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Video Transcript
Rebecca Powers 00:22
Welcome everyone, and thanks so much for joining us for this week’s edition of On the Money with Secure Money with Brian Quaranta. Of course, Brian is an independent fiduciary, and he created Secure Money Advisors. It’s holistic and looks at every aspect of your retirement and gives you a true plan. Are you on the right track for retirement? That’s why he wrote this book. And when you call for a complimentary consultation, we truly mean that, leave your checkbook at home. When you call make that appointment, he’ll even mail you this book in a beautiful, golden envelope, and it can be a game changer. Great to see you, Brian!
Brian Quaranta 00:58
Great to see you, as always, lot to talk about on today’s show. My favorite topic, actually.
Rebecca Powers 01:05
Mine too. Yes, since I started doing these shows and learned so much about safety and security, I’m not a gambler. If I go to a casino, I want to leave with the $50 I walked in with. And after doing these shows, you know, I took all of my 401(k) from my television station career, that was just, personally, I didn’t want to lose any. Put it into a fixed, indexed annuity. My husband’s still working, accumulating, so we still have his Disney money. He’s a ESPN producer. His money is still in the stock market. Why do you think annuities have gotten such a bad rap over the decades? Because you can hear people say, Oh, I’ve heard those are terrible.
Brian Quaranta 01:42
Yeah. Well, first off, I want to compliment you on just the simple strategy that you just described.
Rebecca Powers 01:49
Thank you.
Brian Quaranta 01:50
Because what you’re referring to is what I talk about in the book, and have simplified it where it- essentially, it’s just a two-bucket approach, right? And when you retired from broadcasting, the money that you had accumulated there, you were no longer working, so no money was going into your plan anymore. So that money makes really good sense to protect, because you can’t offset any losses when you have no money going in, gotcha compounding the losses? Yeah, so, so, so think about your husband now. Your husband’s still working. He’s still actively contributing to the plan. So, if we have money going in, it makes good sense to keep this money at risk here. So, and risk money also needs time, at least 10 years, okay? And then, of course, protecting the money, which eventually will become a source of income for you. And we do like to utilize annuities over here for the guaranteed safety. The annuities were created in 1995 they were meant to compete with the very popular index mutual funds. And the whole idea was for you to get some of the gains of the market but not be exposed to any of the losses. Now, usually when people hear that, they think that’s too good. Yeah, and, and I, and I would agree, until you understand how it works. First off, if they’re not going to give you 100% of the gains, it makes pretty good sense that they can protect you from the law. So, let’s just say that your annuity has a 10% cap, okay, and the market goes up 15% well, you’re gonna get 10 missed out on that 5% you missed out on that 5% principle is always protected. That’s right. That’s what I like. That’s right. So, let’s do some basic math. We put $100,000 in market goes up 15%, you only get 10% of the 15 so your $100,000 just went to $110,000 now, with the right annuity, you’re going to have two very powerful features. One is going to be called annual lock, and the other is called annual reset. Let’s talk about annual lock. First, annual lock means, once you make the gain, it is yours, and it can never go away. So, when that $100,000 goes to $110,000 that becomes your new locked in, guaranteed balance. So, if the following year the market goes down 50% you do not lose any money. You stay at, right at $110,000 now, if you were in the market, you would have lost half of that money, and you would have had to have had a 100% rate of return to get back to even. Because what people don’t realize is, if you lose 50% of your money, you can’t just do 50% to get back to even. You got to do 100% to get back to even.
Rebecca Powers 04:54
Because common sense would tell you that’s all you have to do is get 50% back math. But math doesn’t. It doesn’t work that way.
Brian Quaranta 05:01
It doesn’t work that way. And if we just take another, you know, if I got $100,000 and I lose 50% I go to $50,000 and I earn 50% on that $50,000, that’s only $25,000.
Rebecca Powers 05:12
You get back to 75.
Brian Quaranta 05:15
75, which means I’m still down 25%, okay, so why am I willing to give up some of that upside? Because I don’t want any of the downside. And folks, here’s the thing you need to ask yourself in your retirement years: what’s more important to you at this point in your life? A sure thing or a maybe? Most people are going to say, look, I want as much certainty of a sure thing that I can get. I don’t want a maybe. I don’t want to be waking up at night worried about whether or not we’re going to have to go back to work or we’re not going to be able to travel the way we talked about traveling. I mean, think about all those years you go to work, those days that you don’t want to wake up and go to work. I mean, we all have those days. Look, I run a company, and there’s days I just want to sleep and hang out with my kids all day. But, you know, we sacrifice, yeah, and so when we get to retirement, we don’t want to be worried. Now
Rebecca Powers 06:20
Now that’s the payoff should be.
Brian Quaranta 06:23
It should be the golden years, right? It should be the golden years where you’re going and you’re doing all the things you promised yourself you were going to do. And the reason why I love the annuities so much and personally own them myself is because not only can they protect your money, right, and still give you some gains of the market without any losses, but they can also provide you with guaranteed, insured income. And this is why, when you’ll hear people say, Well, I hate annuities, and you should too. Usually, if you’re reading something that is against annuities, there’s two things. It’s either going to be an annuity that really is a bad annuity because there’s
Rebecca Powers 07:06
Like a variable.
Brian Quaranta 07:07
Like a variable annuity, or the person writing the article has an agenda for something else. But when you hear people say annuities are bad investments, I actually agree with them, really, because it’s not an investment, it’s
Rebecca Powers 07:24
It’s a protection of the money you’ve already-
Brian Quaranta 07:25
It’s an insurance policy!
Rebecca Powers 07:27
Gotcha, with a big insurance company, with
Brian Quaranta 07:29
With a big insurance company
Rebecca Powers 07:30
It’s a contract,
Brian Quaranta 07:31
It’s a contract which, by the way, is the best thing you can ever sign, by the way, right? Because if you ever sign paperwork to put your money in the stock market, that big packet that you sign on every single page, it says, If we lose your money, there’s nothing you can do about it. A contract says, here’s what we’re giving you, here are the guarantees. Here’s what we promise you. And by the way, every state has a state insurance department that regulates every insurance company that does business in that state. Now think about this, if every state has an insurance department, if that insurance company wants to do business in all 50 states, think about how many insurance departments are auditing their products. Now we use annuities, good point because of the insurance feature. We insure our cars, we insure our homes, we insure our health. Why would we not insure the most important thing we’re all going to need in retirement, and that’s our income right now. That doesn’t mean you can’t have money in the market, but you should be taking care of your income first. And this is why I wrote the book Right Track Your Retirement. And I want you to go to RightTrack. I’m sorry, OnTheMoneyOffer.com. Again, it’s OnTheMoneyOffer.com. You can get a copy of my book absolutely free. We mail out the physical copy to you. You’re going to get this in the mail. It’s yours to keep. But what else I want you to do is call the 800 number, because my team is standing by to take your call and get you scheduled for a complimentary appointment, and when you come in, you are going to get something out of this meeting. You’re not going to get a sales pitch. You’re not going to get people pressing in to do anything. What you’re going to get is you’re going to get a thorough, comprehensive second opinion that will help you identify any red flags in your current situation? Again? 1-888-382-1298, call the number right now, folks.,
Rebecca Powers 09:46
All right, and stay with us. I’m Rebecca Powers here with Brian Quaranta and we’re talking about how you can right track your retirement.
Brian Quaranta 09:54
Most people worry they’ll run out of money in retirement. Are you one of them after decades of work? 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 10:43
All right, welcome back this week, we decided to talk about annuities. It’s a powerful tool. You have to know which kind is the right kind, a powerful tool to secure and protect your hard-earned money. Why has maybe it’s Wall Street. Why has it been marketed against so long? Those annuities?
Brian Quaranta 11:03
Well, look, I mean, Wall Street… Wall Street wants money to stay in Wall Street.
Rebecca Powers 11:10
Their brokers’ not going to tell you, take out from the stock market and put it into a safe place, because that’s not their purview.
Brian Quaranta 11:18
You know, in 2000, 2001 when I was at the big box firm, I had went to my manager at the time, and I had read an article about annuities, and I thought, wow, I didn’t know there was such a product. Nobody had ever taught me about it. And I said, Why are we not utilizing this? Because most of the people that we’re trying to help are retired, and their fear is running out of money. Their fear is that if the markets go down, they don’t have the time to recover, because they can’t afford to take the risk, and if the annuity is going to protect their money and at the same time provide a source of income for both the husband and the wife for the rest of their lives. Why are we not taking the money that’s in the market, or at least some of it, and putting it into the annuity? And what he said to me is, why I said, I can’t be with these big box firms anymore. He said, Brian, if we utilize annuities, we will cannibalize the revenue of the firm now, wow. In more simple terms, that means that we will reduce the revenue of the firm. And here’s why annuities do not allow you to charge an annual management fee.
Rebecca Powers 12:47
Okay? It’s a one time commission.
Brian Quaranta 12:51
It’s a one-time commission to the advisor. The advisor does not set the commission. The insurance company does. They get paid one time, an advisor will make way more money off of investing somebody’s money in the stock market than they will ever buy in an annuity. The worst business model, quite frankly, that you can choose is the one that I chose because we don’t have the luxury of just sitting back and collecting fees, right? But you know what? I sleep well at night, Rebecca.
Rebecca Powers 13:27
And your business has grown so much, and it’s from referrals to family members from your current clients. And that says it all. Yeah,
Brian Quaranta 13:33
Yeah, and so many clients call me when the market’s dropping and they’ll say, Brian, why is it that I seem like every time the market drops, I’m the only one out of my friends not panicking? And I said, well, because your plan was designed for times like these. Your plan was designed to weather any storm that could come through. And that is the type of plan you want going into retirement, and the annuity plays such a great role. Now, there’s lots of different types, sure, and I think we could probably get to that maybe on the last segment, right? But you know, annuities, annuities, the most important thing we have to understand is that they are a private pension, and whoever ran the campaign that annuities are bad, or I hate annuities, and you should too. It was an absolutely brilliant marketing campaign because, for whatever reason, it stuck, yeah, just like things. I mean, think about health and fitness, right? I mean, they used to tell us not to eat steak
Rebecca Powers 14:39
Or butter.
Brian Quaranta 14:39
Or butter.
Rebecca Powers 14:40
We used to use margarine, and that’s so much worse,
Brian Quaranta 14:42
Yeah, like, maybe, like, have something light, like pasta, yeah, right? I mean, it’s funny. Now think about it, yeah. You know, there’s people that all they do is eat steak now.
Rebecca Powers 14:53
Right, and avocados.
Brian Quaranta 14:55
Pepperoni sticks, you know, Dr Atkins was right.
Rebecca Powers 15:00
Yeah, and use real butter.
Brian Quaranta 15:01
And I took a really big risk because I knew it was going to be an uphill battle, because there was so much negative press about the annuities out there. Can you imagine a young kid 25 years ago talking to somebody about how they should be protecting a little bit of their money in this type of annuities, so that they’ve got guaranteed income for the rest of their life. And, you know, people just come through the 90s where they were making all kinds of great money, and the tech bubble burst. They lost a lot, but they still remember, remembered all those returns they were getting. And so, you know, it was a real uphill battle, and today, it’s much easier than it’s ever been, because even the big box firms are finally getting smart and realizing that maybe we should do something.
Rebecca Powers 15:50
Yeah, carve out a little bit, because they’re getting wise to us.
Brian Quaranta 15:53
Yes, and the key here, folks is, you know, there’s clients of ours, and they had come to an event that I had done a couple years ago, and they said, you know, our primary need for our money is going to be income. And we’re currently working with an advisor right now, and that advisor has our million dollars invested in different stocks, bonds and mutual funds. I take a look at the portfolio. It’s a halfway decent portfolio. There’s nothing you know terribly wrong with it, but they said we haven’t had good returns over the past few years, and we’re starting to see our principal go down. And so, they’re using 100% of their money to generate the income that they need. And I said, What if I could show you a way where I could use 30% of your money to generate 100% of your income needs? So, what we were able to do out of that million dollars? I said, Look, I still want you to have money in the market, because I want the growth. I want the ability for us to be able to keep pace with inflation, and I know that we’re going to have time with that risk money, especially if I build it the way that I’m going to share with you. So, I said, if we carve off and take about $300,000 of the 1 million and we put it into this guaranteed income annuity, I can get you the $30,000 a year that you need, guaranteed for the rest of your life and guaranteed for the rest of your wife’s life, with only using 30% of the portfolio. So, I said, we can either use 100% of your portfolio to generate 100% of your income, or I can use 30% of your portfolio to generate 100% of your income. And I said, which plan would you want? And they said, why wouldn’t we go that direction? Because now what’s happened is the $700,000 that we left in the stock market that truly becomes long term money. Now the reason why it is long-term money is because we do not need to touch it. The minute you start touching your money, that long term is over. And that is some of the disconnect and contradictions that we see with the way Wall Street wants you to invest your money.
Rebecca Powers 18:35
And there’s that compound loss when you withdraw constantly, your compounding loss. Albert Einstein said compounding interest should be the eighth wonder of the world. That’s right, those who know it get it, those who don’t lose it.
Brian Quaranta 18:50
Rebecca that is such an excellent point, because folks, if you’re pulling money out of your risk investments, you are stopping the compounding. You are stopping the compounding of that money, because when you pull money out, that money that you’re growing is not going back in to help the compounding. So that’s a great point to bring up, because you flatten out the ability for that money to grow at a much more rapid pace, because you literally just threw compounding interest out the door. And folks, this is why you need to go to OnTheMoneyOffer.com and get a copy of my book absolutely free. Call the 800 number 1-888-382-1298, my team is standing by to take your call and schedule a time for you to come in. Don’t kick the can down the road. This is not a time to procrastinate. I know change can be hard, but I promise you will make it easy, and you’ll be thankful you came in.
Rebecca Powers 19:54
Speaking of making it easy, if you don’t want to dial your phone, there’s a QR code- wait, there you go. There’s the QR code right there. Stay with us.
Speaker 1 20:03
We know the market is going to get worse from here. This is the biggest monthly decline in 10 years. People’s 401(k)s took a major hit.
Speaker 2 20:12
My investments are tanking. My retirement isn’t going as planned. Can’t believe I let my kid talk me into buying crypto. I mean, what is that anyway?
Speaker 1 20:20
This was the fourth worst contraction in history.
Speaker 3 20:25
So, how are you two doing?
Brian Quaranta 20:25
Your financial future doesn’t have to be uncertain. I’m Brian Quaranta with Secure Money Advisors. If you have amassed a nest egg, it’s time for a financial advisor to help you reach your retirement goals. This is one of the greatest tax windows in history, now is the time to take advantage of this tax discount while you can. We specialize in retirement planning, tax mitigation, estate planning and more. Plan your retirement right Call now for your complimentary portfolio review and tax analysis.
Rebecca Powers 20:58
Welcome back. We’re always talking about how you can secure your money risk less. Do you even know your risk tolerance? That’s really where the conversation begins. Brian, why is risk not a smart thing to do? Risk and retirement don’t go together. Why?
Brian Quaranta 21:13
It doesn’t because you don’t have the time to recover, right when you’re working and you have money going into your plan. If there’s market volatility, you have time to recover. But most people that earn retirement are utilizing their money. So, if the market goes down, we know it will come back. But the question you have to ask yourself is, will it come back in the time period you need it to come back in. You see, folks, this is why I truly believe that when you have won the game, when you have accumulated enough money, you do not need to continue to play that game. You know, I wrote a story in my book about Babe Ruth. Did you know Babe Ruth had an annuity? I know
Rebecca Powers 22:01
I know, I love that. You said his manager was the one that said, Hey, I’m kind of worried about things the economy. You need to take big portion of that money you wrote about in the book, yeah.
Brian Quaranta 22:10
And it was during the Depression, yeah. Ticket sales were down. And, you know, Babe Ruth’s manager kept advising him, you need to take some of this money so that you will get an income stream for the rest of your life. Now, Babe Ruth used the old types of annuities. What were they then? So back then, if you bought an income annuity, you gave up control of your principal. Oh, so, Babe Ruth gave about $200,000 of his money to generate income for the rest of his life, which that would have been equivalent to him getting roughly about $3 to $400,000 a year in today’s dollars, okay, but the key to that is the fact that he never had to worry about income. And a lot of the baseball players back then, especially during the Great Depression, because ticket sales were down, a lot of them went broke, sure, you know. And even today, a lot of professional athletes go broke because they didn’t plan, yeah, and the old annuities, you know, if you died, the insurance company kept your money. The reason I’m such an advocate for the new types of income annuities is, you know, give you a good example. So, I just bought another annuity for Kate and I now this one I put directly in Kate’s name. Now there are reasons for that. That’s the other thing. You have to sometimes think about certain things, and sometimes you might want to put things together jointly. Sometimes you might want it just in their name. And there’s reasons, and for me, there was a reason for doing that, but the type of income annuities that are out there today, let’s say Kate and I, we die in a common accident together. 100% of the money that’s in that annuity gets paid out to my two boys.
Rebecca Powers 24:16
With just their name on the beneficiary line and a death certificate.
Brian Quaranta 24:20
With their name on the beneficiary line, death certificate. Goes directly to those boys. No probate court, no probate court, no, nothing. And so, we never lose control of money. And another thing is this, when we talk about refinancing your home, when interest rates are good, right, or when interest rates go down, well, when interest rates go up, it’s good for the annuities, it’s a great time to refinance your annuities. So, we just recently went through a period where we were using a really great annuity about four or five years ago, but interest rates were much different. Okay, lower then much lower. And a lot of people get scared of these terms, because annuities will say the contract’s for 10 years, and they think their money’s locked up. No, you can take money out day one if you want to. But because interest rates went up, we were able to take annuities that had only been in contract for three, four years and replace them, refinance them with brand new ones. And we were having people come in that had annuities they had bought from other advisors that were not having that conversation with them. And we took, we have a- one of my favorite stories is a husband and wife that came in. Neil, one of my (indistinct)
Rebecca Powers 25:32
Yeah, Neil Mager.
Brian Quaranta 25:34
Yeah, who’s been on the show before, says, Brian, look at this. These people are getting $2,000 a month. If we move the annuity from where it’s at right now into this annuity here, their $2,000 a month goes to $3,800 a month. That’s almost a hundred percent increase in income
Rebecca Powers 25:57
Because of the bonuses and the different things?
Brian Quaranta 25:59
The higher rates.
Rebecca Powers 26:01
The higher rates.
Brian Quaranta 26:01
The higher rates, the payout rates, everything. So, if you have not, if you own an annuity, come in, because we can look at bringing you through the same process we bring through our clients, where we look at refinancing all the time. And that’s the thing. People think that once you buy this annuity, you’re stuck with it forever. No, if we can improve after two years, three years, four years, we’re going to do it. Because if we can get you more money, well, that’s not a bad thing, right? And if you don’t like the more money I get you, then maybe you can give it to me!
Rebecca Powers 26:33
Or maybe we’re not right for you.
Brian Quaranta 26:37
But again, folks, this is why you got to go to OnTheMoneyOffer.com get a copy of my book, read the book, understand the philosophy, because if you don’t have a money philosophy, you’re going to fall for anything. So again, call 1-888-382-1298, schedule a time to come. In order the book, and we’ll see at the office.
Rebecca Powers 26:56
And again, it is OnTheMoneyOffer.com. We really want you to get the book if it’s before your appointment or even after. And as Brian said, You will never be felt like you’re being pressured or sold anything. And if they’re on the right track, even with their annuities, it’s in black and white. You’ll show them what the top companies in the country would be willing to do.
Brian Quaranta 27:16
Yeah, and keep in mind, we use the annuity as a tool. It’s a tool. It’s just another tool in the toolbox to make retirement even better, the right annuity is going to provide you with peace of mind and security. And not all annuities are equal. There’s lots of different types out there. So, working with an independent fiduciary who can shop the market for you and work with all the companies, and we have a software that does it. You get to see it. That’s who you want to be working with. So again, thanks for joining us.
Rebecca Powers 27:48
Have a great week, everyone, we love you Pittsburgh. We’ll see you next time.
