Retirement You TV: Episode 21

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. Yes. Why? How are you? I’m doing great. I’m doing great. And you I am doing fantastic as well. And I always look forward to our time together in the studio, because each week you’re delivering such amazing information to the viewing audience. And we’ve talked about this in the past, Brian, about how many people that do not have a true plan for retirement as they’re getting closer to the retirement years?

Brian Quaranta – 00:57

Yeah, I think it’s what we see a lot. I mean, you know, 90% of people walking through the door don’t have a real plan. They’ve got investments. Typically, they’re splintered and splattered in different places. So the statements if you will, yeah, the statements, you know, what we call it our office, the POS. And that stands for pile of stuff. You know, most people have a pile of stuff. Yeah. But there’s really no coordination with that stuff, or, or there’s no strategy of how to maximize 30, 40 years worth of work. Yeah. And when people finally get the right information, which is what they get at secure money advisors. And we teach them the appropriate way to leverage what they’ve accumulated over their lifetime. They’re amazed at how hard their money can actually start working for them. Because if you think about it, it’s pretty simple. When you retire, right, your paychecks gonna stop. Exactly, and you need to replace that paycheck. Yeah, and it’s gonna be done a couple of ways. Number one, you’re gonna get a social security check. So that helps replace some of the paycheck, okay. But Social Security is only designed to replace about 30% of your income. All right, about that. So where are you going to get the rest, it’s either going to come from a pension, which most people don’t have anymore, right? Matter of fact, 85% of the people retiring today don’t have pensions. So that means most likely it’s going to come from some type of retirement plan. So the extra income you need is going to come from some type of retirement plan, like a 401k, a 403, B or 457 plan. And that retirement plan, most people when they retire, are going to be required to roll that money over to a self directed IRA. And then they’re going to need a strategy for starting to generate income from that retirement account. Okay. And the strategy that you use to accumulate that money to grow that money is completely different than the strategy you’re going to use to generate income that mines Yeah, yeah. So you, you have to focus on the fact that you’re going from what we call this accumulation phase, okay, where you’ve grown the money to a distribution phase. And this is when we start to take the money. And the reason why those strategies change is because volatility is a is not a friend to a portfolio that you’re taking income from. Sure that makes sense, right? Because if I’m taking money out on a monthly basis, and let’s say I’m taking out $10,000, a month out of my portfolio, Okay, and let’s say the market goes down, and you lose $20,000. Well, not only did you lose $20,000, because the market went down, but you also took $10,000 out. So now you’re down 30,000. So when you take that money out, you’re locking into loss, and you’re compounding the loss, okay? And that puts a lot of pressure on the portfolio, meaning it has a hard time harder time recovering, right, because we have to do a much greater rate of return to try to get back to get back to even. And this is why the greatest fear, according to AARP, as a retiree is running out of money. You know, they did a study a AARP did a study, they interviewed 1000 people and they said, What do you fear most? Do you fear running out of money? Or do you fear death? You know, 90% of the people that were surveyed said that they fear running out of money, more than they fear death alone. And I think I would I would be one of those. I would be fearful of running out of money.

Cynthia De Fazio – 04:30

Yes. Because I think a lot of people, they don’t want to be a burden to their children. That’s like the number one thing they think about. It’s like, Okay, if I run out of money, I’ve got to go knock on my son or my daughter’s door throw that I have a place to live. Absolutely. I think that’s the driving force to right there. So they wouldn’t have that peace of mind that they’re going to be okay.

Brian Quaranta – 04:47

Yeah, absolutely. And and when you have a plan, right, you do have that peace of mind. Absolutely. And that’s, that’s that’s what the planning process is supposed to be about. And I think that’s One of the nicest compliments that we get, when people do move forward and engage with us, after we show them how to build a plan, and they implement it, the one of the things that we hear often is just how much peace of mind that they have, and how much less stressed they are, and how fortunate they feel to be able to have a system that they can confidently generate income from, and know that even if the market goes up and down, that the plan has been built around. The idea that if we do have volatility, you’re still gonna be okay, you’re still gonna be okay. I still got mine. Yeah, peace of mind.

Cynthia De Fazio – 05:38

Let’s talk about the importance of working with a licensed fiduciary because you are a licensed fiduciary. So if someone in the viewing audience today is unsure of what that means, can you explain that Brian?

Brian Quaranta – 05:48

Yeah, well, the licensed fiduciary is just it’s a standard, okay, right, that says, By law, that you as advisor, have to work in the clients best interest, you’re not beholden to any specific company. So you don’t work for any specific company, your job is to help provide advice and help provide a plan. Now, this is where most of the industry gets it backwards. All right. If you look at my industry, a lot of times when you sit down with a financial planner, they’re going to start to talk to you about a product. Well, that’s not the right order, right. What we want to talk about is a plan. Okay. Okay, once we have the plan in place, now, we can go to the marketplace, and we can shop the marketplace and figure out what products are going to best work to get that plan to work. Okay, right. So working with a licensed fiduciary just means that that individual has taken an exam that requires him to be held to the highest standard by law to do what’s in your best interest. Okay. Now, I don’t think there should be an exam that you have to take that says you’re going to do what’s in the client’s best sensors. I think if you’re the financial industry, you should just automatically do what’s in the clients. best interest. Yeah, but But what does that mean? Well, that means if someone didn’t do what’s in your best interest, and they are a licensed fiduciary, you have a lot more legal recourse. And if you are working with somebody, that’s not a licensed fiduciary.

Cynthia De Fazio – 07:15

Okay, so that could be a benefit to you, just in case you need it. Yeah, I think it’s an added layer of protection for you. I absolutely I do too. Let’s talk a little bit about the birth of secure money advisors. How did you start the company? Brian?

Brian Quaranta – 07:28

That’s a great question. I’ve been doing this for 21 years. Gosh, when I started in the business, right out of college, you know, I got right into the financial industry. I was working for a big firm in Pittsburgh, okay. And I was so excited to get into business. So excited. I thought, Wow, what a neat opportunity to be able to help people with their money, and learn about the stock market, learn how it operates. help people build plans that make them rich, that make them you know, you know, financially secure, change their lives, change their family’s lives. And so I go to work for a big firm in Pittsburgh, I won’t mention the name, okay. And when you pass your exam, right, the you’re called what they call a junior advisor, which really is just a nice name for Hey, kid, can you make some copies for me? Can you get me a cup of coffee, right? That’s really what a junior advisor as it sounds a lot better than what it is, but but I had an opportunity to sit in meeting after meeting after meeting with advisors and listen to him talk to clients about their financial future. And here’s typically what I would hear I would hear the advisor say, you know, Mr. Mrs. client, you’re going to be retiring here soon. You know, we recommend that you roll over your 401k and allocate it to this portfolio. And as we see market conditions change, we’ll make changes to the portfolio so that the portfolio stays relevant based on the current market conditions. Well, I remember I got in right at the end of 1999. So I get right in at the end of the tech bubble bursting. Yeah. And I see 2000 2001 2002, three years of basically people losing money, okay. And one of the great blessings for me was that as a junior advisor, right, when the markets are going really bad, the financial advisors are hiding under their desk at the big firms. And the junior advisors are on the front line, taking the phone calls from clients. And I remember a guy calling in that was very upset that he had just lost a lot of money. And I didn’t know what to tell the guy is the first time I’m experiencing this being in the industry. And of course, I go to the advisor and I say you got a client on the line. He’s upset he wants to get out of the market today. And the advisor says to me, Brian, you need to get back on the phone with the client and tell him not to worry about anything to just hang in there. He’s in for the long haul, that it’s just a paper loss. Now, for those of you that are listening, you’ve probably heard that before. Don’t worry about it. Hang in there. You’re in it for the long haul. Right. These are all cookie cutter phrases that have been created by my industry, to emotionally keep you from making any knee jerk. reactions. But the reality is like this guy said to me, I went back as a good soldier, right? And I said to the guy, exactly what the financial advisor told me to say to him, I said, Sam, listen, talk to your advisor. He said, don’t worry about it. Hang in there. You’re in it for the long haul. And what he said to me Next is the reason why I started secure money fighters is Brian, I’m 70 years old. How much longer do you think I got left? And he was 100%. Right? And you know, it’s not a matter of whether or not the markets will come back. Because we know in the long term, they’ll come back the question you have to ask yourself, as the market goes down, will the market come back in the time period, you need it to come back in? Absolutely. Because what happens if it goes down, and it stays down for a few years, and those are your primary years where you need income, to do the things you want to do in retirement, think about the fact if you just retired it the at the beginning of 2020 and 60 days in all of a sudden your portfolio takes a 30% hit, that’s scary, especially if you’re like 85% of the people that do not have a pension, and are going to rely on that money for income for the rest of your life, it becomes very scary. So secure money advisors was really built out of out of my disgust for these cookie cutter answers that people get when the markets are going badly, right? Like Don’t worry about it hang in there, you’re in it for long, I don’t believe in that I believe that people should have a portion of their money. In an account that safe and guaranteed what I call a buffer account, you can’t have 100% of your money at risk. When you roll into retirement, you can use what we call bucketing strategies, you can have a one to five year bucket, a five to 16 year bucket and 16 and beyond bucket and those buckets get invested differently based on your investment needs. And so secure money advisors was really built around finding the best, the best of the best out there, right and utilizing technology to give us a competitive advantage. And this is what I talk about a lot on the radio is we talk about the use of algorithms today, algorithms give us the ability to do things that manually manual investing does not allow us to think about it like this, if the markets changing and the allocation of your portfolio needs to change, the adviser would need to manually go in and make changes. Sure. Now, if that advisor has 100 clients, how are they going to do that? Heck, if they have 25 clients, Cynthia, how are they going to do that? With an algorithm we have an algorithm working for us 24 hours a day, seven days a week making decisions based on the economic cycle, it’s looking for those data points, that algorithm can run 1000s of calculations, right at day in and day out. And when March, February, March of 2020 happened, our portfolio barely went down, because the algorithm was smart enough to catch it. But you know, our right track retirement system really is going to help you look at all these different areas. And the five key areas that you want to focus on is number one, and most importantly, is income because in retirement, you cannot retire without a good income strategy. And you have to have an income strategy that’s going to last the rest of your life, you can’t run out of income 10 to 15 years in retirement, when you’re 10 to 15 years older, and you don’t have the physical health to be able to go back to work, you also need to have a good tax strategy. Because again, one of the biggest erodes of your wealth is going to be taxes. So if tax rates go up, it’s going to erode your wealth, it’s going to lessen the amount of income that you’re receiving, then you want to have a good strategy for investments, right? We want to make sure that you’re maximizing your returns is reducing as much risk as you possibly can. You won’t have a good plan for health care. What happens if a health event happens? How is that going to be handled? And most importantly, is a legacy plan. What happens to your money after you’re no longer here after the good Lord takes you home? What’s going to happen to your money? Is it going to go to your family? Or is the largest beneficiary going to be the IRS don’t allow that to happen your family? And if you’ve been wondering yourself, do I have the right plan? Am I in the right investments? Maybe you’ve been wondering if you can do better in taxes? Maybe you’ve been wondering if you can do better in performance, take advantage of our right track Retirement System, because it’s going to help you determine whether or not you’re maximizing all of those key areas and for the next 10 callers who call in right now. We’re going to give you a complimentary right track Retirement System consultation. I know that’s a mouthful, but it’ll be worth it. It’s 1-888-382-1298. Again, that’s 1-888-382-1298

Cynthia De Fazio – 14:31

Brian, thank you so much to the viewers at home, the phone lines are already lining up that number to call is 888-382-1298 we have to take a very short commercial break when we come back. We have so much more with Brian Q, don’t go away.

Commercial Break – 2:45:00 PM

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 hi 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 – 16:19

And welcome back to retirement UTV. My name is Cynthia de Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian Quaranta. He’s president and founder of secure money advisors. Brian, a great show we’re having to. Yeah, absolutely. You’re so passionate about what you’re speaking of. And it comes through so clearly that you definitely care about each person in the viewing audience. One thing that you tapped in on a little bit as we went to the commercial break was tax planning. Yeah, let me ask you point blank. Is there a difference between tax planning and tax preparation?

Brian Quaranta – 16:50

Yes, that’s a great question. Yeah, tax preparation is how much money have you made? And how much taxes do right? tax planning is? How do I avoid paying unnecessary taxes? Okay, right. And that’s what that’s going to be coming down to. And when it comes to working with an advisor, and talking about investment planning, these are the things that you can calculate over the long term. So what strategies can I start to do right now to minimize my taxable liability over the next three 510 years? Okay. And then what could I do to make sure that my wealth is not eroded by taxation? Because most people when I asked this question will usually answer in one of two ways. But let me ask you, do you think taxes are going up or down in the future? I think they’re going yeah, and you know, 95% of people that I asked will say, I think they’re going to go up, and most likely they are with the amount of money that’s been injected into the economy, most likely will see a tax increase. So if we can eliminate paying taxes on on some of our money in the future, that’s going to be a better thing, maybe, right, maybe going from taxable money to tax free money, right? We’re even if you’re investing in non IRA accounts, you can use portfolios that are very tax efficient, don’t kick off taxable gains to every single year. And there’s been some changes in the tax law back in 2019, that allowed portfolio managers to do some things that would eliminate the individual from having to pay taxes on about 90% of their money in a non IRA investment.

Cynthia De Fazio – 18:19

Wow. Okay. So very important. Yep, absolutely. Let me ask you something, Brian, how important is it for someone who’s working with an advisor to make sure that they have communication with their CPA? If they already have someone that’s doing their their tax plan or their preparation? How important is it that those two people are at the same table at the same time?

Brian Quaranta – 18:38

It’s very important. Yeah, I mean, you know, we get a lot of referrals from CPAs. Because the CPAs that we’re working with love our process that we bring people through, because we’re bringing them through a real planning process. This isn’t you coming down and sitting down and just talking about investments, we’re bringing you through a real process, and a lot of the CPAs that refer business to us do that, because they want their clients well taken care of just like we do. Sure. So but having your CPA on board, right, and which, you know, we’ve had many meetings in our office with clients CPAs. And I think it’s very important because making sure that everybody’s on the same page with how to maximize your overall results from what you’re doing is very critical. And we need the CPA in there to do the preparation part, right to do the preparation plan. The CPA will always give a blessing to the strategy, because it’s just logical, and it makes sense. And we’re using the tax law in our favor.

Cynthia De Fazio – 19:31

Okay. Yeah. Let me ask you a question. Brian. How important is it for people to have good communication with their advisor? Like, we’ve heard a lot of people in the past say, you know, what, my advisor, I never hear from him. Wouldn’t that be a red flag?

Brian Quaranta – 19:42

It is a red flag. And that’s why when you go in and you’re maybe interviewing different firms, you should ask them what their communications plan is going to be. Okay, you know, so for us, our communication plan is very simple based on the level of client that you come in at, you know, let’s say you’re one of our Platinum elite clients. Well If you’re a platinum elite client, what that’s going to mean is that we’re going to contact you four times a year, right? We’re gonna have phone calls from us, you’ll have in office meetings with us. You’ll also have four events to attend each year meaning, well, as soon as we can, yeah, back to that, to that normal life. But you’ll have four events that you can attend each year. And so we have a whole communications process that we lay out for you when you come in. So you know, what to expect from us over the upcoming years. And you’re not just wondering, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to that said, you know, when we went in and talked to this guy, he was really nice. He took over our money. We never heard from him again. We take more business because a lack of service than anything else, sure people weren’t contacted. So asking a firm that you’re interviewing, right, if you’re choosing to hire somebody, you should be asking them what their communications plan is, because it’s very important when it comes to choosing the firm that you’re going to entrust with your money.

Cynthia De Fazio – 20:58

Absolutely. And speaking of communication, Brian, this is the perfect time for us to reopen the phone line.

Brian Quaranta – 21:02

That’s right, folks. And as a matter of fact, who, for the next 10 callers, our right track Retirement System is what we’re talking about here today, right? So many people when they come in the office, they’ll ask me, Brian, I just want to know, are we on the right track? My question to you is, do you know if you’re on the right track? Most people don’t? Most people don’t? When’s the last time you got a second opinion? Remember, you can’t get a second opinion from the person that gave you the first opinion. So maybe you’ve been wondering, you know, are you doing the right things? Are you on the right track? Do you have the right plan? Do you even have a plan? Are you maximizing your investment returns? Are you minimizing as much potential loss as you can? Are you are you minimizing the amount of taxes that you’re paying now and into the future? These are all the things that we’re going to talk about when you take advantage of our retirement right track system. Okay, so when you come in, we’re gonna spend 45 minutes together, we’re going to go through a very thorough process with you, we’re going to make it very simple, easy for you to understand. And for the next 10 callers who call in it’s going to be complimentary, no cost. All you have to do is take action right now. You can’t kick the can down the road. Don’t be intimidated by the process. You’ll be very thankful that you came in and spoke with us because over that 45 minutes to an hour with us, you’re going to learn a lot. So again for the next 10 callers. That’s 1-888-382-1298.

Cynthia De Fazio – 22:21

Brian, thank you so much to the viewers at home. Like Brian mentioned, the phone lines are once again now open, there’s 10 spots available, the number to call is 888-382-1298. We have to take a very short commercial break break, but don’t go anywhere. I have more questions for Brian when we come back.

Commercial Break – 10:37:00 PM

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 – 24:04

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. Do you see me or you’re always always I’m telling you your pronunciation. Like you’re doing great, though you’re doing great. Well, thank you, Brian. Let me ask you a question just in case someone perhaps is in the audience today. And maybe let’s just say they’re five years away from retirement, we’ll just use five years, Brian, how can they make sure that they’re on the right track, as you’ve mentioned?

Brian Quaranta – 24:38

Well, there’s two things that they can determine right away number one, you have to know two very critical pieces of information. Number one is if you are going to need income from your portfolio, which 95% of people are okay. You need to know what rate of returns you need to be successful with your portfolio. Here’s what I mean by that. There’s three rates of returns. You You need to look at number one is and this is based on the the amount of money that you need to withdraw from your plan. Okay? So there’s three rates you need to look at if you’re planning on living off your retirement money. Number one is, what is your spend down rate of return? Meaning if I start to withdraw money from my portfolio, what rate of return do I need? So that maybe at the age of 95, or 100, the last check I write is to the undertaker, and then you’re out of money, you follow me? That’s called our spend down interest rate. Okay, then you have to figure out what is your preservation rate? So this would be if I’m taking out a certain amount of money, what rate of return Do I need just to maintain principal? Right? What rate of return? Do I need to maintain principal? And then you want to look at what your legacy rate is, your legacy rate is, if I’m taking those withdraws, and I still want to grow the money? What rate of return Do I need there? That gives you a target range of what your you need your portfolio really to do? Okay, see? Why Why would you just go and make an investment into something right? Not knowing what rate of return that you need? Because if you know what rate of return you need, now, you know, what level of risk you need to take to accomplish your goal that makes sense. If you only need a 3% rate of return? Why in the world? Would we be rolling the dice and high risk investments if we would only need a 3% rate of return to accomplish your goals? Absolutely. Right. So those three rates of returns are so important. And this is why we offer the complimentary review, right? Our retirement right track system. That’s what we’re calling it here today. If you call in right now, we’re going to teach you these things, there’s five key areas that we’re going to go through with you. Number one is income. Number two is investments. Three is taxes for is health care planning, and five is legacy planning. So when you come in, we’re gonna spend about 45 minutes to an hour with you. There’s nothing sold during this meeting. There’s no pressure to do anything. This is purely educational. On coming in seeing where you’re at determining whether or not you’re on the right track. If you’re not, our job is to help map out a road map to give you turn by turn directions of how to get on the right track. So again, for the next 10 callers who call in right now. This is going to be complimentary 18883821298 you just need to do your part by getting up getting on the phone and scheduling the appointment again, that’s complimentary appointment with us 18883821298

Cynthia De Fazio – 27:32

Brian, thank you again for another amazing show this week. I know the viewers are enjoying it. I love watching the phone lines light up like right now. to the viewers at home. Thank you so much for spending time with us again this week. That number to call is 888-382-1298. Remember, you deserve to know if you’re on the right track for retirement. Be safe, be happy, be blessed. We’ll see you back here again next week. Thank you for watching.