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Video Transcript
Rebecca Powers 00:25
Welcome to this week’s edition of on the money with secure money brought to you by Brian Quaranta of secure money advisors. And I’m Rebecca Powers. So happy to be with you again. Great to see you. As always see you today. You had been reading a lot of articles recently about women specifically, you said you’d kind of like to model today’s show, specifically for women.
Brian Quaranta 00:47
Yeah, well, for some reason, we have a lot of women clients.
Rebecca Powers 00:52
Yeah, that’s great. Worrywarts were the ones that are always: do we have enough?
Brian Quaranta 00:57
You know, it’s interesting, you bring that up, because one of the things that I think secure money advisors, connects really well with women, is the fact that we have a very, very black and white approach and a very secure approach, right? And so, women are more likely to take a sure thing versus a maybe. And you’ll see it a lot if you’ve got a married couple, because the husband always thinks that, you know, the stock market is going to be the greatest thing ever. You know that he’s willing to gamble. And she’s going, why are we going to gamble with all this, we’ve worked all of our life for it, if all we do is protect it, we’ll have a great retirement. And you’ll always see women take a much more conservative approach, which in my opinion, is a smarter approach. Because once you’ve won the game, and you’ve accumulated enough money, your job is to make sure that it’s protected. And it’s going to last, you know, you don’t have to continue to sit at the blackjack table your entire life.
Rebecca Powers 02:00
Right. I mean, if you’ve won, walk away.
Brian Quaranta 02:02
Walk away. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to walk away with 100% of it. But you got to walk away with a good portion of it. Because again, people are not retirement pension. So, we’ve got to think like pensioners, not gamblers.
Rebecca Powers 02:15
And that’s in your book, think like a pensioner, not a gambler.
Brian Quaranta 02:18
It is, it’s chapter three. Yeah. So yes, as you know, you don’t want to think like a gambler. So, walk away from the blackjack table or the roulette table, however you want to look at it, and put yourself in a place to where if you are going to continue to gamble, gamble with a little bit, but not all of it. And that’s really what we but women, you know, connect really well with secure money advisors because of the level of safety that we talked about. And women are wired a little bit differently where they want to know, they kind of want to know, they want a plan. Men are not planners.
Rebecca Powers 02:51
So, we take lists too, boys usually, men don’t usually write as many lists as ladies.
Brian Quaranta 02:55
Yes. And the challenge for married couples is, you know, more and more today, I will see that the CFO of the family actually is the one, right. But you’ll still get a lot of men that, you know, are the CFOs of the family. And so, when somebody is the CFO, the other person tends to take the backseat, so they don’t see the money going out, they don’t see the money coming in. And when you’re disconnected from paying the bills or seeing the expenses go out, you have a different viewpoint on you know what retirement may or may not look like 100% Yeah, so if you’ve got a woman, that’s the CFO of the family, and she’s been paying the bills the entire time, and the husband’s like, why just want to retire, what we find just keeping the marker we find she’s like you don’t understand, I don’t think you know, but one thing that we do really well, that gives women peace of mind is showing them the black and white math and writing and giving them that plan that they actually get to take with them. And since we use a simple Excel model, a lot of them can just plug and play on their own, even in their own private time. And so, it gives them the confidence and courage to move forward to that next step.
Rebecca Powers 04:02
And you love the physical binder. And I do too, opening your binder, seeing it up on my shelf, knowing we can open it anytime you can add pages to it as things change. It does really feel great. All right, we had this wonderful, Greg, our studio manager gave us this wonderful article. Fortune 500 Did this article saying 20 quick facts about women’s retirement prospects and 11 ways to improve it. So, there are specific things that women should be doing differently than men? Then why. Do you know what I mean? Like, why is it different? because we make less money, commonly, or…
Brian Quaranta 04:40
Well, women typically are going to have to plan for a longer retirement because on average women do live longer. So that’s one main thing that might have to, longevity. Yep. Women we’re talking in this case, we’re talking about single women also right now, right tend to be much more active than what men are, they want to, they want to do a lot more things than what men are willing to do. Men tend to, as they get older, get more emotional, they get more emotional, they get exhausted and tired, and they really don’t want to do much. Women get reenergized. They, they- it’s almost like, you know, women go through this period of time where they’re working through who they are for so long, where men really don’t have to do that. And then all of a sudden, they become this really strong human being.
Rebecca Powers 05:36
I know I am now!
Brian Quaranta 05:37
Yeah, and men are like, I’m tired of being strong, you know, did that
Rebecca Powers 05:42
Did that, I was born that way.
Brian Quaranta 05:43
My own dad could cry at the drop of a hat anymore at 78 years old, you know, I mean, he is like, you know, he’s the most emotional I’ve ever seen him.
Rebecca Powers 05:56
It’s like Benjamin Button. The guy’s going this way, the girl’s going that way. That’s really funny. And caregivers, that’s another good point. A lot of women become caregivers or have been caregivers and put their own lives on hold.
Brian Quaranta 06:08
Yeah, look, my mom, that was my mom. You know, my mom took care of my dad’s mom for five years. Wow. And people do not realize how hard it is on a caregiver. So, it is so difficult on the caregiver, and basically give up your life, you do give up your life. And what’s even more difficult is that the person that they’re caring for, if that person passes, it is really difficult, because that was their primary purpose for so long. And then all of a sudden, that purpose is gone. And now they have to almost like reinvent who they are because they were in a routine of doing these things. So, but as far as overall financial planning goes, yeah, things are pretty much the same between men and women, when it comes to the basic fundamentals, they’re going to need income, right, they’re going to have to prepare so that they don’t run out of money, they usually are much more willing to take less risk. We like because that’s common sense. You know, it’s common sense that as you as you get older, and you get closer to retirement, and you’re and you want to retire, and you’re going to need to use your money to replace the paycheck that you’re going to lose, you want to get safer. And so, women, for them, that’s just a natural progression for them.
Rebecca Powers 07:32
They don’t push back on you and you say, hey, look, here’s your actual risk, and we need to know “Oh, I thought it was in less risk.”
Brian Quaranta 07:39
Yeah, for a lot of the women that we see, we’re kind of a breath of fresh air for them. Because if they’re working with somebody else, you know, or they’ve been to a few different firms, they’re always nervous that the advisors telling them to take that much risk. So finally, when they come in, they’re getting. Yeah, and this is what I would tell you, folks, if you’re deciding on working with a firm, find somebody that shares in the same money beliefs that you do, okay, because if you’re sitting across from somebody, and somebody’s telling you to do something with your money, and it’s making you very uncomfortable, and you know that feeling I’m talking about where you’re being given advice, and you’re shaking your head, yes, at the meeting. But when you leave and you walk out that door, you’ve got that feeling in your gut, that something just isn’t right, it doesn’t align with who I am, that’s a sign that you need to start looking elsewhere. So go to onthemoneyoffer.com Get a copy of my book called right track your retirement where I teach you how to get your retirement on right the right track, I give you the information to help you determine if you’re on the right track, go to onthemoneyoffer.com Get a copy of the book, we send it out to you absolutely free. And you’ll also be able to schedule an appointment there. It’s called our right track appointment, where we teach you the basic fundamentals of how to build a system and process to get you retired and keep you retired. Or you can call 1-888-382-1298. My team is standing by right now, and you can schedule directly with them.
Rebecca Powers 09:10
Stay with us more great advice from Brian Quaranta, how to make your money secure. Stay with us.
Brian Quaranta 09:16
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 09:31
The last thing you want to do is have a really good job and you’re in your 60s retire, be looking for work again in your late 70s.
Brian Quaranta 09:39
The average person might say Well, a good portfolio would be a good mix of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, kind of a good portfolio is all designed around the five key areas income, taxes, investments, health care and legacy planning.
Neil Major 09:53
Because we’re not just product pickers here. What we do best here as we build retirement plans,
Brian Quaranta 09:58
nine out of 10 The 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 10:09
People, you know, can actually see a vision once we start to really build out their plan.
Brian Quaranta 10:14
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 the difference at secure money advisors, as a fiduciary firm, we help you manage the risk, build the income, and give you the retirement withdrawal.
Rebecca Powers 10:45
Welcome back to On the money with secure money. We are talking today specifically about women and retirement. little difference, little nuances, but it’s always for everyone getting your money safe. How often? Or is it common place, Brian, for you to look at everything they have all their little buckets of money? Do you almost always take money out of the risk bucket and put it in the Safe Money bucket? Is that customary? Or just once in a while?
Brian Quaranta 11:11
Yeah, well, it depends. And what it depends on is, are they going to have enough money between social security and pensions? And, you know, there’s a high percentage of people that again, we talked about it on every show that do not have that pension? So, the money that they typically have is what people are retiring with? We work with a lot of a lot of the women that we work with are nurses in the local area, because we’ve got a big community and online childcare and so much healthcare. Yeah. Teachers.
Rebecca Powers 11:43
At the university.
Brian Quaranta 11:44
Yeah, so a lot of them have 403 B’s, you know, if they’re working at a corporation, they might have a 401k. And though all of those accounts, usually when we’re meeting them, if they’re still invested there are all invested at risk in the stock market. Yeah. And you know, the first question we ask, and this is something great for you to even do at home right now. And if you write these down, or just remember them, it’s a good way for you to start to identify the direction that you need to go with managing your money. But there’s only four things you can do with your money. You can get income from it, you can make it safe, you can have it grow by taking risk. Or you can keep it liquid and available to you like under your mattress. So, when you ask folks, you know, out of those four things, what is the number one most important thing? Did you write them down? Rebecca did?
Rebecca Powers 12:41
Make it grow? Keep it liquid?
Brian Quaranta 12:42
So, let’s go through the exercise with you. Okay. All right. So, what would be the number one priority of the money that you’ve accumulated over your lifetime?
Rebecca Powers 12:51
For me, it’s making it safe, you make it safe, okay. But my husband would say let it grow.
Brian Quaranta 12:56
Okay, so safe would be number one. Okay. Now think about, think about if we were having this conversation and you’re retiring tomorrow, okay. So safe would be number one, what would be number two?
Rebecca Powers 13:06
Income.
Brian Quaranta 13:06
Income would be number two. Okay. Number three?
Rebecca Powers 13:09
I think liquid, to know that if I needed a new roof, I could go into my matches and-
Brian Quaranta 13:14
Beautiful. So that would be number three. And what’s your last one?
Rebecca Powers 13:18
Grow.
Brian Quaranta 13:19
Grow.
Rebecca Powers 13:19
And I guess maybe, because I’m 54? I mean, is that? Yeah,
Brian Quaranta 13:22
Yeah, well, here’s the thing. That is how most people answer.
Rebecca Powers 13:27
Are you serious? In this order?
Brian Quaranta 13:22
The only two that will be different is you chose safety and then income next, they’ll be reversed sometimes.
Rebecca Powers 13:37
Gotcha, income and safety.
Brian Quaranta 13:38
But usually, a high percentage growth is last. Right?
Rebecca Powers 13:43
So, it shows that we are inherently not greedy people. But we get sucked into the more and more and more, let it ride!
Brian Quaranta 13:50
Or we’re being brainwashed by Wall Street to believe that we need to be taking all of this risk in the market to be successful with our retirement dollars. And yes, the market is a way to grow our money and accumulate the pile of money you need as you’re approaching retirement. But again, in my book I talk about the fundamental change that you have to make is that mindset of taking risk with your money to grow it. That’s the mindset of someone that’s in the accumulation phase of their life where they’re trying to grow their pile of money. When you go to retire, you’re going into a completely different phase. And it’s what the retirement planning experts call the distribution phase, which is where you’re going to start to distribute or in this case, take income from your investments. And so fundamental changes need to take place, and this is why I write in the book. The investments that got you to retirement usually are not the best choices to get you through retirement. And this is where my bucketing strategy comes in, right? we’ve talked about the bucketing strategy where We have two main buckets of money. We have a safe money bucket, and we have a risk money bucket. In this case, you said, you know how much usually comes out of risk? Well, it depends on how much income you need. So, if you were going to need a certain amount of income, let’s say over a, you know, let’s say over a 20-year period, you need a $20,000 a year, well, that’s $400,000, over 20 years that you need an income. Okay, but what happens if you only have $400,000? Total? Yeah, total, right? Yeah, this is where the bucket approach comes in to get leverage. So, you might take 200,000, or 300,000, and put it into your green bucket, where you’re going to create a bridge of income for maybe 20-25 years, so that the money that’s in the red bucket, or the growth bucket can still be in the market. But it has a very important ingredient built into it now. And that’s called time, right? Because in order to be successful in the market, you’ve got to put the money in, and you’ve got to give it time to grow. Because if you look at a stock chart, it goes like this, right? And even though even though the stock chart might go up and down, up and down, it’s still going up, right? But it goes up and down on the way up, and people don’t realize that there’s volatility on the way down.
Rebecca Powers 16:15
Well, they forget things too. Yes. 2008, my God, some people lost 50% of everything. And then last year, you know, what happened there? So how can we all forget so quickly, and oh, let’s roll the dice. You know.
Brian Quaranta 16:28
People have very short memories, when it comes to the pain of what 2008 2009 Were like when people lost half of their money, or even 2001 or 2002, during, you know, 9/11. I mean, we had from 2000 to 2010, we had something called the Lost Decade, which meant over that 10-year period, Rebecca, there was no money made, zero money made because of the volatility of the market. Now, think about if in that 10-year period, you were taking money out of your accounts, what would be happening, most likely, depending on how it was invested, you could have spent down a lot of that money because you just weren’t getting the growth rate to be able to do it,
Rebecca Powers 17:12
Devastating to your savings
Brian Quaranta 17:14
Right. Now, history typically doesn’t repeat itself. But it certainly does rhyme. And if you look at some of the factors that we’ve got going on in the marketplace, right now, there’s a lot of rhyming going on, compared to like, think about the banks right now, right thing we’ve gone through, you know, the volatility, the interest rates, spiking the Feds constantly raising interest rates, it’s very rare that the feds raise interest rates, and we have what we call a soft landing, meaning that’s the Feds way of saying if we raise rates very rarely do we have a soft landing or meaning we don’t push the economy into a recession, right? Meaning they’re most likely going to push it into a recession. It’s very probable. I don’t know that for a fact. But the data shows that there’s a higher probability of that happening. So ask yourself this. If we got into the last decade again, and you’re retired right now, or you’re wanting to retire, what are you going to do? Yeah, and this is why what I write about in right track, your retirement is so important, because the system and process that I talked about, that you need to have when you retire. You This teaches you how if another Lost Decade happen, or we had markets that were just going down, how you’re going to protect yourself from that, because you’ve worked your entire life to accumulate this sum of money, the last thing you want to do is retire. And somebody tell you, it’s okay to keep all of your money at risk and just start taking your money, and then it doesn’t work out. Remember, if it doesn’t work out. They’re not the ones responsible for paying your electricity bill, your mortgage bill. So are you going to ask them to pay for it when you’re out of money. This is why you have to make sure that you’re protected. Because at the end of the day, it’s really easy to tell somebody else to gamble with their money, especially if they get paid to do it. So, learn the right system. Learn how to protect yourself from these things. So go to onthemoneyoffer.com And get a copy of my book and also schedule your appointment there. The appointment that you’ll have with my team is about 45 minutes to an hour we’ll send you a little packet out of what you need to bring in. And my promise to you is nobody from my team is ever going to try to sell you anything. Nobody’s going to pressure you to do anything. You’re there to learn, ask questions and be informed. You can also call 1-888-382-1298 and my team standing by to take your call and get you scheduled.
Rebecca Powers 19:41
He’ll even pay for the shipping and handling. Even the book is not for sale, it truly is about educating and empowering and that is what we are doing especially for women today. Women and finances. Stay with us.
Announcer 19:58
the work never seems to end Until the day it finally does. After nearly a lifetime on the job, you should be rewarded for all the time you spent working. Whether that’s crossing off items on your bucket list, learning a new passion, or rekindling the love of an old one. After all, life isn’t over when you stop working, it’s the start of an all-new chapter, the one where you’re the writer, and you get to choose how your story will go. A way to achieve that is by having a clear financial plan to sustain your golden years, the biggest fear most retirees have is if they’ll have enough money to maintain the lifestyle they’ve always enjoyed. Having a plan to help protect you against the curveballs life often throws will help to maintain your lifestyle. Call today to get your free written financial plan. See me live every day to the fullest, and enjoy the retirement of your dreams.
Rebecca Powers 20:49
Welcome back to On the money with secure money. I always say Brian, you put the word secure in the title of this show and your entire business. Because that is your number one priority. Yeah, protect, protect, protect, but secure your money. It’s like you’re the guy screaming it from the mountaintop.
Brian Quaranta 21:06
That’s right. And I will say this to Rebecca, we are not perfect. I mean, we have you know, clients’ accounts that are in the market, right? We go up and down just like everybody else does. But because of the system that we use, the process that we use with the two buckets, we’re not concerned about this going up and down. We’ve actually planned for that, we want that to happen. That’s part of the process. Right? You see, when people don’t have a plan or a process, and this is going up and down. That becomes a problem now.
Rebecca Powers 21:33
Right? A big, big problem. So, in this article, I love this. It says only 15% of women have a written retirement strategy. And 42% reported saying they have an unwritten strategy. Yeah, unwritten what it’s just in your head? I mean, no offense. But…
Brian Quaranta 21:54
I would tell you, that just from me, being doing this for 25 years, I will tell you that a lot of people do not have a written strategy. Yeah. Right. And the most important thing you can have is a written strategy. Think about it like this. If you are going to build a home, what would you start with?
Rebecca Powers 22:14
Oh, just go to Lowe’s and buy a whole bunch of stuff and just start throwing it out there…
Brian Quaranta 22:18
Right? And this is what people do with their finances. It’s like going to Lowe’s and saying, Well, we’re gonna need some lumber and some piping and some nails. And then we’re gonna do these tools over here, and they get home, they go, how do I how do we build this thing, maybe we should call an architect. That’s right, then you start with the architect. And the architect helps you do what create a blueprint. And that’s exactly what we are at secure money advisors, where the architect or the engineer, we help you build that blueprint, we give you that roadmap. And so now, when that roadmap is laid out, if you’re working towards retirement, we have a plan to get you there. If you’re getting ready to retire, we have a plan to get you there. And when you have a blueprint, and you have it mapped out on paper, you can also make all the bad things happen on paper Exactly. And I always say, let’s make the bad things happen on paper, so that when they actually do happen, we have a plan for them because bad things do pop up. So, for example, when we’re building a plan for our clients, we might simulate, well, what happens if we have a health event you have a stroke, you need to go into a nursing home, and it’s going to cost you an additional $100,000 a year? We need to know if we’re going to take that money out of your out of your accounts. What’s that gonna do to your future balances? What risk is that going to put it the spouse that’s not sick? Right, other bad things that can happen is what happens if the market goes down three years in a row? Like it’s done before? Yeah, what how are we? What is that going to look like? What’s that going to do to the future bounce? What happens if all of a sudden, you need a large sum of money from your accounts for an emergency for a child or something? What is that going to do the balances and simulating all of that in our planning model. And looking at those systems of process, it’s no different than what an engineer would do. If they were to build a bridge or a building, they can simulate an earthquake, they can simulate high winds. That’s exactly what we’re doing. Because we want to make sure that when we build this thing, it’s as weatherproof as we can possibly get it says bulletproof as we possibly can get it. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. Understand that nothing is ever going to be perfect. But you can get pretty close to having something that is and that’s what I encourage you to do. And that’s why having a good system and process like the right track retirement system is so important.
Rebecca Powers 24:44
Absolutely. And that’s why you did it to make it very simple. We all agree that we were not educated enough of financial planning growing up in our public-school systems. You said almost like it made me I don’t know how to say this. When you say it feels almost like Wall Street has brainwashed all of us to say, keep your money and keep your money in. Right? Yeah. Doesn’t that give almost an inherent conflict? When I think I’m with a fiduciary like you, but I’m actually just with someone who is strictly a broker? Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s so important, especially for you ladies to say, number one, are you a fiduciary? Are you an independent?
Brian Quaranta 25:21
Yeah, yeah, I think I think financial planning is a little bit like political issues, right? There are people out there that have certain beliefs on how something should be done. There are people that believe that all of your money can stay in the market, and you’ll be fine. And they believe that you do believe that they really believe they, we see it every single day on the dice the rest of your lane the dice every single day, their life, okay? And that’s because of the culture at some of the big box firms. Gotcha. And the big box firms create that culture. So what happens is, if you’re a young guy, like you read my story in the book, right there as a young guy, you know, go into that firm, I mean, the first thing they’re telling me is that, you know, people are going to be calling him because the markets are going down, they’re losing money, and we just need you to tell them, everything’s gonna be okay. And that it’s just a paper loss and hang in there. You’re in it for the long haul. But these are the same people that will also tell you, we don’t have a crystal ball, and we don’t know what’s going to happen. So how can you tell somebody it’s going to be okay?
Rebecca Powers 26:18
We can’t be held responsible if it goes down, but I’m sure it will maybe.
Brian Quaranta 26:22
Yeah, well, the market, look, since 1929, the market, we will go through a bear market every 3.4 years. Okay, this is- The last bull run that we’ve had was a long bull run. And this was where people got overconfident. Right? When you see young kids, you know, making lots of money in these Robin Hood accounts and these TD Ameritrade accounts, buying these individual stocks, that’s a sign that it’s not a time to get in. That’s a sign when you should be selling because when everybody’s buying, you should be selling. And when everybody is selling, right, you should be buying. So, you always want to buy low now. But again, we’re getting back to a system and a process. That’s what I want you to have folks go to onthemoneyoffer.com Get a copy of my book. As we’ve said, we ship it out to you. It’s absolutely free. Take the time to read it. Understand the five key areas retirement planning, educate yourself in here and get clarity on what you need to do. While you’re there. Schedule your appointment to come in. Right, you have nothing to lose. It’s absolutely free the appointment nobody from my team is ever going to pressure you to buy anything. Nobody’s going to ask you to do anything. You’re there to learn and educate. You can also call 1-888-382-1298. My team is standing by to take your call and get you scheduled for your appointment. We look forward to seeing you at our office and we’ll see you again soon next week.
Rebecca Powers 27:45
Thank you so much, Brian, and thank you at home for joining us keep those emails coming in a lot of your questions give us ideas for this show. We’ll see you next week.