Hosts: Denise Kovach, CFP®, AIF® and Joe Bert, CFP®, AIF®
Good afternoon everyone, welcome to On The Money with Certified Financial Group, part of the news 96.5 WDBO ask the experts weekend. Joe Bert and Denise Kovach are certified financial professionals from the Certified Financial Group and they are here taking your calls. 844-220-0965. That’s 844-220-0965. Of course you could always text us your questions. 21232. Good morning everyone.
Good morning. How are you?
I’m good, how are you doing?
Good. We understand your father is a long-time listener to our show, so good morning to Laurel’s father who may be out there listening this morning.
Yay.
Well Denise and I are here to take questions that your father and all of our listeners might have about anything that’s on your mind regarding your personal finances. As we say, we go through life trying some of this, trying some of that, and wake up at 55 years old to find out we have nothing more than a collection of financial accidents and some day those paychecks are going to start and we have to figure out how are we going to get the income that we want to maintain the lifestyle that we hoped and dreamed about in our what they say golden years. Your questions oftentimes revolve around issues about stocks and bonds and mutual funds and real estate, long-term health care, IRAs, annuities, life insurance, reverse mortgages, all that and more. And Monday through Friday, Denise and I and the other certified financial planning professionals at CFG do this for a fee, but on Saturday morning we are here absolutely free. So if there’s anything that’s on your mind regarding your personal finances, things you’ve been thinking about, questions that’s you’ve always had, wonder how this works, can I do this, can I not do that, we are here to take your questions. And the good news is for you the lines are absolutely wide open and you don’t even have to use your real name, you can pretend you’re Jack or Daphne or Loretta or whoever you want to be, and we’ll take your call. So the lines are wide open, right Denise? We are here.
We are.
And all you have to do is pick up those phones and dial those magic numbers, once again Laurel:
844-220-0965. 844-220-0965. And Denise, I understand you’re here to talk to us about bad habits that are going to ruin our retirement.
Yep. Joe was just talking about that. Some people make some mistakes as they approach retirement. First of all, you don’t want to treat retirement as the destination. It’s actually the beginning of the next part of your life. And it’s really easy for people who are still working to think of retirement as an end goal, but it really is a mistake if you only concentrate on reaching the finish line.
So people — let me stop you right there. So what we see is people say, at 66 I want to retire. That’s all they think about. They don’t think about the remaining 20, 25 years.
The fuel to keep them going.
Right, exactly.
Absolutely. So people need to keep in mind that retirement could actually last longer than your working career, so you need to have assets that are going to last. I’ve even had clients say to me, I plan to retire in a year or two, so I think I need to invest much more conservatively.
I hear that all the time.
You do?
Yeah.
I thought it was just me.
People think — they don’t want to lose any money because obviously they can’t go back and replenish it.
Right.
But what they don’t realize is I think what you’re about to tell them what happens when you get really really conservative in your retirement years, what <Inaudible>.
I’m going to talk about that. Portfolios, Joe, as you know, the may need to be tweaked, but it’s certainly not time to put on the breaks. And having said that, don’t avoid investment risk. Reducing volatility and lowering risk in retirement may make sense, but not everyone can afford to buy only CDs or low yielding bonds for the rest of their life and still maintain their desired lifestyle. Inflation is a huge factor, and it will destroy any conservative investment strategy given enough time. I think that’s where you were going with that.
Yeah, I think most people fail to realize that over time the cost of living will absolutely go up for you, and I think the challenge is that people, when they retire, as you’ve probably seen, they come in with a rough estimate as to what it costs to live, and until we give them our detailed living expense form that has virtually everything on it including the termite <?> bond, they don’t realize really how much it costs to live every month, every year. And then what they don’t realize is that that cost will definitely increase over their retirement years. And it’s easy to look at where you are today, because you have that information. Usually it’s incorrect or incomplete information. And then, well, I have so much coming in from Social Security and maybe from my pension and I get so much from interest or dividends. But then, what happens five, ten, fifteen years down the road when the cost of everything has perhaps doubled and you still have the same income, and that is a problem.
I remember years ago I used to work for a Datsun <?> dealership.
Datsun?
Uh-huh. Remember Datsun?
Datsun.
A barbarian <?> auto house is what it was called.
Okay.
And they had this beautiful yellow 240Z on the showroom floor, and I mean, it was beautiful. What do you think that thing cost?
What year?
I think it was 1976.
1976, my guess that that car probably cost about $8,000.
Less than that.
Really?
Yeah. You try to buy a car today like that —
You can buy a used Yugo for that.
So another — let me get back on these bad habits. And we’ve talked about this before, Joe — many people think that they’ll spend 70% to 80% of their previous salary in retirement, but is this really the way to build your budget, right? What I would suggest is put together a list of necessary expenses, and then add additional expenses that will benefit you, and for each cost, ask yourself if spending that money will actually make your life better, or is the expense there just because it’s always been there. And even so, another thing you can do is a couple of years before you do retire, once you get this budget done, live on that budget. See if it makes sense for you.
That’s a good point.
Yeah.
Yeah. You have this theoretical spending plan, see if you can really do it.
Absolutely.
And that includes the vacations that you want to take, the dining out that you want to do, the stuff that you want to buy.
The stuff.
The stuff. It’s the stuff that accumulates, I know.
And don’t go into retirement thinking that retirement will solve all of your problems, because that’s not going to happen. Yeah, you’ll have less stress and more free time, but retirement may bring about some other challenges you didn’t have when you were working.
Such as?
Declining income.
Oh yeah.
Loss of health insurance.
Yeah.
And perhaps increased health care costs.
Yeah.
You don’t want to carry any problems you had while you were working into your retirement, so fix them now. Or you burn out from work, find another job. No time to pursue your passion, find the time to become more productive. If you don’t live a balanced life now, there’s no guarantee that your retirement will be any different.
For sure.
And finally, don’t stop being active. Stay fit and healthy, both physically and mentally.
And even — people retire, they say — well maybe they don’t like their current job, they can’t wait to get the hell out, excuse my French, but you really need to be doing something in those later years, even if it’s volunteering or being a Walmart greeter or bagging groceries at Publix, just to get out, to be with people and to feel that you’re productive in some way, shape, or form. It’s good for you physically, it’s good for you emotionally, and I think people need to focus on that. That doesn’t mean that you can’t kick back and relax — and get something that accommodates your personal lifestyle. If you like to sleep late or whatever it is, then find the position that you don’t have to start until noon or something.
My husband’s already — he’s semi-retired, as you know.
Uh-huh. We know.
And he’s already on me saying, you need to figure out what you’re going to do when you retire. I’m like, I’m not retiring. He says, you just still need to think about it.
Figure out. That’s right. Where are you going.
I’m going to pull out my charcoal pencils and start drawing again.
There you guy. Hey, that’d be pretty good.
I love to draw.
Oh, I’ve never seen your work.
Yes you did, I drew a picture of my dad —
Oh yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes —
And I posted it on Facebook.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Incredible. Yes. Very good. Alright, we’re here, folks, to take your questions about anything that might be on your mind regarding your personal financials. As you enter those retirement years, think about retirement, all those things that come across your mind, the health care — those are the toughest challenges that we deal with when we’re doing planning for retirement and somebody wants to retire before they’re eligible for Medicare.
I tell you what, it’s pricey. I don’t know —
It’s very pricey, very pricey, and people don’t realize the impact that that has, so you have to plug that into the numbers and see what happens, and oftentimes it makes sense to work a little bit longer, get closer to that Medicare eligible age, or get into Medicare before you retire. But once again, the toughest cases that we work on are those folks that already made that irrevocable decision, I’m quitting, I’m out of here, I’m going to get my Social Security at 62, only to came in to our office for the first time five or six years into retirement when the wheels are coming off and say, help me.
Right.
And those are very, very difficult cases. So folks, if you want financial planning, that’s what Denise and I and the other certified financial planner professionals at CFG do for a fee, and we are here this morning to take your questions absolutely free. So if you have any questions about anything that’s on your mind regarding your personal finances, once again, we are here, the lines are absolutely wide open, I think everybody’s out enjoying the beautiful weather this morning, Laurel. So why don’t you give them the numbers.
Okay, we’ll do it a little slower just in case they missed it. It’s 844-220-0965, again 844-220-0965. Or if you’re a little shy and you don’t really want to call you can text us your questions. Text those to 21232.
There we go.
There we go. Or e-mail.
Or e-mail us.
You threw out that there — we talked about our living expense form that we give to clients when we do planning for them. I think you would be happy to send that to a client if they are a prospect or a listener that may want to see exactly what you have to consider in your retirement years. So why don’t you give them your e-mail address and they can contact you and you can send that out to them this week.
Again, Joe is referencing a personal expense summary that we use. It lists the various expenses that you may have now and in retirement. It’s very thorough, so if any of you want to try to put together your budget for now or for retirement, simply e-mail me at denise@financialgroup.com, and I would be happy to send that out to you.
There you go.
I had a — it wasn’t a client, in fact he was a long-time listener, came to see me this week, and he came in with his tail between his legs kind of licking his wounds, and unfortunately he retired from a civil job, and when he retired I told him what I think he ought to do, and he unfortunately ignored my advice and put all of his money in gold.
No.
Yeah, he did. And now he has a disaster on his hands and wants to know what options he has available to him.
So the actual metal.
Well actually it was in his retirement plan. He bought —
So it’s being stored in a vault.
Yes.
Okay.
And now he’s underwater and he needs income and he realizes that this was not such a good idea. Now whether it was gold or Yahoo stock or whatever it was, the key here is, as you know, is diversification. Betting the farm or the ranch or your financial future on one particular kind of investment — I don’t care what it is, real estate, gold, mutual funds, I don’t care what it is — is a mistake, because you need diversification, because any particular point in time something is going to outperform or underperform, and if you have a whole bunch of that underperforming stuff when you need the income, therein lies the problem.
And bringing up another subject within an IRA, I was speaking with somebody recently that had a lot of real estate in her IRA. I mean, a considerable amount. Of course a little bit of cash there too because of the expenses and whatever, but when you do that, the liquidity that you need when you have to take your mandatory distributions may be problematic. So that’s something that you and I might need to talk about a little bit.
Sure.
So people understand that.
People like real estate as an investment because it’s tangible, you can drive by, you know what’s there, you believe it’s never going to go down in value, and you want to own it because you don’t understand other investment alternatives, and so many people put real estate in their retirement plans, which is fine. But you bring up a very valid point: if you’re loaded up on that particular non-liquid asset, when it comes time to make those required minimum distributions at age 70 and a half, you need to be sure that you have enough cash flow to meet those distributions. Otherwise, you’re going to be into a forced liquidation at perhaps the wrong time.
Mm-hmm.
So once again that gets back to diversification and why it’s so very, very important. We’re going to take a break here I see, Laurel, with the fingers in the air —
Yes.
That’s the signal, that’s the radio signal I got —
That’s — yeah, that’s the signal.
<Inaudible> we got it. Okay.
Hey Laura <?>, you need to put your hands in the air a little higher.
Wave. Sorry, my arms aren’t as long as Kyle’s. I’ll jump. Alright. You’re listening to On The Money with Certified Financial Group. If you’ve got questions about retirement, about your finances, now is the time to call because we’ve got open lines. 844-220-0965. 844-220-0965. Or you can text us: 21232.
21232.
That’s it.
That’s it. Alright.
Planning tomorrow today.
Welcome back here, you’re listening to In The Money right here on news 96.5 WDBO. We’re here for you. You’ve got financial questions, you’ve got retirement questions, give us a call: 844-220-0965. Certified Financial Group here. 844-220-0965. Or text us: 21232. We’ve got Joe Bert and Denise Kovach here, and we want to talk to Jane. Jane’s got a question about wills versus trusts here in Florida.
Good morning, Jane.
Good morning.
Hello, Jane.
Good morning.
Good morning. How can we help you?
Just would like to know what’s the difference between the will or a trust here in the state of Florida?
Ah, it’s pretty much —
<Inaudible>.
Sure, it’s pretty much the same all over the country. It’s not just unique to Florida. A will, what the purpose of a will is to pass the assets on to your survivors the way you want them passed. So you designate I want this to go to Mary, I want this to go to Jim, I want this to go to whomever, and that’s what a will does. And a will is used to pass on the assets that are in your name alone. Now that being said, let’s look at the different ways in which you can own property. If you own property in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, okay, that’s going to pass on to the survivor without going through probate and regardless of what your will says. You follow me?
Yes.
So let’s say — let’s take an example. And I’m not an attorney, by the way, although I play one on the radio as you can tell. But I want you to get legal help for this. Let’s say that you have a home and you want to leave that to your daughter, but you own that joint tenancy with right of survivorship with your husband. You pass away, your husband gets the house, regardless of what your will says. And that joint tenancy with right of survivorship overrides whatever your will says. Okay? Now, let’s say that you own the home or some property or some investment accounts and you want to pass that on to your daughter. You can do that through the will. If you do that through the will, it’s going to go through probate, it’s going to be time and it’s going to be expensive, or you can put it in a trust. When you put it in a trust, that avoids probate. Trusts are free from the probate court. So it’ll pass on to those survivors, and you can become creative in trusts. You can say, I don’t want Jane to get this money until she’s 30 years old and has a college degree and has to buy a house, or whatever you can think of that’s legal, you can put strings attached to it. You can also avoid assets going through probate, as I said, by jointly owned, by having a beneficiary named, and that’s typical in an annuity, in an insurance policy, in an IRA, in a 401(k), in a 457, in a 403b where you name a beneficiary. Whatever that beneficiary is, that avoids probate, and also regardless of what your will says, if you say I want to leave my 401(k) to Mary and your 401(k) beneficiary says that your ex-husband’s going to get it, your ex-husband gets the 401(k) money regardless of what your will says. So that beneficiary designation is very, very important. And the last way to avoid probate is to have accounts that are not retirement accounts, not IRAs, not insurance policies, not annuities. Let’s say you have an investment account, you can do what we call a TOD. What’s that, Denise?
Transfer on death, which means that upon your death, your assets transfer directly to the beneficiaries that you have designated.
Right. And that’s another way to avoid probate.
It is, but going back to the trust, another different between the will and the trust is that if you have a big — well, we’ll talk about this when we come back.
Alright, we hear the Beach Boys. We’ll get back to you, Jane. Hang in there.
Alright, if you’ve got questions, 844-220-0965. Again, call us right now, financial questions, retirement questions, with On The Money. 844-220-0965. Or text us at 21232. Because we are planning tomorrow today.
Welcome back. You’re listening to On The Money right here on news 96.5 WDBO with certified financial professionals, certified financial planners. We are taking your calls, because you have questions about finances. I know you do, because we all do, and we’re all worried about retirement. 844-220-0965. That’s the number you’ve got to call to get your questions answered. We’ve got open lines. 844-220-0965. Or if you’re driving and you don’t want to call in because you’re driving or you’re a little shy, you can always text us your question. Text that to 21232. I’m here with Joe Bert and Denise Kovach, and we’ve got a bunch of callers. But we were talking about wills and trusts and realty, right?
Yeah, we were talking to Jane about what’s the difference between a will and a trust. One of the other provisions or benefits of a trust, Jane, is in the trust document, you will designate what we call a successor trustee, so that kicks in if you become incapacitated and can’t manage your affairs. You can also designate your health care directives within the trust. It’s all encompassing. A way to get that done and not do a trust is to do what’s called a durable power of attorney and a health care surrogate form, which is generally less expensive. I think unfortunately trusts are sometimes oversold. You can do it on a pretty straightforward — like what Denise and I were talking about, titling your accounts appropriately. Be sure your beneficiaries are done correctly and do a health care surrogate form and durable power of attorney. But seek legal guidance on that, and I hope that helps you, Jane.
Alrighty.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks for your call. Thank you!
Thanks for your call!
And don’t forget one other thing, if you have a sizable estate, if you put a trust in place, then you can do some planning to avoid some estate taxes.
Yeah, if you have a huge estate, $10M, $12M, $15M and you want to do some trust planning as well.
Another benefit.
Yep, yep. Alright, we’ve got a call here from Robert. Robert wants to know about using birth certificates to make bond payments. What’s that about Robert?
I’ve been seeing a lot on YouTube and I know you don’t trust a lot on YouTube and stuff like that but I’ve been seeing more and more stuff pop up talking about using your birth certificate to pay off student loans or purchase cars or whatnot and I didn’t know if it was a fad or if there’s a just a fly by night scheme or if it’s actually true. And after you do it, what would the repercussions be after that?
I’m not sure. I’ve never heard of this. So, let me be sure for our benefit and our listeners’ benefits, what you’re hearing is you give your birth certificate to somebody in exchange for paying off your student loan or buying a car?
Basically what I understand is, your birth certificate is like a savings bond. So when you get that savings bond when you’re born, that’s basically money in the bank and I guess, from what I understand is, you present your birth certificate as a loan deposit and that’s what pays the bill. So you actually don’t have cash out of pocket. It’s actually the paper that has the money.
Robert, that is 100% bogus. Somebody is trying to convince you to give up perhaps your identity. So if you give up your birth certificate, they know where you were born, they know your birth date. The only thing they are missing is your Social Security number which is the next thing they’ll be asking and now you’re in a heap of trouble. I would stay off the Internet, stay away from those harebrained schemes. That makes absolutely zero sense. Absolutely zero sense. It’s bogus. End of story. But thanks for your call.
Thanks Robert.
Jeez oh man, schemes out there.
I’m looking it up on Snopes right now. False.
Oh, yeah, that’s — I mean, you want to talk about giving up your identity, giving up your birth certificate, wow. Somebody walks away, this is my birth certificate. Then they could use it to obviously take over your identity, get on airplanes and stuff.
Stuff.
Stuff!
That’s scary stuff!
Yeah, you don’t want to do that. Forget it. Scares the heck out of me. Okay, Laura we got some other callers, what’s going on?
Who’s next? We’ve got Mary!
Mary’s got a call. She wants to talk about. What do you want to talk about Mary? Good morning. How can we help you?
Good morning. Yes, my dad died in 2008 and my mother in 2012. My mother left the will. In the meantime, during all of that, I was fighting a pretty heavy illness and I had to pick my battles so to speak. I’ve recently got a copy of the will, which has never been probated and everything was to be sold. They have property in North Carolina and here in Florida. The problem is, my sister in the interim, has filed bankruptcy and included those back-taxes on all of those properties in her bankruptcy. How she did that, I don’t know. But it’s kind of frozen. What I can do, I had someone that was wanting to buy these properties and I wanted to get with my sisters but I can’t even sell them now.
First thing Monday morning, you need to seek an estate planning attorney and get this worked through, yeah.
Okay.
This is not do it yourself time, particularly with properties out of state. And the fact that those assets are out there and now somebody is making a claim on those assets, I would not — first thing Monday morning, pick up the phone. We have an attorney that we work with through our office. You can go to our website. Go to financialgroup.com. Click on estate planning. It’s Jodie Murphy.
Okay, okay.
She’s highly qualified in this area and she will treat you well. But that’s what you need to do and you can tell her you talked to me on Saturday morning and she’ll get you straightened out and down the right path. This is potentially going to be a disaster for you but it can be cleared up. But it’s definitely not do it yourself time.
Okay, alright, great. Well thank you so much.
You’re welcome. Very good luck to you. Mm-hmm, bye. Alright another call here. Laura, what do we got?
Michael has a question on qualifying for distribution for his wife.
Good morning Michael!
Good morning, how are you?
Good, how can we help you?
My wife is going to be turning 59 and a half soon and my question is, is she going to have to stay employed with her current employer to get a distribution. She has a Roth. Or is she going to have to leave her job as considered retirement and go back in a few weeks or a couple of months or get another job. How does this work? Does she have to stay? Is she tied in with her employer? Can she leave her employer to get that distribution? What does she have to do?
What you’re talking about, she has a 401(k) plan or a 403b or 457 or something like that?
Yes, it’s a Roth.
It’s a Roth. Okay. It’s a Roth 401(k)?
Yes, I believe so.
Okay, so it’s a Roth 401(k). And your question is does she need to stay employed to be able to make a distribution from that account?
No, can she stay employed once she turns 59 and a half?
Okay, yeah, of course.
Of course!
Yeah, why — unless she’s fired.
There’s two ways she can do that, Michael, she can take a loan, okay up to — what is it?
One half of your vested balance or 50,000, whichever is less.
Or she can take a distribution, but they’ll take 20% out in taxes automatically.
But if it is a Roth, they won’t.
That’s true. My mistake there.
So if it’s a Roth, they won’t.
If it’s a Roth, they won’t take taxes nor it will be no penalties but will it be considered income for that taxable year?
If it’s a Roth, of course not. No.
Has the Roth been open at least five years?
Yes, it’s been about 11 years.
Okay, okay.
Whoah. Yeah, then it shouldn’t be any tax consequences at all. The key is now, is can she make what’s called a distribution while she’s still employed? Some plans and it depends on the terms of the plan document, whether or not she can make a withdrawal while she’s still employed. I think that’s your question. Is that not your question?
Well, I’m getting confused because I heard about this in-service distribution, the terminology with that, that for her to stay with her employer, for her to take that distribution at 59 and a half, the plan administrator would have to offer an in-service distribution and that’s kind of confusing me a little bit.
Okay, an in-service distribution means that she can get a distribution from her account without a penalty. And she can continue to be employed, so that’s what an in-service distribution means.
But it has to be rolled over into a qualified account.
Okay, well let’s scratch that, because she wants to take a bulk payment of the total balance when she turns 59 and a half, and she wants to also stay employed for another additional two and a half years until she turns 62, at which point she plans on getting her Social Security.
Okay, my guess is that her plan document will allow her to take that withdrawal without taxation because it is a Roth and I think she should be able to do that. She inquired with human resources.
Okay, and she’ll still be able to stay employed with the same employer and then retire at 62?
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yes, nothing — the retirement plan has nothing to do with her ability to keep her job.
Now, by law, is there any excuse that the financial company can use that she cannot take a full distribution at 59 and a half?
The plan is run by whatever the plan document states and she should be entitled to what’s called a summary plan description. So she should ask her employer for what’s called the SPD, Summary Plan Description, they have outlined all of the features of her particular plan.
Okay, because her employer switched companies a year ago and we never read the fine print. What if it says you have to be with this particular company for 10 years?
No, no, no, no.
I mean that’s what I’m saying by law, she has the right to take that out at 59 and a half correct?
Yeah, what you’re thinking about is when you qualify for a pension or be vested in the employer contributions, that language I’m sure is not in there.
Okay, last question. You guys are financialgroup.com. Is that who you are?
That’s correct.
Okay, and we’ll look you up online and we may come in for a consultation.
Great, we look forward to meeting you. Thank you for the call Michael.
Thanks for your help.
Okay, take care.
Alright, Laura, what do we have next?
Okay, next <?> wants to talk about, you were talking about the realty and retirement and he said he missed it so he wants to talk to you next. Ask him what you want to ask him again.
Yes, hi, good morning. I thank you for answering my call. My call was basically I kind of missed the information you were talking about real estate. I’m retired and I have a real estate property that I have rented out so my question is, is that advisable for me to do or is it something that I should take the money out and put it some place else.
Okay, so let’s back up here. You are retired. You own a piece of real estate for investment and your question is should you cash it out and put the money somewhere else?
Right.
Okay, it all depends.
Our famous answer.
It all depends. You wouldn’t want to necessarily sell an investment that’s performing for you, that you are able to keep, that perhaps has upside potential that is providing you cash flow. No, there’s no reason to liquidate it. You probably caught the tail end of a call we were talking about having real estate in your retirement plan, which has complications. So if you are happy with the investment, if it is doing — if it has upside potential, if it’s in a reasonably good neighborhood and you’re able to get good rents from it and it’s not a burden on you, I would keep the property. What do you say Denise?
I agree. I agree. Depending on your other assets, it could be complementary to what else you’re holding. We don’t know. But like Joe said, if it is a good piece of property, hang onto it.
There’s no need to liquidate it when you get into retirement assuming that you’re pleased with the potential of the investment.
I’m pleased with the tenant, I’m pleased with the income. I’m also planning on getting another one. So, the thing is I am in Florida and I have the property in New Jersey so I will likely get one in Florida, because it’s out of state.
Alright, now let’s ask some questions about that. You bring up an interesting situation. The property that you have in New Jersey, is that in a living trust?
Actually I haven’t —
Not got that far yet?
I haven’t.
Is the property in your name alone?
No it’s in my name and my wife.
Okay, so it’s going to pass without probate. It should pass without probate. That’s what you have to be careful of. Right Denise, if you have property out of state in your name alone, then you’ve got probate in two states, Florida and the other state.
Which can be problematic.
Problematic. So that’s another purpose of the trust. Vanessa, sounds like you’re okay. Buy that property, enjoy your retirement. Alright. Take a break here.
Thank you guys. Take care.
Thanks for the call.
Alright. That opens up some lines so if you have questions, you want a call, we have one more segment, 844-220-0965. Wanda, you’re the first caller up so don’t go away on us because we’re going to grab you after the break here. 844-220-0965. Or you could always text us your question, 21232, 21232. This is On The Money with Certified Financial Group because we are planning tomorrow today —
Today.
844-220-0965.
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Welcome back. Thank you for listening to On The Money, brought to you by Certified Financial Group right here on News 96.5 WDBO. This is our last segment. We are back every Saturday, 8:00am, 9:00am to 10:00am, answering your financial questions. We have a bunch of calls we have to get through and we have a workshop we want to talk about right?
Exactly.
So let’s get it.
Exactly. I tried to say exactomundo, it didn’t work out.
No it didn’t but yeah, Nancy and I are hosting our Social Security boot camp next Thursday evening in our office.
This Thursday?
That’s this Thursday. Oh my goodness. It’s the 20th of July right? That’s this week.
At 6:00, we’re going to host our Social Security boot camp. We’re going to talk about claiming strategies, whether you’re married or divorced. You might have some opportunities there. We’re going to have some light refreshments. So if you have an interest in learning a little bit more about Social Security claiming strategies, you can go on our website and sign up to come on out. Again, it’s going to be in our office at Altemont Springs from 6:00 until about 7:30 next Thursday, which is July 20th.
So go to our website financialgroup.com. Click on a workshop so you can make a reservations right there online or leave a message at 407-869-9800. Once again 407-869-9800. Hope to see you there. Alright, Laura, what do we got?
Wanda has a will question, she’s held on patiently.
Hi Wanda.
Hey Wanda.
Good morning. How are you?
Good. How can we help you?
Yes sir, I wanting to find out, me and my husband, we’ve been married for 16 years, but he has children by his first marriage. Anyway, he has one of his daughters as beneficiary for his will. And I would like to find out exactly what do I have in —
Any rights? Do you have any rights?
Right!
Is that what you’re saying? Do you have any rights?
Yes sir. <Inaudible>.
That’s a legal question one and I’d want you to seek an attorney on that depending on how the will is written and what other assets that you might have in joint names. That’s going to solve the question for you. So it’s not a question that we are really qualified to answer on the radio. But I appreciate your call.
Alrighty, awesome. Thank you Wanda! We’re on to Shannon. He’s got some good questions about credit.
Morning Shannon.
Hey Shannon.
Hey, good morning everybody. I’ve got a quick question for you. One might not be as quick as you want it to be but so I own a business and I own two houses and when the kids came along and I got stuck in this construction loan a little while back, I found myself a little set back. I’ve got about $80,000 in unsecured credit debt. One is a business loan, but I’ve had to guarantee it all, so I’m just basically considering it my own debt. AmEx charged me off even though I was in complete communication with them and intended to pay them back and I still do at this point. But when my credit exploded it was like a stick of dynamite went off in my wallet. I’m asking myself what’s the difference between one stick and five sticks going off all at the same time if it is just a time and numbers game before I regain and get my credit back. So I’m debating a tactical lay-down of my credit. Feels ugly but —
What you’re talking about is filing bankruptcy?
Maybe not even going that far.
So what do you mean by tactical lay-down?
Simply stepping away from these cards.
And then it’s going to wreck your credit and you’re toast.
Right, credit is already wrecked. I’ve already got one charge off so there’s virtually nothing I can do with it when it pulls you down into your front end <?> of the five <?>.
So what you’re saying, it can’t get any worse than what it is.
I’m thinking that. What’s the difference between a four and mid fives, if neither of them will buy you anything?
Well, then, in your view that may be the decision that you have to make and then you have to determine whether or not they’re going to ultimately come after you for whatever assets they can find. That’s a personal decision but I see where you’re coming from. Can’t get any worse than what it is so what the heck.
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Thank you very much. Alright.
Alright, that just about does it. Do we want to give out numbers one more time?
Alright.
I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about John, he’s still on hold. My goodness John, hang on. Our number at the office 407-869-9800 or get on financialgroup.com.
This is On The Money. We’ll see you next Saturday.
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This is News 96 <Lost Signal>.
Dictation made on 7/26/2017 2:07 PM EDT.