Retirement You TV: Episode 16

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Video Transcript

Cynthia De Fazio – 00:20

And welcome to retirement You TV My name is Cynthia de Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian Quaranta, he is president and founder of secure money advisors. You’re almost there. What did I miss this time? which you want to add to yours? I know I do. Yeah, it’s like it flows better. Can we change your last name just to suit me?

Brian Quaranta – 00:43

I know. I know. That be okay. I think a lot of people would actually like that, you know, because, I mean, I have clients have been clients of mine for 20 years, and it’s still hard for them to say my last name. Yeah. So yeah, I’m telling you, my father was called. Mr. Q. My grandfather was called Mr. Q. So it just works. And I may have asked you this before, but how do you order pizza? How do I order pizza? Yeah. You know, the when you when you order if you get in from a, you know, a real Italian pizzeria. Cuz I grew up in New Jersey. So you know, usually the pizzeria is up there are owned by you know, people that speak, you know, Italian so right. They love when I call in what aren’t? We got two pies for quote, aren’t that? Easy? There you go. You didn’t say that? Yeah, you could do it that way.

Cynthia De Fazio – 01:38

well, that is awesome. And I know, Brian, I’m so appreciative that you take the time to do the shows each week, because we know the viewers are really enjoying the amount of information that you’re providing. Because your business you’ve been very busy. Yeah. You know, we talked about when the pandemic hit how that shifted just the course of business. A lot of meetings were via zoom. Yeah, but now you’re comfortable having people back in the office, and the meetings have been just incredible. So let’s talk about how busy been for a

Brian Quaranta – 02:01

little bit very busy. Yeah, very busy. I mean, you know, I’m booked probably four or five weeks out right now. You know, and it just shows you how desperate people are, I don’t wanna say desperate, but how in need people are hungry, hungry, for good information from reliable sources, you know, in my industry has made it very difficult for people to make decisions. Google has not helped with that, right? You know, because you have paralysis by analysis, right? So what happens is, you know, people get on, they start reading about things, they’re not sure what to do. And what we don’t want to have happen is we don’t want people procrastinating kicking the can down the road on very, very important decisions that they need to make. Absolutely, because there’s so much good that you can do in planning, if you have time. Oh, sure. You know, so many people wait to the very last minute to put together a plan, which if that’s you, I mean, there’s no judgment there, it just it is what it is. But if you can get out in front of it, you know, to where you’re planning, 10 years for retirement, or even at least five years from retirement, there’s a lot of great things that you can do and take advantage of like conversion strategies where we can go from taxable income to tax free income, but it takes time to put together those strategies. And it takes time to implement those strategies. So sure, yeah. You know, we just our job really, you know, my team and I, we wake up every day to come in and provide accurate information, good information, black and white, that people can make decisions, because everything out there that you can do in financial planning has a purpose, otherwise, it wouldn’t be there. Right. But there’s pros and cons to everything you do. And there’s no perfect investment out there. Yeah, you know, there’s always something that you have to accept about a particular investment strategy. But you got to weigh that and you got to determine, you know, are the rewards worth the risk are, you know, are the restrictions worth the restrictions, whatever it might be, but our job is to help guide in those areas so they can make informed decisions.

Cynthia De Fazio – 04:05

So in case someone is just tuning in for the first time, Brian, let’s talk about just the conceptual stages of secure money advisors. How did you bring it all together? What was the the seed that you planted, if you will?

Brian Quaranta – 04:16

Well, you know, I’ve been in the business for over 20 years now practicing for over 20 years and I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly, and and I see what’s out there in the marketplace and people were not getting financial planning advice. They’re being sold financial products, okay. And financial planning is very comprehensive and it focuses on five key areas, income, investments, taxes, health care and legacy planning. If you make sure that every i is dotted and every T is crossed in those five areas, and you understand the best practices of how to generate, you know, the maximize your cash flow in retirement and do it in the most tax efficient way, get the most from your investments as far as the return. goes but also try to minimize as much risk as possible, making sure that you have a good health care strategy, whether that be that you want to retire before the age of 65. And you need to get some type of insurance to get you to Medicare age. But then once you get to Medicare age, what’s the appropriate supplement to get? How much should I spend on it? There’s good ones, there’s, there’s, you know, good, better ones for each individual based on their own needs. And then, of course, taxes, we want to make sure that taxes are positioned the best. Sure. And of course, legacy. Legacy planning is important because most people when they pass, they want to make sure that the money goes to their loved ones and not the IRS. Yeah. So those are the key areas that we focus on when folks come in.

Cynthia De Fazio – 05:42

Okay. Yeah. Brian, I want to ask you your opinion on so security, that’s been such a hot topic lately, especially in the news, and what have you, do you think it’s going to go away? Is it going to disappear?

Brian Quaranta – 05:51

I don’t know. I don’t, you know, I, we know that the government’s kick the can down the road and hasn’t, you know, the Social Security is definitely underfunded, we know that. But I just think that, you know, based on the peer groups that I’m involved, and the study groups that I’m part of across the country, we talk about these things, and I think it would be political suicide to any politician to not fix Social Security, because you think we have challenges right now in our economy? Could you imagine if you started taking away people’s social security checks, apps, especially to the greatest generation ever, which is the baby boomer generation, that have worked their entire lives to get this benefit? Yeah. And I think the largest voting population as well, if I’m not mistaken, of course, yeah. So I think you’ll see changes to the younger generation, you know, they might, they might increase the retirement age, the early retirement age from maybe 62 to 63. They may change the full retirement age, there’ll be changes in those areas. Yeah, definitely. Gonna have to be,

Cynthia De Fazio – 06:50

are you seeing people retire earlier today Brian, than in years past?

Brian Quaranta – 06:55

Yes, yeah, especially what took place, because I think what, you know, the pandemic did for most people, is, they were forced to work at home, okay. And so all of a sudden, they were with their families again, and they didn’t have to wake up and get ready and drive to the city and, you know, have this long commute to where they’re spending an hour commuting. And employers have actually found that their employees are more efficient, but but people that were that people that were on the brink of retirement anyway, I think it really kicked it into gear for them to say, you know, what, I think I’m just done. And we had a lot of people that we had on three to five year plans to retire. And we actually wound up implementing the plan three to five years earlier, and retired them now versus waiting, which the original plan was to wait maybe three to five years. But we actually want to retire them early. And that’s the great part about having a plan, Cynthia, because when you have a plan, you can do those things, you can walk into work one day and get frustrated, say, you know what I’m calling secure money advisors, because I’m leaving now. Yeah. And and when you map out a plan based around good black and white math, you’ll be able to have that level of control.

Cynthia De Fazio – 07:59

And again, it’s all about peace of mind to this, you’re granting people peace of mind the ability to sleep at night, knowing that no matter what happens in their life in the current situation, or let’s fast forward to something else that could happen. They’re going to be secure.

Brian Quaranta – 08:12

Yeah. And that peace of mind doesn’t happen by accident. Yeah, there is best practices that you can utilize, that gives you that peace of mind. And there’s certain strategies that will allow you to sleep well at night. And there’s so many people that just don’t understand those strategies, or have never been educated about them. And that’s part of the process when you come to secure money advisors is we teach you those things. Absolutely. And a lot of times people say I didn’t even know that existed. Yeah, you know, or I heard a little bit about it. But nobody ever really explained to me the benefit of doing it that way. Yeah. So that’s something that we get excited about when we see people for the first time connecting the dots. And going wow, I didn’t know it could be that way.

Cynthia De Fazio – 08:51

Well, something I’m excited about Brian, is we’re gonna open up the phone lines for the first time this week, do you want to tell the viewing audience what they can expect to receive today,

Brian Quaranta – 08:58

absolutely focus for the next 10 callers and don’t procrastinate on this too. In order to make change, you have to take action. So take action, call schedule a time to come in and take advantage of what my offer is going to be here. First off, we’re going to when you come in, we are actually going to build a plan with you. Right, we’re not about dictating what you need to do. We’re about working with you and executing on a plan together. And when you come in, we’re going to look at where you are, where you need to go and how we can improve. What we want to do is we want to help maximize your overall wealth and mitigate any potential risk and eroding factors to your your situation such as lawsuits, disabilities, taxes, or even premature death. So it’ll be a very thorough meeting, you’ll get a lot out of it. And we’ll be able to determine whether or not we want to move forward with those changes or not. But the most important thing is that you get up off the couch and take action and call and schedule a time to come in. So again for the next 10 callers. That’s 18883821298 888-382-1298 that’s a complimentary, no cost folks, no cost for you to come in and sit down with us and walk through that process.

Cynthia De Fazio – 10:09

Brian, thank you so much to the viewing audience at home, the phone lines are now open and we can see them they’re already lighting up. And for your convenience, there is a second phone line that we’ve added this week is we know that there’s a lot of people that want to take advantage of this offer. Once again, the number to call is 888-382-1298. Don’t miss this opportunity for that complimentary consultation with Brian q to plan your retirement safely. We’ll be right back after this very short commercial break.

Commercial Break -10:37

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. We’ll 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 – 12:11

And welcome back to retirement You TV. My name is Cynthia de Fazio I’m joined today by Brian Quaranta. He is president and founder of secure money advisors who will run their

Brian Quaranta – 12:23

We’re definitely you know what we’re gonna have to figure out we’re gonna have to figure out what charities we’re gonna be able to give it to. Wouldn’t be great if we just start and then we could just get it wrong all the time, because they have to be just for good.

Cynthia De Fazio – 12:35

Well, I can think of a few that we should definitely donating to so one of these days, it’s just gonna flow cut on top. That’s right like that. Yeah, that seems like you’re better if you do it that way. So can I use my hands? Yes. Yeah, the hand the hand will really help you get it out? I think so. Yeah. We all talk with our hands. And stuff like Yeah, what do you think it would be great. Cool. All right. Awesome. Yeah, it’s

Brian Quaranta – 12:57

really good. That was really good. So if you did that out of the gates, I’d give you at least four gold stars. Still not five, almost, you’re almost there.

Cynthia De Fazio – 13:10

I can’t get five stars. Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about, you know, in the past, we were talking about people that are actually coming in to sit with you and then are going through their process to plan for their retirement, we talked about the importance of cash flow. But Brian, let me ask you, what are some of the things that can cause a retirement income gap? What can cause a shortfall?

Brian Quaranta – 13:27

Yeah, it’s a good question. Well, obviously, the obvious thing is debt. Right? How much debt does an individual have out? Do we still have mortgage payments, car payments, things along those lines, but one that some people don’t take into account is the cost of health insurance, especially if you want to retire before the age of 65. And what the cost of that would be, you know, for a married couple, you could be looking over $1,000 a month for health coverage. But you know, also when you get into the planning process, what can cause shortfalls is a premature death of your spouse, right? That can cause a major shortfall because with Social Security, what happens is, if your spouse dies, Social Security takes away the lowest check, the spouse, the surviving spouse will pick up the highest check. But still, according to AARP, the average loss of income to add death to a married couple. So the surviving spouse, according to AARP would have 40% less income to live off of when their spouse dies, that’s a lot of income to lose. That is, that’s a lot of income to lose. So that means that you’re going to have to have a way to mitigate that loss of income now, everybody’s reaction to that is, well, there’ll be less expenses if I’m gone. Really. I’ve been practicing for over 20 years. Let me tell you, the expenses don’t go down by much. Yeah. So if you think that when you die, it’s going to be as simple as expenses going down. I hate to tell you you have it wrong, because typically you don’t see expenses go down by much. You might you know, give up a car. You might have less car insurance, but it’s not going to be this drastic amount to where a 40% loss of income is still going to have an impact, even though there’s less expenses. So you really got to plan for this. But the last thing you want your spouse doing too, is having to, you know, change their lifestyle. Now that you’re gone. Typically, when a spouse dies, what you see is the other spouse, after they’re done grieving, they will start to travel more, because they want to spend more time with their kids or their grandkids, or they want to go see brothers and sisters or wherever it is, because they’re alone at home. So they want to get out into, you know, into the world and see the people they love and care about. So they actually wind up spending more with the travel, or all of a sudden, they want to move out of the house that they’re in, and they want to move into a new home. And typically, they want to move into a newer home, which usually cost more money. So don’t make it don’t make it in your mind that when you lose a spouse, it’s going to be easy, because there’s going to be less expenses. I hate to tell you it doesn’t work out that way. In real practice, right. I mean, it might you might think it that that might work that way, but it really doesn’t.

Cynthia De Fazio – 16:13

Okay. Okay. It’s amazing when I hear you talk about it, because also let’s factor in, let’s say inflation. Sure. We talk about the importance of it true retirement plan. Also factor in what cost could be down the road due to inflation? Yeah, well, you know,

Brian Quaranta – 16:26

we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of clients die. I mean, we just do I mean, we’re a busy firm. We manage money for a lot of people. So we deal with it. We deal with it on a monthly basis. Yeah. Never once has a spouse ever called me and said, I have too much money coming in, you know, the surviving spouse, right? Yeah. Brian, I’m overwhelmed. Yeah, yeah, that’s typically what I hear. And they’ll say, I need to increase my income. Yeah, I need to increase my income. That’s what we typically hear. Okay. Yeah.

Cynthia De Fazio – 16:58

Okay. And you have ways to help people do that, which I love listening to the people that have actually been able to glean that consultation with you. Because the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. People are saying that when they come into your office, they feel that you’re giving them individual one on one attention. And that’s a gift because you know, when you go to the doctor’s office, even they spend one man insulting doctors, but you know what I mean, they spend maybe 10 minutes with you, and you’re off to the next room. Yes. They feel that you’re really taking the time to spend with them. And that’s a huge testimonial for you, Brian.

Brian Quaranta – 17:31

Yeah, it Well, look, I mean, it’s consultive. And in order to work together to build a plan, with each individual I work with, there’s an education process that has to happen. Yeah. And so that education takes time. But it’s worth it in the end. Sure. Because they understand. And when when they understand they feel very comfortable in the planning process, and the new plan that they’re going to implement, because they were part of the process. When you’re part of the process. You connect all the dots. Oh, yeah. And you feel comfortable moving forward, you feel and typically what happens is you go in a firm ask you some questions, and they come back with a proposal and you go, Well, how did you get from point A to point B? Right? I mean, I don’t know. And they’re dictating what I need to do. Well, why are you going to do that? We tell you why we work together. And there’s a communication that happens between us with them, to where I know that I’m going to challenge some of their financial beliefs. Because you don’t know what you don’t know. Right? When I I’ve been practicing for 20 years, if I went in, you know, and met with another person that specialize in something, whether it be a home builder, or you know, whoever it might be, you know, I mean, we just had to have a furnace replaced, right? The guy comes in and, you know, I two quotes come in, the first guy comes in, and he basically tells me how much it’s going to cost. What I need to do, the next guy that comes in takes the time to educate me of why it’s going to cost me the money that it’s going to cost me and how I’m going to get more efficiency. That guy was a little bit more expensive. But Guess who I went with? You went with that guy went with him because he took the time to help me understand what was taking place and why we needed to do what we needed to do. Absolutely.

Cynthia De Fazio – 19:06

Yeah, well, fine. We’re going to go ahead and open up those phone lines again. So I’m going to tell the viewers what they can expect to receive if you don’t mind. Absolutely. All right to the viewers at home. We have about six spots left this week. That number to call once again is 888-382-1298. Brian is offering you a complimentary consultation, he’d like you to take the time to come into the office to sit with him. Let’s go over what you currently have in place. Or if you’re designing something for the very first time Brian can help you design a retirement plan that’s suited to your needs. very personalized, very one on one so that you can weather any storm no matter what hits down the road, you’ll be protected and you’ll have peace of mind to sleep at night. Once again six spots only remain and the phone lines are open. The number to call is 8883821298. We’ll be right back momentarily with Brian q with more questions and answers for you.

Commercial Break – 19:56

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 – 21:22

Welcome back to retirement You TV, my name is Cynthia de Fazio I’m joined by Brian Quaranta. He is president and founder of secure money advisors. And I use the hand that time it still sounded loud. So as you go, it’s only been 25 episodes ago, probably 10 years from now. Maybe you’re gonna come and say guess my last year? Yeah. Okay. So I wanted to actually talk to you because as the phone lines were lighting up, we’re able to glean some viewer questions. And so we’re going to do one show down the road. That’s just going to be viewer questions completely, but I think we have time to tackle a couple. Let’s do it. Okay, so the first one is, Brian, I enjoy watching your show very much. I’m five years away from retirement, what advice do you have for me? What should I be doing right now?

Brian Quaranta – 22:16

Great, great question. Well, first off, I would look at how are your expenses right now? Do you still have debts to pay off? You know, one thing that we can do as we’re approaching retirement, specially five years out, is trying to get those expenses as low as we could possibly get them. So these are times when you might want to look at your contributions to your employer plans. So a lot of times people are putting more in than what the employer is actually contributing. Okay. And so it let’s say you’re putting more in than than what the employer is matching, right? So you’re putting more in? Well, maybe you pull back on that, and you redirect that money to paying down the debt. And here’s why. Let’s say that you have a mortgage of $1,000 a month, okay. And we could get that paid off by redirecting the excess money that you’ve been putting into your 401k plan or, or any type of retirement. And we could redirect that and put more money on paying off the mortgage every single month, and maybe we can get that mortgage paid off by the time you retire. Okay, well, that means that we now pick up an additional $1,000 a month in cash flow. And now here’s how we would calculate that the little bit of extra money that you’re putting into the plan, if you were to put that in the plan, how much would we need that to grow to to generate $1,000 a month in cash flow, versus if I pay off a debt, I know, I’m going to be guaranteed to pick that $1,000 up in cash flow, right. And sure, because when you were putting that into a plan, we have no idea whether or not we’ll be able to generate that cash flow, because we have no idea how those investments are going to perform. So if we want to pick up additional cash flow, the first thing we can do is focus on getting those expenses as low as we can. Okay, the second thing is, can we start to do some tax planning, so that when we do generate cash flow and retirement, we can start to generate a tax free, those are the two primary things we want to look at. Because, again, lower expenses means that less money we’ve got to take from the plan, but also with the tax planning. That means any money we take out is all tax free.

Cynthia De Fazio – 24:15

Awesome. That would be fantastic. Thank you, Brian. That was an excellent answer. I think we have time for just one more. It says, Brian, I’m very confused. I want to make sure I understand this. Can you help me clarify what are the best uses of my assets in retirement? How do you go about determining that? That’s a great question.

Brian Quaranta 24:31

Yeah, it is. Well, it again, it all comes down. Do you need cash flow? Do you not? Yeah, if you don’t need cash flow, then how do we make sure that we leverage that? Well, so it’s not eroded by taxes later on down the road? Because remember, you know, when you turn 72, the IRS is going to require that you start taking money out of your accounts, right. So that’s going to road to taxation, when you die, it could potentially erode the taxation Are you giving to charities there’s huge tax benefits for giving to charities right now. For example, you You could redirect your RMD and not have to pay taxes on your RMD. If you give the RMD to charity, so rather than paying a charity from your bank account, you could just give them your RMD. And that would be tax free to you and tax free to the charity. That’s fantastic. So the best uses are really how to, again, do I maximize my overall wealth? Whether you need to generate income or not, there’s still things that you’re going to want to do. Because if you just allow them to sit in retirement accounts, right, or non retirement accounts, they’re going to be eroded by taxation, anyway. Right. So how do I leverage that to maximize my overall wealth, not only to myself, but to whoever might inherit that money, too. Okay, so the best uses are a little bit different for everybody. Sure, but we want to leverage the wealth as much as we can, so that we can benefit not only the client, but whoever they’re going to leave the money to.

Cynthia De Fazio – 25:50

Sure. Brian, for the people that were fortunate enough to obtain the consultation with you today, what can they expect by the first visit with you? What does that look like? How long does it take?

Brian Quaranta – 26:00

Yeah, well, we’ve developed a roadmap, you know, in that roadmap is how do we get from point A, to point B, where we are right now and where we need to go? First? It’s really understanding where are you educate me a little bit on what you’ve been doing. Right? And tell me what we need from the plan. And we’ll help by asking questions, right, sometimes people don’t know exactly, but the number one question we always get is, am I on the right track? Well, am I on the right track means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, right? But understanding where you are is key to it. And we do that by asking a lot of questions. Then we look at that and we say, okay, could we help a change this person’s lifestyle? Could we help enhance what they’re doing? And from there, what we can do is we can run a quick analysis on certain things. And we can start to educate what would happen if we do these what if scenarios, okay, and from there, we can start to give you a turn by turn directions on what to do next. Okay, and how to, again, maximize your overall wealth. And that’s what they can expect when they come in. The other thing they can expect is for us to work together as a team to build this. Yeah, right. Not somebody dictating what they need to do. And that’s why, you know, for the next 10 cars, I think there’s only two spots left to left, two spots left. If you call in, we’re going to do this at no cost for you. We’re going to sit down we’re going to go through your planning, we’re going to give you that complimentary view. We’ll ask you lots of questions. It will be a an opportunity for you to make change. People are not coming to secure money advisors to kick the tires are coming to make changes that improve their overall financial situation. So again, for those that call 18883821298. You’re going to get a complimentary review at no cost no obligation.

Cynthia De Fazio – 27:37

Brian, thank you so much for your time again this week. to the viewers at home. Once again the phone lines are now open with two spots available only that number to call is 888-382-1298. We know you have a lot of questions about retirement, Brian is able to give the answers to you. Thank you for spending time with us. Be safe, be happy, be blessed and we will see you again next week.