Good morning everybody and welcome to another edition of On The Money, with the Certified Financial Group right here on News 96.5 WDBO, ask the experts weekend, good morning Orlando <Inaudible>.
Good morning, welcome back by the way.
Oh, well thank you. Not only do we have the Oracle of Orlando Joe Bird here in today, we have Gary Abley here as well. Gary, how are you.
Good morning, I’m doing terrific. No rain today maybe.
20% chance.
I’ll take it. And knowing everybody in Central Florida, that’s a 20% chance for about five minutes at some point around Central Florida.
That’s the way it works.
It’s Florida. Well, as long as it’s not 60, 70 like it’s been all week and raining every single day. But so with a gorgeous day outside, it’s now time to get out there and get your honey do list done that you’ve been neglecting all week, and in the mean time, I hope you sit back and we’ll help you get to that retirement finish line. Joe, what can the audience call you about today?
Gary and I are here to entertain any questions that you might have regarding your personal finances. As we say, we go through life trying some of this, trying some of that. Wake up at 55 years old, look across the kitchen table to Loretta and say Loretta, honey, well you know, we’re only 10 years away from retirement and we’ve got to have income when we retire. We got Social Security and these IRAs, these 401ks, how do we turn that into a stream of income so we can continue to enjoy the lifestyle that we always dreamed of. And that’s what Gary and I and the 11 other certified financial planner practitioners at CFG do day in and day out for a fee. But on Saturday morning, we are here absolutely free. So if you have any questions regarding your personal finances as they revolve around questions about stocks and bonds and mutual funds and IRAs and 401ks, reverse mortgages, annuities, life insurance, all that and more. Gary and I are to take your calls and there’s no call that, there’s question that might be a dumb question, because if you’re thinking of it, there’s probably 146 other people out there thinking of it. And you don’t even need to use your real name. You can pretend you’re somebody else. So pick up the phone and dial these magic numbers.
844-220-0965. We also have the text machine up and running as well. 21232. Let’s have a most unique name contest today. Let’s see <Background Noise> let’s see what we got.
By the way, we’re also on Facebook.
Facebook Live, want to watch Joe and his, you know Joe’s wardrobe has significantly gotten a lot better ever since the video cameras have been turned on.
I do have collared shirts by the way.
I never doubted you. I just say, it was radio, you could wear T-shirts.
That look that I used to come in here with.
To each his own, but I’m just saying, <Background Noise> it got potted up a little bit there, with the collar. He even did his hair, it’s great. Now you can really see.
Makeup. See, why didn’t I think of that.
They only see the back of you. I don’t even know if they see the back of your head.
That’s okay, I don’t want to be seen.
Look, if you want to watch what’s going on in this crazy studio this morning, go to Facebook and you go to Facebook in the search engine put Certified Financial Group and you click in right in the studio and watch all this hilarity that we have going on, right Gary. So we have some calls coming in, we have, oh look the calls piling up here.
<Background Noise> the screen, this is where we’re going to start off with today’s conversation like we always do here. What is a flat or inverted yield curve and what can it mean to investors, Gary?
Go slowly, flat inverted yield curve.
Flat or inverted yield curve.
So when we look at yield curves, what is a yield curve. First of all, we’re looking at the difference between what two-year Treasuries yield typically and what a longer dated, say a 10-year Treasury would yield. Normally, if you think about it, when you loan money to somebody, and you’re not going to be repaid for say 10 years, you’re going to want more interest because of potential default risk. And for interest rate risk. What happens if you got your money tied up for 3% over 10 years and interest rates start going up, that’s not going to do too well for your debt. So that being said, typically longer dated Treasuries yield more than shorter. Just like a CD.
You can buy long-term CD, you want a higher interest rate.
And you can almost explain it just that way because if you look at CD rates, you’re not really being paid much to go out further. You can find a one-year CD around 2%, just drove by a bank that had that offer. And you go out to five years, you might be looking at maybe 3% right. So anyway, when a yield curve inverts, it tends to be an indicator that an economic slow down possibly a recession is going to happen. So if we go back to 1956.
Let’s talk about what we mean by invert. I understand what it means.
So an inversion means simply that the short-term rates now are yielding higher, yielding more interest, than a longer dated. So the curve starts to flatten initially and then it inverts.
It flips.
Exactly. And that has typically been a pre-cursor to the last six recessions we’ve had since 1956. Usually within about 24 months of an inverted yield curve, we go into a recession. And so you say well why is that important to investors. Well, it’s important because when we go into recessions, typically corporate profits are lower. And then we have lower stock prices. And that actually is a wonderful thing for long-term investors.
Buy more on the cheap.
We’re buying more on the cheap. So opportunities ahead. We look, what Joe and I do daily is we’re rebalancing client accounts as they become out of balance either because equities have risen, or because equities have fallen. <Inaudible> fallen, we get to buy more shares of stock mutual funds, equities cheaper.
Exactly.
If they’ve risen, we’ve got to take the profits to keep back into that risk tolerance. So anyway, an inverted yield curve, we expect that that could happen perhaps by December of this year, which might mean we’ll see an economic slow down in the next couple years thereafter and so that’s great opportunity for investors. Because we’ll have that opportunity to buy shares cheaper.
So keep your eyes and ears open and we’ll keep you posted. Absolutely.
That’s why we’re here.
All right. What do we have Carl.
Let’s do it, want to get to the phone lines now.
Yep.
Now we got them all lined up, screened up, alrighty, let’s start off today, John was the first one to call in today. John, you’re up next with the Certified Financial Group here on WDBO.
Morning, John.
Good morning. I’m trying to raise my credit score. My daughter score has a high of 823 and a low of 809 for 12 months. My score is a high of 820 and a low of 783 with five scores in the 700s. Hello?
Yes, we hear you.
Okay. She always pays her statement balance. Never anymore.
I pay my balances on the due date. Usually there’s no balance from the statement balance. But I pay the whole thing off on the due date. The only thing that might hit is between the due date and the closing date, which is like four days.
Okay.
My question is, should I keep doing the same thing that I’m doing, or should I start paying just the statement balance.
So your question is how do you raise your credit score to equal your daughter’s?
Well, yeah <Background Noise> at least in the 800s.
Right. All right, so your payment history is a critical part of your credit score, but it’s not the only thing. And so what I’m looking at here probably the amount of debt that you have relative to your income is probably a factor there.
I don’t have any debt.
Well okay. Then your daughter’s, there’s something going on here.
Well, the other issue could be depending on how many cards each of you have.
That’s true.
For example, the amount of outstanding revolving credit that you have. A lot of folks will say, well you know, I don’t understand why my credit score is as high as somebody else, I have eight credit cards and all of them have zero balances or I pay them on time, well if you have eight credit cards and maybe you total those up to $60,000 as a revolving credit, that actually is going to hurt your credit, because the exposure to the companies is a lot higher than somebody who only has say 10,000 or 15,000 outstanding. But honestly, John, any score really above 750, you’re not going to be dinged when you go in to buy a car, or you go in to buy a house.
Well, I have a lease coming up next year.
Again, your credit score is just fine. I think you’re worrying unnecessarily. I think your credit score’s fine, don’t worry about it. But if you want to call our office, we can send you a link to a site that will talk about how to increase your credit scores legitimately.
Gary’s right, your chances are your outstanding or available credit.
Right.
Is high in proportion to your income. And your daughter’s available credit.
Well, I have three cards that I use. The main one I charge everything on it.
It’s not the number of cards, it’s the credit line that you have on the card.
Yep.
So I don’t want a lot of credit.
Well, if you don’t need it.
The one that I use the most, they raised it like three times in the past couple of years.
You know, I have two cards in my wallet. I have a Costco card because I have to, to get in, and I love Costco. And then I have one credit card I use for everything. It’s one of these reward cards where you get 2% cash back. So I think we tend to you look at all of the issues with credit fraud and identity theft, to me, the less is better. You really only need one card, in addition to maybe one other if you have foreign travel or something like that. So I think one mistake we make is we get the 10% off at the department store to get a new credit card and then we forget about it.
I don’t do that.
Well, you’re in good shape, John, don’t lose any sleep. But appreciate the call. Yes, thank you have a good weekend.
You want John’s line it’s 844-220-0965, it’s 844-220-0965. Yeah, you hear that, anything past 750, doesn’t matter, 751, 810 are the same pretty much the same thing.
Yes, yes. Sounds like a little competition going on.
Yes, I think we have that in my family.
But he’s right, they just raise your credit and it’s like well, you raise my credit, my credit score went down.
Well it happens.
Ellie in Orlando, you’re up next, Ellie, you’re on the Certified Financial Group.
You know it’s also Mike before.
Hang on.
It’s how often your credit is checked too, impacts your.
Yes, that’s true. So if he’s getting his credit check every week to see how he’s doing.
Competition, exactly.
Well, if you go to like Free Credit Score, but some of those credit card companies just offer the screen, you don’t have to actually go in, make a small thing or whatever.
Ellie in Orlando, now we’re good.
What’s up?
Good morning.
Good morning.
I wanted to ask, I’ve got $50,000 that I want to invest, I’m 58 years old, I have no other investments and I wanted to know how to invest it best for growth, but also for security.
You want this thing that everybody else wants. You want high returns and no risk, is that right Ellie?
Well, I know there’s no such animal.
Ahah, well we’re making progress, all right. So let me ask you this Ellie, you mentioned that you had 50,000 and that was your only asset right now. Do you have an emergency fund, in case something happens at work, or you became disabled.
No, I don’t.
Okay, so the first thing I would want you to do is look at the disability offered maybe by your employer, or maybe you have an individual policy and if you have say a three-month waiting period before your disability insurance kicks in, you might want to consider having three months of your expenses put aside in an emergency fund and then only invest the excess. So we generally say three to six months, I kind of prefer six months, but it really depends on your situation.
It depends, first of all, we’re assuming you’re the primary breadwinner in your household?
I’m the only one.
You are the primary, all right. So we want to protect you from a rainy day. So let’s say that your monthly expenses just as an example were 5,000, we’d only want you to invest 35,000 on a long-term basis. And because of your age, I think a growth-oriented mutual fund would be appropriate. However, what do we do when we have somebody come in, Joe?
Well, first thing we look at are what their goals are and their short-term and long-term goals are. Which brings me to my next question, or my first question, is you have a retirement plan? Through your employer?
No, I don’t, I’m self-employed.
Oh okay, then you can create your own retirement plan. So you have some options here, right Gary. You can turn that 35,000 that you’ll have left after your emergency fund into the tax deductions for you.
That’s what I was looking at.
So let’s say your business earned a profit, again we’ll use a $50,000 figure. You could setup several different types of plans. One it would be a SEP, might be appropriate for self-employed person, you can put away about 20%. Depending on how much you’re able to put away, a SIMPLE IRA, you can actually put away up to 12,500, and I think you said you were over 55, Ellie?
Yes.
Okay, so you can actually put away an extra 3,000 or 15,500 into a SIMPLE IRA. In addition to.
She can do a Uni-K.
Yeah.
<Inaudible> person 401k. And the good news for you, if you haven’t done anything yet, if you haven’t file your taxes for 2017, you can setup a SEP. You’re still eligible to do that, get a tax deduction for 2017 and even if you have, it might make sense to file an amended return and go back and do that. So those are some options for you, but then once you have that setup, you put the money in, you get a tax deduction for it, and then what you want to look at is growth and you want to use a mutual fund, it’s the best way to get the growth.
Right, and what I was going to say, Joe, one of the things we would have somebody do is fill out an investment questionnaire, which lets us assess your risk tolerance. Now, if you were in your 50s and you came out to be conservative, we might then try to educate you on why you want to be a little bit more aggressive for the long-term because you potentially have 40 years that you need this money to grow and to provide an income for. But anyway, we would assess your risk tolerance and then we would develop a portfolio for you that would suit that risk tolerance.
Does that help you, Ellie?
Yes, it does, thank you so much.
We appreciate your call, thank you.
Thanks, Ellie.
All right, appreciate the call, Ellie. If you want Ellie’s line it’s 844-220-0965, that is 844-220-0965. We also have the text machine up and running as well. 21232. We are planning tomorrow.
Today.
With the Certified Financial Group.
Time to give three big things you need to know.
WDBO.
Welcome back, On The Money with the Certified Financial Group, right here on News 96.5 WDBO, we are three minutes away from the latest news, weather and traffic here on News 96.5 WDBO. In the mean time, we’re looking to take your phone calls at 844-220-0965, Central Florida, you’ve got questions this morning. So want to get back to our busy phone lines. Joe, David, Josh, we’ll go to George here first. I also see we have some text questions, hang on in case, because this is a short segment, because we’re three minutes away from the latest news, weather and traffic, so hang on, we will get everybody’s question answered. But we kick it off with George in Orlando. George you’re on with the Certified Financial Group, go ahead George.
Good morning. I have a variable premium annuity that qualifies as an IRA. And I’m 72, so I’ve already done the required minimum distributions, but in any other case, if you need money in between then and the next RMD, if you need money then they charge you like an interest or a premium or something. For taking your own money out. Is that true?
Well, you know George, it’s going to depend on how long you’ve had that annuity.
A long time.
A long time? Then I don’t think you should be beyond any type of extra charges. So typically annuities will have surrender charge periods, but if you’ve had it a long time, and you need more money George, just call them up and <Background Noise>
You know what it might be impacting.
What’s that.
Is guaranteed income. Because if you start exceeding the amount that they tell you to take out, you blow up the guaranteed minimum income.
Oh, I see.
George, do you have that feature on your policy.
Where the guarantee is so much income for your lifetime.
I’m not sure.
That may be what’s going on.
That could be it. So talk to the company directly, ask them what the impact would be if you were to take out more money and what the fees would be by doing that.
But on some of those policies if you withdraw more than your, of the guarantee amount, then you blow up the guarantees. So you got to be careful on that George. That’s exactly what it might be. But appreciate the call, as always. Thank you very much.
Alrighty George, we’ve got roughly 50 seconds, so we’re, David, Josh, Debra, hang on the line, you’ll be first up when we come back from the latest news, weather and traffic right here on News 96.5 WDBO. Also we have a text question in, 58 and looking to retire, but don’t have health insurance, what options do I have to receive health insurance, Roth, 401k, we’ll get that on the other side. So texter hang in there right here on News 96.5 WDBO.
Welcome back, this is On The Money with the Certified Financial Group right here on News 96.5 WDBO, it’s all part of our Ask the Experts Weekend each and every weekend, all the experts take time out of their busy weekend schedule to come in and answer your questions at 844-220-0965. This hour we have the Certified Financial Group. The Oracle of Orlando, Joe Burke, alongside Gary Abley. Joe, just real briefly for anybody that may have joined us during the latest news, weather and traffic, what can they call you about today.
Well, first all of all, this is the only radio call-in show, financial radio call-in show in Central Florida hosted exclusively by Certified Financial Planner professionals. Gary and I are one of those, two of those, whatever you might say, and we have 11 others at our firm up in Altamonte Springs. We’re here to take the questions that you might have regarding your personal finances as we go through life trying some of this, trying some of that and hope it all works out. Only to find out we have a collection of financial accidents. So we are your financial body shop. We bring out the bondo here this morning and patch it up and get you on the way. There is no question that may be a dumb question, we are here to help you and help our listeners and the good news for you, there’s still a couple of lines open. So all you have to do is pick up the phone and dial these magic numbers.
844-220-0965, 844-220-0965. We have the text questions up and running, 21232, and go ahead Joe, how else can they watch us today.
Well, we are trying something new here, we’re now on Facebook Live, so if you have a Facebook account, go to Facebook on the search engine there, put in Certified Financial Group and you peer right here into the studios and you see. That’s peer not appear. <Background Noise>
Peer into the Joes.
And see Gary and me and how we do it right here behind the scenes. So we welcome you to do that once again go to Facebook.com, type Certified Financial Group in the search bar and there we are.
All right, just like that, again 21232 is the text line, we do have a text question here, 58 and looking to retire, but don’t have health insurance, what options do I have to receive a health insurance. She has 150K in the Roth, or he has, a 401k is 120K.
So interestingly, the amounts in retirement accounts do not effect of course your ability to get health insurance On the exchange, and thus —
Excuse me. Some people think because I have so much money I won’t qualify for subsidy. You could be a gazillionire —
That’s the problem. So unfortunately the Affordable Care Act did not make the health insurance, the subsidies that folks can get on the exchange asset tested, they just made it income test. So, we have clients who have a high net worth and they qualify sometimes for free health insurance despite having a high net worth. And of course that wasn’t the intent of the law, but that is the law.
The Affordable Care Act is one option. Individual health policies are not a lot of carriers that offer these, BlueCross would be one in town that someone could look into. But in general, going on to healthcare.gov and you’re going to have to answer a lot of answers regarding your income and so forth for eligibility for the subsidy. You want to be careful still about buying temporary policies.
This is a new one that’s just been approved, it’s coming out.
There’s are.
Gap insurance they call it.
Gap insurance, right. So, if you knew that you would only have a short-term gap, these gap policies in between jobs would be appropriate instead of paying very large COBRA premiums. But in general you want to make sure that you’re sticking with a policy that has what’s called creditable coverage, because if you don’t you could have issues then getting back onto a true either group policy or an exchange approved policy. The temporary policies don’t cover everything, so they can exclude coverages that are mandated by the Affordable Care Act, so there is some risk to those.
Unfortunately this is a challenge that we have when we do financial planning for clients who retire before age 65, you know what your expenses are, you can pretty much know what you spend on gasoline, groceries, dining out, all that stuff, but the real wild card is medical insurance. And so we plug that in and then you don’t know what’s going to happen next year. It’s a real challenge.
Or medical bills period.
A particular individual has $0.25M in retirement accounts on the text again, but has no health insurance, and that of course is a huge risk. If you have a heart attack you will be seen in the emergency room, but if you need chemotherapy for an ongoing cancer, you’re not going to get free chemotherapy. So, it’s a huge risk that one should not take.
Well just like that, we get their questions answered here on the text line 21232.
Let’s get back to your busy phone lines. We have two Davids on the line. First David is in Palm Bay. David go ahead. You’re on with the Certified Financial Group.
Good morning, David.
Good morning.
How can we help you?
I’m about ready to close on a second home and I’m going to get about $200,000. I have a primary residence with about $70,000 mortgage and a 10 acre piece of property that I would like to develop in Tennessee that has about a $20,000 mortgage on it. I’m thinking that for tax liability purposes it would be better to pay off both of my mortgages before I start investing that money because of tax liabilities.
Paying off the mortgages isn’t going to affect your tax liability, David.
On the sale?
You’ll have taxes on the sale regardless of whether you pay off other mortgages. So the first thing to do is to calculate what the tax effect will be from the sale. I tell you what, I have a lot of people who they make decisions based on an expected tax bill that turns out to be not much, because we’re talking about long-term capital gains, typically on the sale of real estate and we forget sometimes how much money we’ve added to these properties over the years. Improvements can be added to what you pay for it to reduce your gains. The first thing is David is calculate the gain, then project your taxes. Another thing a lot of folks don’t know, Joe, is that your tax rate, your long-term capital gains tax rate for the lowest bracket is actually a big 0, so there are some folks who end up have a small long-term capital gains and they end up not paying any taxes on it. First thing is find out what the taxes are, then you know what you’re going to net from the sales, so let’s hypothetically say you sell it for 200,000 and you —
Now do we have 200,000 of profit, that’s the other thing we’re talking about. You say you were going to sell it for 200,000? No, it’s 399,000 minus the equity loan that I have on the property currently leaving about 220,000.
And what did you pay for it?
My dad and I were co-owners when he passed on, I had right of survivorship. The tax liability as far as taxes have been around 225, 250 on the property.
So, you’re talking about property tax, assessed value. So, what we would want to know is what your father originally paid for the property and how you received it.
We built on a 10 acre property, had two houses, had to subdivide it out, it’s really very complicated.
It is complicated, Joe and I are shrugging.
The key thing is you need to sit down and figure out what your basis, which is your cost factor in the property is. For those listening, if you inherit property, there is a step-up in basis to fair market value. If you inherited half of it because you owned it joint, half of the property potentially could receive a step-up. Yours is complicated with trying to calculate it on the air, I suggest you sit down with a CPA, find out what the gain is, find out what the tax is on the gain, and then out of that 200,000, let’s say hypothetically you have 20,000 in taxes, you know you have 180. Then I think you say I’ve got a bucket of money of $180,000. Is it prudent to pay off debt that you have on other properties? And that is really going to be based on how much you owe, what type of an investor are you, are you conservative and you would prefer to be debt free, or are you needing to pay off the debt because you need to do a new loan because you want to develop this new piece of property and they won’t do it until you pay off an existing lien on the property?
There’s a lot of questions.
And if you’re in the tail end of the mortgage, it might not make sense to pay off the mortgage at all, because in the tail end of the mortgage you’re just paying back your own principal and it’s really not costing you a lot. There’s a lot of variables.
This is a sit down.
A lot of questions.
This is something that Gary and I deal with all the time as certified financial planners, but the first step is as Gary said is to get a good idea on your taxes. Based on what you said, you bought this land and you developed it, which means you’ve got some costs in developing that property, so your taxes may not be nearly what you think they are. David I wish I could give you a quick answer, but you bring up a lot of lot of questions that need to be answered across the desk, but we appreciate your call.
And wish you well.
Thank you David. We’ll give out the number so David can give you a call on Monday.
Our number is 407-869-9800.
Or go to out website, financialgroup.com. That’s financialgroup.com.
It’s such a great website, too.
Josh in Orlando, you’re up next. Josh, go ahead, you’re on with Certified Financial Group.
Good morning, Josh.
Good morning, good morning. I wanted to ask a question. I work for an employer who has a very generous deferred compensation plan. Previously we’ve been offered stock options and we’ve always — automatically. This year it’s changing, and it’s going to an option of continuing the stock options or RSUs. My question is I’m relatively young, I’m in my mid 30s, would it be better to take an RSU option from my company, still the same value and everything and then as those vest, diversify in a mutual fund so it’s not all invested in one company?
Oh, boy, I like your thinking. Whatever I hear diversify because sometimes we end up with a lot of company stock with an employer that we work for and then something bad happens. I have personal experience with that in my own family where my wife had worked for Columbia Health Care and had stock options and of course what happens with Columbia Health Care Medicare fraud, the stock plummeted and those stock options became worthless over night.
Look at the people that work for GE.
That’s right, look at the folks who work for Enron and Worldcon and we could go on and on. The idea of selling when they’re vested and diversifying I love that idea, Josh. Now restricted stock unit, the advantage of that maybe over a stock option is stock options have strike prices. And a restricted stock unit as you just are giving the ability to buy company stock, so you can somewhat ride out a storm. So for example, in the Columbia Health Care example, the company did rebound eventually, so if you own the stock, you were able to recover, but if you owned the stock options, those became worthless because they expired with time. In this example if we’re comparing apples to apples and it’s very hard to do that frankly when you’re comparing a restricted stock unit and a stock option. But assuming both offers appeared about the same financially, I would favor the stock unit. How about you, Joe?
Yeah, I think so, for the reasons you said. And then as soon as you’re able, as soon as you’re completely vested in it, as long as you have more than 5% tied up in your net worth, I would say sell to diversify. What’s the number you use, Joe? I use 5% no more than one company.
Yeah, the thing is we said time and time again the challenge that people have when they have the ability to get stock in their company is they buy that stock for the wrong reasons. They think that the boss knows how much they own and it’s part loyalty or you think you really know what’s going on in the company and you wake up one day and find what you thought was going on really isn’t going on, because you’re close to it. You eat, breathe and deal with it every day.
It’s an emotional attachment.
The 5% is really about the limit that you want to do. And what we don’t want you to do is do that at the expense of maximizing your contribution to your 401k plan. Do you have a 401k, Josh?
Yes I do.
And how old are you.
I’m 35.
So, you could put 18,500 into your 401k hopefully you’re doing that and investing that aggressively at your particular age. And then I would look at getting company stock, what do you think, Gary?
Yes, absolutely.
Appreciate your call, Josh.
Thanks, Josh.
Diversify is the name of the game, that’s what I’ve learned here on the money.
Diversify is the name of the game.
All right, let’s go to David in Davenport. David, you’re up next with the Certified Financial Group. Go ahead.
Good morning, David.
Hi. Can you hear me, my phone is breaking up?
We can hear you, what’s up?
Okay, my credit score has been forever 500 something. I’ve been married 48 years. 45 years ago I filed for bankruptcy. Ever since then I’ve been paying cash for everything, but I do have credit with Rent A Center, gold card with them in three different states. I do have credit with a Goodyear Tire Company mechanical shop. All my bills, water, electric, rent, everything I pay two weeks early. And I applied to get a used camper and they told me that because of my car accidents that I don’t qualify. I’ve never had car accidents.
Well, then you need to check that out. I would contact the credit bureau and find out what’s going on.
That’s an interesting point, David. A lot of people don’t realize that decisions are going to be made on loaning you money not just on your ability to pay, but on really we’re going to try to analyze the type of person you are. Because let’s say you have a lot of moving violations, car wrecks or whatever we want to say. That could indicate and I’m not saying this about you, David, but it could indicate a riskier personality, somebody who is constantly getting speeding tickets, and therefore one can argue you could make riskier decisions in your financial life. And therefore they can charge you more based upon even your driving record.
Something doesn’t sound right here, David. What threw me off here is when you said you have this credit, but you don’t use it, and therein lies the problem. If you don’t have a credit — the biggest thing that affects your credit score is timeliness of payments. That’s the number one biggest factor that affects your credit score. So, if you’re not making regular payments, forget the water bill, it’s the credit card bills. You’re using cash for everything you mentioned, David, and if you’re paying cash for everything, that is part of the problem. You did mention you have two companies.
I was approved last month for a medium sized car brand new. I don’t want the payments, I have a vehicle.
I understand, but therein lies the problem if you want to increase your credit score, make payments.
You’ve got to make payments, yeah.
And cash doesn’t seem to count any more.
That’s the challenge. But I’m not saying you shouldn’t do the tire store, because chances are that interest rate that they may charge you is going to be high. Get a low interest rate credit card and use it on a regular basis and pay it off every month. That will affect your credit score more than anything.
All right, David, thank you so much for the phone call. We’re up against the three big things you need to know. Paying the water bill in cash two weeks early doesn’t get you anything any more unfortunately.
Yeah, zippo unfortunately. David, thank you so much for the phone call. 844-220-0965 or you can text us your question to 21232. We are planning tomorrow today with <Inaudible> of Orlando, Joe Byrd and Gary Abley, the Certified Financial Group on News 96.5 WDBO.
This is new 96.5 WDBO. We are four minutes away from the latest news, weather and traffic, but you are listening the final segment of On the Money with the Certified Financial Group here on News 96.5 WDBO. You know when you do four of these shows every Saturday and it’s around the same thing and you didn’t finish your coffee yet, they all just merge together after a while.
We still love you.
But this is the Certified — this is my favorite show, I will say this. Don’t anybody in the hallway listening right now. This is no doubt my favorite show to do and there’s no question about that. Joe Byrd to the Oracle of Orlando and Gary Abley are here answering your questions. 21232 on the text lines. Keep it to about 160 characters. But not only do they come in here in the studio each and every week to talk to you here in Central Florida, they also welcome you to their house, it’s called the Workshop. Gary, when can I come by late this week or this month?
We do several workshops, we’ll talk about just the types we do. We do them on health care options in retirement. Unfortunately that ones booked up and we’ll be doing another one probably in another four or five months, so check our website financialgroup.com. We do one on financial basics for life, so that’s the next one that’s not full and that is September 8 at 9:00am, so from 9:00 to 11:00.
That’s a Saturday?
They’re all Saturdays.
All Saturdays.
All Saturday mornings. And the appropriate party for that is anybody who has not learned financial basics. That’s quite a bit of people.
99% of America.
But it’s really geared for younger people who want to understand how they can get to $1M before they start college without saving another college. We teach them how to do that. We teach compounding of money and that’s by the way only working six summer, 30 hours a week.
Actually he teaches them how to pick lottery winners.
No, I do not. We’ve all won the lottery already.
The horse track.
October 6 Countdown to Retirement. So we’re going talk about things like tax strategies in retirement, Social Security claiming strategies in retirement, what you need to do — legal documents you need to have in order prior to retiring. That’s a great one, that’s designed for people who are three to five years away from retirement. And then my favorite one is December, December 1, Will Your Savings Last A Lifetime? And the reason that’s my favorite is that’s our biggest fear, right, is running out of money. And we don’t want our clients to retire without first knowing that least they have an 80% probability of not running out of money based on the savings they’ve accumulated. That’s a really important one.
And we view financial planning as Gary said, we stress test. We stress test the end result to be sure there’s a high probability — we can’t guarantee anything, but we run it through 10,000 iterations to at all possible variables to look at the possibility of you being okay. And that’s important, because numbers are not static.
My goal is to plan to be 100 years old and anything after that I don’t care. That’s my plan. That is my plan and I am sticking to it.
Nothing wrong with that plan.
All right we’ve got a minute left. What’s the best number to reach you guys at the office and the website?
Our website is financialgroup.com and our phone number is 407-869-9800. To learn all about us go to the website. There’s a little quiz on there, get a little survey, you can find out where you might stand and we would be glad to talk to you. We offer a complimentary visitation. You want to come by, give you a cup of coffee, find out what’s on your mind, see if we can help you, and if we can’t help you we’ll point you in the right direction. It’s what we’ve been doing for nearly 40 years at Certified Financial Group. We have 11 certified financial planners. We are CTEC <sp?> certified and if you want to learn more about that, go to our website financialgroup.com. We are one of the few firms in the country that is CTEC certified for fiduciary excellence. We are fiduciaries and we work with our clients doing financial planning for a fee and wealth management. Come on by our website, come on by our office, we look forward to meeting you and we look forward to seeing you again next Saturday.
1111 Douglas Avenue, right?
Yes.
1111 Douglas Avenue, put it in your phone and we’ll see you there next year <?> on the radio, 9:00 Saturday with the Certified Financial Group where we continue to plan tomorrow today.
This is News 96.5 WDBO. We’re Orlando