Retirement You TV: Episode 26

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Videos transcripts

Cynthia De Fazio – 00:19

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. Brian, how are you today?

Brian Quaranta – 00:30

I’m doing great. And I have to tell you’ve been doing such a great job. I’ve been very impressed. I’ve been very, very

Cynthia De Fazio – 00:37

well. The funny thing is that I’m walking around the house practicing it before I see you and I’ve got this really.

Brian Quaranta – 00:45

We wrote that down what over a year ago over over a year ago, and you’re so meticulous with your nose and keeping track of everything for us. Great job I wanted to I wanted to give you five gold stars for

Cynthia De Fazio – 00:57

so much. I’ll take them out. I don’t know why I always want to throw an R in there at the end. It’s just I don’t it’s just I love to say your name. It’s just so fluid that sometimes the artist slips. So how have you been really good?

Brian Quaranta – 01:12

Thank you very much. Yeah, I’m very, very busy. And, you know, very blessed and grateful for the opportunity to do the show. You know, it’s always been important for me. Growing up, I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. My mom and dad worked really hard for their money. And, you know, I always said my dad used to always meet with his broker out in New York City credit growth. I grew up in New Jersey, okay, and my dad would always be complaining about money. He’s losing money. I’ve always thought to myself, what is this whole broker? That now is a little what I was thinking, right? Like, what’s this whole broker thing? My dad I remember my dad, buying Snapple tea. Remember, Snapple tea is mine stock? Yeah, he thought he was gonna, you know, he thought he was gonna hit the lottery with Snapple tea, you know, but, but my dad would always lose money. And you know, it was interesting, because, you know, I would always think to myself, gosh, if my parents just had the ability to get good advice, right without somebody trying to sell them something. And so it was always very important to me when I got into the business because my parents went through a really hard time. My dad had a government where its catalog store. Do you remember victim rewards? Sure do. Yeah. Growing up, I mean, my dad had the store. And I remember working at the store the time that my dad had this store, there was a very popular doll being sold in the 80s. Do you remember what that was? cabbage pads. It? Yeah. Everybody wanted a canvas, there would be a line around the block from a store of people coming in to get these Cabbage Patch dolls. I remember that, you know, the semi trucks used to pull up to the back of the store. And and for a while there, there would be semi trucks just full of cabbage patch of people come in and getting them and so things were good. My parents were doing well, my dad had worked hard to build up the store and buy into the franchise. And then mobile gas came in and purchase Montgomery wards and wound up liquidating it and filing bankruptcy and my parents literally went to bed one night and everything was okay and woke up the next day. And their life was completely turned upside down. When they found out that they got rewards had filed for bankruptcy. And Matter of fact, my dad, they didn’t even get any word from the from from recovery words themselves. My dad got a call from a friend of his who also had to make dumb rewards about 50 miles from my dad’s store. And he said, Bob, if you turned on the news today, and my dad said No, why? He says, Well, you should he said Montgomery Ward’s just file for bankruptcy. So my parents went through a really hard time. Financially, it was very challenging my dad, he had three young kids, my dad worked multiple jobs, just to make sure that us kids were okay, and we’re provided for. But that’s really what got me very interested in money. Because, you know, my parents went through such a hard time financially. And when I graduated from college here in Pittsburgh, I decided to get right into financial industry, I thought I was gonna go back home and work on Wall Street. But I wound up staying in Pittsburgh working for a large firm here in Pittsburgh. And Pittsburgh is my home. I’ve been here for over 25 years now. And I’ve been practicing financial planning here in Pittsburgh for over 21 years. So but you know, the things that I when I first got into the industry, I really didn’t like what I was seeing, and what I was seeing was a lot of selling of financial products. But, uh, not a whole lot of planning. And those are two very, very different things. I mean, you know, and, and, you know, folks out there, they know what I mean, when I say, you know, a lot of people they own financial products. When I ask folks, you know, typically, you know, tell me a little bit about the reviews that you do on an annual basis with your advisor. They’ll tell you, you know, we haven’t seen the advisor in quite a long time. And a lot of times what happens is people have what I call their POS. Now that stands for a pile of stuff in my office, and the pile of stuff comes from, you know, they were working for an employer and they’ve got an old 401k or they, when they when they left this company, maybe they rolled something over and bought some investments from this individual advisor and maybe they don’t talk to that advisor anymore, and maybe they bought an annuity from this And that person, they got it splintered and splattered everywhere. And unfortunately, it’s very hard to retire. And really make sense of all of this stuff when you have a pile of stuff. So our job, our job as a fiduciary is to help you organize a plan, and map out a roadmap to give you the clarity of how to get from point A to point B. And we’re very good at doing that at secure money advisors, and the right track Retirement System is all built around helping give you clarity of getting from point A to point B in retirement. And it literally is a roadmap that we follow with each and every one of our clients. The first step is really understanding. Where are you currently at what’s going on right now? What’s happening? What red flags are there? What yellow flags are there? Are there changes that need to be made that can improve your current situation? Right? Could we could we help maximize the returns of your portfolio at the same time potentially reducing the risk? A lot of times people are taking this much risk, and they’re only getting this much reward? What if we could flip that and take this much risk, but get this much reward? You know, these are things called standard deviation and things along those lines that we can talk about when we evaluate your portfolio. And that’s the stuff that we’ll do during the meeting for the right track Retirement System is we’ll go through those five key areas of income, investments, taxes, health care, and legacy planning. But it’s important that ultimately, when you go through this process, that you wind up having something that’s written and tangible. And you’ve thought through all of the bad things that can happen. And if you’re a married couple out there, or even if you’re single, making bad things happen on paper during the planning process is so important for you to be able to make very key very critical and important decisions about what to do if your spouse dies, what if your husband dies? First? What if your wife dies? First? What’s the income cash flow going to look like? If there’s a health event? What do we do? Do we? Do we pay for it out of pocket? Are you a veteran? Will we qualify for any type of benefit or service that you might not know about? Do we have to buy some type of insurance policy to protect from that, but when you come in the right track Retirement System, is going to give you the peace of mind. And it’s finally going to bring all of these pieces in the focus so that you have the confidence and peace of mind, not only to retire right now sooner than you probably ever thought, but also be able to stay in retirement and not have to worry about coming out if the market doesn’t cooperate.

Cynthia De Fazio – 07:26

And again, when you’re retired, Brian, we’ve talked about this, all of a sudden, every day is a Saturday, everyday Saturday. That’s right, you have to plan for that. That’s right. When you think about it, do you spend more money now on a Monday or Saturday, on a Saturday

Brian Quaranta – 07:38

on a Saturday, right? You’re you’re improving the home, you’re going out to dinner with family and friends, you’re always spending more money on Saturdays and Sundays. And in retirement, we want to build the plan so that you don’t have to live off of a very tight budget, we want to build a plan to give you the freedom and cash flow so that you can go do all the things you said you were going to do. Absolutely. You know, if you ask 10 retirees, what are some of the most important things you’ll do one of the things all have in common is they want to travel, yeah, they want to travel so domestically or internationally, whatever it might be. But in order to do these things, it comes back to the fundamental of every retirement plan. And that’s income planning. If we don’t replace that paycheck, and we don’t do it in a way that’s going to guarantee that income for the rest of your life. Right, then then this is where people will have challenges in retirement, and they’re not gonna have challenges in the first five years or 10 years, they’ll have challenges 15, 20 years in retirement, right, where they’re running short on money, or they’re going to run out of money when they can’t do anything about it. And they’re at a point in their life where physically, mentally emotionally they can’t go back to work. Yeah, they’re not a placing go back to work. Yeah. And we don’t want to fail to plan, right? We don’t want to fail to plan. So that’s the most important thing.

Cynthia De Fazio – 08:44

Well, Brian, this is the perfect time for us to open up the phone lines to the viewers at home for the first time this week. You tell them what they can expect to receive by being one of your callers.

Brian Quaranta – 08:52

We talked about it every week, folks, that right track retirement system is built around determining whether or not you’re on the right track. And you know, you probably think to yourself sometimes, you know, I’m not really sure when to collect Social Security, how do I maximize my social security? You know, I’ll hear a lot of times people will tell me, I can’t afford to take another big loss in the market, I just don’t have the time to recover. People say you know, I don’t have a pension. And I want to find out how do I create a pension. These are the things that we can talk about during your meeting. And when we’re going through the right track retirement system, and my promise to you is that you will walk out of our office more clear than when you walk through the door. And it will be worth your time whether or not you make changes or become a client of ours that doesn’t matter. What we want to give you is the opportunity to open your eyes up to what really good planning looks like and teach you the best practices of how to build out a really solid retirement. So again, that’s the right track retirement system that you’re going to get at no cost, no obligation if you call 188838 to 1298. But again, folks, you have to do your part in this you can’t kick the can down the road. This is is not the time to kick the can down the road, pick up the phone, do not procrastinate. Take advantage of this. It’s not very often that you get to sit down with a firm that’s a fiduciary and go through a very thorough process like this again, that’s 1-888-382-1298.

Cynthia De Fazio – 10:17

Brian, thank you so much to the viewers at home, the phone lines are now open that number to call is 888-382-1298. Don’t miss this opportunity for Brian to take a look at where you currently are. Are you on the right track for retirement? Brian can make sure that you are and you’re able to weather any storm but all you have to do is pick up the phone and call 888-382-1298 we have to take a very short commercial break, but don’t go anywhere. When we come back. We’re going to have so much more with Brian about how to plan your perfect retirement. Please stay tuned.

Commercial Break -10:48:00 AM

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 – 12:22

Welcome back to retirement You TV My name is Cynthia de Fazio and I’m joined today by Brian Quaranta. He is president and founder of secure money advisors. Brian, a great show that we’re having today. I can always gauge that by the amount of phone activity when we go to the break because they’re lining up like crazy. Oh, yeah. So I know people are really just wanting to gather and glean that information from you a question I have for you, if someone’s in the viewing audience, and let’s say they’re feeling a little apprehensive, they’re nervous, they’re afraid that it’s gonna feel like walking into the dentist or the doctor.

Brian Quaranta – 12:54

What does it feel like when someone comes in to see you? Well I can tell you it definitely does not feel like an interrogation. Okay. You know, we’re not, we’re not there to criticize or judge anything that you’re doing, we’re going to ask you very thoughtful questions that you’ve probably never even thought of yourself, that really helped think through the planning process, but you’re going to be greeted by a very warm group of people. I mean, you know, the one thing I can tell tell you about my team, is they are a very caring bunch of people. You know, every every one of my team member has been with me for a long time, you know, 15 plus years for, you know, you know, for most team members. So, you know, we’re a very tight family. And everybody really does an incredible job in welcoming any new potential client to our office, because we know, I mean, the financial planning process could be intimidating. I mean, I’ve worked in this industry for over 21 years. I mean, let’s face it, you know, there’s a lot of ego in my business. And sometimes people can feel like they’re being talked down upon by financial advisors, or, you know, the order even that they’re talking over there, or they’re over their head, you know, or, you know, people feel like, you know, if a share with somebody what I’ve done over the past 10 years, you know, they might make a snarky comment, like, Well, why the heck could you have done that? We’re not there to judge you. We’re not there to criticize you. We’re there to say, Hey, what’s going on right now? What is it that we need this money to do for us? Right? And can where you’re at currently, actually get that done? You know, so if if, if the money is positioned in a place to where it’s, it’s in alignment with with your goals and what you need that money to do, then Wouldn’t it be nice for you to know that you’re okay, sure. But if you’re not okay. If we’re if there could be things that could be improved? When would you want to know that? Exactly. When would you want to know that? Most people would want to know that sooner than later? Absolutely. No, I mean, planning sooner for retirement is definitely better than planning later, right? I mean, not that it can’t be done. I mean, we get calls all the time. Hey, I’m retiring next month. I need to come in and see if that helps. That’s Sure. So if you’re in that position, don’t worry about it. But at the end of the day, you know, we’re just a very welcoming group of people. And it’s definitely not an intimidating process with us.

Cynthia De Fazio – 15:09

All right. Yeah. Sounds great. And Brian, I know you so well, but I have to ask this question, coffee and cookies, would that be involved?

Brian Quaranta – 15:17

Coffee, cookies, cupcakes. We’ve got it all. Yeah, you know, beverages of your choice. You know, and, you know, but yeah, we try to, we try to stock the office with as many goodies as we can. So very warm, very welcoming. Matter of fact, one of my team members even had the idea of getting a small oven for the office. So that in the morning, we could we can make muffins so that when people walk through the door, they would smell muffins. And then at lunchtime, they wanted to cook chocolates or big chocolate chip cookies. And I love the idea. The only problem is, is that I’ve tried to lose weight so many times, I just don’t know how well that would work for me. Yeah,

Cynthia De Fazio – 15:55

I think the next question that’ll come up, Brian, can we get a peloton? Yeah, I’m just curious. So for that first meeting, Brian list of documents, are there any things that people should be bringing with them like bank statements? Do you ask for that on the first meeting, or what is your process.

Brian Quaranta – 16:14

it’s helpful, I mean, you want to get as much out of this meeting as you can. So we’ll give you a list of things that you should consider bringing, obviously, we don’t want people going crazy and pulling their hair out trying to gather all these documents, a general conversation works too. But you know, with the time that we’re going to spend, it cost us a lot of money, sure to give these complimentary meetings. So you know, for for anybody that’s going to take advantage of it, maximize the time that you’re getting from us. Because you know, at the end of the day, we put a lot of resources into giving these complimentary meetings, and we’re going to give you 150% of what we have. And if we don’t, if you don’t bring everything, it’s very difficult for you to walk out with all that you could get if you brought everything in.

Cynthia De Fazio – 16:57

Sure that makes sense. So after the first consultation, Brian, is it followed up like a week later with a second visit? Or how do you typically structure that?

Brian Quaranta – 17:05

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I mean, we again, everything is secure money advisors is built around systems and processes, right? So so the initial process, if somebody is coming in for an initial meeting, it really is just a discovery meeting to find out, you know, where are you at, what’s going on? Tell us a little bit about your goals. What what challenges are you having right now? What concerns do you have? What fears Do you have moving forward, and then really looking at that situation based on what that individual told us, and really looking at it as a team, right, because we plan as a team at secure money advisors, that’s the other really nice thing is that most people are used to working with one individual, we work as a team now you might sit down with one individual. But on the on the back end, what’s happening behind the scenes is we’re operating as a team. And we’re planning together. And this is important, because when I sit down with my team, and we go through the notes of a specific meeting about what we’ve addressed with this individual, you know, one team member may give their opinion on something or another team member may give their opinion on something or we you know, and then having that different input and more than one set of eyes looking on, it really helps maximize everything that we can do in financial planning. Because we really, you know, one person just can’t handle all the moving parts anymore between social security and medicare and all the different rules on retirement accounts and everything else. So so what we’re doing is we’re making sure that behind the scenes, you’re getting as much as we possibly can, but the next step really from there is us making a decision as a team, can we really help these people can we really improve their situation because as a fiduciary, we’re very busy office, so we don’t need to just move money to move money. We don’t need to make people clients just to make people clients. We make people clients, we onboard clients, because we truly can have an impact in their future, we truly can help them and they want our help. So in that case, what we do is we take the next step, if we feel that we can help, and those individuals want our help, then the next step is really to do an analysis of everything that they’ve got, right. And this includes Morningstar reports, quanti, reports, riskalyze, software, social security software that builds out everything that looks at all of the positive and negatives of the current situation, right identifies all the red flags, looks at the exposure of risk versus reward determines what Providence probability of success or failure that their current plan has. And that allows us to truly lay both plans side by side and say, here’s your current plan. This is what would happen. Here’s the proposed plan. This is what happened. It’s very easy. Once you look at the data on both plans to make a decision of well, it only makes sense to go with this plan versus this plan because obviously, the data shows that it’s way better than over here and that’s how we’re planning for. So that step that analysis proach. What we do is we bring them back in for a second meeting, and we present that analysis to them and we go through all of the Those five key areas, right the income, the investments, the taxes, the health care, the legacy planning part. And we try to get as much as we can, that analysis will now give the individual the information they need to either keep doing what they’re doing, or to make a change, okay? From there, if they decide to make a change, sometimes, depending on the length of the meeting, we may need to get back together for a third meeting. But sometimes, you know, we can accomplish a lot in just those two meetings. And then we just onboard right and we onboard right at the end of the second meeting, if it makes sense to do that. And there’s a whole onboarding process that my team brings them through. And then we have a very specific communications calendar. Once you become a client, we’re very hands on throughout the course of the year, with our clients, making sure that we keep them informed on a weekly basis on a monthly basis. You know, we’re multiple reviews throughout the year, multiple client events throughout the year. So we’re very, very engaged in this is why we have a 98% client retention rate, because a lot of that servicing that we’re doing throughout the year matters. And you know, that’s key in anything and you know, this, right, I mean, service matters, how are you being served, so many of people I talked to will say, you know, we just, we don’t we don’t see these folks anymore, but folks, this is why we do the right track Retirement System. Again, for those of you that call in for the next 10 callers, we’re going to give away the right track Retirement System, no cost, no obligation, we’re going to bring you through those five key areas that I keep talking about, you got to call 188838 to 1298. Again, that’s 18883821 to nine, eight, but folks, you’d need to do your part. You’ve got to pick up the phone, you can’t procrastinate. Don’t kick the can down the road on this one. This is not something to procrastinate on. You can procrastinate on purchasing a car, buying new carpet, but don’t procrastinate on planning your retirement spend the time to plan out your retirement so you have the confidence and peace of mind moving into retirement and through retirement. So that’s the right track Retirement System 18883821298.

Cynthia De Fazio – 21:57

Brian, thank you so much to the viewers at home, the phone lines are once again now open that number to call is 888-382-1298. We know you have questions about how to plan your perfect retirement. Brian has the answers for you. We have to take a very short commercial break, but we’ll be right back momentarily with so much more. So please stay tuned.

Commercial Break – 10:15:00 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 exposure 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

23:37
today.

Cynthia De Fazio – 23:42

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. Brian a great show we’re having and I love this part of the show. We have time for viewer questions. And your viewers have been so patient waiting for you to answer some of these. So I’m just gonna jump right in. So we have a caller actually George from Pittsburgh, Brian, what should I do with RMD funds after paying taxes if there is currently no need for the funds, and I want them to grow with limited risk? Any advice you could give me is greatly appreciated.

Brian Quaranta – 24:15

rmds, What a great one right. For those of you that don’t know no quits required minimum distribution is what George is talking about. And great question. You know, so first off, let’s understand that at age 72. Now, it used to be 70 half. But now at 72. you’re required to take a minimum distribution. So let’s say you’ve got $500,000 sitting in retirement account. There’s a divisor number we have to use. I believe it’s roughly 27.4. So we take 500,000. We divide it by 27.4. And we come up with roughly about $18,000. So if that was George’s situation, he’d have to take it about $18,000 and you have to pay taxes on it. And what he’s asking is, what do I do with that money afterwards? Where can I put it where can I put it with limited risk? Well, there’s a lot of different choices out there today for limited risk. If you could go a very conservative portfolio in the market, you could do something as easy and simple as a fixed annuity or indexed annuity where you could just get a guaranteed rate of return, or an indexed annuity that you know, when the market goes up, you make money. But when the market goes down, you don’t lose any money, you just get a participation in the return, you don’t get 100% of the return, but you get a participation. But the most important thing about those rmds there is that when it comes to rmds. Now, if George didn’t want to pay any taxes on those rmds, he could actually give them to charity, and not pay any taxes. And a lot of people do they give the charity. So rather than just take money out of your bank account and give it to charity, the IRS says, Hey, if you want to give your RMD or half your RMD to charity, you don’t need to pay taxes on a portion that you do. So there’s a lot of neat things, doors that you can do with the rmds. And there’s a lot of great options out there for minimal risk options for investing that money after tax for the rmds.

Cynthia De Fazio – 26:00

Excellent. This is a great question, Brian as well. This is from Phyllis and she’s calling from Mount Lebanon. She would like to know, Brian, what is your opinion on paying down debt as I enter the retirement years?

Brian Quaranta – 26:12

Yeah, I love this question, fellas. Right? Because debt is one of the easiest ways to pick up cash flow. So here’s the dilemma. Some people are in, hey, I still have a mortgage. Do I continue to do I maximize the contributions to my 401k? Do I continue to put money in my 401k? Or do I use money to pay off debt? In my professional opinion, you get better leverage if you actually stop contributing to your 401k and redirect all of that money to paying off the debt. And here’s why. Let’s say that the debt that you’re going to pay off is as high as a monthly cost of 20 $500 a month or $1500 a month. We know once that debt is paid off, you absolutely are guaranteed the pickup 1500 to $2500 a month in cash flow, whatever the debts monthly cost is, once it’s paid off, you will absolutely guaranteed pick that up a cash flow. However, if you put that money into continue to put that money into your 401k and the market doesn’t cooperate, how are you going to recreate that $1500 a cash flow that you could very easily gotten by just paying off the debt so I believe in pain and maximizing that debt payoff more than anything else?

Cynthia De Fazio – 27:29

Okay. Yeah. Brian only 30 seconds left in the show you 30 seconds one more time.

Brian Quaranta – 27:34

The right track Retirement System folks, I’m telling you to please don’t miss out on this. We’ve worked so hard to provide so much value and so much opportunity for you with the right track Retirement System. It’s 1-888-382-1298 for the next 10 callers no obligation right track Retirement System. Do your part. Call now.

Cynthia De Fazio – 27:52

Brian, thank you. Have a great day. Thank you so much for watching. Be safe, be happy, be blessed. keep those questions coming. We’ll see you next week.