Winning in Retirement

Build Wealth and Create a Legacy

• Akers Financial Group

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Brian Akers and Jeffrey Akers, both Certified Financial Planners, discuss strategies for building wealth and creating a legacy in retirement. They emphasize the importance of planning beyond financial independence, focusing on wealth preservation and tax efficiency. They highlight the significance of determining the purpose of money, whether for family, charity, or other causes. The conversation covers various financial tools like trusts, charitable gift annuities, and donor-advised funds to manage and distribute wealth effectively. They stress the need for comprehensive estate planning to minimize taxes and ensure assets are distributed according to one's wishes, ultimately aiming to create a lasting legacy.

Unknown:

The following is a pre recorded show, welcome to winning in retirement with your host. BRIAN AKERS, Certified Financial Planner, professional and founder of AKERS Financial Group. Now helping you win in your retirement. Here's BRIAN AKERS,

BRIAN AKERS:

welcome to winning in retirement. I'm BRIAN AKERS, president and founder of AKERS Financial Group, and also host, co host of the show, winning in retirement. It's our radio podcast put on by AKERS Financial Group. Here with me today is my cousin, my vice president, Jeffrey AKERS, good morning, Jeff, good morning. Brian. Good to see you again. He's also my certified financial planner practitioner. Indeed, I am just as Brian is a Certified Financial Planning practitioner. Oh, yeah, been there for a while. Yes, you have. You've been there for a long time. It meant a lot to me to become a CFP, a certified financial planner, because I wanted to lead any and all advice from planning, from points of view of planning, I did not want anything to be driven by the end, the end of implementation. You have to do planning

Jeff Akers:

first, right? When I started working with you, one of the first things you taught me was the the investing of your money is determined by the purpose of the money. So your purpose determines

BRIAN AKERS:

absolutely and so what Jeff and I did today is put together a show where we took winning in retirement to the next level. Ooh, a new level. That sounds exciting. Oh, so imagine this. You won. You won in retirement. You've already done the winning. You've done all the work to win in retirement. Now what? Okay, we're going to teach you today how to build wealth and create a legacy for your family, the concerns, the things to think about. But we want you to take a moment while you're driving around or driving a lawn tractor, wherever you are today listening think about what you love most, what you care about most, when you build wealth beyond what you need and you want to create a legacy. What is your goal? Not what are we going to tell you to make it into a goal? Or what your kids tell you, what should be your goal? What is your goal? So that's what today's show is going to be about. You go to our website, at AKERS, financial group.com, and check us out anytime to find out what we're doing. You also hear past shows, but the key thing is this show, you're probably going to want to

Jeff Akers:

listen to it again. Oh, that sounds good. The little repeat performance. Oh, it sinks in.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. Well, it's nice. You can hear yourself over and over, Jeff, you'd like to listen to it again. Oh,

Jeff Akers:

yeah. Everybody loves hearing their own voice, but that's, that's another story. Well,

BRIAN AKERS:

I always second guess myself, and the way I use words, I'm good with numbers, the words sort of slowly come out. Thank you for listening, though. I appreciate that. All right, so this show, this show is called winning in retirement. And what we're talking about today is you've won, and by winning, you know, you have enough money to be financially independent and financially be secure from today throughout your retirement years. And then now what? What else do you

Jeff Akers:

do? Right? You've worked hard, you've accumulated some wealth, you've got your nest egg that you need to live on, and there's that you're you find that there's going to be money left over after you've met your needs. What do you do? Yeah, I've

BRIAN AKERS:

been thinking about my clients, where we've gotten to this phase, and what happens is this. There's multiple examples. First example is great savers, right? Where they get to the early 60s. They retire a couple years in, they know they're okay. 510 years later, they have more money than when they started. They're making more money on income than they had to live when they were working, and the money's growing. And then they're like, What do I do now? And I'm like, Well, what do you want this money to do for you, your family, for things you care about, charities? What do you want this money to do? What is its purpose? Then we can talk about that's actually what legacy is all about. Is beyond yourself, beyond your time on earth. What are you going to do with the money?

Jeff Akers:

Right? And everybody has different things on their heart, things that they love, that they want to benefit from their life, that excites them, and so that's what we want to find out. What what is it that that excites you?

BRIAN AKERS:

One of the things about getting being successful in this mini and a great saver is the fact that you get to a point where you don't have to have a high rate of return on your money and take high risk to reach your goals. You can actually dial down the risk and preserve your wealth. So wealth preservation becomes one of the key points in building a wealth plan and creating legacy is first of all preserving that wealth for yourself and for the future. And you got to take a lot of things into that type of calculation, right? Jeff, Oh, that's right.

Jeff Akers:

You've got these ideas, okay, I've got this money that I want to leave a legacy with, and you're all excited about that, but then it's invested in some way that is too much risk, it ends up going down in value, and then you can't accomplish the legacy that you wanted to. So we need to preserve that you worked hard to accumulate it. Now let's preserve it. Make sure it's there to do what you want it to do. So other

BRIAN AKERS:

clients that we have that have built their well. Beyond what they need. Our clients have been very successful small business, very successful C suite, and been able to build a career. And then there's this moment where the money has come in and they use and spent, and then more stayed, and actually stayed in the accounts, and then grew and then grew and then grew, and all sudden it's like, well, I can retire, yep. And then let's work a little bit longer. And it grew and it grew, and you get these doubles from like, the amazing thing is the the percentage interest rate from $100,000 to 200,000 Okay, is the same interest rate to go from 4 million to 8 million. Oh, and so the compounding of wealth, as we take wealth and grow it over time eight to 16 those those doubles are incredible moments that lead us to this build of wealth and legacy planning, because you enter new phases of concern, which comes the estate taxes, which we want to talk about today. So wealth reservation is not just going to be about the risk you take with your money. It's going to be the taxes that you pay today, the taxes you pay in the future, the taxes that your kids pay, and is the IRS or the state that you live in going to get a big chunk of what you is that you really your legacy that you want to give? Is there another option? Yeah,

Jeff Akers:

so when it comes to preservation, one of the things we look at is the risk of investments, but another is being tax efficient. Don't pay more in tax than you need to. You know, it's okay to pay what you have to, but there are ways that we can be more efficient so that your legacy can be more benefited more. Yeah,

BRIAN AKERS:

so you think about building wealth, and you're growing that wealth, and you're thinking about all these things. It could be your family, and family might be something where you want to start giving it now and in the future, which we think is not a bad idea, because you get to see how they use the money as you give it

Jeff Akers:

to them, right? Determine how, if you do decide to give to them, how you're going to do that in your legacy.

BRIAN AKERS:

Have you ever had a person who was did very well saving money, and then they got to a point of thinking about kids, they had a limit on how much they wanted to give the kids, and then they want to have the rest go to something different. Yeah,

Jeff Akers:

absolutely, that does happen. And for various reasons. Sometimes they just know their kids, and they know, okay, if I give them a bunch of money, it's going to be gone in six months a year, sure, whatever. And other times they just say, you know, they're going to work hard. They need to earn their own Sure, and so I'm not going to make it easy on them,

BRIAN AKERS:

absolutely. And it's sort of like when you think about them, I think about Warren Buffett and Bill Gates talking about giving away all their wealth and giving away billions of dollars. Don't give it to their kids. Well, they gave a lifetime to their kids, a lifetime of education, a lot of money, a lot of upfront. So the kids have a decent start with, right with maybe millions, early billion, low billions, not high billions, but for them to give the rest to charity, what that does is Save, save a lot of money going to the federal, federal estate tax.

Jeff Akers:

Yes, yes, it does. And I'm just thinking about a particular client when I first met them, well, that there was a husband and wife, and the wife always let the husband take care of things. She had no idea how much they had, and when she saw the number, she's like, that's too much money. We got to give some of this away. We got to do something.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, that was in that meeting Well, and that's a great concept, because some people that are savers and growing. They're really into the growing and the accumulation, and they never think about distribution. And like, Great savers don't ever want to spend their money, and so you almost have to tell them to it's like, well, if you don't spend it, someone else will. What do you what do you want done with the money?

Jeff Akers:

Right? Make sure it accomplishes your goals, not someone else's.

BRIAN AKERS:

In that case, you did a lot of things for them. Part of that building that wealth and creating a legacy was to create a legacy that started today with the idea of using a 401 K millionaire person to take some of that wealth and give it to charity once they hit a certain age above 70 and a half under qualified charitable distribution, so they could start giving charity up to 105,000 a year, right away, per person, right?

Jeff Akers:

And that helps them tax wise, because that becomes money given to charity that's never been taxed, and it does count towards your required distribution when you hit that age. So it's a it's a win, win situation, and the charity actually gets more out of that, because it came out before taxes.

BRIAN AKERS:

So the idea is this, you're building your wealth. You might have done it through just you took the risk in life, you started that company, you started that business, and you grew it, you organized it, and then there's that moment of time when the offer comes and you take it, after you've paid your income tax, capital gains, there's wealth to manage, building that wealth, and is a lot of sweat equity, maintaining and preserving that wealth and creating a lifestyle within that wealth is all part of this plan, all the financial independence and retirement that you have to walk through to make sure your needs are met as you're starting retirement. A lot of times when you've built wealth like that, you're not done. You don't want to stop.

Jeff Akers:

Yeah, right. You might not get paid for the work you're going to do. You want to volunteer and do

BRIAN AKERS:

volunteer, but it's hard to stop running your company and start like even if you, if you sell a business, you want the pay me and let me stay concept where you can keep going, because you want some of the money for the work, especially small business owners. There's a lot of great opportunities for the trades, you know, like plumbers, electricians, HVAC, to sell and then to work within there and then maintain the last couple years, but get the money for the value or no one else could afford to pay on the price that's offered currently.

Jeff Akers:

Right? So you spend a long time accumulating your wealth. You want to preserve it. You want to make sure it's going to places that you want. And now it's time to manage. Instead of working for it, you're letting your money work for you and you're managing, yeah. So the idea is this, you want

BRIAN AKERS:

to build your wealth, and you build it and grow it, and then you want to maintain it through wealth preservation, and then you create a legacy plan based on whatever you want to see happen. What that means to us is, it's your plan, right? It takes time to develop your plan, to figure out where we want to start. What is important. This is not a one moment, one meeting. Oh, it just checked this box. You're good, right? It's a it sounds like a great idea. Oh, it takes time, and it takes a while. Now, there's many, many ways of doing this. There's a lot that, lot of topics to talk about, the good things, the bad things about it, the hard concepts of what could be a detriment to your plan, that kind of stuff, right? We have a lot of topics to cover. So here in the first quarter, our goal was to talk a little bit about maintaining and giving away some of the wealth, maintaining and keeping it, using it for your lifestyle. It could be the charity. Could be the kids could be any idea that you might have. So balancing the distribution phase of life with a legacy phase is what we're getting at now. AKERS Financial Group, we're local, we're independent. We don't report to a big company on Wall Street. We report to you. We have offices in Barstow Lutherville, and clients all around the mid Atlantic region, I'll even clients all around the country and even a few around the world. It's so easy to begin winning in retirement, all you have to do is just give us a call and schedule your free meeting with one of our team of advisors by calling 833 win retire. That's 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, or call us at 833-946-7384, to start planning for your retirement. Now. Do you want to be immortal? We'll talk about that when we return.

Unknown:

You're listening to a pre recorded Show. Welcome back to winning in retirement. Call 833, win retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement once again. Here's BRIAN AKERS,

BRIAN AKERS:

welcome back to winning in retirement. I'm BRIAN AKERS from AKERS Financial Group, and we welcome you to our show today. The show's called Build Roth and create a legacy. You go from winning in retirement and you know you're winning, then you got another step, that next level you want to level up is building that wealth to where you have the the idea that you can think about building this legacy and making it happen for you and your family or charity, whatever your heart is set out to do with money, right? What's next financially? And what's next? It's one of those things. There's one day when you sort of take a breath and you say, Well, I've saved enough, I've met my goal. I can retire. Then in retirement, you started to do everything you wanted to do, and then you sit back again, you think, Well, what's next? And then you There's certain times of life where you're sitting there and you're thinking, Well, let's think about where this money's going to go right now. The sad part is, we all don't get this perfect time scale. The timetable of, oh, you can put this off to 75 so our general planning advice from AKERS Financial Group is this, you begin planning as if you might die tomorrow, and you have your plan of where you want your money to go based on tomorrow, right? Then we invest and plan do everything like we're going to live forever, right? Almost like being immortal, right? So wait this part of the show we said, Do you want to be immortal? Well, in our planning, we want to make sure investments last as long as we do, at least, because we want to get a check every day. That's right, even maybe the last day, something to spend, yeah. And then the idea would be, is you might have to spend on that last day for the doctor bills. But the concept is this, the money has to be borderline and mortal, and that lasts your whole life until you pass away. And then there's money beyond you, right? So the money beyond you, you won't get to be immortal, but your money, the memory of you, the legacy that you have on Earth, could be viewed as being immortal. If you want to take that kind of topic

Jeff Akers:

right, you're remembered beyond your own lifetime for what you've done and how you've helped people, how you've helped organizations and things.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, I like that idea of being remembered. The money part is not the number one motivation for me. When it comes to legacy, there's a lot more than that, right?

Jeff Akers:

But your well, your heart tells you what you want to benefit, what organizations, what people who you want to help, how you want to help, and money can be the tool that you use to help them. So

BRIAN AKERS:

your money and use of money does show where your heart is. Yes, it shows the priorities of your life. It shows a caring or not caring. It shows devotion or not devotion. All that happens,

Jeff Akers:

right? It does so you want to be able to look ahead say, What do I want to help? How do I want to benefit it? Like Brian said, you've worked hard, you've accumulated you've built that wealth up, but now what do you want to have happen to it after your last day with it?

BRIAN AKERS:

Right? And we need the plan as if it's tomorrow. And the reason want to bring that topic up is there's a lot of famous singers and actors that you would think they would have special advisors and attorneys and lawyers and everyone help them do the estate planning. Yeah, they certainly have access to all the best, right? But the problem is, if I don't want to think about it, right, it ruins the vibe. It ruins the thought. No one likes thinking about passing away, right? But General sound financial planning is, hey, get that done, write it out. You can always change it, right?

Jeff Akers:

You can make changes. And once you've done it, then you don't have to dwell on it,

BRIAN AKERS:

no? And it doesn't make you die sooner by having a document, even though some people are very fearful of talking about death, talking about the need of life insurance, in need of wills, estate planning, power of attorneys, charitable giving plans, having all of that. But the idea is this, make that one of the first things you do in sound financial planning is putting together your plan in case you pass away. Get it all the way through. Not just a thought, not just the first meeting with the lawyer. You got to go to the signing meeting.

Jeff Akers:

Yep, it's got to be written down. You've got to sign it. It's got to be notarized, all that stuff.

BRIAN AKERS:

And then it's done, right? And then you can live your life, right?

Jeff Akers:

I talk about these financial documents, these legal documents, as part of protecting your family, because you're protecting them from going through a really difficult time after you've passed away, and if you don't have these documents,

BRIAN AKERS:

this also matters, because you had power of attorneys and other documents in there to take care of you while you are alive, but not able to do your own transactions, and those are very important, that you're taking care of yourself today and your family to the future and any other piece that you want to take care of. Right?

Jeff Akers:

When those things are necessary. Things aren't going great, and so it's one less thing for your family to worry about, because, you know, whoever the power of attorney is can step in and say, or the successor trustee, in the case of a trust, they can step in and say, Okay, I've got the authority to handle this now, so I'll take care of it for them. And then there's just a lot less to worry about, less time in court dealing with it.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, the reality is that if you do not have a plan, the state you're a resident of does they have a plan for you, they have a plan, and that plan might not be your favorite plan, probably not. The reason we know about Elvis Presley's estate is that he did not have a will, and so his estate has to file tax returns all through probate, all through Memphis, Tennessee, every year, you can go see where every dime went to, where all the money's going, and see that it ends up going to the family, but you get to see it all, and the federal government's there with their hand out, waiting for an Estate Tax and a trust tax, all those taxes coming out of that thing that's been since the 70s. Yeah, it's all public record. Yeah. So, so we're not doing a full estate planning show. We're doing a show about building wealth, creating a legacy. Part of that is to preserve the wealth by having a plan, a plan that's a state documents, getting them right now, no matter what, if you're building your wealth and you get it to certain levels of assets in the state of Maryland, 5 million is a big number, but 5 million in Maryland is different than having like near 14 million. Now, why is that there's the two numbers different? Jeff,

Jeff Akers:

well, there's an estate tax in Maryland and an estate tax federally, but there's a certain amount that's exempt from the estate tax in Maryland. That number is 5 million nationally, federally, that number is 13.9 9 million, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

So that is per person, and that's why the use of trust upon someone passing away and getting that money partitioned out into a trust can be a very good thing when it comes to taking advantage of each person's exemption, right? You can use some of that exemption while you're alive now through gift tax returns and working through the exemption that way,

Jeff Akers:

right? But here in Maryland, you could be thinking, although the federal estate tax exemption is almost $14 million I'm way below of that. Now I've only got $10 million Yeah, well, you've still got the Maryland surprise that you need to deal with,

BRIAN AKERS:

right? So Maryland, once you're over $5 million of an estate. Now, what's an estate? Just general definition of an estate. So it's what happens to your assets after you've passed away. That's the process that it goes through. It will pro probate probate takes care of getting it to Yes, the estate when it comes is basically who you are when you pass away, right? It's going to be every asset that you're connected to, your life insurance, your investments, your house. The estate is your your your dog, your your couch, your car, it's all these things that you own is your estate, right? And that estate, when it goes there's a wall there that at certain levels they want taxes, the Federal Tax above, basically 14 million. 14 million, and above is starts out at 40% I think 45

Jeff Akers:

it's it's high. And we know about the estate or tax brackets, the tax brackets for estates are shrunk way down so that most of your money is at that highest rate. Yeah.

BRIAN AKERS:

Now the estate taxes are a death tax, not anything to do with income tax, right? That could also be happening upon someone's death for anything that's never been taxed before, usually non qualified annuities, things like a retirement, pre tax retirement is still taxable through next generation. So you need to plan for that

Jeff Akers:

too, traditional IRAs and 401, Ks and tsps, things like that. So

BRIAN AKERS:

Maryland is the special state that has two taxes. You got to worry about if you pass away, there's an estate tax. If you're individually, have your estate worth more than 5 million, right? You can be subject to that, and that's up to 16%

Jeff Akers:

Yeah. Now that's that's, no matter who it is that gets right? It's based on value. That's just the value of the estate, so all of your assets at death, and then inheritance tax, and the inheritance tax is 10% but there's exemptions, and it's a direct line of descent, so parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, those are all exempt from it. But if you're giving money to nieces and nephews, that's not exempt from it. And cousins, right? And because

BRIAN AKERS:

gone. I mean, if I give you $1 you got to pay a 10%

Jeff Akers:

tax, right? I only get 90 cents a rip off,

BRIAN AKERS:

but, but there isn't a 10% inheritance tax, even if, like, you don't have children, you give it to your niece and nephew. Now, the hardest part is, are there ways around it? And the answer is, planning. Right? Find ways around it through the gifting during your lifetime, using the unified credit, the exemptions now, through proper trust planning, but it's all organized with built within, building your your plan for your wealth, creating your legacy plan. So we know the destination of the money, and we can help more of it get there,

Jeff Akers:

right? Brian's talked a lot about planning. You mentioned in the first quarter about planning. Planning is the beginning of everything when it comes to how we work with clients, and so planning is important, and that's how we can work to avoid or minimize things like inheritance tax, estate tax, so that more of your money gets where you want it to go, not necessarily the government.

BRIAN AKERS:

So immortality is for the concept this quarter is, do you want to be immortal? Do you want your money to last beyond you? Of course, we do, right, and we like all of it to go where we want it to go, right? I mean, if the IRS is sitting there and state of Maryland, then you got your family and you got charity. Of those three, which one do you want? Which two do you want the money to go to? Oh, family and charity, right? And there is a way of doing that, yep. But you got to give a lot to charity, and you got to do a special trust, wealth replacement trust, and design it in a way so that the money gets to where you want it to go, right? These are all extremely important topics, extremely important things that you must think about early. You need to do some basic estate planning today. The reason we talk about this is that planning has to be the way you think about your money. Money cannot just happenstance come around in your life and just hope that things will work out well financially, if you plan for it, build your wealth with a plan in mind. You're going to be able to have that wealth over time by setting aside, letting that money grow and build for you. We love helping people build the wealth, preserve the wealth, and spread the wealth. So giving that legacy is an extremely important thing to us. We love the idea of making your plan happen on that date of your death. It's been some big, big, important days for us, as if, as a company, to help that client make everything they want it come true. And that was very, very important, right? You love doing that. I actually do, and we love doing our job like this. So sometimes you get sold something you're not really doing with planning. That's not what we do at AKERS Financial Group. We want to, want you to win in retirement. And when beyond so go ahead and give us a call at AKERS. At AKERS Financial Group is our website, AKERS financial group.com where you give us a call at 833 win retire. 830 3w, I n, r, e, t, I R, E, 833-946-7384, and visit our website. AKERS financial group.com to set up that free meeting to begin talking about how to build wealth and create a legacy for you and your family. How do you plan for a legacy of immortality? We'll talk about that when we come back in a moment

Unknown:

you're listening to a pre recorded show, welcome back to winning in retirement. Call 833, win retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement. Once again. Here's BRIAN AKERS, yes,

BRIAN AKERS:

indeed. Welcome back to winning in retirement radio podcast put on by AKERS Financial Group. Here with me today is Jeff AKERS from BRIAN AKERS and Jeff AKERS are both certified financial planner practitioners from AKERS financial working through arcadios wealth financial advisors for a long time. Jeff's been with me more than 20 years as we built this AKERS financial group together. We welcome you to the second half of the show. Our show is called build wealth and create a legacy. We're trying not to be too depressing about passing away, and we're trying to give you the motivation you need to take your thoughts and make it happen. Imagine that you wanted to benefit people, charities, people, things that are going on in your life. You want to help them. Well, let's make it happen. That's what planning does. Planning leads to implementation, which leads to things actually being done.

Jeff Akers:

Very, very important, right? Taking your dreams and making them reality. If you see

BRIAN AKERS:

these charities that have a family's name on the wall, why did they get their name on the wall? They planned for it, right? Some of them built incredible wealth and built these trusts, and then the trust kept growing, and then their names in a lot of places because of the legacy they left with the money to be able to build a legacy to support what they loved during their lifetime. It

Jeff Akers:

can benefit a lot of good things and be remembered, like you said, with your name on a brick or whatever,

BRIAN AKERS:

or the whole wall, or the whole wall, yeah, or the whole building. Why not? I mean, we have, we have clients that have things named after them, all kinds of different things out there. The thing is, this is when it comes to you and your wealth, you need to think things through. One of the fundamental things about winning in retirement radio show is getting you to be financially independent, to where you're at a point where you know you have enough money so that you can retire anytime you want, and you know you're okay.

Jeff Akers:

That is a good thing to know that you're okay. Now this is left over. How can I give it away? We've had clients like and

BRIAN AKERS:

the hardest part is 90% of America does not spend enough time develop, developing their own financial independence plan of getting to a point where they're preserving for themselves,

Jeff Akers:

right? Sometimes you keep working and working and working at your your portfolio, because you've never gotten into the mindset of, I have enough to live on, and the rest of this is kind of gravy, or it's extra. And what can I do? How can I benefit from it, as opposed to, what do I have to do for it?

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, so this building wealth. The idea is this, I have clients that I have a widow client that she gives away about $100,000 a year, and we give the money out of the growth of the portfolio she has. We look at it, we talk about it, and she tells me what she wants to send it to. And we send some out of IRA, some out of stocks that she's had a long, long time. And we do that once a year, and there's still money left over for kids, but you want to do it while she's alive, so you can see it be at work, get that money there. And also the tax advantage of its are very, very good, because you get a terrible deduction for most of it, depending on your income,

Jeff Akers:

right and the way you do it, like when you do from the IRA, if you're over 70 and a half, then it doesn't get counted as taxable income and counts as your required distribution.

BRIAN AKERS:

I mean, recently we gave with another case, we've put $30,000 of a of a stock that had an incredible gain, and we gave it directly to the charity. Instead of giving like fun offering each week, we gave a stock once a year, and that stock on the $30,000 is a, is a charitable gift, which goes on the tax return, and they didn't sell the stock. They gave the stocks. They didn't have to pay tax to sell the stock. Gain, right? Because one of the fundamental problems we see is people are writing checks to charities and then not thinking about their portfolio and what other ways to use their money to give the charity, more tax efficient ways?

Jeff Akers:

Yeah, and that requires a plan. Have a plan for how you're going to give, and it all

BRIAN AKERS:

starts with, are you charitable at all? Do you want to get a charity? We're not trying to make you give extra charity or give more, but if you have a heart for it, well, let's make it happen. Let's figure it out,

Jeff Akers:

right? That's right now, just so you know, I get this question sometimes, no, your kids don't count as a charitable contribution. Question. You ever get that question?

BRIAN AKERS:

Not Seriously, though? I mean, they talk about their dog and cat. Seriously, this, this dog went to the hospital. I need, I need, I need to duck that dog. I said, Well, pet insurance might work for we're way off track right now. So build wealth and create a legacy. This quarter, we talked about the concept of, how do you plan for a legacy of immortality? How do you actually do it? Well, what we're talking about so far is this, you have your financial independence is set now you know what you want to do with your money. Let's lose charity as an example, that charity can be a beneficiary. So a direct beneficiary on an IRA means it goes from your IRA straight to the charity who pays tax on that.

Jeff Akers:

Nobody. Why? Because it's a charity that's receiving it, and the charity is taxes, tax exempt.

BRIAN AKERS:

Now under the secure act of 2.0 which was signed 2020 that secure act the first version and even the second version, you don't want to have a charitable Ira beneficiary and add people to it. It causes problems on a 10 year distribution. Not gonna cover that today, but generally, if you have an IRA by itself and you wanna give that to charity, make charity 100% to beneficiary. You can make multiple beneficiary overrides, trust overrides, wills. It is a leading thing that directs money. Is the beneficiary, right?

Jeff Akers:

It's sort of a contract between you and the company that has the money that says, here's where I want it to go after I'm gone.

BRIAN AKERS:

So one way of doing planning is after you've got your retirement planning and getting all settled in, you know you're good, you want to begin with the end in mind. So by having the end in mind. So if we're not around, where does it go? Well, who do we want to see get that money, and when do we want them to receive it? And this would be more sophisticated, if you have a special needs child. We've done a number of these where there's a special needs trust for money. A certain amount of money goes in there to provide for them, if the parents aren't around, also to provide for them now for some daily extra expenses,

Jeff Akers:

right? So we talk about, from a tax standpoint, give the money to charity that comes from a taxable source, like an IRA or something like that, or a non qualified annuity, the money that you give to your kids, you want that to be from non taxable sources, if you have them, things like Roth IRAs or life insurance. And sometimes, you know, we mentioned this before, sometimes you don't want your kids to get all the money at once, and that's where a trust comes into play. Is set, set something up so that they get money doled out to them over a period of time, or when certain things happen, so that they don't just get a lump sum all at once.

BRIAN AKERS:

Now, we've seen some mistakes in this. They love their kids, and they're told by some friend, I'll put your kid's name on your house, put your kid's name on your account, now on the bank account. We caution against that, because that gives that child the total control on the account if they're a joint owner, right? We like things called payable on death, which is a beneficiary on a bank a transfer on death, a beneficiary on a brokerage account, if you have a stock and you have a low cost basis. If you add the kid on the account jointly while you're alive, they get your cost basis. That means, if you pass away, there's a little bit of step up on 50% but then generally the rest of it would have your cost basis they have to pay tax, which they never would had if they had just stayed a beneficiary on the account. Right?

Jeff Akers:

With a step up in cost basis, that means that the person inheriting the money, their cost basis is whatever the value was on the date that you died, not what you paid for it. So they could turn around and sell it right away and not pay tax, but if you gave it to them ahead of time, they'll pay tax. Same

BRIAN AKERS:

thing works on real estate, yep, and real estate on personal real estate on second real estate on rentals. So imagine you have a second home, and you want the family to have it. It's a beach home, it's a mountain home, it's another state home, and you want the kids to get it right. Don't put them on the don't make them join owners. Yeah, because when you own you buy it and you keep it for 20 years that this grown up a lot of value. And the hardest part would be, is that if they wanted to sell it, because maybe they can't afford to maintain a double house lifestyle, you know, maybe they like the place when you're around, but maybe not like you like it,

Jeff Akers:

right? They like it when they don't have to pay the property taxes and utility bills and all that kind of

BRIAN AKERS:

stuff. Well, a lot of it's the memory of everyone being there. And it's hard to have that same memory in the same location unless you build new memory. So the flexibility of not having a capital gain tax is very good with the law. The step up basis works out very, very well. So the concept is this, if you're trying to create a legacy and you want to, like, I guess we have one, one case where they have a beach home. It's right on the water, really nice. And so what they want to do is that we put into a trust, and that trust is for the kids. We also have put money in the trust to fund it, to keep it going, so they can go visit there. So far, after seven years since the client passed away, they're still going taking care of it using the money. It's working really well. I. And all all the kids are in agreement. The hardest part would be, is when that moment comes, when they're not in agreement,

Jeff Akers:

right? So that's a case where someone planned for the future. They said, I want my kids to to have this property, and they also plan for, well, there's more expense. Besides just giving them the property, they've got to upkeep it. They got to pay taxes, insurance, all that stuff.

BRIAN AKERS:

I've seen the opposite. I've seen someone give them a huge property to a charity and no money, no cash, right? And then the charity to keep the property going has had to fundraise to make it happen, right? That's very difficult to watch, right? Or they have to sell the property, even if they didn't want to, yeah. So the idea is this, when you build your wealth and grow your wealth, we love helping people do that, but then you say, what's next? What's my next level? And this idea of legacy, or being able to have your money be immortal, so that there is a memory of you and your family because of of what you've been able to leave behind. Now you can't take it with you. They say when you pass away, but how you leave it behind is important.

Jeff Akers:

It is important. And you want to be remembered for something positive. You don't want to be remembered for something painful.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. All right. So the idea is that, how do I say the best way? We don't want to think about it, right? And what happens is, some people will wait to the last moment, and they might have the time to be able to think about at the last moment. But not all of us get that quick or slow, where we pass away slowly and get to properly plan at the last moment, right? Things happen if you read, if you search the internet or Google, whatever you whatever you search, what by you look up estates that had no will, famous people that states with no will. There's all these lists of people who are living their best life didn't take care of the next, the next, next, stage, right?

Jeff Akers:

You mentioned Elvis Presley earlier, and he died young. Michael Jackson died young. Lots of these people died before you would expect them to.

BRIAN AKERS:

Aretha Franklin was one recently without a state plan, right? All right. So this talk has been growing and building our wealth, and talking about creating a legacy and making this money last for your lifetime and beyond. And so what we want to understand is that retirement is a key thing. So at AKERS Financial Group, we want you to win in retirement. Because we all know retirements where you get your time back, where you decide how to use it before retirement, your time is tied with other commitments, mainly your job. A lot of that, a lot of that, goes away in your retirement years, your time is now consumed by what you want to do. You know, create a legacy plan, right? So it's easy to begin winning retirement. You just go to our website, AKERS, financial group.com scroll to the schedule a meeting section and let us know you'd like to schedule a free consultation with one of our team of advisors. That's AKERS financial group.com or call us at 833 win, retire. That's 830 3w, I n, r, e, t, I R, E, and we'll give you a call on Monday to schedule a free in person meeting. Go to AKERS financial group.com or call us at 833-946-7384, to start planning for your retirement now. Your Money shows where your heart is. We'll explain when we return.

Unknown:

You're listening to a pre recorded Show. Welcome back to winning in retirement. Call 833 win retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement once again. Here's BRIAN AKERS.

BRIAN AKERS:

Welcome back to the fourth quarter of winning in retirement. I'm BRIAN AKERS, Certified Financial Planner, practitioner, president and founder of AKERS Financial Group. Here with me today is Jeff AKERS financial planner, and all that too, and we're down to the fourth quarter. Aaron, fourth quarter. I love game and sports. I love the fourth quarter. It's winning time. Who's going to take the last shot? Who's going to hit it? All right? Jeff, are you gonna take the shot?

Jeff Akers:

Well, you're the coach. We'll find out that's right. If I give you the ball, right? We'll see the play that you draw up.

BRIAN AKERS:

It'll just run a play where you say, just give me the ball, coach, and everybody else sit down.

Jeff Akers:

You've coached basketball a long time. That's okay.

BRIAN AKERS:

Oh, it's funny when you draw a play and then the one kid you don't want to shoot, like, lights it up. Yeah, it was a screen. But then they're open and they shoot. Well, that's why you leave them open when you're the defensive coach, right? All right, so building, wealth and creating a legacy is what we're trying to talk about now. How does that apply to a basketball design in the fourth quarter? Let me come up with an

Jeff Akers:

answer. You'll need to come up with one for that. Well, sports,

BRIAN AKERS:

Defense wins the games. I love defense. So wealth preservation is where you build your wealth. You take less risk in retirement, less risk, risk with your wealth as you grow it, you diversify your wealth. As you achieve wealth, you don't. If you own one stock that's built your wealth incredibly, you do. Got to trim it over time to preserve it. As we've seen great stocks go up and great stocks come down. And can see people make millions and lose millions within just a few months of trading, right? A

Jeff Akers:

few months. Or if you stretch it out to a few years, it happens even more often. Yeah,

BRIAN AKERS:

there's a local stock that's had that same experience this year, where up and then down about 30 some percent, then back up again. So it's a question of, when you have money and wealth and you're trying to diversify, you got to build some sound foundational pieces of your money and build it where your financial independence is set, and you know you're okay, and that's preserved, then you have the other wealth above what you need, and that's where we're talking about, how what do you do with that? How do you grow it? How do you use it? How do you benefit beyond you? So

Jeff Akers:

first, have that smart, diversified portfolio that's going to take care of everything you need. And then how are we going to leave money behind?

BRIAN AKERS:

Absolutely. So this quarter is about where your money shows where your heart is. So basically, where your treasure is, though, where your heart be also. So the concept is where you put your money, where you write the checks. Is example of you saying, I love that. I love best buy. I love whichever whichever one you're writing the check to, or if it's the church, if it's a school, if it's another charity, it's a certain kind of charity, you're writing checks to them. It might even be the kids writing checks to them, saying, Here, Johnny,

Jeff Akers:

Well, nowadays they're venmoing to the kids, but that's another story.

BRIAN AKERS:

Oh, Venmo excelling. Yeah. There's lots of ways to send money, and people accept it always, yes, they do. The funny thing is that when you have to tell them, I send it to you, then, oh, yeah, I got noticed. That was it?

Jeff Akers:

Yeah, no, thanks. But we don't need to go down that path,

BRIAN AKERS:

no. So I think the path that we're going down was the idea of your heart, the heart, the passions behind what you have in life. Your money is going to show what you really believe in, what's important to you. So if you're thinking about, well, what do I care about? Look at where your money went to, right? That's a good place to check and see. It might be that I like to eat.

Jeff Akers:

It might be I need to cut back on a couple of things,

BRIAN AKERS:

right? So when you look at it, go, I don't want my heart to be that way. I mean, I pay, I pay all these streaming people, and I don't, I don't even want to watch TV. I want to be

Jeff Akers:

outside this up. My heart's not going to last long, right? So these are all

BRIAN AKERS:

decisions that that we make, that we might not be thinking about, that are controlling your finances. So in finances, if we're saving first and putting money to our future, and that money's grown over time, you've built your wealth now you get so many decisions, so many choices.

Jeff Akers:

And it's always good to be be in a position where you have choices, but sometimes people just get locked up that's like, well, I could do this, I could do that, and they have a hard time sorting through what's really important to them. And

BRIAN AKERS:

we've had clients come to us and say, Yes, I want to give some money away. Help me do that. One of the funnest things that I enjoy is something called a charitable gift annuity. Terrible gift annuity, pick a charity that you like that's going to be around long term. You give them money, and then they send you quarterly checks for as long as you live, and then they keep the rest, okay? And you get a partial deduction on what you give based on your life expectancy,

Jeff Akers:

okay? So you don't get a full deduction, because they're going to give you some money back.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, you get it. Basically you're retaining an income from it. So it's not like gone, right? But you know, it's going to the charity. So it's out of your pocket, right? It's in their pocket. But you're getting an income stream, a quarterly income stream, is normal. That's not a bad I like that idea, right?

Jeff Akers:

It benefits them, and it still provides for your lifetime.

BRIAN AKERS:

Sure on that we've set up foundations for clients. Foundations typically where you set your own basically 501, c3, and that process takes a while with an accountant to get the paperwork organized, you need to have quarter million minimum or above to set up your own foundation before that, you can do donor advised funds, where you put money into them and then that'll send money to proper charities as you see fit. It's sort of like set up your own private endowment with money going out, which I like that a lot. So you got lots of ways to take care of charities. I'm just getting started here. Hey. I mean, I enjoy helping people do what they want with their money. The strategy of it is fun,

Jeff Akers:

right? A lot of fun right. Now, the ideas that you're talking about right now have to do with charity. So if charity is something on your heart, then that's where you want to give.

BRIAN AKERS:

I love presenting this concept. The concept is this, let's cut the IRS out of your estate plan. And they're like, What? What does that mean? Well, let's talk about the flow of your estate the way it is now, and then we'll show you all the fees, all the taxes, all the federal the state, all of the cost, and what your family really gets. Let's do that first. And so we go through that. Oh my, they're getting almost a same share as my family, right? Is that? What was that? What you want, right? And I said, Well, do you really love charities? Oh, yes, we really do. Now I always ask that question, because some people don't care about charities. So they're they don't care, right? I wanted to go to my family. They want as much to their family as possible. Now, if they say as much to their family as possible, then that gives us an answer, right? And their answer is gifting. Their answer is wealth preservation trust, or might be life insurance. If we can qualify second to die inside of a trust, there's different options based on that answer to the question,

Jeff Akers:

right? Even Roth IRAs things that gets money to the next generation, tax free.

BRIAN AKERS:

It's an income tax free. It's still a state taxable. So you have to watch how large we get the Ross. What's wonderful about Roth is they grow tax free, and it's fun when they grow and grow and grow. There could be issue of state taxes, even on Ross, even life insurance, if you still own it, the key thing would be giving the ownership away so it's not includable in your estate, to make sure that works properly,

Jeff Akers:

right? We've done that before with folks that wanted to, in this case, they wanted to give some money to charity. So we took all the taxable stuff and made the beneficiaries charities. And then the non taxable stuff, we set up a life insurance trust and things that would not be taxable to give to the family, to the kids.

BRIAN AKERS:

Now, charities and trust, there are a lot of them out there, lots of choices, and they're all driven by the end purpose. The end in mind, it's almost like going on vacation. If you want to go somewhere, you pick a location, you say, Well, how am I going to get there? Like if you picked Wyoming, how am I going to get there? Well, no one flies there. Well, directly, you have to go. They circle around the country to get there. But generally, you pick a location that you want to go visit, and you got to figure out how to get there. Same thing with your money, if you want money for your kids, and then you want money for grandkids, but you don't want them to have all of it, then that means we gotta have a version of a trust, and we gotta have somebody in charge of the trust. You gotta decide between individual or corporate trustees. How is that gonna work? Who's gonna manage the money? All that's part of the planning that comes to building your wealth and creating a legacy to make this money last beyond you and make this money do things that you wanted to

Jeff Akers:

do, right? And you mentioned, if you want to go somewhere, you got to know where you're going. You also need to know where you're starting, and that's where the plan comes in. You've got where you're starting and where you're going, and the plan figures out the map. That's how you're mapping your way there.

BRIAN AKERS:

By having a plan, what happens is that money stops being the focus in life. It stops being what you're working for, what you're trying to accumulate. It becomes the opposite your heart, what you want the money to do for you, the money becomes a tool. And when money becomes a tool, I think money's in its proper place, right? And money in its proper place is a great thing for you and your family, and the pressures and the stress that you might put on your life when it comes to money, when you think about it, and the opposite way,

Jeff Akers:

right? We don't want money to be a stressor for you, right? You want it to be something that you don't have to worry about. It's taken care of. Your life is taken care of, and the future is taken

BRIAN AKERS:

and that's by doing the right things all the time, right? By keeping yourself within means, by living having a cash flow, understanding where money comes, where money goes, have your money work for you, having it build the wealth. Not trying to get rich quick, but building wealth over time, right? Wealth is sustainable. Money. It's money that's going to be there. Money is going to stay there. Wealthy is a busy definition of someone that has accumulated and still has it, someone that gets rich quick, typically spends it quick and then has to go try it again, right? Oh, you see, you see the emotions of that the concepts agreed where they'll do beyond normal to get extra wealth. Those are all terrible things when it comes to money.

Jeff Akers:

Yeah, sudden wealth usually leads to sudden spending, and then you're right back to where you started. Yeah, the

BRIAN AKERS:

word sudden wealth, I always think of lottery winners and how the stories don't sound really well when it comes to that. So sudden wealth is a way of handling that money is a whole nother way of trying to counsel people to treat it as almost untouchable, act like you didn't get it, and then trickle it into your life rather than let it overwhelm Yeah, that's it. I always think about it, and it's it's difficult situation, trying to guide people through that decision. All right, so today we talked about a lot of things. It started with about winning in retirement. Then now what? And the idea is this, we need to build wealth and create a legacy through proper planning. That legacy needs to take advantage of not paying too much in estate taxes, too much in inheritance tax, knowing what's out there at different levels of wealth, making sure you have your money set aside for your purpose and your goals. What are the charities that you care about? When do you want to receive money? How do you want to receive money? Make sure you got that figured out. The hardest thing when it comes to financial planning is for you to be able to talk to us about what you want, right? That's the starting point, and that begins with that conversation, that free meeting, where we talk with an advisor and begin to understand. And what your situation

Jeff Akers:

is, right. So let us help you through that process absolutely

BRIAN AKERS:

well. Thanks very much for a good show. Jeff, it went quick, loads of fun. Actually, it is building wealth creating a legacy is a great fun thing for us to do with our clients. So today we did cover building wealth and creating a legacy, and we look forward to meeting with you. We want you to win in your retirement by taking advantage of the opportunity to begin planning with us at AKERS Financial Group to schedule a free meeting with one of our team ed advisors. Go to our website at AKERS financial group.com scroll to the schedule meeting section and let us know you'd like to schedule a free meeting right there. That's AKERS financial group.com or call us at 833 win retire 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 with one of our team of advisors. Start planning for your retirement now. Go to AKERS financial group.com or call us at 833-946-7384, thank you for listening. I'm BRIAN AKERS from AKERS Financial Group, and we want you to be winning in retirement.

Unknown:

You've 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 wealth. AKERS Financial Group and arcadios do not share any common ownership. Neither arcadios nor AKERS Financial Group provides tax or legal advice. Advice advice given on winning in retirement is general in nature, and one should seek further advice from their financial advisor, broker, attorney andor 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.