very grateful, because it’s been a real passion of mine. You know, I’ve been doing this for over 20 years now. And it’s been a real passion of mine to make sure that people get good information. Yeah. And I think they need good, accurate information. And they need help deciphering all the noise, because there’s just so much noise in the marketplace of what to do with your retirement planning dollars and how to do it and how to build it. And my industry has just become flooded with so many different advisors. And there’s so many different opinions on how to do it. And really, when it comes down to building a good solid retirement plan, there’s basic fundamentals that need to be followed. And as long as you understand those basic fundamentals, you’re going to have a really good plan.
Cynthia De Fazio – 01:50
Absolutely. Brian, let me ask you, in your opinion, why would someone be nervous to talk to a financial advisor, if you will?
Brian Quaranta – 01:57
I would be I mean, I would be if I was if I didn’t do what I did for a living. And I had to go in and I had to open up my finances to somebody and show them what I’ve done over the course of my life. It’s like a report card. Right? Yeah. So I think people, one, I think, number one, I think they’re scared of being sold something, or being pressured into doing something. But I think they’re also scared of and fearful of just been judged on what they have or haven’t done, okay. And, you know, my team and I have made the process of somebody coming in an enjoyable process, because it should be Yeah, and and to the viewing audience. So you should never worry about, you know, where you are, what you have whether you feel you’ve accumulated a lot of money or not enough money. You know, getting a second opinion is so important when it comes to your finances, and you can’t get a second opinion from the person that gave you the first opinion. And the importance of the second opinion is so that you have something to compare to, that’s what’s important. Because if you think about just technology alone, think about how much technology has changed over the past 1015 years. I mean, we were all walking around with a flip phone. And if we wanted to text somebody, you had to press the number three or four times, right. And so now, you know, I mean, you basically have a keyboard on your phone, you can pay your bills on your phone, you can check your bank accounts, you can check your stock accounts, you can read the news, every does everything. In the world of finance it the same thing has happened. And as a licensed fiduciary, my job is to work for the client and do what’s in the clients best interest. So for my team and I, we’re always searching the marketplace for the very best solutions to help the clients maximize retirement at all times.
Cynthia De Fazio – 03:46
Absolutely. And Brian, let me ask you how many people are coming in and saying, Brian, I really want to retire. But I’m afraid that I’m not going to have enough money to do so. Are you hearing that a lot?
Brian Quaranta – 03:57
Well, the fear of money is real. And the fear of running out of money is really real. Sure. And as a matter of fact, AARP had done a study and they interviewed 1000 people and they said what do you fear most running out of money or death. And over 85% of those people said that they fear running out of money. They’re more than they feared death alone. And I don’t blame them. Because I think the worst day of retirements not the day you run out of money, the worst day of retirement is the day you figure out it’s going to happen. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Yeah. And a lot of that comes from poor planning. You know, maybe somebody is trying to take money out of retirement accounts that are invested in the market. And maybe they didn’t get the right order of returns over the years and they’re getting into a drawdown of their portfolio and they’re still healthy and they still have a lot of life left but yet their portfolio is depleting. And we should never be in a situation where we’re we’re in a situation where we may run out of money because there’s tools strategies and techniques out there to prevent that from happening. Okay, you know, if you look at retirement Planning 3040 years ago, it was simple because people were retiring with with social security checks and pensions. Today that’s not happening, people are retiring. And they’re not getting a pension anymore, but they’re getting a retirement plan like a 401k or a 403. b. Sure. And I always call it the grand experiment, whether you listen to my radio show, or you hear me here on retirement UTV, I always call it the grand experiment, because nobody knows how it’s gonna work out, because most retirement plans that were invested in are 100% invested in the stock market. So you need a lot to go right in order for that plan to happen. And retirement planning real retirement plan is all about mitigating that risk, and removing as much risk as possible. We always want to make bad things happen on paper. And that’s the importance of having a real written retirement plan is we can look at all of the variables, all the bad things on paper, and we can make decisions to help transfer or move things around to mitigate that risk, so that we don’t ever wind up in a situation to where we run out of money. And by doing that, it allows you to enjoy your retirement. Sure, right. We all want to go into retirement feeling confident. But more importantly, we don’t want the anxieties of the markets. And if you go back to March of this year, I think it was a real wake up call for everybody of how quickly absolutely, you can lose your money. Yeah. And like that is not yet a blink of an eye. And it happens so quickly. Because 70% of the market today is traded by software. It’s traded by algorithms. So it happens very, very fast. It’s called high frequency trading. Okay, so the average consumer just doesn’t even have a chance against what’s really happening out there with the big financial institutions. And so we show them ways to be able to compete in the dynamic marketplace that we’re in today.
Cynthia De Fazio – 06:40
Yeah, absolutely. Brian, let me ask you a question. I mean, how would someone know if their money was going to run out? Is that something you can help them with? Do they just come in to you and say, you know, Brian, these are my monthly expenses? This is what I think we’re going to have. Is that something that you help them do?
Brian Quaranta – 06:55
Yeah, great question. So everything we build is around math. And we have specific worksheets that we work with. So if we’re building a cash flow model, we have a cash flow worksheet that we work from, to look at all the sources of income coming in, okay, minus taxes minus expenses, so we can see what the net amount is left over what we really have, okay, then, then we move to if we’re going to need to generate income from the portfolio, what impact are those withdrawals going to have? Sure. So we have a worksheet that we work from to be able to determine if we get this rate of return, and we take out this much money, here’s the impact of the portfolio over 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years, okay? What happens if we only get this rate of return and an emergency shows up and you need to take a large chunk of money out plus take the annual income out that you need? What’s the impact of those withdrawals. So this is what we call our withdrawal worksheet. And the withdrawal worksheet is a pretty accurate projection of the balance of your account after withdrawals. Okay. Okay, after withdrawals. And it’s important to have that because, again, you know, retirement is is, you know, very dynamic, meaning we may plan one way, but I may have a client that calls me two years later and says, look, you know, I need an extra $50,000 this year, because of whatever reason, you know, I need to help my granddaughter out, or I need out my grandson out, or we want to remodel a kitchen, whatever it may be. And you want the freedom to be able to do those things. Sure. You don’t want to have to worry whether you can, can or cannot do those things. And with secure money advisors, we’re going to put you in the driver’s seat by giving you those tools to be able to make those decisions. So when you’re a client of ours, if that were your situation, all you got to do is call a team and say, if we were to do this, what’s the impact on the balance down the road? Are we going to be okay? If we take this money out right now? Are we going to be okay 20 years from now if we do that, and we’ll be able to give you answers so that you have the confidence to be able to make those decisions?
Cynthia De Fazio – 08:55
Brian, that information really is invaluable. So we’re going to be opening up the phone lines in a very short period of time here. What can you tell the viewing audience what they can expect to receive by being one your first 10 callers?
Brian Quaranta – 09:05
callers you will first off we want to make the experience of you coming into secure money advisors a enjoyable experience and it is and you’ll find out you know, our team at secure money advisors is a very dedicated team, very talented group of people and they care that’s the most important thing is that they care and each individual that comes into the office, we spend the time with them to truly understand their situation. So we can help in the best way possible. So for the next 10 callers who call in right now we are going to give you a complimentary Financial Review. It’s at no cost, we normally charge about $1,000 to 15 $100. To do these reviews, we are going to do a complimentary for you. It the the the review is invaluable for you because we’re going to build a secure income report for you to show you what your income guaranteed income sources are if you need to build additional income sources, we’ll show you how to build a private pension. So that gives have the freedom to spend the money the way you want to in retirement, we’ll also do a risk analysis of your current portfolio, show you the probability of success of your portfolio. And if the probability of success isn’t where it should be, then we can show you how to make improvements. So that portfolio operates much better. So again for the next 10 callers who call 18883821298. That’s going to be a complimentary Financial Review. 18883821298.
Cynthia De Fazio – 10:28
Brian, thank you so much to the viewing audience at home. That number to call once again is 888-382-1298. We know you have a lot of questions about planning your perfect stress free retirement. When we come back, we’re going to have more questions and answers with Brian. So please stay tuned after this short commercial break.
Commercial Break – 10:47
How confident are you in your current financial plan? Do you know with certainty how the recent market volatility will affect your future hopes and dreams? How much are you paying in taxes? And how much are you losing to unnecessary high fees? You didn’t work to save this money so that you could spend your time worried in retirement. Now is the time to take charge of your finances so you can feel confident about your future call in during the next 30 minutes of today’s show only to set up an absolutely complimentary no obligation, full blown Financial Review that will result in your own customized written plan. This is a $999 value that we’re giving away complimentary to the first 10 people who respond will start with a full blown analysis of what you already have, by running a report to untangle how much you are currently paying in fees, how you’re allocated for risk, and what it’s costing to work with your current advisor. Next, we’ll identify your goals. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Where do you want to go? And who do you hope to go there with? Is your current financial plan set up to get you there without mishap? Let’s design a roadmap to create a financial plan you can follow with confidence. Get the piece that so many people are missing from their retirement. Find out how having a written plan can make a difference to your retirement dreams. Call now to schedule your complimentary no obligation full blown Financial Review today.
Cynthia De Fazio – 12:21
And welcome back to retirement UTV My name is Cynthia de Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian co entre otherwise known as Brian Q. of secure money advisors, President and Founder Brian another amazing show. And as we were going to the commercial break, the phone lines were lining up, and we had viewer questions come in. And I love that because you never know what they’re going to be asking. So do you mind if I throw a few at you? You have no idea where I’m coming from? Or where? Brian, where’s your favorite vacation desk? No kidding. did not come up right now. All right. So we had a call come in it says Brian, do beneficiaries pay taxes on life insurance? Well, that’s
Brian Quaranta – 13:00
a great question. So life insurance is one of those tools. It’s a great planning tool. So most of us were taught that life insurance is a tool that we use when we’re younger, so that if we die, we can take care of our spouse or our kids and you know, help pay the mortgage, pay the bills still send the kids to school, so on and so forth. But you know, a lot of people want to know how to beat the tax fan later on in life. Sure. And one of the ways that you can beat the tax man later on in life is you can take a small amount of your money and buy a big pot of tax free money called Life Insurance, okay. And life insurance is great, because when it passes to the beneficiaries, it’s tax free. Now, there’s a catch to this, though, in the state of Pennsylvania, we’re one of six states that still have the inheritance tax. So even though life insurance is a tax free benefit to the beneficiaries, it still becomes part of the estate and still counts toward this calculation of the estate tax. Interesting. Interesting. And Pennsylvania. Yes. So one way that you can make it completely tax free, is you can use what they call an irrevocable life insurance trust, and you can put the life insurance in there to remove it from the estate. And now you’ve got at 100% tax rate.
Cynthia De Fazio – 14:18
That’s amazing. Thank you, Brian. That was an incredible answer. And I know just definitely appreciate it. So we have another question, actually. What’s the difference between 401 Ks and a pension plan? Brian, I’m trying to understand the difference. Yeah.
Brian Quaranta – 14:30
Well, a pension is simple, right. It’s designed to pay you monthly income for the rest of your life. That’s it. Sometimes, when you get your pension, sometimes your your employer will offer you an option and the option might be Do you want to take the monthly benefit that pays you for the rest of your life and if you die will continue to pay your spouse and if your spouse dies, the pension dies with them. Or you can take a lump sum, you can take the lump sum, and you can do whatever you want with it. But let’s just say the lump sum isn’t available on a pension, the idea of the pension is to provide monthly income. But typically when you die, if you don’t have a spouse, the pension is going to die with you. So if you only collected for one month, you know, let’s say it was $3,000, and you worked 40 years for this company, all you got from that pension was $3,000. Right? Let’s say that you live for a couple of years, your wife lived for a couple years, you only collected 100,000? Well, the pensions gonna die when both of you die, okay. Whereas the 401k, that’s a real sum of money that you own. All right, that that is a lump sum that’s available to you. And it’s a lump sum crisis, if you will, because everybody builds up this pot of money, but the crisis is when you retire what to do with it, to manage it properly. Now, typically, what most people are doing today is they’re taking that 401k. And they’re carving off some of that money to build a pension for themselves. So they do have some guaranteed income coming in, okay. But a pension is, is you don’t have any say of how its invested. The pension company does that is designed to provide your monthly income, a 401k is a defined contribution plan, which means that money is going in that you’re putting in, your employer also may do some matching on that. And you have the options within the portfolio, right, where you’ve got different mutual funds that you can move money in and out of, to try to get the best performance that you can possibly get. But then when you retire, there’s no monthly benefit attached to I mean, there’s no monthly income that comes with a 401k plan. So it’s up to you to figure out how to get that monthly income, whereas the pension automatically calculates how much it’s going to pay you for the rest of your life.
Cynthia De Fazio – 16:45
Interesting. So Brian, in your opinion, is it very important to have diversified streams of income in retirement?
Brian Quaranta – 16:51
It’s critical. Yeah, it’s absolutely the most important thing in retirement because one of the things that we’ll walk you through what we’ll walk folks through when they come to the office is we’ll show them their cash flow worksheet, and if they’re a married couple, here’s the most important scenarios you have to go through. Okay, so you might have as a married couple, you might have a social security check for Bob a social security check for Sally, Bob, they have a pension, Sally may not have a pension, and the income looks good. As long as they’re both living, what happens if Bob dies first? Right, there’s going to be a loss of income. Absolutely. And if Bob dies, first, we know that Social Security is going to take away the lowest Social Security check, you’ll keep the highest, okay, but Bob’s pension might be reduced, meaning Sally might only get half of his pension or she may get none of his pension. And so now Sally’s income goes from here to here. Wow. So there’s a there’s a loss of income. And according to AARP, Cynthia, the average loss of income for a retiree if you’re a married couple in retirement is 40%. Had death. So think about that. A 40% loss of income at the depth of your spouse, that’s a substantial loss. And you have to be prepared for that. But again, this all goes back to what I talked about all the time, having a written plan. The key to having the written plan is to look at all of these things on paper, so that if Bob dies, we already know what the loss is going to be. So Sally has a 40% loss. We already have a plan in place to replace that loss of income for Sally, so she can go on and maintain her lifestyle.
Cynthia De Fazio – 18:23
Sure, absolutely. You know, Brian, is it ever too late to start if you don’t have a retirement plan in place? And let’s say the viewing audience, maybe there’s someone who’s 60 62, Is it too late for them to start one never,
Brian Quaranta – 18:34
never too late to start. And there’s a lot of really creative things that you can do to build a retirement plan, even if you don’t have one in your in your 60s. Okay, so I’ll give you a great example. So you know, at your full retirement age, you can start collecting Social Security, and still work and your Social Security is not penalised. All right. So what does that mean? Well, that means you could have an entire additional source of income coming in, on top of all your work income, that income can actually be used to start to accelerate your retirement savings. So I’ve got many clients that had zero and savings. And we were able to show them by turning their social security on carving a little bit of money out of their work income, we were able to show them how to have a few $100,000 by the age of 74 75. So in a very short period of time, they could have three, four or $500,000 saved by putting together a strategy like that, whereas going in, you know, to their 60s or thinking that you know, I’m never going to be able to retire. And when you finally map out a plan and you get disciplined with that saving and it’s easy to be disciplined, when you know what the plan is going to look like, of course, right? If I know what the end result is going to be, and I want that end result. Then I’m going to do everything I can to get there and if someone shows me the steps I need to take to do it. I’m going to be even more excited about doing it. And that’s what happens so it’s never too late to start saving.
Cynthia De Fazio – 19:56
Brian, thank you so much for that answer. We’re about ready to open up the phone lines. To the viewing audience at home, can you tell them what they can expect to receive by being one of your first 10 callers today?
Brian Quaranta – 20:05
Yeah, folks, we want to make the experience of you coming into secure money advisors an enjoyable experience. And I’ve got a great team of people at the office that are going to take really good care of you. And we’re going to walk you through a very simple comprehensive process to really help you get very clear on what retirement planning should really look like for you and help you maximize everything from your income, your income strategies to your investment strategies. So for the next 10 callers, we’re going to offer you a complimentary Financial Review, we’re going to build a couple of reports for you, when you come in, we’re going to provide a secure income report for you, where we’re going to show you all your guaranteed sources of income. And if you need to build additional guaranteed sources of income, we’re going to show you the best ways to be able to do that. We’re also going to run a risk analysis for you. We’ll show you how much risk you’re taking in your portfolio, how much fees that you’re paying, and we’ll be able to show you how to maximize your returns and reduce your risk all at the same time. So again, that’s a complimentary Financial Review for the next 10 callers who call 18883821298. Again, that’s 18883821298.
Cynthia De Fazio – 21:14
Brian, thank you so much to the viewing audience at home, we realized the phone lines had been busy so we added an additional phone line this week. That number to call once again is 888-382-1298. We have a very short commercial break that we must take but when we come back, we’re going to have more questions and answers about planning your perfect retirement. Stay tuned.
Commercial Break – 21:34
As a good saver, you’ve been putting away money during your working years. studies find that the biggest fear of retirees is running out of money. market volatility isn’t just a downward movement of stock prices. It’s the size and frequency of change. The more dramatic the ups and downs, the higher the volatility. This can put savers who are newly retired or a few years away from being retired at greater risk. today’s generation of retirees is not receiving traditional pensions as our parents or grandparents did. Instead, we have retirement accounts such as 401, K’s or 403 B’s. These accounts typically expose your money to market risk. The last thing you want right before retirement is to lose a portion of the money you need for income. But how do you turn these accounts into a retirement income? Is it safe to keep all your retirement money sitting in the stock market. The last thing you want is to lose a portion of the money you need for income due to market loss. By working with a financial professional, you can learn how to turn a portion of your savings into an income stream for life and income for the life of your spouse if you’re married. We all have moments in our lives when we wish we had taken action sooner. Don’t let procrastination rain on your retirement parade. Act now before it’s too late. Please call our office to set up your no cost no obligation retirement income review today.
Cynthia De Fazio – 23:01
And welcome back to retirement UTV. My name is Cynthia de Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian Quaranta, he is president and founder of secure money advisors. Brian, another great show, again filled with so much really good information, truly. So I want to ask you, the viewing audience at home maybe thinking about this as well as they’re sitting together with a cup of coffee or just kind of walking through the kitchen. How often should someone be hearing from their financial advisor? What is the norm? And what is your opinion on that?
Brian Quaranta – 23:30
That’s a great question. Well, every advisor should be providing their clients with a servicing plan. And you know, for us, we give them the secure money advisors, financial roadmap, and that roadmap really starts at the beginning of the relationship. And the reason why we put together that roadmap is because clients need to know what to expect along the way. Sure. So we give them a very clear picture of what to expect from the very start of the relationship all the way through to the continuing of the monitoring of the relationship. So for us, it really sets really starts with us sitting down and really understanding what they need from from the retirement dollars, what they really want to do in retirement, whether they want to gift money, they want to help kids or grandkids, go to school, whatever it may be, we need to understand all of that stuff upfront to help them maximize their retirement plan. You know, that could be that they want to leave a legacy to their children, whatever it may be. So then what we do is we really look at where they are, are they meeting all of those objectives. And if they’re not, we’re going to show them how to maximize each one of those areas that they want to make sure is handled in the retirement. Okay, but from there, you know, if they decide to before with us, we’ve got a great team that really takes everything that we’ve put together and we make it so simple. The client doesn’t even need to do a thing. All they got to do is give us a thumbs up that this is the direction they want to go. And my team makes everything happen. We go out. If we’re moving monies from other institutions, my team does all Have that it’s all turnkey for the client, it’s very hands off for the client. And it makes it really nice because the clients don’t have to get involved with the messiness of all of that stuff. So but but beyond that, once once they become a client, now, the servicing and the monitoring begins, and we work as a team at secure money advisors, and that’s by design, because the client needs to have access to more than just one person. Sure. And everybody on the team understands their case, understands what we’re trying to accomplish. So if they call into the office, and they need help with something, if I’m not available, or one of my other advisors isn’t available, they can talk to other team members, and those team members will be able to service them. Now. When it comes to sitting down and doing a review, the most important thing is to do a heavy Financial Review heavy lifting Financial Review once a year where we’re really diving deep into specific things. But beyond that with our clients, because everybody’s different. We have a 411 servicing model. And what that means is we have four very specific, unique client only events each year. Okay, I do one state of the market events each year, we update our clients of what’s going on in the market. Obviously, things have changed a little bit with everything that we’ve gone through this year. But and then beyond that, we do one mandatory review a year, but we give our clients access to unlimited financial planning appointments a year at no additional cost. Wow. And what’s nice about that is they kind of get to set their schedule for how many times that they want to meet. Sure. And we did that by design, because, you know, we used to do four reviews a year. But you know, for some people, that was too many, some people, it wasn’t enough. So we really give the client control of being able to do that. But we got to do that one mandatory review every year.
Cynthia De Fazio – 26:47
Okay. That’s amazing. And also, Brian, we only have about a minute left, I want you to tell the viewing audience one more time what they can expect to receive by calling in today.
Brian Quaranta – 26:55
Yeah, absolutely. Folks, when you come in one, we want to make the experience of you coming in and enjoyable experience and easy experience. We don’t want you to be intimidated by the process, my team and I have put together a very simple intake process to really help get the best out of the complimentary Financial Review. So here’s what we’re going to do for the next 10 callers who call in right now. We’re going to give you a complimentary Financial Review, we’re going to build out a secure income report for you, we’ll look at all of your guaranteed sources of income. We’ll show you how to maximize those, we’ll show you how to build additional income sources if you need them. And we’ll also do a risk analysis where we’ll determine how much risk you’re taking. If you’re maximizing returns. If you’re not we’ll show you how to maximize your returns. We’ll also show you how to reduce your risk again. That’s for the next 10 callers who call in right now. That’s a complimentary Financial Review. 1-888-382-1298
Cynthia De Fazio – 27:47
Brian, thank you so much to our viewing audience at home. Thank you so much for spending time with us again this week. We look forward to seeing you have a safe, happy, healthy and blessed week ahead. We’ll see you again soon.
