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Central Florida’s most listened to financial call and show brought to you by Certified Financial Group in Altamont Springs. It’s the only show hosted exclusively by certified financial planner professionals. Monday through Friday, their CFPs provide financial planning and investment advice for a fee.
But on Saturdays, the advice is absolutely free and has been for more than 30 years for their WDBO listeners. If you have a financial question you want answered by real fiduciaries, the lines are wide open. Call 844-580-WDBO.
That’s 844-580-WDBO and enjoy the show. Welcome to on the money right here on WDBO. My name is Greg Rhodes joined today by the people of Certified Financial Group, the people who are planning your financial future, making your just a little bit better than you’re today.
Joining us today, we have Rodney Owen B and Joe Bert, certified financial planners with the Certified Financial Group. And you know by now that for more than 30 years, the professionals at Certified Financial Group have been answering your questions for you every week right here on WDBO’s on the money. They become Central Florida’s most listened to financial call and program.
And it’s the only call and program where all the hosts are certified financial planners. Again, our hosts today, Rodney Owen B and Joe Bert. Good morning, Greg.
Good to be with you. As you said in the intro, we are here to take your calls as we have now for more than 30 years, closing out 40 years, I think. Anyway, Rodney and I are here to take calls.
Our listeners might have on their mind things regarding your IRA or 401k, long-term health care, annuities, life insurance, reverse mortgages, all that more that Rodney and I and the 15 other certified financial planners deal with day in and day out for our clients, providing retirement planning, investment management for a fee. On Saturday morning, we’re here for you, though, absolutely free. This is not a one-hour infomercial.
This is a live broadcast. We’re not afraid to take calls. We don’t know the answer.
We’ll try to find the answer. But unlike a lot of the shows that are on the radios over the weekend, they’re all recorded. And that’s because they don’t want to take any calls.
They want to answer the questions. So Rodney and I are here. This is not stump the host.
But if you want to stump the host, you’re welcome to call. So the good news for you is the lines are almost wide open. I see we have a call coming in already.
But Greg, if you want to give them the numbers, we are right here. That’s right. Bob in Melbourne doesn’t need the numbers, but you guys might.
It’s 844-580-9326. It’s 844-580-WDBO. Or you can go ahead and use the open mic feature inside the WDBO app.
Don’t forget, we have Charles Curry taking your calls off the air today. That’s going to be at 407-869-9800. And the topic for the guys today is steering clear of online financial misinformation.
Yeah, we will get into that because there’s a lot of that stuff going on out there and you can be misled. But let’s not keep waiting. Let’s take Bob’s call.
Bob, good morning. Hello. Good morning.
What’s up? Hi. Thanks, guys. I’ve listened for years.
Yeah. My income situation for 2025 will be pretty much exactly the same as 2024 in the amount and where it comes from. And I just wonder, in your opinion, since I am doing estimated taxes, if possibly 2025 taxes could be lower because I do not want to overestimate.
Your taxes will be lower. The tax brackets, I don’t think, are projected to change. They’re not projected to change.
I think the taxation might be. There may be some tweaking on the standard deductions. But the tax brackets themselves probably are not going to change.
Okay. And there’s no increase in standard deduction or some other change in the taxing of Social Security? You don’t see that happening for 2025? Well, you know, we don’t know. In fact, Rodney and I were talking off the air just before we took your call, Bob.
And the challenge that we have as financial planners is we get a lot of information. And I have learned and Rodney has learned and my colleagues have learned over the years what we don’t want to do is read all the stuff that’s coming out of Washington, what the House is proposing, what the Senate is proposing, because at the end of the day, it’s what they decide on is going to be the law. And unfortunately, we get sometimes get some bad information or people get some bad information because they heard something and they think that’s going to be the law.
And it turns out not to be the law. So it’s, you know, up in Washington, doing this tax bill is kind of like making sausage. You ever made sausage? I’ve made sausage.
When I was a kid in high school, I made Italian sausage in an Italian food store. And I know what sausage is. It’s not a pretty picture, but it sure is good when it’s done.
And what’s going on right now? They’re making sausage up there in Washington. But we don’t know what the end result is going to be. If it’s going to be spicy, it’s going to be mild.
You know, it’s going to be what kind of casing it’s going to be in. But when it’s done, that’s what you will be one of the first to know here, because we will do several, several sessions. I’m sure about what the end result is going to be.
But you answer your question that you can’t. I don’t think you’re going to see any changes in tax brackets at all, but we may see some tweaking on the standard deduction. I don’t think I don’t know about taxation, Social Security and tips and all that stuff.
What do you think, Rodney, to pine in on that? Well, that’s just what you said. The tip thing is floating around out there and there’s talk of Social Security, although I don’t know how they would would do that. But it seems to me that you’re Bob, you’re in good shape if you plan on 25 being comparable to what you paid in 24.
Yeah, as long as your income situation is is essentially the same. Are you worried about the penalty, Bob? Is that what you’re for the penalty? Well, no, because I know as long as I make estimated taxes as much as the previous year. That’s correct.
Yep, yep. Yep. So you don’t have to worry about a penalty and maybe a good good Lord willing, maybe you’ll get a little bit of a refund and you’ll know before the end of the year.
So you don’t have to make that last payment. Well, I’ll be listening to you guys. We appreciate that very much, Bobby.
You have a great weekend. Thank you. Okay.
So topic for today, Rodney, is tell us. Steering clear of online financial misinformation. The proliferation of computers and smartphones, we can find information and guidance on virtually every aspect of human existence in a matter of seconds.
It’s amazing. And this is inclusive of financial information. And that’s a you know, online smartphones is a big source for people to seek out answers to their to their questions about personal finance.
Right? Yep. Interestingly, in between 2021 and 2023, the FTC came up with an estimate of how much money people lost due to fraud, just strictly associated with social media. I want to take a guess to think in millions or billions, you think it’s got to be billions, billions, 2.7 billion, just social media alone.
We’ll talk about, you know, where that fits into this overall, you know, online financial misinformation, but $2.7 billion lost in that, in that two year period. And it’s only increasing, only as they get more sophisticated, only increasing exactly. And with AI, yeah, deep fake and all that, it becomes even more and more sophisticated in terms of the, the ways that you can get that you can get duped with online misinformation.
And, you know, the survey looked at the CFP board actually surveyed about 1000 Americans didn’t to get a good representative sample of what people use, where they find where they find the information in terms of online sources, where they find out 55% of people rely on opinions from friends and family for financial information. And 45% actually look on financial websites, errands, uh, bank websites, uh, tax, you know, tax expert websites and two and five. So 40% rely on social media, um, which again was the source of the 2.7 billion loss over, over that two year period, uh, between 2021 and 2023.
Um, in terms of popularity, YouTube is actually number one. I believe it. Yeah.
How many times have you had somebody say, Oh, YouTube, you’re trying to fix your car. Oh yeah. Look at, look at anything you want, anything you want to know how to do.
And I mean, anything you want to know how to do, you’ll find on YouTube. Right. The good news is if you’re trying to fix your car, there’s a video there and you can see that it’s exactly the part and the car that you’re working on.
Not so, not so with, with financial, financial information. So the potential for, for misinformation I think is, is significantly increased. Number two is Facebook.
Oh yeah. Uh, which is, which is a little scary actually if you think about it. Uh, you know, what generation is the bigger user of Facebook older? Yeah.
Baby boomers. Yeah. Yeah.
They’re, they’re bigger users. Yeah. So, so I guess 50 to 55, 80, 85 and then tick tock is fourth, uh, in this ranking of, of social media websites that people look at for, uh, for financial, financial information and potentially financial misinformation.
Um, a couple more interesting stats here. Uh, 55% of Americans go online for financial information at least once per week. Okay.
Where’d it go? Where are they going? Oh yeah. As you said, they go to those YouTube, tick tock. Yeah.
In terms of social media, they go to those sites and that, and that order we talked about it. 75% of people say that they’re most comfortable with information obtained from a financial advisor. So that’s good for us.
That’s not bad. That’s good for us. I mean, they feel confident.
Um, 67% or two thirds, uh, look to a bank or credit union for, for financial information. Um, and, and rely, they view that information, information from that as a reliable, reliable source. And then employer provided information is also viewed as reliable.
56% of respondents said that they view employer provided info as, as reliable. And then the lowest was social media is 37%. 37% view that view that as reliable.
Yeah. It’s a challenge with this stuff out there, you know, with, with, uh, artificial intelligence, you got any statistics on what’s going on out there with that? There’s a, uh, there’s just a little bit of reference to artificial intelligence. I’ve got some anecdotally, I’ve got some go ahead.
What do you got? Uh, so, uh, have you seen any of these, uh, these AI, uh, fake, uh, commentary from, from experts? Have you seen that? Um, I’m not sure I knew it was fake. Go ahead. Well, remember a few years ago, we passed around the office.
There was a video of Ron DeSantis saying things that we knew he would never. Yeah. Where they mimic somebody and you, they make it.
Oh yeah. I’ve seen that. So they take, I’ve seen them do that with president Trump.
Right. Exactly. So they take video and then they, Oh yeah.
Take your voice. Oh yeah. Just from words that you’ve spoken.
You and I are going to be out there pretty soon. Right. Exactly.
So they, a few years ago, we saw this with Ron DeSantis. It was passed around the office here. Right.
And you remember, we could look at it. It was okay. Right.
But we could look at it and sort of focus on it until it was fake. Yes. So a few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me, this was when the NBA playoffs were going on.
He sent me one of the teams that lost the Knicks lost in one of the earlier rounds of New York Knicks. Right. And he sent a video to me of one of the players talking about the final loss that kicked him out of the playoffs.
And he was criticizing his teammates and his coach in ways that we know he thinks he would, we know he would never say. It looked authentic. It looked scary.
It looked absolutely scary. The contrast between the thing we saw with Ron DeSantis a few years ago. Right.
And this thing that we saw just a couple of weeks ago was frightening. Yeah. Because it looked like he was saying, it was a video of it.
It looked like he was saying all these terrible things. The technology. Well, you know, they’re doing that today with kids and grandkids.
Right. And this is the frightening thing for grandparents. You know, you get a Facebook thing and he’s your granddaughter pleading for money because you’re being held captive somewhere.
And it’s man alive. It’s frightening. Frightening, frightening, frightening.
And all they need is a snippet. Yeah. Just a small snippet.
Yeah. And you’re getting kids all over Facebook. I mean, it’s just, yeah.
Instagram. Yep. And they’re all over it.
Like you said. You know, what they suggest is that families have a secret word or code word, you know? So what, once again, for you, for listeners who may not be familiar with that, what you want to have in your family is a code word that if you get that call, you ask them, okay, what’s the code word? If they don’t know the code word, you hang up or disconnect. And that’s the way, that’s the way you protect yourself.
So I’ve got a friend who went through this situation and they prayed on the grandfather. Oh yeah. So the grandfather’s, you know, we need $15,000.
Your grandson’s in trouble. Oh yeah. And he wrote the check.
I understand. I understand. I can see how that could be done.
I see we’re up against the break here. Greg, you want to take it away? That’s right. And if you’ve been listening and you’ve had any issues with online financial misinformation, maybe you’ve been duped by some of these scammers, or maybe you’ve been able to combat it, let us know.
Go ahead and give us a call here. 844-580-9326. That’s 844-580-WDBO.
Or go ahead and drop your story inside the open mic in the WDBO app. You’re listening to On The Money, where we’re planning tomorrow, today, with the Certified Financial Group. Welcome back to On The Money here on WDBO, 107.3 FM and AM 580.
You can also listen live on the WDBO app wherever you are. Today, we have Rodney Owenby and Joe Burt from the Certified Financial Group. If you have any questions about your finances, go ahead and give us a call here at 844-580-9326.
That’s 844-580-WDBO. Or go ahead and use the open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You can also call 407-869-9800, where Charles Curry’s taking your calls off the air.
And now, back to Rodney and Joe. You know, Greg, we haven’t mentioned for a while that we’ve moved our Windermere office. We’ve moved a little bit closer to the villages.
It was now in Winter Garden, right there on the West Colonial, in the Schmidt office building. So those of you familiar with the western West Orlando, up in that Claremont… Right near Oakland. Right in the Winter Garden.
Sort of between Winter Garden. Yes. Yes.
So it’s… Winter Garden address, but it’s right by… Yes. Beautiful office there in the Schmidt office building, right there in West Colonial. So we’ll be glad to meet you there.
And also, we have an outpost in Daytona, at the Daytona Beach Yacht Club. So for our listeners that may not want to trek here to our home office in Altamont Springs, those options are available to you. More information and location is on our website.
That’s financialgroup.com. We’re talking about being duped already through the internet and all that information that’s being thrown out there. That’s right. A couple more things to hit in terms of highlights from the survey.
There are some very prominent themes of misinformation. And to hit on the top four or five of those, anything that’s talking about investment returns. Right.
You should be getting 14%, 15% annual returns year in and year out. That’s a big source of misinformation. And then AI-generated advice, some instances can also be suspect and a source of misinformation.
You know what it’s called when AI gives you bad information? What? Hallucinations. That’s what- Okay. Yeah.
Right. In fact, we had a little example here in the office this week. Aaron was running, we want to run something through chat to do a calculation.
And he gave the details to chat and came back with the answer. And we verified it on the calculator and it was incorrect answer. It just goes in left field.
Yes. All right. So you got to be very, very careful that the information that you’re getting from the internet is you don’t know how to interpret it.
Right. Exactly. And I think this is where people fall astray.
But I think what you said about the returns and the missed opportunity or the ground floor opportunity to get into this and that, the new cure for cancer or whatever it might be, get into the ground floor before anybody knows about it. Send your money here. And yeah, you, yeah.
A couple of others are social security strategies. So sometimes there’ll be misinformation around social security timing and then real estate as I’m sure you’ve seen. Yes.
Real estate scams. Right. Or tax, tax schemes too, you know.
And that’s the next one. Yeah. Tax strategies.
Yeah. Tax strategies. They have this secret nobody knows about.
Nobody knows about the secret code tax, part of the tax code that nobody uses and is available to you to, to eliminate all the taxes that you’d ever have to pay. Boy, you got to, and they make it look so authentic. That’s the scary thing.
That’s the scary thing. I hear the bumper music there, Greg. And you’re right.
They do make it seem so authentic on some of those. So you’ve been listening to the On The Money here on WDBO. If you’ve had any issues with any of this online and misinformation, go ahead and give us a call here.
844-580-9326. You’re listening to On The Money, where we’re planning tomorrow. Today.
With the Certified Financial Group. Welcome back to On The Money. Central Florida’s most listened to financial call-in show.
Brought to you by Certified Financial Group and Altamont Springs. It’s the only show hosted exclusively by certified financial planner professionals. Monday through Friday, their CFPs provide financial planning and investment advice for a fee.
But on Saturdays, the advice is absolutely free and has been for more than 30 years for their WDBO listeners. If you have a financial question you want answered by real fiduciaries, the lines are wide open. Call 844-580-WDBO.
That’s 844-580-WDBO. And enjoy the rest of the show. Welcome back to On The Money here on WDBO, 107.3 FM and AM 580.
You can listen live on the WDBO app wherever you happen to be. Today we have Rodney Owenby and Joe Burt from the Certified Financial Group. And if you have any questions about your finances, go ahead and give us a call here.
844-580-9326. That’s 844-580-WDBO. Or you can go and use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app.
We’ve also got Charles Curry taking some of your maybe more personal calls off the air over at 407-869-9800. Now back to Rodney and Joe. Yeah, Greg, I see we got a call there.
Maybe a little personal situation here. You want to tee it up? We’ve got Noreen calling in from Orlando. And we were talking a little bit about how you’ve been duped by this online financial misinformation.
Well, she unfortunately got duped by a bank. So let’s go ahead and see what Noreen’s got. Sorry to hear that.
You’re on. What happened, Noreen? Good morning. Hi, good morning.
Yes, I wanted to share my call with all of your listeners. So recently I received a call on my phone and it came up as a Chase Bank. And they said we wanted to see if you had some fraudulent… We think we have some fraudulent charges on your account.
Did you make these two charges? And one was for $1,000, one was for $900 to certain people. And I said, absolutely not. They said, well, we think your account’s been scammed and you need to call your bank.
And here’s the call in number, the fraud line. And they gave me an 877 number and a claim number to call it in so that they could back those charges out. So I called that number and they answer Wells Fargo fraud line.
They all looked legit, showed up on the phone, Wells Fargo fraud line. And then they walked me through the steps to go through Zelle and put in the claim number. And what I was actually doing unknowingly was putting in numbers that converted to dollars.
And they took $3,990. I transferred unknowingly to Zelle to back out those charges. And they basically walked me through.
They knew all the screenshots, everything that would come up on my side. And then they had me do it on two different times because of the two different amounts. And then on the second one, I thought, this doesn’t sound right.
And I expressed, you know, I’m not happy about this. They said, no, no, no, no, no. We’re here to help you and assist you.
And so I put them on hold. And oh, so smooth. And I called Wells Fargo.
They said, no, it’s a scam and hang up. But all the phone, all the identification came in as, thanks, Chase, Wells Fargo and Zelle. Oh, my gosh.
Very unfortunate. And I tried to send the note to Wells Fargo about it. And they said, unfortunately, it’s a fraud.
And I raised it to the next level supervisors. And they said, you know, we’re very sorry. But you sent that money, whether it was knowingly or not.
Right. And they sent me $3.99 as a goodwill gesture. So 1%.
Oh, my gosh. 1% is what they gave me. Oh, got it.
And I’m pretty savvy. And I couldn’t believe how smooth it was. And so I just want your listeners to be careful with phone IDs that come up on your phone, because they were able to, you know, put that information on my phone.
And you don’t sound like a 75-year-old grandmother. But you know, that’s happening to the 75-year-old grandmothers. Well, you know what? I’m turning 70 next week.
And I’m starting to wonder. Maybe I’m becoming that, too. No, you’re not.
Well, you’re a youthful-sounding 70. I am. Thank you.
I am. God bless you. Well, you know, they say 70 is the new 50.
So live it up, baby. I hope so. I feel that way anyway.
Oh, good for you. Good for you. Well, thanks for sharing.
I mean, I had not heard of that one, though. So boy, once again, for our listeners that may not have just tuned in, tell us exactly what happened again. So it showed up on the phone as Chase Bank calling.
Chase Bank told me that that was a fraud. They referred me to Wells Fargo Claims. And I called the number they gave me.
And they answered the phone, Wells Fargo Claims. Right. And sure enough, it was a fraud.
And they walked me through the steps of sending the claims into Zelle. And it was actually sending dollars into Zelle to the supervisor that they gave me the name of. Did they reference a specific credit card, Noreen? They didn’t credit.
No, they didn’t ask for a credit card. Well, yes, they did. They referenced your card, a Chase card? No, no, they didn’t.
Yeah. OK. And then they had it linked to my bank account on my savings.
Excuse me, the checking account on Wells Fargo. Oh, this is the ease of Zelle. This is it sounds like they’ve made that final step.
Yeah. The ease of Zelle. Yes.
Oh, yeah. Is this scary? Yes. Here it is.
Yeah, there you go. It’s just I’m sorry. There you go.
Well, well, thank you for sharing it. Do you have a little more time? The good news was the police officer, I filed a report and the young police officer came and filled out the report and, you know, I filled out the application, put my age on there and he left and a half hour later came back knocking on my door and he said, I think there’s something wrong with your application. You put on here you’re 69 years old.
And I said, that’s true. He says, I need to see your I.D. Because if you’re over 65, it’s a bigger it’s a bigger fraud for higher criminal cases. But the good news was he didn’t think I was 69.
You know, you don’t look at it. You don’t sound like I still got scammed anyway. All right.
Well, thanks for the call. All right. Have a great weekend.
Thank you. Wow. You know, that’s it is tough.
And, you know, I see it come across where you get a notice from the bank. It looks like it’s from the bank on your computer. You know, the way they spoof these things or for Social Security or the IRS.
It’s it’s it’s a minefield out there. You know, used to there would be typos and caps in weird places. That’s diminishing.
Oh, yeah. They’re getting more sophisticated. The sophistication is definitely.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. So you had another thing or two you want to wrap up on that. So, yeah, just to wrap up only and with Noreen’s example and, you know, all the things we’ve talked about in mind, only 39 percent of people believe the information they find online has their best interest in mind.
So with that, only six percent never question what they find. So in addition to that, 93 percent of respondents said that they corroborate or validate whatever they find initially. They look for another source.
So people understand this is the good news of all this. People understand that they need to validate the things that they find in these in these online sources because of misinformation. Yep.
So there’s an understanding out there of, you know, the and recognition that we need to to verify some of the things that we unfortunately sometimes you got to get burned before you before you get scared. Right. You know what I mean? Right.
And I think the runs that are really, really sad are the ones that lure you into these high rates return or these get rich quick schemes or that’s that’s. Yeah. I mean, because people are desperate.
You know, they’re tough, tough times and people take how many times, you know, or the or the dating things, you know, where you. Right. You got this.
I met with someone a month or so ago that had that. Yeah. And lost money.
Yeah. As a result of that. We’ve had it.
We’ve we’ve we have. Well, you know, we have what we call the senior alert here at our office that if there are any attempts to withdraw money and and it doesn’t sound like this is something that you would do. We have procedures to be sure that this is really what you want to do and is really you.
So, you know, it’s we’re all on high alert nowadays, but boy, they’re getting more and more and more sophisticated. All right. So I see we got a text question floated in there.
Greg, take it away. That’s right. And they are.
It’s like they had intuition. They knew we were going to be talking about this today. What are some warning signals I might see to indicate that what I’m seeing online is actually misinformation that’s coming from Dave in a video? I think it’s what you talked about.
I think if it sounds too good to be true or if it just sounds a little suspect, then you need to go validate that information with another source. But the number one thing is where there’s something that’s promising these, you know, extremely high returns. So I think that’s a red flag.
If you see something that’s promising, you know, annualized 12 percent returns, then you probably need to it sounds too good to be true and it probably is. Right. So you need to to investigate and validate claims that you see along those lines.
We had a as some of our listeners know, we broadcast live on Facebook and we had a recommendation come through from one of our Facebook viewers, listeners here this morning, suggesting that you use the automatic answer. What do they call it? The greeting on your voice on your phone, on your voicemail. Do not use your voice on your voicemail.
Because they can capture those words, your voice, speech pattern. Yes. So go to settings and make the standard greeting.
It’s rather than your voice, rather than your voice, because that’s my gosh, the things you got to think about today. That’s good advice, though. It is great advice.
Yeah, yeah. Great advice. I’m asking about seeing this online.
That’s actually misinformation. I know we mentioned a couple of the sites that you can go to earlier in the show that that a lot of people are using for financial advice anymore, including social media, things like that. When you see that information on social media, what do you think is the best way to tell if it’s good information? And we talked about a lot about the misinformation, but how are you able to kind of discern the good information then? My quick response is you have to have a trusted advisor.
Exactly. Yeah, corroborate it. Our clients call us when they see something that looks interesting and we will look at it and do some research for them.
Nine out of ten times it is bogus, but you have to have somebody that you can trust that you can sit down face to face that has the ability to do the research for you. But there’s all kinds of schemes out there. It’s frightening.
With artificial intelligence today, it gets more and more sophisticated. So that’s kind of a downer. I see you got another text question there, Greg.
Take it away. That’s right. And we’ve got one here from Julie in Winter Park.
And Julie wants to know, if I don’t need my RMD, can I roll it into a Roth IRA? Okay. So once again, the RMD, Required Minimum Distribution, this is the amount that the government says that you have to take out if you’re turning, say, 73 this year. You got to begin withdrawing from your retirement accounts.
Otherwise, you’re going to get hit with a 25% penalty. And it’s not a good thing. So the question is, can I take my RMD and roll it into a Roth? Rodney? So technically, I guess the answer is no.
But to the extent that you have earned income, you can still contribute to a Roth. So if Julie has earned income, then she can. And there are certain income limits as well.
As long as she’s under those income limits, then she can contribute to a Roth. So it’s not technically a direct transfer from her RMD. But it’s the earned income, sort of, that she’s funding the contribution.
So you just can’t take the RMD and roll it into a Roth. So you take out the RMD and you put it in your non-qualified account, your taxable account. But then you could always take more money out of your retirement account and do a Roth.
Same year. Right. Sure.
Yeah. Right. A Roth conversion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as long as you don’t take that RMD amount, which doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s the way it is. So let’s say your RMD is $5,000.
You take the $5,000 and put it in your taxable account. And then you want to do a $10,000 Roth conversion on extra money. You can do that.
You can do that. As long as you pay the taxes. As long as you pay the taxes.
Right. Makes no sense at all. All right.
We’ve got one more there. Greg, take it away. That’s right.
It looks like we’ve got a winner from somebody who’s got a text message here with us this morning. My wife won a Fantasy V drawing a few weeks ago. Congratulations.
But they want to know what they should do with it. That’s Irwin in Titusville. All right.
Fantasy V. So that winning is in the $100,000 range, Fantasy V, I think. I don’t play. So tell me.
Yeah. Do you know what the Fantasy V is there, Greg? I think it’s in the $100,000. I’m not 100% sure.
Let me double check it for you. I’m not playing either. OK.
If you’re a single winner, I think it’s in that range. I know someone who won, actually. Oh, OK.
They won it one time. So you’ve got to pay the taxes. I think they do that automatically.
Yeah, they deduct it. That’s the first thing. Withhold, yeah.
So then I would say a lot of it depends on your personal financial situation, which is why we do comprehensive financial planning. But I would say save a substantial portion of that in a high-yield money market or an investment account. Yeah.
Well, the first thing is if you get any credit card debt, kill the debt. Well, exactly. And then be sure you have an emergency fund.
And then start funding your retirement accounts. I want to get back to last week when I was gone. Nancy and Aaron were on the phone.
And we had a call from Ed in the Villages, one of our longtime listeners. And he said he was a client of yours. And there was some question about some information that he said you gave him regarding RMDs and age 74.
And is there a requirement to start taking money out when you turn age 74? And we didn’t have the answer for us. And so we did track it down as to where Ed got that information. So those listeners that may have been tuned in last week, we want to clear up exactly what Ed was talking about.
And this gets back to what you were talking about with the grinding of… Making the sausage. Making the sausage. It ain’t done until it’s done.
Right. So there was the original Secure 2.0 Act that passed through the House, but not the Senate, had a provision in there that phased in the RMD age. So in 2030, that RMD age went from 73 to 74.
But in the Senate or somewhere in that making of the sausage, they removed that. And in the final bill, it was age 73 and then age 75. And 75.
So that phase in portion was taken out. But there was a… And this falls under the category of misinformation. So it’s sort of timely, given last week’s call from Ed.
It was misinformation. Which really just gets back to what I said earlier. We’ve learned not to focus on what’s going on in Washington while they’re putting the sausage together.
Because you have to find out when it’s all said and done what the real rules are. Because it’s really easy to get confused. But there was an article from Barron’s that referenced that.
Yes. It referenced the bill that passed the House. Yes.
And so people take it as gospel. I hear the bumper music there. Greg, take it away.
That’s right. A little research. $100,000 right now for the Fantasy 5. So if you are a player, there you go.
Now we know. Now you know. You’ve been listening to On The Money here on WDBO.
If you have any financial questions, go ahead and give us a call here. 844-580-9326. That’s 844-580-WDBO.
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With the Certified Financial Group. Welcome back to On The Money here on WDBO. 107.3 FM and AM 580, where you can also listen live using the WDBO app.
Today, we have Rodney Owenby and Joe Burt from the Certified Financial Group. If you have any questions about your finances, go ahead and give us a call here. 844-580-9326.
That’s 844-580-WDBO. Or go ahead and use the open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You can also call 407-869-9800.
That’s where Charles Curry is taking your calls off the air. Now, back to Rodney and Joe. I see we have another text question floating in there, Greg.
So take it away. That’s right. We’ve got Janet in Altamont who’s wondering if you can talk a little bit about what QLAC is.
Q-L-A-C. QLAC. Rodney.
So QLAC stands for Qualified Longevity Annuity Contract, I believe. Yep. And it’s a strategy if you anticipate living into your 80s, typically over age 80, you can pull a portion of your qualified money from a 401k IRA into this QLAC contract.
And it’s exempt from the RMD requirements. So that’s an advantage there. But it’s for longevity.
So typically, you would use this between ages 80 and 85. And you wouldn’t buy it between 80 and 85. No, you would buy it in advance of that.
But you would anticipate using the money. Right. Because you can take it out in that age range.
Right. I believe 85 is the upper boundary there. Yes.
And there are limits on how much you can do. But you can avoid the RMD requirement for that portion that you put into the QLAC. Right.
I believe it’s around $200,000. Yeah. So you can take a lump, a good chunk of money out of your retirement account.
So you’re going to be forced to pay taxes on it, roll it in the QLAC. And the idea behind that is, at some point in time, then you pull the trigger. And then it guarantees you an income for your lifetime.
Exactly. Right. Not necessarily a good idea today with lower interest rates.
But it’s all the things you have to look at. And then you have to be careful of the fees attached to those things. But that is a tool that’s out there that’s being used in some circumstances.
Yep, yep, yep. So that answers your question, what exactly what it is. I see we’re coming up near the top of the hour.
Greg, I want to mention, once again, on July the 12th, Dave Belichristian will be holding a workshop here on planning through the four stages of retirement. As we say in our ad there, while you’re working, it’s an accumulation phase. But in your retirement, it’s a spending or a decumulation phase.
And you need to know where to pull that money in the most tax-efficient way, looking at Roths, the pros and cons, and all that stuff. So once again, that’s July the 12th. You can go to our website.
That’s financialgroup.com, financialgroup.com. You can make your reservation right there. And we hope to see you there on July the 12th. I think it’s three weeks from today.
And I want to mention, once again, that our listeners, we do Score My Funds. It’s an opportunity to have the investments that you hold in your IRA, your 401k scored by the Center for Fiduciary Studies. We will send you a free report, show you how your funds score, given 11 distinct criteria, not just investment returns, but with expenses, manager tenure, and how much return you’re getting for the amount of risk.
So you go to scoremyfunds.com, scoremyfunds.com. Greg, take it away.