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Video Transcript
Cynthia De Fazio – 00:22
And welcome to retirement You TV My name is Cynthia de Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian Quaranta otherwise known as Brian Q. President and Founder of secure money advisors. Brian, how are you?
Brian Quaranta – 00:34
I’m doing good. Yes. We gotta go. We gotta go with the Q. Yeah, well, and I love it.
Cynthia De Fazio – 00:40
I mean, your financial IQ retirement IQ. Yeah. Retirement questions which ties into the Q.
Brian Quaranta – 00:46
It does tie into the Q. I know. Well, I’ve said on the radio show we do increasing your financial IQ. Brian. Q. Yes. You know, because saying Brian Quaranta Yeah, it’s tough. It’s been butchered all my life. I’ve got clients that you know, been with me for 20 plus years that still can’t say my last name.
Cynthia De Fazio – 01:02
So I always tease you about this. But what happens when you order a pizza?
Brian Quaranta – 01:14
Yeah, well, you know, the pizza places, the pizza places get it. It’s the Mexican restaurant that doesn’t get it. But the Italian, the Italian restaurants will usually get it right. And they’ll usually do even they’ll even roll the R and make it even sound even more Italian. Right? Yeah. I love that. Yeah.
Cynthia De Fazio – 01:26
That’s cool. That sounds great when you say it, I love it. Well, Brian, I want to talk a little bit more today, if you will about planning for retirement, because I know a lot of people that are viewing in perhaps don’t have a true written comprehensive retirement plan. How important is that for someone that’s approaching their retirement years?
Brian Quaranta – 01:45
Well, it’s very important. I mean, it’s like anything we do in life, you know, whether you’re building a home, or you’re trying to lose weight. I mean, you have to have a plan. You know, and if you’re building a house, you have blueprints, if you’re trying to exercise and lose weight, it’s people that are most successful with it will usually keep some type of food diary. Sure. And retirement planning is no different. But unfortunately, I think people are a little bit confused on what a real plan looks like, because statements are not a plan. And, you know, the reality is, is that most people have a pile of stuff. That usually includes lots of statements from IRA accounts, 401K’s maybe even old, dire, old 401K’s that they still have with past employers that they haven’t even moved yet. And and they say, Well, I have a retirement plan. No, that’s not a retirement plan. Yeah, retirement plan takes into takes into account five key components. And that’s income, right? Because we’re all going to need cash flow and retirement, 85% of the people retiring today are not retiring with pensions, and they’re going to need to generate some type of cash flow from their retirement accounts. Okay. And then we have investments and investments, right? If we’re going to be generating cash flow, we better make sure that those investments are set up to generate cash flow. Or maybe if you even if you don’t need to generate cash flow, it’s important that your investments are maximizing your returns right and, and eliminating or minimizing your losses, a lot of times, what we’ll do is when we do an analysis on somebody’s portfolio, what we’ll find is that they’re actually not getting the return from their investments that they should be Meaning, if they’re taking if you’re taking a certain amount of risk, if I’m taking this much risk, then I should get this much return. Okay. But if I’m taking this much risk, and I’m only getting this amount of return, then that’s not an efficient portfolio. Okay, so so investments is a component of it. And then we have taxes. So for most people in retirement, if they’re going to be generating income from the retirement accounts, we want to make sure that we do it in the most tax efficient way. And we’re in the lowest tax bracket that we can possibly be in health care, making sure that you have adequate health insurance. So if you want to retire before the age of 65, before you can go on Medicare, you’re going to have to probably go to the marketplace or work with a health insurance broker to find the best insurance for you to be able to retire. Okay. But once you hit Medicare age, you’re gonna have to have a supplement. And then, of course, what happens if you get sick? Sure, you know, you have a stroke, and you have to go to a nursing home, how are you going to pay for that cost of care, and that’s the long term care planning part of it. And then we have legacy. And that is when you know, the legacy component of it is when the good Lord decides to take you home. What’s going to happen at money. Sure, you know, the end of December, or December of 2019, the secure Act was signed into law, which basically was the biggest money grab by the IRS we’ve seen in a long time, probably the biggest change in financial planning we’ve seen in 25 years and What a lot of people don’t realize is that in the past, you were actually able to roll your IRAs over to your loved ones other than your spouse, you could give your IRA to your son to your daughter to your grandson, your granddaughter, and then not pay any taxes on that money, when they receive that now, they would have to start taking withdrawals out which they’d have to pay taxes on, they could take these withdrawals out for the rest of their life, okay. And it was a way to stretch the IRA out over a very long period of time. Now the IRS has come in and say you can’t do that. And it’s a big tax bomb that goes off at your death. So, so making sure that strategies are in place to leave the money to your loved ones, and not make the IRS the largest beneficiary. So most people don’t have those five components handled, right, they might have the pile of statements. But that’s just one small piece of the puzzle. And the statements all have to connect the dots to all five of these things, right? They’ve got to connect the dots with the the income, the investments, the taxes, the health care, and the legacy planning part of it. And that’s something we can show them to do at secure money advisors.
Cynthia De Fazio – 06:06
Brian, is there one component that people just forget about planning? Because I would think that a lot of people don’t think about taxes, but a lot of the misconception is taxes go down when you retire. But that’s not always true. So are people sometimes forgetting that one piece specifically? Or what do you
Brian Quaranta – 06:21
Yeah, usually, it’s multiple pieces. Okay. So you know, and we’ve got a very comprehensive intake that we do with people when they come to the office. Okay. And that’s by design, because with a comprehensive financial plan, you need a checklist to work from and, and so we work from a comprehensive financial planning checklist, and the importance behind that is this, you know, you want to make sure that every part of financial planning is being checked off, too many people are left in the dark of, you know, am I doing this? Right? Am I doing this, right? Because they’re not, they’re not working with somebody that’s keeping them organized. And, and, and, and laying out for them all the key components that need to be handled. So it’s multiple things that are being missed. Typically, they’re not in the most tax efficient places that they can be. And they’re not taken advantage of, of the tax law to minimize taxation, or a big missing component is, is the legacy planning part. Most people just don’t even have their basic legal documents. Wow. And we’re talking just basic will Yeah, yeah. And that’s, that’s not good. And, you know, and we’ve got to make sure that all of those things are handled, especially when it comes to legal documents, especially your powers of attorney Oh, you know, if you’re married to have the financial powers of attorney on each other, I mean, if you have, if you’re a husband and wife and your husband has a large IRA account, and and he has a stroke, those nursing over comes, becomes incapacitated, anyway, he gets in a car accident, you’re not going to be able to make any decisions on those IRA accounts, without having a financial power of attorney. So it’s multiple things that are missed. And that’s why at secure money advisors, we’ve built the One Stop Shop, I love all of these things can be handled in one place. And that’s by design. Because most people have to go to the accountant, they got to go to the attorney, they got to go to the to work with somebody to help them with their health insurance or medicare supplement, we can handle all of that at secure money advisors. And it makes it very easy to build a comprehensive plan when everything’s already available to you in one place.
Cynthia De Fazio – 08:28
Absolutely. And everyone loves easy, most definitely. So that’s important, right? Well, Brian, we’re about ready to open up the phone lines for the very first time this week. Can you tell the viewing audience what they can expect to receive by being one of your first 10 callers?
Brian Quaranta – 08:42
Yeah, as a matter of fact, folks, for the next 10 callers who call in right now we’re going to give you a complimentary Financial Review. Now we’ve seen people charge up to $1,000 for these reviews, you’re going to get it at no cost. And we’re going to go through those five components that we talked about, we’re going to talk about how to maximize income, how to maximize your investments and the returns that you’re getting on them how to maximize your taxes and or I should say minimize your taxes and getting the best tax bracket you can be and also make sure that if you’re retiring early, you’ve got the best health care at the best cost. And most importantly, is the legacy planning part of it when the good Lord decides to take you home, let’s make sure that your your money goes to your loved one. So again for the next 10 callers who call in right now. That’s a complimentary Financial Review for the next 10 callers who call 18883821298. Again, that’s 1-888-382-1298
Cynthia De Fazio – 09:35
Brian, thank you so much. The phone lines are already lining up 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. Brian q has the answers for you. So please stay tuned after this very short commercial break. We’ll be right back.
Commercial Break – 09:56
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. And welcome back to retirement You TV.
Cynthia De Fazio – 11:31
My name is Cynthia de Fazio. I’m joined today by Brian Q. He’s president and founder of secure money advisors, Brian, a great show that we’re having so far today, talking about the very important topic of planning for retirement and a lot of people that glean those statements out of the mail, they’re missing the full picture of what that is. That’s right. They sure are. So we went to the commercial break the phone lines were already lighting up. So I wanted you to maybe just tell the audience, what does it feel like to be a client of secure money advisor?
Brian Quaranta – 12:02
That’s a great question. That’s a great question. You know, just from the feedback that we’ve got, you know, what people will say is for the first time, they feel like they have a real written plan. They feel a sense of peace and calm, okay, right. And that, to me, that’s the greatest compliment, lots of tears sometimes in our conference rooms, because when somebody finally lays out the math for you, and really shows you how to properly take 40 plus years worth of work, and truly build a plan that now works for you. Yep. Right. You think about it? Why? Why are we building all of this anyway? Sure, you know, we’re putting money away with every paycheck that we get, we’re accumulating all these dollars, and then what? Well, the whole idea of building and saving this money was for that money to now work for you. Sure. And we’re showing people how to get that money to start to work for them and provide them with additional paychecks now, or play checks, right? So it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a peace of mind that they get in knowing that number one, their money is finally working for them. Number two, that we’ve helped design a plan that they understand, that’s the other part of it. And when they understand what the plan is, and they and they truly understand the owner, there’s just a peace of mind that you that you can’t get without having the understanding of how your plan works. So I think for most people, they would just tell you, they have the warm fuzzies with us. Okay. And you know, if that’s if that’s the way they want to describe it, and that’s the way it’s been described to me, yeah, Brian, I sleep well at night, knowing that our minds with you. Yeah, the warm fuzzies that’s the greatest compliment that we can get the greatest company again, but we take really good care of our clients, you know, we that, you know, not only the initial part of it, the planning process, and helping them actually put together the plan for the very first time. That’s a big impact on their life. And it’s a it’s emotional for a lot of people because, you know, they’re scared, they don’t really know if what they’ve done is going to work. And a lot of times, even if they’re working with another advisor, those advisors really have just bought them financial products. And so they really don’t understand the true power of what they’ve done until it’s actually put into a plan for them. Because remember, financial products is not a plan. Right? Right. And so what we do is we show you how to actually leverage the benefit of those products and mountain now make it work for you. So
Cynthia De Fazio – 14:32
okay, you Brian to the viewing audience at home that may be sitting on the couch this morning, maybe having a cup of coffee with their spouse, their loved one, and they’re considering approaching retirement, what kind of questions should they be asking and most importantly, when should they be asking you when they call?
Brian Quaranta – 14:48
Yeah, well, most importantly, really, they need to understand what are they going to be doing in retirement, what’s going to be their new purpose, okay? Because there’s a psychological component to retirement also and that is, you know, All these years of working, that becomes a lot of people’s identity. Sure. So what it’s their new identity? What’s their new purpose? Are they going to be volunteering? Are they going to be traveling? Are they going to become full time? babysitters? Right, right? Which a lot of that happens, which a lot of them do. But But really, what’s, what’s it gonna look like for them? Because that’s really the most part. And then more importantly, is, what do they actually need the money to do? Are you fortunate enough that between, you know, are you fortunate enough that maybe you’re going to get a pension? Because 85% of the people out there today are not getting pensions? So maybe you’re not going to have to touch a retirement dollars? So do you want to take risk with it? Do you not want to take risk with it? Do you want to start gifting money to your family members? Do you want to start giving the charity, these are all things that need to be thought through because when the plans put together, you have to keep that in mind when you’re building out the plan. Now, the nice thing is when they call the office, we’ve got a very thorough intake that we do right when they sit down with us. So they don’t really need to be worried about whether or not they’re going to have the right questions to ask because we’ve thought of all the questions you should be asking, okay, and we’re going to ask him to you when you come in, so that we have a real understanding of who you are and what we need that money to do for you. Because we’re going to tailor a customized plan based on your needs and your concerns.
Cynthia De Fazio – 16:24
Absolutely. And Brian, we’ve talked in the past about the POS, yeah, the pile of stuff, right, what from their pile of stuff would they need to bring in for their first appointment with you?
Brian Quaranta – 16:33
Yeah, we have a checklist that we’ll send them. So typically, it’s just going to be your tax returns, your most recent statements from your bank account, your retirement accounts, life insurance policies, any annuities that you might have long term care. From there, we’ll be able to take that information and organize it correctly, and figure out where they are right now, and where they need to go. And then we’ll be able to make recommendations on how to make improvements. Okay? Is it ever too late to start, never too late to start never never too late to start? I’ve we’ve helped people, you know, one thing people don’t realize is that you can do, you can build a pretty significant retirement plan in a very, very short period of time. I’ve had people come in at the age of 62, and 63, that had almost nothing saved. And by putting together a very disciplined 10 year plan, you’re able to get them, you know, a few $100,000 in retirement savings. By leveraging social security, what most people don’t realize is that, you know, you can start collecting social security and work and not be penalized once you reach your full retirement age. So if you’ve been lacking and haven’t been disciplined on saving, you can actually use social security as a tool to accelerate savings and actually build yourself a pretty significant pile of money over a very short period of time and give yourself a nice retirement maybe before the age of 75.
Cynthia De Fazio – 17:54
That’s incredible. These are all pieces that people need to keep in mind when they’re thinking about picking up the phone and making that call to actually be one of your clients. Because there’s so many different things that people aren’t thinking about when they’re planning for retirement just because they don’t have the knowledge in front of them.
Brian Quaranta – 18:08
Yeah, and there’s so many different moving parts to retirement planning. Yeah. And because we have a thorough understanding of all of those moving parts, once we understand where you are, and then where you need to go, it’s very easy for us knowing the rules. And the guidelines that govern all of these different types of accounts and the availability of product, it’s in the marketplace, will understand how to engineer that plan the right way for you,
Cynthia De Fazio – 18:31
Brian, you have such a passion when I talk to you about helping people plan for retirement, but I think we need to let the viewing audience watch the video about you so they can really understand where that passion comes from to the viewing audience at home. We’re going to play just a short video clip about Brian and why he has such a passion for helping you plan your perfect stress free retirement. We’re going to be right back after this video break. Stay tuned.
Brian Quaranta – 19:00
Retirement Plan is just all about getting to know somebody. I mean, retirement planning is really about just building trust with people. I have a responsibility that when I wake up in the morning to be the very best that I can be because people are relying on me to take care of a lifetime’s worth of work that they’ve worked 3040 years for. I don’t take that lightly. That’s what drives me. That’s what I’m passionate about. You know, our clients really are our family of clients. We know their grandkids, we know their kids. We see them often throughout the community. We see them at the coffee shop. We see them at lunch. We really enjoy it you know we take pride in the quality of the relationships that we build with our clients. Choosing the right advisors starts with choosing someone that shares the same beliefs about money that you have and secure money advisors our focus here is about building plans around principal protection. Low Risk investments are a great way to approach retirement. You know, when people have low risk investments, they’re not worried. They don’t have anxieties. They don’t have fears, they don’t have to worry about what’s going on in the stock market. There are other options available, other than risk options that people need to know about when it comes to retirement. And that’s what we do at secure money advisors. There’s a lot of responsibility and helping somebody plan for the retirement. And that’s why we take the time to listen, we take the time to understand their concerns, their worries, their needs, so that we can put together a customized plan. You know, we believe in what we do, everybody that works for secure money advisors is on a mission to be the very best that they can be and to serve our clients in the best way that they can possibly serve them. You know, we just are a simple company. And it’s the simplicity in what we do that makes everything so powerful. You know, you don’t need to make this thing complicated. Retirement should not be complicated. It should be simple, easy, predictable. And we pride ourselves on providing that to people.
Cynthia De Fazio – 21:21
And welcome back to retirement You TV. My name is Cynthia de Fazio, I’m joined by Brian Q president and founder of course of secure money advisors, Brian, I love that video so much, I never get tired of saying it, because it really encapsulates why you have such a passion for helping others.
Brian Quaranta – 21:39
Yeah, and if you listen to some of the things I talked about, in the video, we talked about the simplicity of what we do, and and how easy it is to understand our planning process. And that’s really been a mission of mine. Because when I started the business 20 years ago, I think the financial services, industry really has kind of done a disservice to the consumer, because a lot of times, people are being talked at with with industry lingo, and they’re talking above people’s heads and over people’s heads. And so people are intimidated by the process of planning. And so what we really I really set out to do was to really help educate people and take these complicated topics, and really boil them down to the basic fundamentals and make them very simple and easy to understand. Because there’s nothing better than feeling in control of your own finances. And in order to feel in control of your own finances, you have to have an understanding of it.
Cynthia De Fazio – 22:32
Sure. And I love the fact that you mentioned that you keep it so easy, and so streamlined, because we’ve talked in the past, and a lot of times when people have, you know, come in to speak with a financial advisor, if you will, they’re using terms that they don’t even understand. So they leave the office, they feel confused. They are like, what was that meeting even about? Yeah, but you take a totally different approach.
Brian Quaranta – 22:51
Yeah, well, you know, my wife does it to me, my wife’s in HR, right, okay. And she use all these, they use all these initials for everything. Yeah, I had an EMR team meeting today, I don’t know when an EMR team meeting, you know, is, you know, executive management team meeting, okay, now I get it. And you can’t talk to people, people that are outside your industry, you can’t talk that way to them, because it just you know, is talking over their head and financial advisors and brokers have a tendency to do that, to the average consumer out there. And so for them, they don’t feel in control when they’re sitting down with somebody and what they’ll do, a lot of times, they’ll go, Well, he seems like a nice guy. So maybe I should just trust them. And what happens is they wind up getting themselves in investments that are probably subpar at best, or they’re in investments that aren’t really in line with their goals or strategies. And so when we take the time to really educate them on what planning really needs to look like the five key areas that you need to focus on, again, income, investments, taxes, health care, and legacy planning, once they understand those five components and the best practices for each of those five things, it really does give them a sense of control and peace of mind.
Cynthia De Fazio – 24:00
And it takes away that fear. Because I believe it’s still the number one fear that people approaching retirement have that they’re going to run out of money during retirement.
Brian Quaranta – 24:08
Well, AARP did a study of 1000 people. And they asked each of these individuals, what do you fear most running out of money or death? over 90% of those people said that they fear running out of money than they fear death alone. So that just tells you how scary running out of money is. And I’ll tell you the worst day of retirement is not the day you run out of money. The worst day of retirement is the day you figure out you’re going to run out of money, right? And there’s nothing you’re going to do to stop it. Because, you know, and unfortunately, I’ll meet some of these folks, you know, they’ve, they’ve been in bad investments, and they’ve been pulling too much money out and the investments haven’t performed. And they’re maybe five, six years away from running out of money. And unfortunately, they’re five to six years old years older now, when they really don’t have the health to be going back to work to make money. So you don’t want to build a plan that has any probability of failure, you have to have 100% success with your plan.
Cynthia De Fazio – 25:04
Because you don’t get a second chance from
Brian Quaranta – 25:07
You don’t. I’ve said it right, you don’t get a second chance. It’s not a dress rehearsal, right? You don’t get a second chance at this, you get one shot at it, and you’ve got to get it right. And again, you know, when you really understand the basic fundamentals, and the best practices to those five key areas that I’m always talking about, you’ll truly have no problem understanding how to properly build out a plan. So getting a second opinion is so important. And remember, you can’t get a second opinion from the person that gave you the first opinion, right. And the importance behind getting a second opinion, is the fact that now you have something to compare it to sure if you could be doing better, right? If you could be making more money with your investments, if you could be paying less in taxes, if you could be generating more guaranteed income? When would you want to know that you could be doing that? Yeah, you know, now would be a good time. Yeah. So the only way you’re going to be able to do that is to get a second opinion, and to be able to compare where you are right now. And where you could potentially go. Most people are very surprised of how much of a difference we can make in what they’re doing. And as a licensed fiduciary, we’ve been able to shop the markets and find the best private wealth managers, we’ve been able to find the best insurance contracts, whatever it is the clients need, and truly deliver the best of the best to them when we’re planning for them.
Cynthia De Fazio – 26:26
So it’s a one stop shop, very holistic planning, you’re just leaving really nothing to chance everything is going to be provided for true peace of mind. Absolutely.
Brian Quaranta – 26:34
And that’s why we’ve always will follow a comprehensive planning model, because we want every I dotted and every t crossed. So folks, for the next 10 callers, who call in right now, we’ve been offering this for the whole show. And you know, I know the process of coming in and seeing it advisor could potentially be very intimidating. But I want you to know, when you come into secure money advisors, we have a very, very welcoming team. We’re not there to judge anything that you’ve done or where you are, we’re there to truly understand how can we help improve your current situation, and we’re going to bring you through that process. And I’m going to bring you through those five key areas and helping you understand better about income planning, how to get your investments more efficient, making more money and help minimize any losses, and help you with choosing the best health care, the best legacy planning and so on and so forth. So when you come in, we’ll sit down we’ll go over through everything again for the next 10 callers. That’s a comprehensive financial plan. If you call 18883821298. Again, that’s 1-888-382-1298
Cynthia De Fazio – 27:43
Brian, thank you so much. The the phone lines are lighting up as I’m looking at you and speaking I can see them in the background to the viewing audience at home. Thank you again for watching this week. We love spending time with you. We will see you next week. Be happy, be blessed. Be safe. And thank you again for watching.