Hosts: Nancy Hecht, CFP®, AIF® and Joe Bert, CFP®, AIF®
Hello everybody, and welcome to another addition of On the Money with the Certified Financial Group, we’re here on News 965 WDBO. We’ve got Joe Bert and Nancy Hecht in the studio this morning. Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you today?
Doing great, how are you, Carl?
Oh, not too bad. Kicking it off on another Saturday 9:00. Why are we here, Joe?
We are here to talk about your personal finances, or talk about those issues that might be on your mind as you approach those retirement years, how do we turn our 401k, IRA and savings and investments into income. Because when those paychecks stop, you’ll have Social Security and whatever you’ve been able to save and accumulate. And unfortunately we go through life trying some of this, trying some of that, and look back and find that we have a collection of financial accidents. And somebody has to pull that all together and show you what you need to do, and our objective is to show you what you need to do so you don’t look back 5 or 10 years from now and say gee, I wish I had known, or gee I’m sorry I did. So that’s why we’re here, to clear up those questions that you might have about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, long-term healthcare, IRAs, annuities, reverse mortgages, life insurance, all of that and more, we are here. So Nancy and I are ready to take your calls and the good news for you is that because we just kicked off, the line is absolutely wide open. And you don’t even have to identify yourself. So you can call in, pretend you’re Jack, Daphne, Loretta, whatever you want to be, <Inaudible>.
Jack, Daphne, Loretta, okay?
Or Angelo.
Yeah. Or Angelo. Or Angela, interesting story. And for our regular listeners, you may remember a couple of weeks back, we had a call from Angelo who wanted to talk about gold, gold, and gold coins and so forth. Nancy took the call she —
I was there, I was much politer than I wanted to be.
But you didn’t even know it was him.
No, it was my husband.
And she didn’t even recognize him. I knew it was him. I could recognize his voice and she’s talking to him for a minute and a half, talking about the pros and cons and so on, so forth. She’s hung up the call and it wasn’t until 10 minutes later that we got talking about it. I said Angelo, do you recognize Angelo. She said who’s Angelo? I said your husband.
<Inaudible> means I listen to him.
Wow.
I don’t think I’d — I would be able to recognize my own wife’s voice <Inaudible>.
I <Inaudible> communication better. Take that where you want.
So we’re going to take your calls once again. Those numbers are 844-220-0965. That’s 844-220-0965. We also have the text machine up and running as well, 21232. But let’s kick it off with today’s topic. Nancy Hecht here to say ways to help your marriage survive retirement.
Right, right. I mean we deal mostly with people that are at or near retirement, so there’s a lot of issues that come up that people don’t think about. The first one is what is your vision of what your time will be like. You know if you stop and think about it, most couples spend awake about five hours a day together.
Okay.
So now you could potentially going into a world where it’s close to 24/7 together. And nobody is used to spending that much time —
With anything or anybody.
With anybody, with anybody.
Yeah.
And you may love this person to pieces, but you could also <Inaudible> to dislike them very fast. So you have to really — and that’s one question when somebody comes in and says that they’re getting ready to retire, the first thing I ask them is what are you going to do with your time. And if they can immediately start listing off a whole bunch of things that they have planned that they want to have to do, I think that’s great. If they say um, then the first thing I tell them is they are not ready to retire. So I mean that is a biggie. And then the role identities in retirement. You know, if somebody was always the wage earner and somebody was always the home maintenance person, how are those roles are going to change or equalize or recalibrate themselves in retirement?
Right.
That’s a big thing, along with what is your identity.
How big is the couch you have in your office to get the people to <Inaudible>.
It’s big enough. You have to pursue your own interests and maintain your separate friendships. Now I mean — most people do that now. They don’t spend, again, 24/7 with their spouse, and you have obviously a lot of common interest and goals. But I’m always of the frame that your spouse is not your best friend. Your spouse has a way higher place in my life at least versus best friend. And you have to have other friends and interests to keep your own personal relationship with your spouse interesting.
There you go.
And something that we do and we did even when my daughter was little is have a date night, and that’s really important. So I mean you’re not going to work, you’re not going on and doing, but —
Your life is going to have a radical change, yeah.
You know, I have a lot of friends that are now becoming empty nesters, the last kid is getting ready to leave and go to college. And they look upon that with a little bit of trepidation. And the first thing I say to them is A, you did the job that you were supposed to because the kid is ready to leave. And B, now you get to date your spouse again. So that’s another important thing to help —
The empty nester time is absolutely the best time.
Well, I am not complaining about it.
Once you get through the psychological part, because the psychological part is your child is leaving home, whether it’s the last one leaving home and then you’re looking at your life, and then you’re wondering what that’s all about and you’re feeling older of course. And then you feel proud about what you’ve done for that child leaving home, and then when they’re no longer there and you have the house to yourself, you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them, how you want to do them. And you don’t have to worry about somebody coming home late and where are they and so on and so forth. <Inaudible> and —
Or coming in unannounced.
Oh yes.
Yeah.
So we immediately turned Brady’s room into a gym.
There you go.
So there’s no boundaries <?> there.
Change the locks.
Yep.
Okay. Alright, we’ve got some calls, here, Carl. What’s going on?
Well, we’ve got Daphne on line one.
Daphne.
Somebody wanted to be Daphne.
Alright, Daphne.
<Inaudible> all of the great names you put out. Because Daphne sounded good, so we’ll do that.
Good morning, Daph.
Daphne is in Orlando. Go ahead, you’re on with the Certified Financial Group on WDBO.
Good morning, you gave me a big decision whether to call myself Jack, Daphne, or Loretta but Daphne is good. Thank you for that. I will be receiving a small inheritance, $10,000 but very grateful, and from out of state. It’s going to be coming from unfortunately from New Jersey. And I was wondering the tax situation. Do they retain tax, do I have to pay taxes — what —
Daphne, the good news for you, there’s absolutely no taxes due. It’s your money, as you want to spend it. So when the estate settled, the taxes will have been paid at that point and then the — I presume it’s coming to you in cash.
A check.
A check, yeah okay. Yes.
Yeah, well yeah, I mean that’s it. But as the recipient, it doesn’t matter if it was 10,000 or 10M. As the recipient, whether it’s an inheritance or as a gift, you are not responsible for the tax.
Oh, okay. Okay, good to know.
So now you can use this in a manner that best suits your life. If you need to keep it as an emergency fund, great. If there’s a trip that you’ve always wanted to do, down payment on a car, further education, whatever. It’s yours and you do not have to worry about any tax ramifications at all.
Let me give you some ideas, Daphne.
Yes.
Do you have any credit card debt?
Yes.
Okay, well that may be the first you want to do is kill that credit card debt because that will help your financial situation. And then —
Definitely.
And then that monthly payment that you’re sending the credit card company, do you have an IRA or a 401k that you could put money into.
Yes, I do.
There you go. So that monthly check that writing to the credit card company, take that $10,000, okay? Pay off the credit card debt and then you start taking that monthly check that you were sending to Visa and put it in your IRA or 401k and get a tax deduction, that’ll help your retirement.
Although, if you do not have an emergency fund, I would caution you to save part of the money that you’ve just inherited and use it as an emergency fund.
I was thinking about that. Also, because of my age and I’m starting — we’ve had — as a family, we’ve had emergencies and we need — so I went back to work even though I retired. I’m 69 now, and I went back to work. I was very happy about it. And I have the opportunity to do the 401k with my new job, so my thing is to match that to maximum and continue. Is that a good idea?
Good, good.
Yeah, try to get the max. One other thing that you — Nancy mentioned emergency fund. You should have that, but you could always — usually in most plans you have the ability to borrow from your plan. You’re borrowing from yourself as the emergency <Inaudible>. I don’t want you to use your 401k for trivial things, but in an emergency sometimes your 401k balance, you can borrow half of your vested balance or up to $50,000, whichever is less. So that might be an option for you as well. But congratulations on the 10,000, use it wisely, and thanks for the call.
Well, yeah, we’re sorry for your loss.
And thank you all around and thank you for being to instructional and educating us. We greatly appreciate it.
That’s why we’re here <Inaudible>. Thank you very much.
Alright, thank you so much for the call, Daphne. If you want her line, it’s 844-220-0965. 844-220-0965. Text machine is up and running as well, 21232. Let’s go to Anthony and St. Cloud. Anthony, you’re up next with the Certified Financial Group here on WDBO.
Good morning, Anthony.
Good morning, guys. How are you guys doing?
Good.
Great, how can we help you?
So I purchased a house probably about two months ago in St. Cloud for about 156,000. We probably — the house is right now probably at 190. So we put — just in those couple of months, we’ve got some equity there. And we have about $30,000 worth of debt between student loans and credit cards. And I’ve been thinking of refinancing and using the money to pay off the debt and pay off the credit cards, but wasn’t too sure. Right now we’re at a 30 year fixed at 5% interest at 1,187 a month.
5% sounds a little high. Is your credit score a little on the low side?
It is. So I needed a co-signer to get the house.
Oh, oh, okay.
Yeah. I don’t think an equity line — first of all, the length of time that you’ve been there as you just said is a short period of time. And the amount of equity to value is not significant. I would say if you just wait another year or two, keep plowing against the credit cards and the student loans as much as you can. Then you’ll have more of a history of regular payments, timely payments, that’s going to boost your credit score up, that’ll have the home the ability to gain a little bit more equity. I don’t think rates are going to go up that much more between now and maybe a year from now, or two years from now. But if I were you, I would wait.
It’s one of the things you want to consider though because using a home equity loan or refinancing, that interest will be deductible to you. Whereas your student loan and your credit card is not deductible. But Nancy is right, get up a little bit more equity, have a consistent payment record and that’ll increase your credit score which could help the interest when you ultimately refinance.
Excellent. And then what will be the process if I wanted to take the co-signer off the deed. Would we have refinance or would it be like a —
Well that’s a — well, generally the lender isn’t going to do that because the lender wants all of the protection and guarantees that they can get. You’d need to refinance.
Okay, so that’d be the only way?
Yep, yep.
Okay. And then I had a question about an investment. Have you guys ever heard of Bitcoin?
Yep.
Yeah.
So what <Inaudible> thoughts on investing in that currency?
I think it’s the wild west.
It is.
Well, it’s the wild west.
It’s the wild west. Have you heard of any success stories, people investing in Bitcoin? I know they have another one, Litecoin and Etherium.
Yeah. And listen, unless you understand it thoroughly, stay away from it. Basically, what you’re doing, you’re speculating and there’s a difference between speculating and investing. We work in the investment world, we try to get volatility and risk out of portfolios. Bitcoin is a high risk, high right away proposition.
It’s the type of thing, Anthony, that you would go into if you could afford to lose every cent that you’re willing to put into it.
It’s like investing in marijuana farms, today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and the situation that you’re in, just moved in a home and all of that other stuff, I don’t <Inaudible>.
And don’t waste your money, put it in a credit card.
I don’t think you can afford to throw money away.
Yeah, stay away from what looks like get rich quick schemes because they generally are sure losers made focus on what you can control, and that’s paying off the credit card and your student loan and then refinance down the road. Thanks for the call, Anthony.
Appreciate it, Anthony. If you would like Anthony’s line, it’s 844-220-0965. 844-220-0965. The text machine is up and running as well, 21232. I do see some text questions in, we’ll get to those in a moment. First, we got to get the three big things you need to know. Stacy in Orlando, you’ll be up next. We are planning tomorrow —
Today.
On News 965 WDBO.
Hey, welcome back. This is On the Money with the Certified Financial Group here on News 965 WDBO. We are taking your phone calls with Joe Bert and Nancy Hecht from the Certified Financial Group certified financial planners, Certified Financial Group. 844-220-0965. That’s 844-220-0965. You can also text us your question, 21232. We are four minutes away from the latest news, weather, and traffic with Dave Wahl in the News 965 newsroom. Let’s get back to our busy phone callers. Talk to Stacy in Orlando. Stacy, you’re on with the Certified Financial Group here on WDBO.
Good morning, Stacy.
Hi Stacy, what’s your question?
Good morning. Good morning, I’ve been looking for a financial planner. However, I noticed that the ones that are touted the most or see the most publications, they want a significant amount of money in order to kind of work with you. I come from really, really modest beginnings and I know about people losing their shirt. I get really nervous. So when they ask me how much do I have — you know, have in my current retirement, I have about $0.25M. But I don’t want — you’re dealing with what you don’t know and no one in your family has ever invested, it gets even more scary. I’ve read everything about how to pick a financial planner and all of this other stuff. I’m still nervous. But I will say this: I’m comfortable putting $5,000 to $8,000 a month with a new financial planner, cash starting from scratch. Do you have any advice for me?
Sure. First, I want to take a little step back. Are you looking for someone to do planning for you? Are you looking for somebody to do investment management for you?
Kind of more like investment management and also kind of like help me working towards a goal as well. Because right now I have all of my money parked.
Alright, so the way we work is we do financial planning first, looking at where you’re at now, when you want to retire, looking at life expectancy, the types of things that you want to do, the family life cycle obligations you have between here and the end. And help you put together the roadmap, the blueprint, whatever acronym you want to use. And then we do risk assessment questionnaire to look at your timeframe, the needs for your assets, your attitudes, towards risk, all of that helps us put together an investment plan for you. And we would do an independent analysis on the current investments you have and then put together recommendations, also for independent investments. We don’t have an axe to grind as far as any type investments for our clients. We use TD Ameritrade or Fidelity both from the institutional side for housing the assets that we manage for our clients. But we work for our clients, not for an investment company.
Stacy, the problem is what you’re doing when you talk to these folks is they want to know how big your portfolio is or your asset base is because that’s what they’re focused on, and that’s managing your money. As Nancy said, our first focus is doing some planning for you. The problem is that we’ve got the terms confused here. And what you really want to do as Nancy said is to really have some plan drawn out for you because that’ll tell you how conservatively you can invest your money and still have a high probability of not running out of money when you’re 92 years old. Unfortunately, what most people do is they chase returns, have no idea why they’re investing, what they’re investing in, what rate of return they need to be getting on their money, and they jump from this and jump from that and jump in and jump out. And they wake up one day with like as we say, a collection of financial accidents. So doing the planning first up-front is what’s the most important thing. It’s like building a house without a set of blueprints. And nobody in the right mind would try to do that but yet everybody does that in the investment world. They go out and they start investing, they start putting up the house and have no idea what it is that they’re building for the long-term. So that’s what planning is all about. We charge a fee for that, and the fee is reasonable. But it’s a function of time and complexity and how straightforward or complicated your situation might be. But that’s why we offer a complementary consultation. To be fair to you, to be fair with us, come in, see what we’re all about. We’ll tell you what we do, we’ll give you an idea of what it looks like. And then you can decide whether or not you want to hire us to guide you through the rest of your life. That’s what certified financial planner professionals do, first and foremost as opposed to investing your money. Now we invest and manage a lot money for our clients, all over the country. But we strongly believe that before you invest your money, we invest your money or somebody invests your money, you ought to have a solid plan in which to work from. And that’s what certified financial planner professionals do.
Stacy, feel free to call us: 407-869-9800 or go to our website financialgroup.com. You could check us out and look at some of the blog posts that we’ve written, white papers, see everybody’s background to get more information.
And then the office — <Inaudible> by the office, where is that located?
Right there on Douglas Avenue just south of 434 and Altamonte Springs.
Stacy, thanks so much for the call. Time for the latest news, weather, and traffic. But if you want Stacy’s line, it’s 844-220-0965. That’s 844-220-0965. Text to 21232.
And welcome back, this is On the Money with the Certified Financial Group here on News 965 WDBO. We are here with Joe Bert and Nancy Hecht, certified financial planners from Certified Financial Group taking your phone calls at 844-220-0965. That’s 844-220-0965. Let’s get back to our phone lines here, talk to Al in Orlando. Al, you’re on with the Certified Financial Group here on WDBO.
Good morning, Al.
Hey, good morning guys.
Thanks for calling, how can we help you? What’s up?
Thanks for the call. Yeah, I have a question. So I’m 35 years old and I’ve been contributing to my 401k with my company for the past 10 years. And it’s a traditional 401k where they Match half.
Correct.
Half of everything you put in?
Correct. Well, up to 4%.
Okay, okay.
Every year, it’ll go higher.
Because I was going to work for your company.
Yeah.
Yeah, what company was that again?
Okay, so they matched half of the first four?
Okay, got it.
Okay.
And my question is, I can also contribute to a 401(k). Now I understand, Roth is where you’re kind of paying the pre-tax. What’s better in my situation at 35 years of age? Do I go with my traditional 401(k) or should I be contributing to a Roth?
My question —
First of all, what’s your income?
That was my question.
My income?
Yes.
Like, yearly?
Yes.
About 75.
Are you married?
I am.
And your wife works outside the home?
She does.
So, what’s your combined income? Is it over 75,000?
Yes.
Okay, so you’re in the 25% tax bracket.
My question is, are you contributing the maximum that you can comfortably contribute pre-tax?
Yes.
Okay, alright. And are you contributing up to the limit?
I am.
Okay, alright.
You could put $18,000 in at your age.
Oh, well, no I’m not doing that.
Okay.
Probably about half.
Okay, if you can afford to save more, then doing it pre-tax in my opinion is the better way to do it. First of all, it’s whole dollars being saved for you. It’s money that you no longer will be sending to the federal government. You’ll be sending it directly to your 401(k) account. You could bump up what you’re contributing to your 401(k) and have no impact on your spendable because the money is now going to your retirement account as opposed to your income taxes, so that’s the first thing I would do before considering after tax contributions to the Roth.
In your tax bracket, Al, 25% tax bracket, let me give you an example. You put $1 into the 401(k). You’re going to save $0.25, so it really costs you $0.75. You follow me so far?
I do.
Okay, now, if you want to put a dollar into the Roth after tax, you have to gross $1.33 — take 25% off $1.33 to end up with $1. So it would cost you $1.33 to put in the $1, as opposed to putting to putting in $1 and it only costing $0.75. Now, the people like the Roth because they’re thinking one day it’s going to come out tax free, right? That’s what the current law is. Everybody understands that and appreciates that. However, nobody can guarantee you that the law will not change.
And there’s already conversation to make required minimum distributions for Roths.
The rules are changing.
Do yourself a favor. Go on the Internet. Google: Roth, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.
He’s saying wolf, w-o-l-f.
Woof, woof, wolf, wolf?
Wolf.
Woof?
Huh?
<Inaudible> aggressive.
Google: Roth, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing and it’ll tell you why you probably don’t want to use a Roth.
If there is some type of calculator on your benefits site to see if you bump up your contribution $100 per pay, how much of an impact it’ll have on your spendables, and you should do something like that just to see how far you can push it up to the $18,000 a year contribution.
Let’s talk about — Al, if you’ve got a minute, let’s talk about how you’re investing those funds.
Sure.
What do you have it invested in?
So, right now, it’s kind of crazy and everyone says it’s crazy, but I’m half in my company’s stock and then half in the 401(k).
Okay, well it’s all 401(k) money. But —
In the 401(k), <Lost Signal>
It’s like a target-fund.
A target-fund.
The other half is in the target fund.
Okay, target-date fund. Okay.
We would caution you on investing so much in your company stock.
The reason he said ugh is because 100% of your pay in benefits is dependent on the health of your company. Do you really want to also have 50% of your retirement in that same bucket? That, in my opinion, lacks diversification. To have part of it going into the company stock is fine. You might want to take that down to maybe 20% versus 50%.
To me, that’s even high. I wouldn’t do more than 5% or 10%, because as Nancy said, the risk that you run, you’ve got everything — not everything, but a good portion of your future and your retirement, banking on how the company does. Nancy and I call tell you stories about we’ve seen clients that work for major companies one day, and the company is doing great, and the next day it’s not so good, and all of a sudden things are falling apart and you weren’t even aware of it. I think people do that psychologically, because they —
You believe, yes, and you believe in your company.
Sure.
However, diversification is really important when it comes to saving and investing.
Believe me, your boss doens’t know that your money is in the 401(k) plan in the company stock, and you’re going to get a raise <?>. Believe me, some people think that as well, and that really has no bearing and they don’t have any idea or anybody is invested.
If the rest of it’s in a target fund, it’s got to be heavily weighted towards equities because of your age, which you said it’s predominantly stock and very little income-producing items. You might want to look at, for the dollars that you’re going to re-allocate away from your company stock, adding some further diversification by getting maybe into a mid cap fund or a small cap fund, maybe a little bit of foreign, so again, you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.
You guys bring a really great question up if I can ask one more question.
Sure.
Sure.
Sure.
Okay, so if I have 50% in my company stock, it’s been yielding well for a number of years, about 10% return. I understand in the future, it could tank or something.
Right.
The money that I have that’s in that fund or my kind of that’s half of my company, can I take that and shift it into other areas?
Sure.
Yeah.
Does that money stay there the whole time I have the start —
No.
<Inaudible> mid caps.
When you’re re-allocating your 401(k), you can re-allocate new money and you can re-allocate currently invested dollars. One is not dependent on the other.
Wow, great advice. I appreciate that.
We do help a lot of our clients manage their 401(k)s while they’re working. It’s just part of the investment management services that we provide.
Yeah, we have the ability to help you with that. Your funds stay with the company, stay in the 401(k) plan, but what you do is you give us access to your 401(k) to manage it on your behalf. We sign off on that, we sign up as fiduciaries and we have a fiduciary relationship with our clients, and we can help you with that. So, give us a call! Thanks for the call, Alan.
Number to do that.
407-869-9800.
Or you can go to the website.
Financialgroup.com.
Alright, thanks so much for the call, Al. We really do appreciate. If you would like Al’s line, it’s 844-220-0965. 844-220-0965. Or you could text us your question to 21232. We do have some text questions in here, guys, and we’ll get to the workshops in just a minute, so we want get <Background Noise>
Another way for people — well, okay.
<Background Noise>
We can go for the text first.
Okay.
Alright.
Let’s talk to the people.
Usually, I was going to get the workshops before we get into the three big things you need to know.
Alright, fine.
Dory asks, texts or writes in: I own my home in full. I would like to take over the mortgage payments on my parents’ home after they are not able to pay or when they pass. How do I do that?
If you make those mortgage payments as I understand it, you want to check with your tax preparer. You will start to get a tax deduction for the interest that you’re paying on that home. Even though the house isn’t in your name — and you don’t want to have the house put in your name, but I believe that there is a provision where if you’re starting to make those mortgage payments on behalf of your parents, you could get the interest deduction on that home. No addition <?> to your primary residence. I know that sounds weird, but I had read something recently and I can’t remember where it was, Nancy.
I can’t either, but yeah, talk to your tax preparer.
Yep, okay. Another text to write, send it 21232. What is asset-based long-term care?
Asset-based long-term care is the type of long-term care that I prefer to provide to my clients. Let’s take a little step back. When people think of getting long-term care insurance, often what they’re presented is the type of coverage that’s very much like your homeowners or your car insurance. You’re paying a premium. You’re contracting for a certain benefit. It is a policy, and policies can change. They can often change, much to the surprise of the policy holder. Either the premium will go up, or the benefit will be decreased. An asset-based long-term care contract is you’re depositing money — either lump sum or a combination of lump sum and annually — to buy a specific benefit. The nice thing, as far as I’m concerned, is that you have access to the cash or long-term care benefits while you’re alive. If you do not use up all the cash for either just cash or long-term care needs, then there’s death benefit that goes to your heirs. You’re expanding the use of the dollars, and it’s an actual contract as opposed to the policy. What you’re contracting for when you take it out is what you get.
The nice thing about that, and Nancy and I have seen cases where people have these annuities they bought in years past, they don’t need the income from it necessarily. It’s just accumulating there, and if you cash it out, you’re going to pay taxes. But it’s a way to convert some lazy annuity into a multiple for long-term health care. As she said, if you don’t use it, you get it back, which is the nice thing about the asset-based plans.
Right, yeah.
Got another text question here, 21232: I’m 42 and have about 363K in a 401(k). If I don’t put another dollar in, would the Rule of 72 or 76 apply?
Well, depends on <Background Noise>
Potentially. It depends on what it’s invested in and what is your factor. I mean, a lot of people still look at —
What’s the Rule of 72 or 76?
Eight, ten —
Well, there is no Rule of 76 that I’m aware of. The Rule of 72 is how long it’ll take your money to double given a certain rate of return.
Right.
So if you’re earning 6% of your money, it’ll double in 12 years. It’ll quadruple in 24 years.
So if you take 9%, it’ll double in eight years, quadruple in sixteen years. This is roughly.
Yeah, but anybody who’s using 8%, 9%, 12% as a factor, I think is crazy.
Hmm.
The markets have not done that well in a long period of time. I think that you should take your expectations down a little bit further. But yeah, that’s how it works.
Okay.
Projecting out 8% or 9%, although the markets have done that in the past, the S&P history is 10% per year the last seven years, but don’t fail the farm on that. Gather <?> a reasonable rate of return and if you exceed it, and you’ve met your objectives, so much the better.
Alright.
Alright, 844-220-0965, that’s 844-220-0965 if you’ve got a question for Joe, Burt, and Nancy. Nancy has <?> workshops coming up with Certified Financial Group.
Yes, so back to the point of a couple of callers of how do you work and stuff, this is one great way for people to come and see our offices and get some free information along generally with a meal or a nice snack, and check us out a little bit. The next one coming up is Financial Basics, Life Strategies for Success hosted by Gary Abley. This is Saturday, September 16th from 11:00 to 1:00. Myself and Denise Kovatch will be hosting our next Social Security Boot Camp Claiming Strategies from 6:00 to 7:30 on October 19th, that’s a Thursday, and we do serve sandwiches so please come hungry. Health Care Options in Retirement is Saturday, November 4th from 9:00 in the morning to 11:00, hosted by Gary Abley, and then the last one we have on the books for right now is January 6th: When Can You Retire? Know Your Number from 9:00am to 11:00am, also hosted by Gary. If you go to our website, which is financialgroup.com, you can go onto the Workshop tab. You can see when the workshops are, the dates, the times, and you can reserve your space for that.
People ask, why do we do this? We do this for two reasons: Number one, give you good information so you don’t become a financial calamity, a financial disaster, trying to show you what you need to do now so you don’t look back five or ten years form now and say, gee, I wish I’ve have known, or gee, I’m sorry I did, and secondly to introduce you to our firm. What we do for our clients, how work with our clients for a fee, and this way whether you need financial planning now or sometime in the future, perhaps you’ll give us an opportunity to earn your business. So go to our website, that’s financialgroup.com, and you can make a reservation right there online. Hope to see you there.
Alright, that’s going to do it for that. Let’s do more phone calls before we get out of here at 10:00, 844-220-0965 is the number <Inaudible>. We are planning tomorrow —
Today!
With the Certified Financial Group!
On WDBO.
Welcome back. It is the final segment of On The Money with the Certified Financial Group here on News 96.5 WDBO. We are three minutes away from latest news, weather, and traffic with Dave Wahl on the New 96.5 News Room to give us the latest news, weather, traffic all coming up 10:00. But right now, we’ve still got three minutes left to take your phone calls or answer your questions, 844-220-0965. 844-220-0965, or the text is 21232. Just that one text to your question, Joe and Nancy from Certified Financial Group, what advice would you offer when looking for a tax preparer?
Well, I would want somebody doing my taxes that was a CPA versus just an accountant or tax preparer. I would talk to friends and coworkers to see who they might be using. I guess you would want to know, out of all the returns that somebody has prepared, how many times have their clients been audited? I mean, a lot of it is the same thing as somebody interviewing us. It’s personality. It’s experience. It’s licensing. So you just need to ask a lot of questions.
What you want to stay away from at tax time, you see those street signs that say they’ll get you so much back on your taxes; file with us, we’ll get you so much back — those are scams.
Many of them are scams.
The people flipping the signs in the street.
Yes.
Yeah, they’re awful. As Nancy said, use a CPA or an enrolled agent is another good alternative. But talk to him. Find out how long they’ve been in business, and what their background is, and <Inaudible> if somebody is doing your taxes <Background Noise>
Yeah, more conversation.
Are they just a fill-in-the-blank person, or do they really want to know what your situation is and look for opportunities to save you some money on taxes?
Well, we had a lot of great callers today, and we especially had one back at the bottom of the hour who just was confused between a financial planner, and investment manager, and all that stuff. We invite her and everybody listening to just — no matter what age you are, give you guys a call with Certified Financial Group or go visit the office, phone number and location.
I had today — this week, I had a couple in for the very first time. They’re near retirement age, and she was afraid. You’ve probably seen this, too. The first time they met with a financial planner, they’re — I don’t want to say intimidated, but they’re embarrassed, maybe, a little uncomfortable about showing what they’ve done or haven’t done, that they were <Inaudible> their life that they need help. It’s putting that fear aside. There’s anything <?> that we haven’t seen in 40 years, but we’ve seen it all.
We’ve seen it all, yeah.
As I go to the priest for confession. We’ve heard it all, and we’re here to help you. We’re not here to criticize you. We’re here to clean up the mess that you might’ve made, or congratulate you on what you’ve done, but our job is to make you whole. Make you healthy, get you there, show what you need to do, give you guidance, and we charge a fee for that. Once again, if you want more information about what we do and how we do it, go to our website. That’s financialgroup.com.
And the phone number?
407-869-9800 Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm.
And we’ll be back next week at 9:00 right here on News 96.5 WDBO.
Yes.
Not me.
That was a question!
I’ll be back in two weeks.
We have been planning tomorrow —
Today!
The
Dictation made on 8/8/2017 11:27 AM EDT.
