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Video Transcript
Rebecca Powers 00:24
Welcome to On the Money with Secure Money. I’m Rebecca Powers. So happy to be here with Brian Quaranta of secure money advisors. Good to see you.
Brian Quaranta 00:33
Rebecca, good to see you as always,
Rebecca Powers 00:37
We get so many calls, so many emails asking questions, people that need to come to see you. One lady from Sewickley said, Is it true in your book, how you say that? It’s very simple. There are simple five steps. Let’s talk about those chapters in the book a little bit.
Brian Quaranta 00:56
Sure. So well, first off, I wrote the book kind of in response to what’s been going on in the marketplace. This isn’t a book I wrote 10 years ago, you know, so it’s, it’s a current book, that really helps simplify the planning process. Because what I’ve learned, and working with so many people over the years, you know, 20 plus years now of, you know, sitting in conference rooms and listening to people and what their concerns are, a lot of the things that I would hear on a week-to-week basis, were relatively the same. So, for example, the primary concerns that people most likely will have, when they come in as they’re not sure when the collector sold security, they’re not even sure when or how they’re going to retire, they will tell me that they can’t afford another market loss, because they just don’t have the time to recover. They’re not getting pensions, and they are going to need to take money from their investments, and they’re not sure how to do it. So, I laid out a very simple planning guide to help people reduce risk and maximize the income they get in retirement. Because when you really think about it, you know, the one thing that we’re all trying to do with the money that we save every single month, every single year, is we’re trying to get to a point to where we accumulate a sum of money. Okay, well, that’s great. What happens when you’re when you’ve accumulated that sum of money? And now what is it supposed to do for you? And I don’t think we ask ourselves good enough questions. And we just kind of keep doing things with the money that probably are not in line with what you actually need the money to do, like keep rolling the dice in the stock market. So, for example, you go, Okay, I got this pile of money. Now, what is the money need to do for me? Well, if I’m no longer going to go to work, and I no longer am going to get a paycheck. And I no longer have to trade my time for money. I still need money to live on a monthly basis and say the bill and pay the bills and have the money to go on vacations and spend time with the grandkids and whatever your bucket list things are, we all have them. How are you going to accomplish that. And when you look at the tools and the technology that we’ve been taught to use, in this case, stocks and mutual funds and bonds, as long as everything is going up, you really have nothing to worry about. But we know that the markets do not go straight up. And we don’t control what the markets do the markets do what they’re going to do. But there are things that impact the market, like the Federal Reserve, raising interest rates, right, that causes typically stocks to not perform well. But it also causes bonds to not perform well. So, in the book, I lay out the five key areas that you absolutely must cover with your retirement planning strategy. Number one, and most importantly, is going to be income. Number two is a tax strategy. And we’ve got to plan for tax strategies, tax strategies just don’t happen in April when you meet with your tax accountant.
Rebecca Powers 03:55
Right? That’s looking at the year past, we want to look at the rest of your life.
Brian Quaranta 03:59
That’s right, the rest of your life, right, and you’re gonna hit different milestones. Number three, is making sure that at this point in your life, meaning if you’re 55, and older, the investments that you were using to grow your money are not the same as investment strategies that you’re going to use when you need to start using your money on a monthly basis. And then, of course, you know, we all have to deal with the fact that we’re going to get older, right? And, you know, the statistics are pretty alarming. When you think that one in three people will get Alzheimer’s, one and two will probably need some type of skilled care. So, what are we going to do when we have a health event? How are we going to handle that? How are we going to pay for that? Because Medicare is a very interesting animal in the way that it pays for certain things, you know.
Rebecca Powers 04:43
That is very shocking for people when you think, Oh, I’ve got Medicare, I got to that age, it depends on your income. Right, right. Correct. It depends. You could A or B or C and it covers this and not that it’s extremely complicated. I don’t think we’re expected to understand it.
Brian Quaranta 04:57
No, we’re not no we’re not in the thing is we could have somebody walk into the studio right now and fall over have a heart attack. And we can have them for life flighted out of here, go to the hospital, go into that individual could go in for surgery, have a stent put in, stay in the hospital for, you know, a few weeks, and Medicare will cover it all. We have this same person walk in and fall over a stroke. And Medicare’s only going to pay for 90 days of coverage. So now they’re on their own. Does that make sense doesn’t make sense. So, we better have a plan for making sure that we have a way to handle a health event. And of course, the last one is just making sure that we have a good estate plan. And I go through all of this in the book in detail. But I’ve laid it out in a very simple to easy-to-understand format. And it’s called right track your retirement because the number one question I always got well, am
Rebecca Powers 05:47
I on the right? Track? Yeah. And how do you even begin to know if you can retire? If you have no idea how much you need? Yeah. So, there’s number one, right? Where do you get that income from? Let’s talk about those different buckets.
Brian Quaranta 06:00
Yeah. So that’s a great question. Because one of the things that I see that’s missing most in people’s retirement plan-
Rebecca Powers 06:09
Or lack thereof, a plan.
Brian Quaranta 06:10
-is actually the plan. I always say, you know, people come in with their POs that stands for pile of stuff or something, yeah, or something else. But there’s no plan. So, a lot of times you’ll meet people, and they might have a 401k with, you know, this old employer, and they’ve got some money at the bank, and they’ve got, you know, a pension that there might be getting, and it’s, you know, splintered and splattered everywhere. Yeah. Well, how do we actually bring that all together, and actually make a cohesive plan that starts to work for you. So, the number one step is figuring out where are your income sources going to be coming from? Now I always say you got to run your retirement, like you’d run a business, right? Absolutely money in and money out. So, you better know where that money’s coming in from. And when it’s going out.
Rebecca Powers 06:57
And then the emergency fund in case something else happens. Worst case scenario, I like how you kind of play out all the what ifs you have to on paper.
Brian Quaranta 07:05
You have to. I always say let’s make the bad things happen on paper. Because if we make the bad things happen on paper, now we can have a plan. And now we’re being proactive and not reactive, right? And let me tell you, if you’re a married couple out there today, the last thing that you want to be doing is making difficult financial decisions when your spouse is no longer around. And this is why one of the things that we do in our conference room in a planning session is if you’re married, we kill your husband for you. Bring them back to life. Don’t worry about it. Now, some of them some women like that. But it depends, right? So, we can kill your husband for you. But we got it. We’re doing that because we want to see what the drop in income is right? And then of course, what happens if your wife dies? First, what’s the drop of income? Now according to AARP, the average loss of income for a married couple in the United States today is 40%. So that means when your spouse dies, you’re taking a 40% drop in income. So, what are you going to do? How are you going to handle that? So that is a scenario that we have to go through? Right, and we have to see what that drop in income would be. But for a lot of people, Rebecca, the biggest thing we’ve got to cover while they’re both living, so that they can live the retirement that they want to live and do the things that they want to do is most people are going to need money above and beyond what they’re getting in Social Security because nobody’s getting pensions anymore. Right.
Rebecca Powers 08:27
And Social Security might not be funded. So, we need to kind of worry about that, I think till 2035 us on Wall Street Journal that it may go down to 77%. Yeah. So, what you’re going to get
Brian Quaranta 08:38
right, so what she’s talking about folks is actually, you know, it’s a I believe it’s 2035, somewhere around there, you can see on your Social Security statement. But it says that Social Security is going to start paying out more in benefits, and they’re actually taking in in taxes. So, what’s going to be the solution there? Some people have talked about, you know, reducing social security benefits. Now, I think that would be absolute political suicide for anybody to vote that in, right. But what happens if that did happen? How are we going to handle that? Because you’re going to need to make up that income from somewhere, right? So, people need to have a plan. And this is why I created the right track Retirement System. Right. So, folks, what I want you to do today is take advantage of our right track retirement review. It really is designed to help give you clarity and peace of mind going into retirement or if you’re already in retirement to get yourself that peace of mind. If you have anxieties and worries about the ups and downs of the market and what’s going on in the economy and what’s going on around the world. I promise you there is a better way to approach this to give yourself better peace of mind. So, call us today and schedule your right track retirement review. You got to call 1-888-382-1298 My team’s gonna be standing by to take your call and get you scheduled and when you call in the schedule. I’m gonna give you a copy of my book complimentary right track your retirement it where I go through in detail, I want you to have it before you come in, go through it, read it, mark it up, highlight it. And you’re going to learn a lot just in that book alone. And it’s going to, it’s really going to prepare you for your appointment when you come in. So, call us today. And Scott, you’re right track retirement review 1-888-382-1298.
Rebecca Powers 10:19
And Brian did a great job of keeping it very short, very simple, I promise I don’t even like to read. And it was very easy, about an hour and a half read. And he will even pay for the postage and handling says he really wants to share this information. There’s a number on your screen, don’t forget your QR code, have your calendar ready, let’s get you an appointment to meet Brian and his amazing team at secure money advisors. We’ll be right back.
Brian Quaranta 10:39
So, everybody can tell you how to invest your money. There’s not a lot of people out there and a lot of firms that can teach you how to use your money. Most people also tell you that they’re scared. And the reason they’re scared is because they’re afraid of running out of money.
Neil Major 10:53
The last thing you want to do is have a really good job and you’re in your 60s retire and be looking for work again in your late 70s.
Brian Quaranta 11:02
The average person might say, well, a good portfolio would be a good mix of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. A good portfolio is all designed around the five key areas, income, taxes, investments, health care and legacy planning.
Neil Major 11:16
Because we’re not just product pickers here, what we do best here as we build retirement plans.
Brian Quaranta 11:22
9 out of 10 people, when they walk through the door would ask us, we just want to know if we’re on the right track. And I always say if you’re not on the right track, when would be a good time to know it. Probably now.
Neil Major 11:32
People, you know, can actually see a vision once we start to really build out their plan.
Brian Quaranta 11:37
This is about you, if you’re not getting what you need. And you feel that when you walk out of the advisor’s office, it’s time to get a second opinion. And you can’t get a second opinion from the person that gave you the first of the difference at secure money advisors. As a fiduciary firm. We help you manage the risk, build the income and give you the retirement dream.
Rebecca Powers 12:06
Welcome back to On the money with secure money. The name of the show is because we want to keep your money secure. And of course, Brian, you named your company secure money advisors. Yeah. Why do you feel like secure is the money especially is the word I should say, especially with what’s going on in the news. I think you were kind of prophetic using that word. That’s what we all need. Right?
Brian Quaranta 12:27
Yeah. Well, I just believe in safety first. You know, I look at you know, you go back 20 plus years ago when I got into the financial industry, right around 1999 Yeah, you know, I saw people lose a lot of money when the tech bubble had bursted. I was working for a big box firm at the time. And I just didn’t like seeing the way that things were handled. You know, I mean, when people would lose money, the culture there, and the culture still in the industry is to tell people don’t worry about it, hang in there, you’re in it for the long haul, you’re going to be fine. And you know, that’s not a plan. That’s not a solution. Because nobody knows if hanging in there for the long haul is gonna work.
Rebecca Powers 13:07
Especially if you’re 75.
Brian Quaranta 13:08
Especially if you’re 75.
Rebecca Powers 13:09
You don’t have that long haul.
Brian Quaranta 13:10
Yeah, I mean, it’s that’s, you know, if you’re saying that to a 30-year-old or a 40-year-old, or maybe even a 50-year-old, you might, you know, that might have some validity to it. But you know, when you’re telling people that are, you know, 6570 Don’t worry about it, hang in there. You’re in it for the long haul. These are folks that are at the they’re in retirement, they’re needing their money right now. So, there is no long haul, right? They need money right now. And I always asked, I said, you know, does anybody ever wonder when the long haul ever ends? By the way, right? I mean, if you’re getting that answer from your advisor, don’t worry about it hang in there, you’re in for the long haul. I would like to know, when does the long haul ever end? It just it doesn’t. So, you know, at the end of the day, it’s just really, really important that you have a really well thought out plan. And my, my philosophy at my firm has always been safety first protect some money. Because once you protect a portion of the money that you’ve accumulated right? Now, you really give yourself peace of mind, because market volatility really doesn’t become that big of an issue. Because the money that you are keeping in the market, right is really long-term money because you’ve protected maybe the first 10 or 20 years of your retirement by creating what I call a buffer account or a safe account. Yeah.
Rebecca Powers 14:24
And so, you have a story actually, I know we shared it a few weeks ago, but you used to work for a big box retailer, you know, those big names and spent a whole bunch of money, you know, sponsoring us open and all these events. And they told you Yeah, tell him it. Tell them that story about just tell him to hang in there.
Brian Quaranta 14:43
Yeah, yeah. So, I took a call. I was, you know, just getting into the financial industry of the point. And again, it was at the end of 99. The markets were dropping. You know, I just passed my financial exam, you know, and just because you pass a financial exam does not mean you’re ready to be a financial adviser to you and your 20s My early 20s, maybe 23-24, somewhere around there. And so, I, they’ve got me on the floor answering phone calls, right? And they’re just servicing calls coming in. But I think a call from a guy that’s pretty upset. He says, I’m calling today because I want to sell all my investments. I went out of the market today. And I said, Okay, now, again, I’m new at this point. So, I don’t have the authority to go in and execute a trade and sell. So, I said, Okay, no problem. I said, Hold on. So, I go find the financial advisor that you know, this individual is working with. And I went to the advisor, and I said, Look, you’ve got a client on the phone, he’s pretty upset, he wants to sell, he wants to liquidate and put everything into cash. And the adviser looks at me, rather than getting on the phone with his own client, he looks at me and says, Hey, Brian, you need to get back on the phone with him, and let them know that everything’s gonna be fine. Just tell him to hang in there and remind him that he’s in it for the long haul. So embarrassingly, you know, I admit that I went back as a good employee. And I told the individual what the advisor told me to say, and what he said to me next, what that individual said to me next is why I created secure money advisors, he said, Brian, I’m 75 years old, how much damn long haul do you think I got left? And that changed my life. Because he was 100% right. He couldn’t afford to take that risk. And what I learned was this, it’s really easy to tell somebody else to take risk with their money. Exactly, especially when you were getting paid a commission to do it. Right. Exactly. And this is why when I started secure money advisors, we wanted to go the fiduciary route, where we’re not commission based, we’re fee based, right? The fiduciary standard is the highest standard that you’re held to in the industry. And that’s interest of the client best interests of the client. So, you know, but secure money advisors was built around my frustrations of the financial industry, because I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. My mom and dad worked really hard for their money. Yeah. And I wouldn’t want somebody just rolling the dice with their money. That’s right. And that’s what I kept seeing at the firms, you know, is that they felt that it was okay to just roll the dice.
Rebecca Powers 17:02
It was a great lesson very early on, because some people will be with the big box retailer, and kind of miserable and feel that same. Like, I’m just shoving those same products, only the products that we offer down their throats. Independents, like yourself, a fiduciary, you can look at any product in the world when we talk about products. Let’s give examples. What does that mean?
Brian Quaranta 17:20
Yeah, products mean, I mean, you know, products come in all shapes and sizes. I mean, you’ve got, you know, individual mutual funds, you got individual stocks, you got individual bonds, I
Rebecca Powers 17:29
I’m in, a great annuity, right, yeah. And I sleep at night, no risk.
Brian Quaranta 17:33
You got annuities, you know, you have ETFs I mean, I can go on and on and on of all the different financial products out there. And the thing is, every financial product serves a purpose. The question is, what are your concerns? What are your challenges? What are the problems you’re dealing with? And what is it that you need your money to do? That’s to give it a job, I love that you draw a line at that what’s right, and that’s why in my book, right track your retirement, I write about my bucketing approach, which identifies the purpose of the money in each of these buckets. So now, think about rather than having all of your money in this one investment area, right? You’re actually taking a piece of that money, and you’re identifying the purpose of it, and you’re applying it to go to work in certain areas. And when people read that in though, in my book, and they start to understand it, they go, Wow, this is really simple and easy to understand. But yes, there’s all kinds of different products. I mean, you know, I know you own an annuity, I own an annuity. And the reason I do is because there’s money that I just don’t want to risk, right, right. And an annuity is a great place for me to put money over time, that, that I can not only protect it, but when I go to retire, it creates my own private pension. So, when I go to retire all that money in the annuity that I have for my wife, Al there, it’s still there, it’s never going to go down in value because of market volatility. And it’s going to pay me a guaranteed income for the rest of my life. And if I die, it’s going to continue to pay an income to my wife’s life. So why in the world, this is why when the secure Act was brought to the wall a few years ago, a few years ago, one of the parts of the secure act was to start allowing annuities to be part of 401 K plans, because we need a place for people to be able to put money where it can be protected, but more importantly, mutual funds, and individual mutual funds or mutual funds and bonds that are typically found in 401K’s those are not products, those are not financial products that provide income, they’re just not so folks, this is why I wrote the right track retirement book. This is why I created the right track retirement system. Because I want you to have this information. And I want you to come in and take advantage of a complimentary no obligation right track retirement review where my team and I will sit down and go through your situation in detail. We’re gonna go through the five key areas with you, income taxes and estimates, your health care strategy and your estate planning strategy, you will get a lot of clarity and a lot of benefit from this meeting. But you got to do your part, you’ve got to pick up the phone, you’ve got to call us, this is not the time to keep your head in the sand, kick the can down the road. Call us today and schedule 1-888-382-1298. Again, it’s 1-888-382-1298. And
Rebecca Powers 20:23
we promise this is no heavy sales pitch, leave your checkbook at home. It’s really just to get to know you as your goals and dreams, no obligation, no cost at all. Don’t you want a second opinion, you may be on the right track. But it’s good to find out. Stay with us more with Brian Kurata right after this.
Brian Quaranta 20:40
If I could help you increase your income, if I could help you pay less taxes, if I could help you potentially maximize the returns of your investments while reducing risk reducing fees if I could help you prepare for a health event or more importantly, when the good Lord decides to take you home to make sure that the money you’ve accumulated over your lifetime goes to your family and to your charities rather than the IRS. Would that be worth the time to come in and get a second opinion?
Rebecca Powers 21:10
All right, welcome back to on the money with secure money. The name of the show is secure money because you had an experience in your early 20s. When you first began, that you knew that people were risking just rolling the dice with their money. How do you get it if someone’s at home right now saying how do I get my money out of the stock market? Because when you watch the news, it is sickening. Yeah. So how do you move that money out of the stock market and make it work for you?
Brian Quaranta 21:33
Yeah, that’s a great question. So first off, I mean, it depends on where people are at. I mean, if you’ve got somebody that is still employed with their employer, and all of their money is sitting in their, you know, company, 401K plan, they might not have the option of moving that money out and going to someplace safer, because they’re stuck in that 401K plan unless, unless they are of a qualifying age. So, for example, you know, I was working with a couple last week. And, you know, they had, they had called our office a couple of years ago. But they were at a point to where they really couldn’t do anything because they were not of a qualifying age. But they finally reached the age of 59 and a half. And at 59 and a half, the IRS allows you to do something called an in service rollover from your 401K plan to an individual retirement account, no taxes, no penalties when you do that, and it doesn’t close your company 401k, you still get your matching, you can still put money in but you can get those chips off the table and get them into a place to where your retirement can be protected, Right?
Rebecca Powers 22:40
But when you leave your job, you can. You’re allowed. yes.
Brian Quaranta 22:42
No matter what age, but if you’re still working, right, 59 and a half is a big day. Yeah. Because that’s when you can do this in service withdrawal.
Rebecca Powers 22:51
That’s such a random number, where did they come up with this? Yeah, right. It’s 59 and three quarters. Yeah.
Brian Quaranta 22:54
Why is it that I have to start taking money out of my retirement account at 72. So, you know, it’s government math is basically what it comes down to.
Rebecca Powers 23:03
It’s fuzzy math. So, if you leave this job or go to another job, does your 401k follow you or it closes.
Brian Quaranta 23:09
So, if you leave your job, and you go to another job, your 401 K is gonna stay where it’s at, at your old employer
Rebecca Powers 23:16
But you are able to convert it,
Brian Quaranta 23:17
But you are able to roll over, even if you’re not 59 and a half, correct? Yeah. I mean, you could be 45. You could, you could move it right. So, it again, so the question was, how do people get their money out of the market? Well, it depends on where it’s at. If it’s just with another advisory firm, that’s easy. I mean, yeah, very, you do that move from point A to point B and change who you’re working with, right. But at the end of the day, before you do those things, you really should have an analysis done to figure out, you know, if you are going to make changes, which by the way, during down markets is one of the best times to look at making changes, because the economic environment has changed, right? Look, think about just where interest rates are. Okay, I mean, interest rates continue to climb and climb and climb and climb. That is not a good thing for the bond market. This is why we have the worst bond market and over 40 years. But yet, if you look at the basic fundamental principles that a lot of the big box firms follow, for a lot of our clients, when their clients get older, they typically move more of their money to bonds. And in fact, what they’re doing right now is creating a bigger problem for their older clients by moving them to something that would traditionally be looked at as relatively safe. Because if interest rates go up, bond prices go down. So, if the if the box firms are moving them to bonds, guess what’s happening there, cavities are going down. So, there’s no safety there.
Rebecca Powers 24:37
So, historically, bonds would be up stocks would be down and vice versa. And that’s kind of the beautiful balance. Yes, but that’s over. That game has is done. Yes. It’s a perfect
Brian Quaranta 24:48
storm right now. It’s a perfect storm. So, this is both stocks and bonds are typically what we consider non correlated assets, right? That means when one’s going up, one’s going down. This one’s going up. This one’s going down, right? Yeah, they’re both correlated right now. Yeah, maybe they’re both going down. So, you have to look for alternative places right now, you know, one of the alternative places that we’re using is just fixed and indexed annuities. Because I love that we can get guaranteed rates, three-year rates, four-year rate, five year rate, seven year rates at four, four and a half, you know, we’ll probably see him even go to 5%. And that’s locked in guaranteed no different than a bank CD. The only difference is it’s with an insurance company, not a bank, and people just need to get over the word annuity, can I it’s not a dirty word. Right? Matter of fact, it’s a really beautiful word, because the reason why it’s called an annuity is because it has the ability to do something called annuitization. Right? So, what annuitization means is that if I have a sum of money in an annuity, at any point in time, I could annuitize that and turn it into income. And when you annuitize, it can actually protect that money from a nursing home, potentially, if it’s done correctly. Now, we don’t typically ever recommend annuitize it because you give up control of your money when you do that. But in some circumstances, like if your only option, you’re going to lose it to the nursing homes anyway, it might be a good option. But most annuities today will always allow you to have access to your money. And you can always take all the money out if you want.
Rebecca Powers 26:18
Is it immediate? If you have an emergency and you need a new roof, can you take it- (unknown) and say I need 25,000 out of the annuity?
Brian Quaranta 26:26
Here’s an annuity we work with right now that, you know, I just had a guy put half a million dollars into it, okay, he’s getting over a 4% rate of return. If you think about it, he’s earning over $20,000 a year in interest. He’s taking that interest out every year as additional income never touching his principal. Oh, and by the way, if he needs more money than just the interest, day one, he can take up to $50,000 which is which is 10%.
Rebecca Powers 26:50
And it’s tax free?
Brian Quaranta 26:51
Well, not in this case, because it would be it would be in his IRA. So, you know, the annuity being his Ira would come out right now, if that was in a Roth IRA, it could be potentially tax free. Okay. But the annuity in the next year would let him take out $100,000. And then in five years, he could be done and walk away. You could say, you know what, I no longer want it I’m gonna take 100% my money and walk away.
Rebecca Powers 27:13
And it’s spelled out it’s you have in writing exactly what will happen.
Brian Quaranta 27:17
It’s a contract, it’s in black and white. There’s no moving parts. A contract is one of the best things that you can get. Have you ever read a prospectus? When we come back, I will share.
Rebecca Powers 27:26
Well, we’re actually out of time.
Brian Quaranta 27:29
Well, till next week folks, But I want you to schedule your right track retirement review, because these are the types of things that we can go over when you come into the office. So, call 1-888-382-1298 and schedule your right track retirement review with us today.
Rebecca Powers 27:43
And you can also do a zoom call if you’d rather just do like that and get a copy of that book. And thanks for joining us. We’re out of time. We’ll see you again next week.
