Starting Seriously for a Fun Retirement

Brian Akers and Paul Franco from AKERS Financial Group discuss the importance of starting seriously with financial planning for a fun retirement. They emphasize the need to be proactive in planning, including understanding your financial situation, setting goals, and implementing strategies. They highlight the significance of comprehensive financial planning that includes asset allocation, income planning, estate planning, and tax strategies. The conversation also touches on the importance of regular reviews and adjustments to ensure financial stability. They encourage listeners to seek professional advice early and stress that planning should be tailored to individual needs and circumstances.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Winning in retirement is brought to you by BRIAN AKERS and the AKERS Financial Group. This is talk radio 680 W CBM at 99.9 FM in Harford County, welcoming you to winning in retirement with your host BRIAN AKERS. Brian is a certified financial planner professional and founder of AKERS Financial Group now helping you win in your retirement. Here's BRIAN AKERS,

BRIAN AKERS: 0:28

welcome to winning in retirement. I'm BRIAN AKERS president, founder of AKERS Financial Group, and you welcome we welcome you to our radio podcast here this morning, and we hope you are ready to listen to a great show that Paul Franco and I have put together. Paul Franco, good morning. Morning. Brian. How are you? I'm doing very well. Paul Franco works for AKERS Financial Group as a financial advisor, as his MBA has been helping many clients over the last number of years. Then also for me, I'm entering my 38th year of financial services. Say 38 oh, yeah, I did say 38 holy cow, my voice sounds more like I'm 38 but it's 38 years of actually, um, help working and helping people for 30 cool. But this show today is going to be called starting seriously for a fun retirement. So it'll be a fun show. Yeah,

Paul Franco: 1:18

I think so. I like that fun retirement. That sounds good. Are you sure you sure you got fun? Retirement ready? I'm think I'm ready. I think that's gonna be fun. All right, so those that

BRIAN AKERS: 1:25

are listening, what I need you to think about is this, no matter where you are in life, you know, when you need to get more serious with your finances, you are already successful, but you might be missing something. When we say serious, we mean down the business, ready to do work, the planning, the implementation to change your life. Many don't enjoy this process, but we do. Many enjoy the results, and that's what we want you and your family to experience. So that's really the reason and goal and purpose of the show. Sounds good, right? Sure, does. You're ready to sit back and listen to this kind of show, right?

Paul Franco: 2:01

Absolutely. I mean, for everybody, it might be different, but starting seriously is so important. And serious is the key word there. It's not just starting, but getting really serious about your retirement.

BRIAN AKERS: 2:12

Yeah. So the way I way I was thinking, when I was thinking about doing this show, I thought about people that come in they want to get started, and then I was thinking about the clients we usually get from the radio, and those are people that have worked, they've started their career, they're midway through their career, or later on, and they say are looking at their finances, keeping looking at the statements, and they have a collection of things, and all sudden they're like, oh, man, we need to get more serious about this, right? And then the answer is, how do we start being more serious about it, right? So that's where the show came from, starting. I'm seriously starting, or starting seriously? Yeah, for but we want you to have a fun retirement. Fun retirement means stress free. That means not the stress of, what should I do with my money? Is my money going to provide the income I need? Will provide? What is going to give us what we need each and every day. We call that winning in retirement. Certainly no fun. And winning in retirement, it's just part of winning in retirement. But they go hand in hand. I mean, they can be on certain days, right? Because depending on who finds out you retired, and all sudden they're calling you all the time.

Paul Franco: 3:17

Yeah, it's your next full time job. It's funny though, Brian, because I mean, I when I when I like, I'll give you an example. Just Just this past week, I met with somebody, and we had a conversation about this, where he had worked so hard he him and his wife, wife have saved, over time, built their nest egg up, but they've been looking for that next step. What do we do now? I want to retire in the next few years. And so that was our conversation. I said, Well, what is your plan right now? What would be your withdrawal strategy? And so ironically, as we're kind of working through and talking about this topic, we came to the conclusion that in a lot of ways, the accumulation part of starting you can almost for a lot of individuals, that's a lot easier than the withdrawal strategy. When you retire,

BRIAN AKERS: 4:04

it's painful, it's painful, but you built this money, but

Paul Franco: 4:08

you can set it, you set it up, and you can forget it, and the next thing you know, you look and your your money's significantly grown for you. Yeah, you're

BRIAN AKERS: 4:16

talking about accumulation. The accumulation, same thing will happen when you retire. You can set it and let it work. The problem is, I believe all retirees, you need about two years to settle in retirement, Oh, yeah. And then you'll walk in the door and you'll say, I don't know how I ever fit work in, yep, yep. Then we know that you're winning in retired retirement and the fact that you are truly retired, yeah, because you just don't know how to fit everything in because you're enjoying what's going on. Your

Paul Franco: 4:42

time is completely filled with with new things. And that's the dreaming. Part of planning we love to do is, how are you going to fill your time?

BRIAN AKERS: 4:49

Nobody wants to do actual planning. Do they Well, that's why they hire us. Brian, well, some people do but, but normally it's more of the wives. It's more people that are analytical. Really watched, watch everything. There's many people that are extremely successful because of the way they are, you know, like the job, and they're going at 110 miles an hour, and they figure everything will just work itself out. And what we like to explain is this, we have a role. That role is to be a financial coach, a financial advisor for you to fill in those gaps, to make sure you have the foundations and the fundamentals that you need to hold your finances at this level and to build and grow so that when you're done racing the race of life, and you want to slow down, or you want to gear down, at any point in time, you have prepared for it by having money allocated with a purpose, and that's all. That's what planning is,

Paul Franco: 5:44

right? That's planning, and that's winning in retirement. Ultimately, yeah, and the idea of

BRIAN AKERS: 5:48

winning retirement isn't going to be a show just about retirees. It's about, how do we all get there? How do we make sure that you are going to be able to be winning retirement, not struggling to pay what bills that are out there? Yeah?

Paul Franco: 5:59

And it's, that's a concept, Brian, where you just you don't know what you don't know. And so when we sit down with clients, and they think a lot, and a lot of times they do think they're set up. And I, hey, I'm coming in to meet with you just for a second opinion, make sure I'm on track. Well, when we have those conversations, then we throw in different terms that they might not even know about. And so I can go, and I don't even want to open that can of worms right now, but ultimately, that's a real conversation we have of like, well, this is why we want to plan for this. This certain way

BRIAN AKERS: 6:27

do you get your worms in a can still every now and then? Yeah, I don't dig into the ground too much. That's the only way I've ever gotten worms. But if, when I fish with just a bunch, I was thinking about one of my clients from the fall, very sophisticated, very brilliant people, and they can obviously, they've got built himself a really good nesting. They're worth, like, almost $4 million because of the hard work in their career. The thing was, they knew their missing areas they were they knew not everything worked together because in good financial planning, it involves your insurance, your investments, having strategies for both of them. It involves your estate planning, your tax planning, levelizing your income taxes for life, making sure you have full advantage of the tax brackets, making sure you're saving everything you can in your final years to make sure there's enough money you throw to that future, bringing it all together on when to draw Social Security, what kind of pension to draw, all of those aspects lead to a good, solid financial plan.

Paul Franco: 7:28

You're spot on. I don't know what to add to that. That's, that's, that's spot on. I just dropped the mic. We're done. Sure did. No, that's, that's the big part. That's a comprehensive financial plan takes into account everything you just mentioned. The

BRIAN AKERS: 7:40

more complex you are, the more we need to do this. I have very successful clients, and the way they got there is the fact that they could run their 100 miles an hour, and then we filled in behind them, making sure we had everything planning for that future, so that whenever they want to slow down, we're good to go right

Paul Franco: 7:57

and that. And I guarantee Brian, that all started with with when they met with you, that first question they might have came in with one question, yeah, might have been as easy as, Hey, can I can I retire? How do I retire? What do I do? Can I take care of myself, take care of my family? And then it just graduated to more, more of a comprehensive financial plan to help answer all those questions so that they could enjoy those retirement years.

BRIAN AKERS: 8:20

Yeah, and I think it back to 1998 I know that was a long time ago, but for many people, the 90s were roaring. 90s really good markets. So that 9899 period, was a the beginning of the internet and the tech all those not the beginning of the internet. Al Gore made that letter earlier, but the idea was, 98 was a big tech year, but I had a radio show work with all the people on that, on that show, and people called in, and one one family called in. We met. There's still a client, but our goal was to take of where they were to where they need to be. And then they became financially independent. And he was a corporate executive and everything. And so one day he decided, well, I think I'm done. And he retired early because he's financially independent, and he could go in and exit the way he wanted to. And he was able to work out a deal the exit, which is incredibly brilliant, worked very, very well, but he took things seriously, you know, like 18 or 17 years ahead of time, to make sure that he was ready, so he could choose his own exit, not have to be be told when to leave or based on ages or anything else. So the idea of planning and being really serious about it is truly beginning, right?

Paul Franco: 9:30

And that financial independence for a lot of folks like I've been meeting with folks that are like Paul, I don't I don't know when I want to retire. I don't know if I want to retire. And the first thing I say is, okay, let's get retirement almost out of your vocabulary, and let's start talking about financial independence. When that choice is where maybe it's 62 we can say you're good to go. We have the plan in place to have income that's going to take care of you and your wife, take care of you and your family to last you a lifetime. And we have more than enough, and we've planned for it accordingly. So. That's financial independence, and ultimately, that's the goal. And so if it is that, you know, finally you decide I do want to walk away. That's your choice, and that's a beautiful place to be.

BRIAN AKERS: 10:10

Yeah, financial independence is a nice moment for clients to realize that, oh, they get to choose to work. They choose to get to do what they're doing. They get to choose and exit whenever they're ready. And then people that love their job, they keep going. They might go from five to four days, four to two and a half, two and a half to two, two to one, one to half a day. I had a guy do that one to half a day over a 10 year period. He'd come in, his wife would start. He's not retiring. Brian. Then he all right, I'll take I'll cut one day, right? And then, like, couple meetings that later of a he's not retiring, Brian cut down. Well,

Paul Franco: 10:44

that's that's pretty hard. Also, of trying and in the planning process, what we love to do is help you dream. What do you want to how do you want to spend your retirement years? Are you going to spend it more with family, with kids, grandkids? Are you going to be able to you're going to be able to donate more time, more of your own time? There's a lot of different ways you can fill time in retirement. So

BRIAN AKERS: 11:03

bringing it all together is what AKERS Financial Group does for our clients. We meet with people on a regular basis. That might be a couple times a year, depending on what's going on. Normally, it's many meetings that first year. As we bring you on board with AKERS, thanks group, and we get through where you are, where you are currently, and we start to build the overall plan. These regular meetings are things that we meet in our offices, or some people zoom from all around the country, actually a two couple around the world here now, we also have websites to track their progress and also track their investments, things like that, which helps us put it all together. I think that's a great way to make it work. Yeah, and that's the

Paul Franco: 11:38

way you start seriously, is start to build the plan out and meet with us, and we can help work that out.

BRIAN AKERS: 11:43

It might start with like one question, but usually ends where we're help. We're trying to slowly do planning, even if you don't want to. We will slowly do planning, and we'll make sure we do the heavy lifting in the work for you now. AKERS financial, we are local, we're independent. We don't report to a big company in in Iowa or New York, anywhere even Wall Street. We report to you. We do have offices in Lutherville and far still, and also meet in other areas. We have clients all around the country, even a few around the world. It's so easy to begin winning in retirement, just give us a call and schedule your meeting, your free meeting with one of our team of advisors by calling 833 win retire as 830 3w, I n, r, e, t, I R, E, we'll give you a call on Monday to schedule your free in person meeting. Go to AKERS Financial group.com you just scroll right down and you set that meeting right on the website, if you'd like to do it that way, or you just call us 833-946-7384 to start planning for your retirement now. Your future self just called What was the conversation? We'll talk about this in a future moment. It's

Unknown: 12:53

time to listen to you and listeners, go to wcbm.com and vote on wcbms latest poll. It's fun, it's fast, and let us know what you want more of on wcbm.com Baltimore is listening. This is talk radio. 680 wcbm and 99.9 FM in Harford County, welcoming you back to winning in retirement. Call 833 win retire. That's 833 win retire. Call now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement. Once again. Here's BRIAN AKERS,

BRIAN AKERS: 13:28

welcome back to winning in retirement. I'm BRIAN AKERS from AKERS Financial Group. Up here with me today is Paul Franco. Paul Franco, financial advisor from AKERS Financial Group. We're here doing this radio show called starting seriously for a fun retirement. So Paul, we're seriously starting. We're seriously starting for a fun retirement. Yeah, all right, we're starting the second half, the second quarter, actually, we're in so we're gonna have a fun second quarter as well. Yeah, well, this second quarter, it's a great question I want to start with, and I'm gonna bug you about this, just because it's a lot of fun. So your future self just called What was the conversation now, future Paul. Do you like to make future Paul worry about things like, Do you like to throw your problems to the future? What's your what's your MO when it comes to dealing with life's happenings? Sure,

Paul Franco: 14:13

Brian, that is a loaded question. It is meant to be loaded. I hope future Paul and future self would be happy of the decisions he's made now in the when I'm looking back 2030, years from now, I sure hope so, as

BRIAN AKERS: 14:28

an older person the future. Okay, let's call myself. I'm in the future already my past self. I have some issues with my past stuff. Some of them is the fact that what seems like obvious stocks I should have bought 30 years ago. I didn't buy three years ago. But hindsight, I wish I could go back and invest. That'd be, that'd be one of my favorite reasons to go backwards. The thing is this, I was in a meeting, and that meeting was a CPA, and the CPA, she said, that's a future me problem. I said, am I? In response immediately back to her. Was. Is, do you really want a future problem that you could handle today? And it was about the mindset of CPAs and the mindset of trying to pay the least amount of tax now and not worry about the future till later. My future me can worry about that. Sure, that sounds like a normal American way of handling finance, doesn't it? I would

Paul Franco: 15:20

argue that's a normal way of that Americans handle a lot of things, and finance being one of them. And

BRIAN AKERS: 15:25

are you talking about government now? Oh, I mean, everything. Push it, push it away, push it forward. Could

Paul Franco: 15:29

be exactly I'm talking about, even on a personal level, personal growth, health, all of that.

BRIAN AKERS: 15:34

You push it to the future of thinking things will change, which they don't right. And so our opinion is that your future self to be happy with your current self, what they want to see you do the future you what they want to see you as you put some work in. They want you to do the fundamental things financially, so that you are successful later, understanding that life does happen. We do get older. We don't keep getting better and better and better and faster and more able to work more hours and make more and more money. There comes a day when you need to retire Absolutely, and that day could be at any point in time, painting on health disabilities, a death of a spouse. There's all kinds of issues that we face in life that are in our future, and we got to be ready for all worst case scenarios. Yeah.

Paul Franco: 16:22

I mean, it's, it is a very hard reality when ultimately we plan, we can plan so much, and we plan for our future, plan for saving to our future, and then something happens that we haven't planned for, like a death of a spouse or a disability where we're no longer able to work. And if we don't plan for that, we're in a really difficult situation now, and now you're forced to make decisions that you might not have wanted to make. You might have to sell your house, you might have to take on another job. And so proper planning is planning for that ahead of time, and that's so important. I mean, I'm having I've been dealing with that recently for clients of mine, thankfully, we have planned for it, but ultimately, when a spouse passes away, ultimately it's a very difficult conversation to have. It's a it's a very hard thing to grieve, and so the financial aspect of that, and doing the planning, having that done ahead of time is an incredible peace of mind that we can give to our client.

BRIAN AKERS: 17:19

Yeah, it's not going to fix everything. It's just going to know we're financially okay. So that that's not one of the lead worries is on the money for tomorrow, and that's why planning has to be done. Now that's not a fun topic to talk about at all. When it comes to their death or disability, the worst case scenarios, what happens is this also, is that when you think about your future self, if you picture what that person is going to be doing in the future, the younger you are, you might have some grandiose idea that you're running down the beaches. Most likely, you're not going to be running at that age. You're walking very slowly on the beach, crawling and sometimes, depending on where you what you like to do, but, but generally, when I think about future self, and you're thinking about, Okay, what I want for my future self? Well, I want to be taken care of and understand that there really isn't anybody else is going to do it for me. And that's a big, big topic we need to cover. Paul is, is our jobs, our government? What we need to rely on for our finances, or do we have to be personally responsible? I

Paul Franco: 18:23

think you have to be personally responsible and and understand that the incorporation of pensions or security are a piece of the financial plan, but ultimately, it's our responsibility to be savers on our own so that we aren't reliant on any sort of governmental benefit like that. Things

BRIAN AKERS: 18:39

are going to change. Pensions keep changing. They keep lowering the benefit, lowering the cost of living adjustments, lowering, really, the payouts down to 1% per year at your work, or less, or many companies, especially private sector, there is no pension, right? It's just whatever you saved on your own.

Paul Franco: 18:57

Yeah, yeah, it's they've done away with them completely. And so we have to start saving on our own. And so, like you said before, Brian, ultimately, a lot of the clients that come in, a lot of them have built up that nest egg they have been saving on their own. And so that conversation of future self still applies to them. It still applies to somebody in their 40s, 50s, 60s, applying to what would their future self want in their 80s 90s, because ultimately, the decisions you make there will have a drastic impact on it. I like to, I like to sit down with a client and say, Okay, let's look at the, let's look at the real, long term drastic implications of drawing Social Security at 62 versus waiting till maybe for retirement age. That's a significant difference in benefit over your lifetime by taking the penalty of drawing early versus Hey, the cost of things are going to go up over time. They certainly will. And so because of that, we need to have money that's growing keeping pace with inflation, but also, if we have a social security benefit and a pension benefit, depending on what your job is, that's continuing to grow by working at. Little bit longer. That's a wonderful place to be. That's a wonderful floor to have when you're saving and trying to build out this financial independence.

BRIAN AKERS: 20:09

Yeah. So when I when I think about all that, I think of work. And one of the things we want everybody listening to understand is that financial advisors, financial planners, what we want to do is do the work for you. Yes, we're gonna ask questions and get to know you, and we need to figure out all the things that you've bought and accumulated or collected over the years and have a starting point. But that planning. We love doing the planning. We can't wait to do planning, and we also can't wait for you to be successful and see it work, right? That's a lot of fun. So when we're your advisor for 30 years, and then your future self walks in the door. It's time now, and we're ready. And what's nice is to know that we're ready. So when you come in to see us, we'll do the heavy work, put a plan together. We love to do this for you. Yeah.

Paul Franco: 20:53

And isn't it a beautiful thing, Brian, when we do the planning, and we've met those 456, times in that first year, we've built out the plan. Now we're meeting, you know, twice, two, three times, four times a year, depending on the situation. And 1015, minutes of that meeting is about finances, discussing what changes have gone on, changes to the portfolio, changes to the environment, and then the rest of that 45 minutes is just how they're enjoying retirement. It's a beautiful place to be.

BRIAN AKERS: 21:20

I do enjoy that. As you were talking, I was thinking about the opposite, and the opposite are people that are sales people. They're selling a topic, they're selling one product. They're selling a little bit of gimmicks, selling you on one thing at a time. And the hardest part is that I don't believe them to be advisors. Advisors are going to talk with you before ever buying stuff. They're going to talk to you to figure out who you are. And over the last few years, they've actually made rules now called fiduciary called best interests, all those things I don't know any other way to make to do business has been my thing for a long, long time. Right is planning has to be what's first, the product or whatever you need to buy or invest in is a byproduct of the purpose behind it, of why are you doing something? So think about this. We want to start being serious about your finance, and then this leads to a fun retirement, because you did the work. You did the work now. So that future of self is going to be very happy with you knowing that, oh, you know, the hard work of saving, but what you actually did was you made your money do the work for you. The earlier you start letting money do the work for you, it can start compounding. You. Like the idea of compounding, right? Paul, absolutely.

Paul Franco: 22:33

You know, compounding is a wonderful idea, and it's, it's a real benefit that you get the earlier you start. But also what you mentioned Brian before that is that that individual, that that sales, individual that tries to sell a specific product, that's everything that we compete against, and so much that we have so many, so many clients that come in might have already been sold something. And so we have to incorporate that now in their plan, and we try to make sure we see where it fits, or if it does fit,

BRIAN AKERS: 22:59

and so and then to see what's the right answer is correct, correct, and

Paul Franco: 23:03

it's, it's. So it's very important to make sure that you start early, but also get wise advice. You meet with a financial planner that has your best interest in mind. Yeah.

BRIAN AKERS: 23:12

So, so this whole quarter has been called your future self. Just called What was the conversation? Now I'm gonna be future Brian talk. Alright, so future Brian, let's push it out 20 years. Future Brian's saying, all right, what? What did you do? Current Brian. And so I don't know what my future Brian is going to be thinking, but I do like to think about I need him to be taken care of. I need him to make sure he's okay, healthy, unhealthy, he's okay if he's here or not here, and that is family, and the legacies that are that want to be left behind are in place to happen now, in my case, I do own a Financial Group, and that financial group having a continuity plan for my business, just like all the small business owners, and the continuity plan is a big deal. And so over the years, that's been a big deal for me, and getting that in place with generational help, people at different ages and quality advisors all built at AKERS financial group so that my clients will be around and working with AKERS Financial Group beyond me has been a big deal to me, and so not that I want to retire tomorrow, but you know, as we grow to that next decade or more, I really want that future Brian to know that that all was accomplished, and that's really all that we can try to do when it comes to working our jobs and being a good advisor, right? That

Paul Franco: 24:28

applies to everybody. And then ultimately, you just never know when that time may be where you're not able to work, where you're not as able to work as much. And so we have to plan it out.

BRIAN AKERS: 24:37

Yeah, I mean, we have clients. We get a phone call on Monday morning. He's in the hospital. He had a stroke. He had this situation, and all sudden, their life does change. What they need to do, and the money has to then be incorporated right away to provide in the right spots. Certainly, Brian, absolutely. So one of the things about this starting seriously for a fun retirement is that you need to start seriously, and as you start. Seriously, you get that fun retirement, because we know the best part of retirement is and that's getting your time back, where you decide how to use it before retirement, your time, your time is tied up with other commitments, you know, mainly your job. A lot of that goes away. Your time is now consumed by things that you want to do. It's so easy to begin winning in retirement. Go to our website, at AKERS Financial group.com scroll to the schedule meeting section and let us know you'd like to schedule your free consultation with one of our team of advisors. That's AKERS Financial group.com or you can call us at 833 when retire. That's 830 3w, I N, R e, t, I R E, and we'll give you a call on Monday to schedule your free in person, meeting, go to AKERS Financial group.com, or call us at 833-946-7384, to start planning for your retirement now. So when do you call a financial advisor? We'll explain. We get back in a minute.

Unknown: 25:54

The C stands for city. The B stands for Baltimore, the M stands for Maryland talk radio 680 W, C, B, M. This is talk radio 680 W, CBM and 99.9 FM in Harford County, welcoming you back to winning in retirement. Call 833 win retire. That's 833, win retire. Call now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement. Once again. Here's BRIAN AKERS,

BRIAN AKERS: 26:32

so welcome to winning in retirement. It's our radio podcast put on by AKERS Financial Group. I'm BRIAN AKERS, President, founder, certified financial planner from AKERS Financial Group, and here with me today is Paul Franco of J Paul Franco might be the official name calling Paul Franco. Paul Franco has his MBA as financial advisor here at AKERS Financial Group, and we're doing a show today called starting seriously for a fun retirement. Oh, that sounds pretty boring, right? Paul, now

Paul Franco: 27:02

it sounds incredibly fun for me. For some people, it might be,

BRIAN AKERS: 27:05

well, you think about, let's say someone's driving around and they're like, seriously. That's their comment. They're starting seriously. And the thing is that the word starting might be a little confusing. The idea is to begin to get more serious about what you're doing with your finances. You might think that you're okay. You might think that things are moving in the right direction. But do you know? And that's what's starting seriously, which results in a fun retirement. And so this segment, the second half of the show, we're starting out with the ideas, when do you call a financial advisor? When do you get serious about this? And that's exactly my comment to you, Paul, is, when should people begin calling a financial advisor to add to add them into their team? Yeah,

Paul Franco: 27:50

it's such a good question. Brian, reality is that a financial advisor is is key and should be a key part of your team of trying to build out your financial plan. So the answer would be, now for somebody who doesn't have a financial planner, doesn't have a financial advisory, we would love to work with you. We want to work with those individuals because it's so important to have a plan. And for a lot of people, they don't want to do that planning on their own, and so that's what we love to do. That's our bread and butter. We're passionate about it, and we do it incredibly well. And so that's the beauty and why they should be calling us. It's wise to call for it call for a financial advisor now, yeah,

BRIAN AKERS: 28:25

so doing that planning and then implementing that planning into our investment portfolios and managing the money according to the plan, is that second piece that people really don't think about, and that is, oh, I'll just get a plan. I'll check some boxes. Oh, I need to save an extra 1000 a month to get to my goal, or whatever that calculation is. If it's not just a calculation, it's really understanding what your purpose and plan is working at, where you're spending your money now and then, trying to figure out what to do in each and every way. And that's why we meet so often with clients, right?

Paul Franco: 29:00

It's not a matter of, here's a plan. We give you this written plan, and you go about your business. That is not how we designed AKERS Financial Group. It's ultimately, ultimately, the goal is we meet over time. We do have that plan. We write it all out. It's so important for us to stay on track, for you to be able to stay on track. But ultimately, the benefit is we meet regularly. Yeah, as changes happen in your life, as changes happening politically in the market, with anything we need to be meeting to discuss and adjust as we need to

BRIAN AKERS: 29:31

so. Have you ever had a new client? They call, schedule their first meeting, and then they want to talk about a financial advisor. What a financial planner, financial advisor does, sure? How does that go? Yeah, a

Paul Franco: 29:42

lot of folks do, and that's a lot of times. That's individuals who have met with multiple financial planners, or might have met with one before and didn't have a good experience, and so they asked that question of, Why should we be meeting with you? And so a big conversation we have, first and foremost is that we and. Answer to one individual, we answer to the client, we answer to the client and their family. And ultimately, that's the most important thing for us. We believe they have, if you have anybody listening to this show, has a financial fingerprint that makes them unique to anybody else. And so that uniqueness means they need a plan that's completely tailored to their situation, to their needs. And so that's why that's the importance of being able to meet and work through a plan. You might have a pension, you might not you might have Social Security. You might be waiting for Social Security, you might own multiple properties. You might have a million dollars in retirement. You might have $4 million in retirement. Your situation is unique to you, and so the planning that we do needs to be unique to you as well.

BRIAN AKERS: 30:44

Yeah, absolutely. That uniqueness is really a key, key idea. It's not like there's a book already with your name on it that has your retirement plan. There's not one radio show or one bit of information you need to make your plan perfect. It's a, it's basically a review that begins with understanding and getting involved in your family, decision making process, and then really, truly adding value at every step of the way. Yeah,

Paul Franco: 31:12

it's completely personal, like our relationship with our clients is on a personal level, because it has to be. We have to get to know who you are, your habits, why you invest a certain way? Why your risk tolerance is a certain way? We have to get to know you. If somebody ever meets with you and says and they don't ask any questions about you and they're like, this is what you should buy. That's a sales individual. That's somebody who's trying to sell a certain product, who's squeezing you in because of your age, how much money you have, whatever it is that's everything that we compete against, it's got to be completely tailored to you.

BRIAN AKERS: 31:43

Yeah, I was thinking about one of my clients who died last year. I met her and her husband over 30 some years ago. We began with simple things, and we build and build and build and build, and we want to make that money last a lifetime. And basically they're in their 60s, and then she passed away. I'm around 92 years old, a wonderful family, wonderful lady, and the key ingredient was there was enough money throughout the whole period of life, but we did the work years ago to put in place, and then we monitor and tracked it as life changed. Life changes. It does every three to five years, something new, something you gotta talk about something. Got to figure out it's not one of these ideas that you can do a plan and set it and forget it. It's a plan that needs to be constantly adapted to everything going on in life. This is not just about you. It's about you, your spouse, your family, lots of choices, lot of decisions. Yeah,

Paul Franco: 32:38

I'm gonna, I'm gonna nerd out for a second, Brian, if you don't mind. Okay, so I had a I had a client come in just few weeks ago, and he has saved up between him and his wife about two and a half million dollars for their retirement. He is going to have a pension, federal government pension. His wife is going to have a pension as well. They don't need social security. But that's a still a key topic that we need to talk about, is when the best time to draw is. And so he's done the hard work, he's done the building up of the assets over time, but he doesn't have a plan for how to withdraw those assets and how to do it in an investment and tax efficient way. And so the conversations that we had, I said, I'm going to nerd out, so I'm sorry, but this idea of Irma, I R, M A A income related monthly adjustment amount, where that was a word term he had never heard of before, and that's an incredibly important word he's going to get familiar with, because his income in the next few years is going to is going to affect his Medicare premium when he's 65 that is what Irma is. And so we have to incorporate that in the plane. He said, Paul, I think I should be doing Roth, converting every year. Convert a little bit to Roth, because I don't need the money right now. And so I said, Okay, are you, are you charitably inclined? Yeah, I do give to some charity. Well, then we shouldn't be converting everything to Roth, because we can do something called a qualified charitable distribution at 70 and a half where we can take IRA money and paid pay zero tax on taking those withdrawals. And so these are all these ideas of you just you don't know what you don't know, but that's where we come in and how we provide incredible value to our clients. Is that we tried when we it's it's so great to build your net worth, build your assets over time. But I want to build it in a tax efficient and investment efficient way, where, if that all that money that you grow and build up is 100% yours or more of it's yours, and less goes to Uncle Stan, Uncle Sam, or whoever your state, Sam

BRIAN AKERS: 34:35

stands uncle Stan, Uncle Sandy, any of those ideas, anybody

Paul Franco: 34:41

except you, exactly, ultimately, our goal is to keep more money in your pocket. That's because that gives you the ability to give do more with it, as you want to do with

BRIAN AKERS: 34:50

now, when you're you're nerding out, I decided to nerd out even worse. So I was thinking of what you said, and I thought, Okay, well, federal government retiree has an interest. Thing Medicare question Sure does, and one of them is, do they take Medicare? They don't really have to, because they have a really strong retirement health care if someone has been financially successful like you described, and they want to blow out the Irma levels and just worry about tax brackets, they can choose not to be in Medicare, certainly by keeping their plan. That's not normal for everybody else. The federal government have a rare opportunity.

Paul Franco: 35:26

So I have a few clients that ultimately I've somewhere we're never going to sign up for Medicare, that VHB is going to be more than sufficient for their needs. What some letters you just use fvhb The that's the federal health benefit that you get for retirees. So

BRIAN AKERS: 35:41

you're all you're more nerding out. I don't mean to, I'm sorry when, but nerds and nerds and nerd nerds, not a bad thing for a financial advisor, sure isn't. He wants you to nerd out, but still have the ability to speak English, right? But

Paul Franco: 35:54

ultimately, for those federal benefits, I mean, for some individuals, they will need Medicare just to cover any gaps of coverages. So Medicare would be primary, their federal health benefit would be secondary. But it's so important that we help you work through those decisions. That's an incredible value. So

BRIAN AKERS: 36:10

a financial advisor is bringing all this together, not just one aspect, not just trying to figure out which investment to be able to manage for you. They're trying to bring it all together. Healthcare, Major, big deal. One of the reasons people work longer is because they look at their healthcare options and they say, I don't know any other way but to work the 65 and then to cover people. And then we try to go over all the options. We bring in, we have our own experts, and we bring in other experts when it comes to healthcare decisions based on whatever situation you have when it comes to health care in your retirement years. So it goes like this, when do you call a financial advisor? The answer would be right away, and the reason is, it's got to help where you are now. Now you might believe that you don't need a financial advisor. Hey, check us out. Interview. Us find out if we can add value. AKERS Financial Group is only going to be around as long as we can add value to our most valuable asset. Our most valuable asset is our clients. Our clients need to walk in because they know we're going to add value to them. That's what AKERS Financial Group has built about, is the integrity of taking what's theirs and figuring out what's best for them, the result is, what's best for them is the best thing for AKERS Financial Group. So when you talk about have an advisor, make sure you understand what what they do, how they get paid. Everyone cover all that as we continue out throughout the show. The first meeting. How all that works together is all very important. What we're going to talk about, mainly today is this starting, seriously. Planning will result in a fun retirement. We're talking about your dreams. We're talking about how to achieve them. This is what we do for a living. Is financial planning, investment advisor, stock brokers, insurance agent. We have all those licenses to help to be able to implement your actual plan. Planning is not normally everyone's favorite thing to do, but it is our favorite favorite thing to do. That is what we do. We want to make this as easy and as comfortable for you as possible, so that when we meet with you and put a plan together, it includes everything that we need to do, make sure it's taken care of it's planned for. And then when things happen, we're like, oh, we plan for that. We're okay. Perhaps you've been sold something, regardless of whether you needed it or not, not. At AKERS Financial Group with us, your retirement money follows your financial fingerprint. Is a retirement plan based on your unique fingerprint that determines where your money goes. It's not about us, it's about you. So go ahead and give us a call at 833 win, retire. Schedule an in person meeting with one of our team of advisors. That's 833, win, retire. 833-946-7384. Or visit our website, at AKERS Financial group.com How do you eat an elephant? We will explain and talk about what this has to do with retirement when we come back in just a moment,

Unknown: 39:06

stay connected and informed. Listen to talk radio 680 or stream us on your PC, tablet or phone@wcbm.com this is talk radio, 680 wcbm and 99.9 FM in Harford County, welcoming you back to winning in retirement. Call 833 win retire. That's 833 win retire. Call now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement once again. Here's BRIAN AKERS,

BRIAN AKERS: 39:39

as the announcer said, welcome back to winning in retirement, the AKERS financial groups radio podcast that we put on for our clients, for our listeners, for you, wherever you may be, at whatever time you may be listening today, it's BRIAN AKERS that's myself and Paul Franco putting on the show. Paul Franco has his MBA, his financial advisor with AKERS Financial Group, and we enjoy. What we do as financial planners, financial advisors, and what we want to do today is finish up here the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter is the winning time in any game. It's also the winning time in your retirement plan. We want to make sure that we are starting seriously for a fun retirement. And what we're talking about today is by starting seriously, we mean not just doing things, but seriously reviewing what you're doing, making sure it all works together, to build your plan to what it needs to be. That's what our show's been about. Today. We started out in that first quarter just talking basically about starting seriously what it means to do financial planning, all aspects of financial planning that AKERS Financial Group does planning. We implement that plan. We have regular meetings and even websites to track their progress. Then we moved on to a topic of your future self, just call. We talked about that a little bit, making sure we're planning for that future self by doing the work today. Then we moved on to a category of, when do you call financial advisor? And then we get into the famous one, how to eat an elephant? All right? Paul, I want you to try to answer this, and then I'll have my answer after you're done. How do you eat an elephant? Paul, well,

Paul Franco: 41:10

you eat an elephant one piece at a time. That's the that's the general idea. And so it's slowly, get a big fork, one one giant fork, and in one meal. Brian, yeah, if you knew me, I could, I might be able

BRIAN AKERS: 41:22

to do it. Well, Pennsylvania, get a shirt, a t shirt, or your name on the board. That's right. That's right. All right. So one of my clients, I said this, she she was talking about her all these things with her business, all these decisions to make. And I said, Wow, if you ever thought about this, and what we need to do is she goes, Oh, no, I'm not sure where to start. I said, Well, how do you eat an elephant? And she looks at me, goes, Brian, I would never. Of course, she was a Austrian, so she's spoken a different language, or not, different language, different accent. And so that was bold, yeah. So she got I would never. And so I just laughed a little bit, and I said, I'm not trying to make eat an elephant, but if someone was going to, you can't eat an elephant. You have to eat it one bite at a time. That's just the way we got to face any issue, any planning, anything that's in front of us that seems too much. Some people love finance, and lots of people don't love finance. The financial planning industry is designed to help those that want help on their finances. The sad part is very few people actually make the call and get started. Yeah,

Paul Franco: 42:24

yeah. Ultimately, when it comes to doing it one piece at a time, that's one of the first things I tell clients of mine that come in for the first meeting is that we could spend 678, hours and take care of it all at one time. That's not realistic. Ultimately, that wouldn't be the right answer. Either it takes time, it takes multiple meetings and not to overwhelm anybody. That's the beauty of is we don't want to overwhelm you, because there's so many parts of building out a good, comprehensive financial plan that we have to do it slowly over multiple meetings. And so we might spend time one meeting talking about asset allocation, how your asset allocation is, if your balance of risk and protected, how your money is growing for you. And we might spend another meeting doing income planning, where we're working through, how is our withdrawal strategy going to be? In retirement? Where are we going to take money? Pre tax? Where are we going to take money? Roth, which sources of money are we going to take from in our retirement years, we might have another meeting that's on estate planning, insurance planning, there's all these different ideas, but you're spot on. Brian, you can't do it all at one time. It takes multiple meetings to build out this plan, to build out a really, really good financial plan. I

BRIAN AKERS: 43:32

was thinking about some of your lengthy meetings, and how I think you were trying to do it all, but really, you do your best to explain it all step by step, right? Yeah, I

Paul Franco: 43:42

would say those first few meetings, I want to get to know my clients incredibly well, and so by getting to know them, it takes time for me to get to know you. And it's not about implementing anything in the first meeting. That's not the goal. But ultimately, what we try to do is get to know you and see what you need and how we can help you in the best way.

BRIAN AKERS: 43:59

Yeah, so AKERS Financial Group, let's say, Yeah, I'm gonna start eating that elephant. And so you would give us a call. You call us at at our numbers, you know, 833 win, retire. That's 833-946-7384 or you go to our website, AKERS Financial group.com and check us out there. AKERS Financial group.com actually has the information that we want you to start to gather and organize, and that's a great time to do that is whenever you can. It's a great time to do it whenever you're just getting serious about your finances. So on the website, what you'll find is there's a tab called documents under the document. The first thing you'll see is information about our customer relationship and best interest. Information is right there. Then right below that, you'll see a document, checklist of things to gather, to bring to meetings. Also we'll have financial planning information form just to begin to fill out. You do not have to fill things out. You come in. Some people come in with nothing, just to interview us. Some people bring everything, and they just start they're ready to talk. A lot of times that's because they've been referred. It in or they've listened to our show a number of times and got to know us and understand what our role would be and how we'd help them. So the idea is this, when we're getting started, we do need to get to know you. We we listen to you, but we want to prove it based on paper, we love to read everything you don't like to read. We love to open the envelopes you put away. We like to understand how things are titled. We want everyone to check their beneficiaries. We want to make sure they are who you want. Want them to be. We want to walk through each and every piece of this. The more information you bring to us, the better the plan will be from the very start. Now, this plan is designed for you, and it's all about that information. It sure is, don't bring everything right,

Paul Franco: 45:45

right? If you don't. And ultimately, I always, I like to joke that it's like, I'm, I'm going to ask incredibly nosy questions, because the nosier the questions, that's how I get to know you, and how I get to know the situation. And so the beauty of it is, we love paper to back it up. We love looking through statements, looking at what you own, making recommendations that way, but we have to see it, and so you're spot on, Brian, where it's ultimately that first meeting. For a lot of folks, they don't bring anything and they just want to talk, and that's fine, but for those that do, and there are a lot of folks that end up filling out that fingerprint form beforehand, the document checklist, they send us the documents beforehand, that's incredible, because that gives us the ability to have a head start, to be able to see what you own and sort of talk and sort of frame the conversation from there. Yeah,

BRIAN AKERS: 46:29

so that first meeting is free. We do not charge that first meeting. That's where we talk and figure out what to do. It's an hour, hour and a half of conversation, and you get to ask those questions. We I always like to begin with, there's a reason you're here, something going on. What is your big question to start and then that, then we go from there, yeah,

Paul Franco: 46:49

yeah, that's exactly right. That's the first question to ask. And ultimately, everybody's meeting for a different reason. I mean, it's, it's unbelievable what you learn from why you're meeting. You even, even a husband and wife might be meeting for different reasons. It's really kind of funny how that

BRIAN AKERS: 47:03

works. So what does it cost? I mean, how do we get paid? Sure, yeah,

Paul Franco: 47:07

so like you said, Brian, the first meeting is always completely there's no cost for that at all. But we get paid a few different ways. We can charge fees for doing financial planning, and so that's anywhere that we when we're basically as fiduciaries, able to recommend and give advice and implement a financial plan. We can charge fees for doing the financial planning, but we also can charge for managing money, which we do for an incredible amount of clients of ours. And so we manage money for our clients. It's an incredible value that we do, that we add by implementing, what you've worked and built up over time and implementing those into proper portfolio design the right balance of trying to take the least amount of risk possible to reach your goals and to get as much return that you can. And so we also charge management fees for those, and that's through a company out of Chicago, Brookstone Capital Management, and that's something we, of course, want to talk with you about as you come in for a meeting, if that's something that applies to you. And then there's another way we get paid, is through commissions. And so we can get paid commissions depending on if that's applicable to your situation. And that can be on the insurance side, also through mutual funds. That's there's a variety of different ways, but the beauty of it is, is that we don't ever try to hide away from our fees. We can't, because ultimately, those are incredible value that we do add to our clients. And so because of that, we don't shy away from it. That's something that we need to get compensated for. The level of advice and the good planning, the good advice that we give,

BRIAN AKERS: 48:35

yeah. So the idea is your advisor needs to be in business and stay in business, so they will make money. It's good for them. Disclose it all, and that's what they should do at all times, and especially any conflicts. So one of the things I was thinking about, there's a, this might sound a little corny, but let's, let's talk to men right now. So let's say you guys are driving. If you're by yourself, let's think about this idea. If you're with your spouse, I'll just say, Nah, I'm not going to do this. But if you're by yourself, think about this. Think about a way to be your wife's hero. And this way is this, you can surprise them by walking home one day and say, Hey, I've gotten information together our finances. I called a financial advisor. We're going to have an interview with a financial advisor to make sure you're taken care of through all the years, just in case, if something ever happened to me. Do you think that would be a good present? A good idea? I sure

Paul Franco: 49:28

do. I think it's an incredible gift, because that's ultimately such an important way that you can take care of your family. I think that's a wonderful idea, but

BRIAN AKERS: 49:36

most men won't do that. But the reason, reason we bring it up is that planning is a natural for for ladies, they really enjoy planning. Us guys, we really want to get it done. Let's what's what? What's my thing to do? Tell me right now, what's that one thing. And so a lot of people market to us for that one thing. It might be a gimmick. Might be one product. You've

Unknown: 49:55

been listening to winning in retirement with your host BRIAN AKERS, of. AKERS Financial Group. AKERS Financial Group offers securities through arcadios Capital an SIPC and FINRA member firm. Advisory services are provided through arcadios and do not share any common ownership. Neither arcadios nor AKERS Financial Group provides tax or legal advice. Advice given on winning in retirement is general in nature, and one should seek further advice from their financial advisor, broker, attorney and or tax accountant before investing, be sure to read each prospectus carefully to understand all the risks associated with each investment. Examples and scenarios shared are meant to be for illustrative purposes only past performance is not indicative of future results.