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Video Transcript
Rebecca Powers 00:20
Welcome everyone, and thanks so much for joining us for this week’s edition of On the Money with Secure Money. With Brian Quaranta he created secure money advisors. He has been in this business for 25 years. I’m Rebecca Powers, and it is my pleasure to be with you each week. Don’t forget to call us immediately so you can get a free copy of Brian’s book. Not only does it say right track your retirement, it literally says a simple planning strategy to help with reducing your risk, building income and giving you peace of mind. That’s what it’s all about, peace of mind so many people, especially elderly in the reports. I’m reading, especially elderly women, are on more antidepressants than ever. That is directly correlated to fear.
Brian Quaranta 01:09
It’s fear, yeah, and most people are very fearful about their money. And typically they’re taking advice, and every time they get that advice about their financial situation, or they see their advisors about their money. They may have that feeling that most of us have, where you’ve got that gut feeling where something doesn’t feel right. I don’t like the fact that I’m invested this way, but maybe this is what I’m supposed to do, because I’m supposed to be trusting this individual. Listen to what they say, listen to what they say. I’m supposed to listen to this expert. But you know, what we’ve got to understand about the financial industry is that the financial industry has disclosures all over everything that say past performance doesn’t guarantee future performance, that when you sign paperwork, that there’s no recourse if they lose all of your money, you’re very aware of the risk that you’re taking, and that’s for a reason. I mean, financial advisors do the best they can, from a textbook planning standpoint, as far as how they’re investing the money. They’re going to try to diversify the best they can. They’re going to try to buy the best companies. No financial advisor out there wants to give a client a bad report card, right? I mean, that’s just a very uncomfortable conversation for anybody, but unfortunately, that happens a lot, and usually they’re giving that bad report card. And that individual that they’re giving that bad report card to that individual has 100% of their life savings invested at risk, and that’s what makes people fearful. That’s what makes people nervous. I mean, look at what AARP has said that you know, people fear running out of money more than they fear death alone. I mean, I don’t know how you feel about that.
Rebecca Powers 03:03
I mean, it’s kind of jaw dropping. And all the reports say that they don’t fear death as much as they fear running out of money, because you could literally become living with your children or desolate. You know, without insurance, health insurance, it’s a very serious thing. So when you say diversification, you talk about in your book, it doesn’t just mean diversify stocks, bonds, mutual funds, whatever it means diversify everything.
Brian Quaranta 03:26
Yeah, well, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a very specific model that you want to follow, in my opinion, when you get closer to retirement, and it’s the model of cash flow, because when you retire, your paychecks going to stop, and when your paycheck stops, the question you have to ask yourself is, how are you going to replace it? Well, I mean, if you’re fortunate to have a pension, maybe your Social Security and your pension replaces that income. But unfortunately, not a lot of people have pensions anymore, and you’re probably sitting watching today realizing, you know what, I’m one of those people that don’t have a pension. So now, what do you do? You’ve got this pile of money that maybe you’ve built up in a 401 k plan, or a 403 B, and now you are going to retire, and it’s up to you to figure out how to take this money that you never had to be responsible for and now figure out how you’re going to replace this paycheck for the rest of your life, not only the rest of your life, but if you’re married, the rest of your spouse’s life, and That’s why, right, track your retirement. The book itself, Rebecca was written was to give people that road map and that guide to help them at least have a basic fundamental understanding of how to properly build this.
Rebecca Powers 04:53
You absolutely need to plan to get to any good destination. But how important is it to have a relationship that you can call and update? And visit that plan regularly.
Brian Quaranta 05:02
Well, plans have to be updated, because life changes happen all the time, you know, but one of the things that we do in our planning process up front is we make all the bad things happen on paper, we want to know if you’re a married couple, what happens to your cash flow, if your husband dies first, what happens if he dies in the first year that you’re retired? What happens if he dies five years in 10 years in 25 years in what is your income going to look like at that point in time? What if this the wife dies first? What’s the drop of income going to be there? What happens if she dies in the first year, the fifth year, the 10th year, the 20th year, what are those income sources going to look like? How much less Are you going to be living off of now? Rebecca, according to Social Security, the average loss of income for a couple when it comes to social security is about 40% so that’s a 40% drop in income so but not only are you getting a drop in income of 40% here’s what else happens. You’re now widowed, and when you’re widowed, you now go to a single file or tax bracket. I remember I was at a good friend of mine, childhood friend. His dad was a state trooper in New Jersey, and you know, I’ve known them since I was born, they’re like a second family to me. And Joan said to me, after the funeral, we were sitting there having a little gathering, and she said, Bry, they don’t waste any time taking that Social Security check? Do they? And I said, they do not. It comes off pretty quickly. And she said, and I just found out that I have to continue to take these RMDs out of his account, and I have to pay so much more in taxes than we did when we were married, because I’m in a higher tax bracket. So these are all things that have to be figured out during the planning process. And I want you to have a system. I want you to have a process to follow. And that’s what our team at secure money advisors has done. We’ve put together a system, a process that makes the planning of your situation easy and simple to understand. And again, not everybody, everybody watching here is going to be a candidate for what we do, but we certainly are able to help quite a bit of people. And I want you to go to on the moneyoffer.com and I want you to get a copy of my book. I spent a long time writing this, whittling it down to the most basic facts so that you could read it very, very quickly. Because if you’re anything like me, I want to get the information that I need as quickly as I can. I don’t want to have to go through a 300-page book to grab a few basic principles. So, I’ve narrowed this down to less than 100 pages for you to read about and get the basic fundamentals of how to build a plan that will give you the peace of mind security you need. I want to send you this book absolutely free. I pay for the shipping and handling. I pay for the printing of the book. All you have to do is take action right now. Get up, call the phone number, which is one on 888-382-1298, or go to on the money offer.com scan the QR code when you go to the landing page there, you can put your order in for the book, but you can also schedule a time to come in and meet the team. And let me tell you a little bit about what we’re going to do when you come in. When you come in, we’re going to go over five key areas of your plan. We’re going to look at your income, your tax strategy, your investments, your health care strategy and your estate planning strategy. We’re going to ask you a lot of questions around those areas. Based on what we find out, will determine whether or not we might have some suggestions that can help you. We feel we have some suggestions and you wanted to take the next step, we would schedule another meeting, and we would give you a review of what you’re currently doing. Both of those meetings are complimentary. There is no cost to those whatsoever. As a fiduciary firm, we do we are fee based. So you know, we could charge for you to come in and do this, but at the end of the day, we don’t have to. We’re a very, very busy firm, and we have the ability to bring you in, give you an hour of our time, and get the questions answered that you need answered. So again, on the money offer.com or 1-888-382-1298, scheduled today, and we’ll see at the office.
Rebecca Powers 09:38
And please grab your phone. We’re going to take a one minute break, give us a call. We’ll be right back.
Brian Quaranta 09:43
Most people worry they’ll run out of money in retirement. Are you one of them? After decades of working, you deserve peace of mind knowing your money will last 20, 30, even 40 years. Maybe you want to leave some for your family after you’re gone. I’m Brian Quaranta. President of Secure Money Advisors, after getting to know you and hearing your goals, we build you a customized principal protection plan based on your unique needs, focusing on five key areas of retirement. Secure money advisors helps you with things like income, investments, taxes, health care and legacy planning, we can right track your retirement. Let us show you how visit our website or call us to schedule a free meeting today.
Rebecca Powers 10:32
Welcome back. We’re talking about how to secure your money and getting advice from this amazing man. He has so much information. I was, I was talking to you on the break before saying, you know, when you’re in your 20s and you start a job, all they say is, well, what’s your risk? Well, what’s your risk? What do you want to do? Like, I guess I’ll go full risk. I don’t know. Well, you got to be diversified. That’s one of the tiny nuggets of information, right? Yeah?
Brian Quaranta 10:54
They never, yes. And diversification comes in many different shapes, forms and sizes, yeah? Because diversification when you’re young is just a diversification of the risk investments, but as you get older, diversification becomes a completely different approach. It’s the diversification of having non correlated assets, right? So, this might be having stock market money, having gold, having crypto, having an annuity that pays income, rental property, rental properties, perfect examples, right? Not
Rebecca Powers 11:26
Not related things.
Brian Quaranta 11:28
Not related.
Brian Quaranta 11:30
That’s exactly right. And so that diversification does protect us, but what protect us protects us more than anything in retirement is the ability to generate guaranteed cash flow. And the reason why I like the annuity so much, and I’ve studied these, I’ve looked for the gotchas. I’ve looked for, you know, the pros and cons. Because in order for me to recommend something to a client, I’ve got to be able to say I would buy this myself. I this is exactly what I would do. So I go through these things with a fine tooth comb and figure out, would I do this myself? And the answer was yes, and I did do it myself, and there is no gotchas in these because once you understand what an annuity really is, then you start to wrap your mind around why you would utilize it. It’s no different than why you would buy life insurance as if you had a family at a young age, right? It’s because you haven’t worked long enough to accumulate enough money and enough savings that if you died and your wife and your kids lost your income, they’re going to be in a serious situation of not being able to pay the bills. So that’s when a young person might go out and buy a term policy for a couple of million dollars to protect the family. Well, it’s the same thing in retirement. What is the most important thing for you to protect your lifestyle? Right? Your quality of life.
Rebecca Powers 13:04
How do you protect your lifestyle and your quality of life? Insure your income.
Brian Quaranta 13:07
And again, we insure it all. We insure our health, we insure our homes, we insure our cars, right? What else do we insure? We insure a lot. If you got a boat jewelry, yeah, you insure your boat, you insure your jewelry, you insure it all. And once people quit comparing an annuity to a stock market investment, now you get it. Now you understand that all it is a buffer against risk, because what it allows you to do is take the rest of your money and keep it at risk. But actually, that risk money that you do have is long term money, and you’ll get better growth on it, because you won’t need to disturb it.
Rebecca Powers 13:45
What advice would you give someone if they feel like they’re behind the ball, that they haven’t saved enough or done the right steps and feels like it’s too late?
Brian Quaranta 13:52
Yeah? Well, it’s never too late. It’s never too late. And I’m going to tell you there’s lots of great strategies that you can utilize to really accelerate your retirement savings. I’ll give you a perfect example. I had a lady came in. She got divorced later on in life. She had raised the kids. She had not worked in a very, very long time. And here she finds herself at the age of 6364 having to go back to work with very little money saved. And she said, Brian, I am never going to be able to retire. She did not get much money from the divorce, and she is working every day just to pay her rent and pay her bills. And I told her, as soon as you turn your full retirement age, we are going to turn your Social Security on and you are going to continue to work. Because when I turn your Social Security on at your full retirement age, and you continue to work, we’re going to take 100% of that social security check and we’re going to start to build you a retirement account with it, because 100% of that social security check now can be deposited into a retirement account that will build up over time. Him, and by the time she was 75 we had no plan, right? I mean, within less than 10 years, we were able to accumulate a sum of money of around $400,000 which was enough for her to be able to live off of why? All we did was bank that Social Security money every single month. We got a guaranteed rate of return of five and a half percent on that money, and now she’s in a position well will be, because she’s almost she’s about two more years away from her to be able to retire. So, it’s never too late. There are ways to fix it, but you want to know something, you have to work with a firm that understands these challenges and understands how to engineer these problems. Because part of what we do at secure money advisors is financial engineering, and that financial engineering, everybody comes in with these different problems. I’ve got this bridge. It’s going over three rivers. How do I build this thing? Not Three Rivers in Pittsburgh, but I’m saying just three rivers in general. How do I build this thing? Or I’ve got to build this building and it’s really windy in the area, what do I do? So just like an engineer would figure out the proper building materials and structure that you would need, we’re doing the same thing on the financial engineering side. We’re able to be creative enough and figure out how to solve that problem. And the greatest thing about secure money advisors is it’s just not one person you’re working with. My team of advisors work together all the time. I work with them on looking at cases that are difficult to find strategies and solutions that can help individuals maximize their situations and make their situations better. So folks, again, I want you to go to on the money offer.com get a copy of my book. But more importantly, what I want you to do is schedule a complimentary appointment to come in and sit down with a team, and I promise you, if you come in, you will learn one or two things that you don’t know right now that could truly benefit your situation, whether it’s how to generate more income, how to pay less taxes, how to properly position your investments, how to protect yourself for health care, or how to pass your money along to your family members in a much more tax efficient way than you might have right now, all you got to do is go to on the money offer.com, scan the QR code, or again, our team is standing by to take your call at 1-888-382-1298, we’ll see at the office.
Rebecca Powers 17:38
it’s very cool. It comes in a gold envelope, and like he said, he pays for shipping and handling, so there’s absolutely no risk to even do the sit down appointment with them. It might just be a really great second opinion. All right, stay with us more on how you can secure your money to and through retirement.
Brian Quaranta 17:53
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 will 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 18:07
The last thing you want to do is have a really good job in your 60s, retire, be looking for work again in your late 70s.
Brian Quaranta 18:15
The average person might say, well, a good portfolio would be a good mix of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. No, no. A good portfolio is all designed around the five key areas, income taxes, investments, healthcare and legacy planning.
Neil Major 18:30
We’re not just product pickers here. What we do best here is we build retirement plans.
Brian Quaranta 18:35
Nine out of 10 people when they walk through the door, we 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?
Neil Major 18:45
Probably now people you know can actually see a vision once we start to really build out their plan.
Brian Quaranta 18:51
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 opinion. The difference at secure money advisors, as a fiduciary firm, we help you manage the risk, build the income and give you the retirement you dream of.
Rebecca Powers 19:20
Welcome back to On the Money with Secure Money, we have a little special treat for you today. Greg and our wonderful studio did a prop for us, because we often joke about how Wall Street will tell you, just keep riding the wave. It will come back. You will be okay. But you know, we don’t have a crystal ball, though, if we lose all your money, there’s no guarantee. So, look what Greg our wonderful studio really our floor director.
Brian Quaranta 19:45
This is fantastic, my favorite. This is my favorite shot of all time to prove that sometimes you can have a crystal ball. Now the question is, can the crystal ball actually tell us anything? Right? Now, I love this crystal ball so much that I. Went out and I bought a miniature version of the crystal ball in our office, right? And really, there’s no such thing as the crystal ball. If anybody tells you that they feel that the stock market is going to do X, Y or Z, nobody knows. Nobody knows. And if someone’s trying to talk to you intelligently about how they feel about the economic environment and what’s going to be happening. I’m telling you, they’re taking a guess, right? There’s not a whole lot of people that guess right on what the markets are going to do, so you got to be very, very careful with that. Right? People can articulate in a very smart way of why they think things are going to move in the direction they do.
Rebecca Powers 20:38
You just reminded me of and I forget the name of it, but I will find it. It is a little app that you can follow what the Nancy Pelosi is in the Chuck Schumer’s and the other congressman, the trades that they make.
Brian Quaranta 20:52
I can tell you what it is. So, it’s an ETF, and it’s called Insider, and it’s I, N, S, D, R, and that’s the that’s the symbol. It’s Insider. Inside. I could have that. I could have the letters wrong, but it’s Insider. It trades on an exchange, and what they do is, there’s a there’s a filing that every politician has to make of what stock they’re buying. There’s a little bit of delay between when they buy it and when they file their disclosure of what they’re buying, but you can follow them in this ETF now. And whoever created it was absolutely brilliant doing it.
Rebecca Powers 21:27
It does make you wonder about the crystal ball. We joke no one has a crystal ball, but somehow the Congressman always seem to do their stocks seem to do well.
Brian Quaranta 21:36
I just don’t know how somebody in Congress can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars when their salaries are 174 171.
Rebecca Powers 21:45
They’ve been in Congress for 45 years, a public servant, but yet they’re multi millionaires. That’s pretty infuriating.
Brian Quaranta 21:55
Yeah, and, you know, and they don’t get in trouble for inside trading.
Rebecca Powers 21:59
Well, they make the rules. Who’s going to get them in trouble?
Brian Quaranta 22:01
That’s right now, there is a there’s been a bill to try to change that, but we’ll see if it ever gets passed through. I’ll tell you another bill that’s in congress that’s very disturbing, and that is that there is a bill out there right now where they want to be able to tax you on unrealized capital gains. Now think about this. Let’s put it in the term of a home. Let’s say you bought a home today, all right, for $100,000 we all know that our homes go up over time value, so let’s say that $100,000 home goes to $500,000 well, that’s a $400,000 gain. Well, you didn’t sell your home, so you shouldn’t know any taxes, right? If you didn’t sell your home. What they’re saying with this unrealized capital gains tax is that they want to tax you on the gain even if you didn’t sell it. So if I own Apple stock and I put $100,000 in and now I have a million dollars, but I haven’t sold Apple stock. They still want to hit me with a 25% unrealized capital gain.
Rebecca Powers 23:09
There is no way that could pass. I would hope, I mean, I hope,
Brian Quaranta 23:12
What’s disturbing is that it’s even a bill.
Rebecca Powers 23:17
Congress even thought about it. They even thought about it well. And think of this, if the market goes down like it did 2008, we had the market crisis with housing. Are they going to give us our money back? Well, that’s it, because they were wrong.
Brian Quaranta 23:28
That’s it. So, what happens if, all the sudden, I pay, you know, capital gains on something, you know, that went up from 100,000 to 500,000 I realized capital gains tax on 400,000 and the very next two months, that thing drops from 500,000 down to 200,000.
Rebecca Powers 23:44
They’ll say, whoops, sorry, no refunds.
Brian Quaranta 23:47
Yeah, exactly, right. So again, I mean, you and I can get into this very deep Yes, but this is why that, you know, if you look at even the Trump tax plan, right, right, Janet Yellen has even suggested to Joe Biden that he keep these tax cuts in place after 2025.
Rebecca Powers 24:05
He absolutely should. He absolutely should. He’s already said he doesn’t want to.
Brian Quaranta 24:09
Which again, you’re going to slow the economy if you do that, right, you’re going to slow the economy when you do that, when you already have high interest rates. So, you know, 2025 could be very ugly. Who knows, right? But this is why I believe that if you’re in a position where you’re you know, five years from retirement, or you’re getting ready to retire, or you’re in retirement, this is why you want to take a hard look at what you have, and you want to protect that money that you can’t afford to lose. Ask yourself this, how much of the money that you have right now can you afford to lose how much of it is there a certain percentage? Are you willing to lose 50% of the money that you’ve accumulated over your life? Are you willing to lose 40% of the money that you have accumulated over your life? You need to make a decision right now that if you’re going to have money in the market, what level of risk are you. Need to tolerate, because if the markets go down 25, 30% and you don’t have a non-correlated asset allocation strategy like I talk about in the book, and you’ve got all of your money in the market, I’m going to tell you right now, you’re going to do what most investors do, you’re going to panic and you’re going to sell, and you’re going to go to cash, and when the market rebounds, you’re going to go back in, but it’s going to be too late and you’re going to miss out on the rebound. And this is why the strategy that talk about in right track your retirement is a simple strategy that can help you mitigate these risks.
Rebecca Powers 25:32
I know we talk about annuities a lot, but I really do feel so strongly about it, because it gives me such peace of mind. We talk about annuities, let’s talk about the payments. How are the payments from your annuity impacted by the fluctuations in the market? They’re not at all, at all, no annuity. Well, variable, but we don’t like those variable.
Brian Quaranta 25:51
Annuities can fluctuate. That’s why we don’t touch them, right? You know, we were at dinner the other night, you and I, and we were talking to Brad, a good friend of ours, Joey Hanson, who was the voice of the bangles for many, many years, and on TV in Cincinnati for many, many years, yeah, for many years. And he was telling me about a lady that he was speaking with that had a variable annuity with a company and him and the advisor that they that Brad was working with, called the annuity company, with the lady, and they had made $76,000 in this annuity the year. Company, no, no, the couple, holder, couple, had made $76,000 in that account on a million dollars. So that’s a 7.6% rate of return. Okay, so they made $76,000 but when they called and they asked the company about the fees she was paying 4.1% a year, so out of the $76,000 that she made $58,000 was paid out to fees. So that’s talking about that, putting this in perspective, mathematically, they took over 60% of her gain in fees. Now that’s not a 4% fee. Now that’s like a 65% fee, but when you run the math the right way, these are the things you’ll start to figure out. And folks, I write about something called the variable annuity escape. We built it to help our clients look at these accounts and exit these accounts so that you’re not paying high fees, because fees will reduce your gains and compound your losses. So, keep your fees low. Get yourself with a good fiduciary firm that can help you build a plan. Get a copy my book at on the money offer.com, scan the QR code, order the book, schedule the appointment. Come in call. 1-888-382-1298, we’ll see you again next week.
Rebecca Powers 28:01
Good job. I was going to end on that. Thanks for being with us. We love you. See you next time