Winning in Retirement

What Does Winning in Retirement Look Like?

• Akers Financial Group

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Brian Akers and Jeff Akers, co-hosts of the "Winning in Retirement" podcast, discuss strategies for achieving financial independence and planning for retirement. They emphasize the importance of understanding one's "financial fingerprint" and creating a personalized plan. Key points include the necessity of saving, investing wisely, and managing cash flow. They highlight the significance of tax planning, healthcare costs, and debt management. Success stories illustrate how proper financial planning can lead to a stress-free retirement, allowing individuals to enjoy their desired lifestyle. The hosts encourage listeners to start planning early and seek professional advice to ensure a secure financial future.

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, our radio podcast show is called winning in retirement. Here today with me is co host Jeff AKERS, Vice President, Certified Financial Planner, practitioner from AKERS Financial Group. Good morning, Jeff, good morning. Brian. I'm very glad to have you here with me today. I'm glad to be here, and we're welcoming everyone to winning in retirement. And today is the secret day. We have our secrets, secret sauce, not the sauce. We can't teach about the sauce the secret, just the secret. And that secret is how to win in retirement. Man, I think everybody wants to know that they should. I mean, the show is called winning in retirement, because if you think about the pursuit of retirement, the pursuit of financial independence, the goal of getting somewhere, to reach all your goals, to choose and do what you want. That is winning in retirement. And that is something that makes this show for all ages, all stages of life. And we're going to try to hit all the topics that people need to do to begin the process of winning in retirement, right? And so that the how to show it's not a YouTube video right now, it's just a podcast, right? But how to win in retirement by winning in retirement years. So how to win in your retirement years? We want to make sure we cover this the best we can. At AKERS Financial Group. Where does it all start? At Jeff, it starts with the client. Starts the client. You mean, like a person has to show up. Yes, a person has to show up. We have to talk to you. I thought you gonna say you have to the door has to open. So I'm like, Oh, the door has to open. Well, that's the person talking to you. They open the door, sure. Then what happens? What's the first concept of winning in retirement? What do we do for people to help them get there?

Jeff Akers:

Oh, well, we've got to get to know you, because we need to know your financial fingerprint.

BRIAN AKERS:

Financial fingerprints. So we fingerprint people on the way in.

Jeff Akers:

No, it's not a physical kind of thing, other than we're writing information down, but it's a financial fingerprint. So kind of like, yes, you have a unique fingerprint, with your thumb and your fingers and everything, but you also have a unique financial fingerprint, and that's what we try to get a grasp of, is who you are financially and who you want to be, where you want to go when it comes to retirement, that's unique to you. So we need to learn that about you before we can really put together a plan on how to get there?

BRIAN AKERS:

Yes, imagine AKERS financial we are planning driven, not product driven. If someone's selling you a product, there they have a product for sale right now, it might be the right thing. Might not be. We believe, without a plan, you can't get to the right answer. You also can't understand are Am I winning in retirement? How am I feeling about this? Am I going to win in the future, or just right now? What's going

Jeff Akers:

on? Right? The plan leads to the product, not the other way around. Absolutely.

BRIAN AKERS:

So this financial fingerprint, if you go to our website, AKERS, financial group.com you see under Documents information about creating a financial fingerprint right there. That's how we get started, how we talk to people about where they are. Financial fingerprint is where you are right now. And then there's a whole talk about what you want to do with your money, with your life, and we're trying to build a plan for your financial future. Guess what? They get to pick where they're going?

Jeff Akers:

Well, that's true. I can't tell you where to go.

BRIAN AKERS:

I answer that, Jeff. I mean, you told me where to go a few times in our life, and I appreciate it.

Jeff Akers:

Oh, you're making me sound bad ever.

BRIAN AKERS:

But the idea is that chef, you like to drive, right? Oh, yes. Now, when you drive, do you look at a map at all?

Jeff Akers:

You know, it's funny, because now it's the GPS, but yes, I look at maps all the time to figure out how to get where I'm going, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

And then used you have a destination in mind? Yeah. And then you say, Well, how do I want to get there? And you take different routes, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like to see new things. And so that's called Planning. Yes, it is. So hopefully everyone's listening. When you plan a trip, you truly plan a trip,

Jeff Akers:

right? And back in the old days when you had a paper map and you knew where you wanted to go, you also had to look at where you were starting, because if you didn't know where you were starting, you had no idea how many map books did you have in your car? Oh, my goodness. Well, there was, like an atlas, and then there was maps of Maryland, Virginia, all the different states I was going. I got

BRIAN AKERS:

the local county maps with each road back before things came became the first GPS I

Jeff Akers:

had something when I lived in Texas that was like a grid thing. You could flip through a book and see every street in the city.

BRIAN AKERS:

That's what I had for every county in Maryland and Pennsylvania as we as they first started financial planning. Wow, 35

Jeff Akers:

years ago. Brian's been at this a long time. He's really good at it.

BRIAN AKERS:

I'm sorry. I. Them. You know, one of the jokes I said recently is that we're so good at retirement planning. Our sisters retired at a young age, like 52 yet, why'd you bring that up? They're younger sisters, yes, and we're retirement experts, but we're still working right now and helping them retire. But what I want to get across is this, is that we work because we love our job. That's true. We love what we do. We love helping people win in retirement. And so when we talk about winning in retirement, it could be that you want to win in your retirement by maybe working a little less, but maybe not totally stopping your work. Oh, it might be stopping a full time job. Going part time. It might be, oh, I'm working for someone. I wanna do this on my own. I wanna go to a different pace. It could be a volunteer. There's 1000 ways of winning in retirement.

Jeff Akers:

Oh yeah, and it's unique to you. What are you passionate about?

BRIAN AKERS:

The key thing is this, if you wanna win in retirement, you need to win the practice. You gotta win the game. I am sounding like a coach. You gotta win every day. So imagine that you got a job. That job is paying you money. What you do with that money will dictate if you're going to win your retirement years, right?

Jeff Akers:

That's true. You need to, that is true. No, Brian's not lying. We need to use that money to set some aside for retirement so that when we get there, we can do the things we want to do. We can be content in that retirement.

BRIAN AKERS:

But it has to start with today. Wherever you are in your financial fingerprint, you got to do the work so that you can have the concept of being able to win. Winning, in our opinion, is having a goal, accomplishing it each day to be able to sit back, relax, lean back, relax, right? Make sure you know you're okay, because things are planned out well, you know you're okay, and that's all very important part of planning, but the planning has to begin with you deciding that you're going to win in your future. No matter what the background has been, whatever the history hasn't been you got to correct it, right?

Jeff Akers:

Sometimes, just bring us the information and let us worry about it. We'll put together where you are and talk about where you want to be, and we'll put together the plan to help you get

BRIAN AKERS:

there. All right. Clients have brought new information. Tell me the different ways people have brought information to you. Give me some examples, then I'll top it. You do one, I'll top it.

Jeff Akers:

Okay, okay. So there are some people that they put everything together. They've got it in nice folders. It's all organized and everything. And they bring it in, it's like, wow, this is fantastic. They've got tax returns and statements and everything. And we just start looking through it and saying, Okay, let's add it up. And, you know, here's our starting point. So that's one.

BRIAN AKERS:

Another one is the the guy comes in with nothing his hands, right? And, you know, they're an engineer, because out of their pocket comes everything financial on one piece of paper, right? They do a spreadsheet and print it as small as possible. Need a magnifying glass every fact and then convincing them that we actually need to see the statements to prove what they're saying. Is a battle about unto itself, right, right? But the stats are all there, all in one really small printed page, so that that's so when you're thinking about someone very prepared, I'm thinking of someone that's prepared, but in their own version, right?

Jeff Akers:

Their version of preparedness versus what we need. I tell people that I like the information, but I believe in trust, but verify. So the statement is how I verify what there is, all

BRIAN AKERS:

right, so let's talk about the another version of somebody bringing their information in. How does that? What does that look like?

Jeff Akers:

Well, sometimes it's a little less organized. They've got stacks of stuff. Sometimes the envelopes haven't even been opened. That just came from a financial looking company. And they're like, Here, see what's

BRIAN AKERS:

in here, the grocery short store, bag full of stuff, plastic

Jeff Akers:

bag.

BRIAN AKERS:

So what happens sometimes is the people like to come to their first meetings, like, after a June 30, after a 1231 because all their statements come in, right? And then they bring them all and, like you said, maybe not opened at all, right? And you get that information. The thing about a financial fingerprint is, we want to look at a statement. When you look at a statement, Jeff, what are you looking for?

Jeff Akers:

Like, while I'm looking for how it's titled, is it an IRA? Is it a Roth IRA? Is it a joint account? You know, what is it? What else do you look for? Well, I want to see, is it a brokerage account? Is it a bank account? Is it an annuity? If it's a brokerage account, what's in it? What do you own? What else can you find on a statement? Oh, my goodness. Well, if it's like an annuity or an insurance product, you can find out when it started, sure, and if there's a penalty for early withdrawal, sometimes you can see on there, when that ends, that penalty ends. So there's a lot of information, a wealth of information, really. Sometimes even have beneficiaries on it. Beneficiaries. One of the things we want to check, yeah, so

BRIAN AKERS:

when people bring information, it's great. And then the other thing we ask people to bring is their ability to log into their account. Else, because we've had the meetings where you log in and we check out the beneficiary, and it's the ex wife, or not filled out at all, or nobody, or nobody, or one kid, but the that the last three kids never made it on there, we check it out. So imagine that a financial planner, a financial advisor, is going to check everything. That's why we want to see the statements. Make sure what you say is what it is. And then we explain what it is to you, what you own. And then we talk about, should you own it right now? Financial fingerprint is where you are today, assets and debt. So bringing tax returns with every little piece of paper, every debt statement, so we can see where you are debt wise, we can help you with trying to get the financial freedom out of debt. Debt snowballs, all kinds of versions how to reduce your mortgage in a certain time period to make sure you're out of debt in retirement, all these things to get us to where we're winning. I believe that if you want to win in retirement, you need an advisor. You don't wait till you hit a million dollars or $2 million before you get an advisor. When I hear people have minimums for you to come see them as an advisor, I think they're investment managers. They're not advisors. They just want your money. They don't really want to advise you to have the

Jeff Akers:

money, right? We want to help you get there. And if, as you're listening, you heard some of these examples of people coming in, you're like, Oh, that would be me, yeah, well, that's fine, right? That's fine. Bring that to us. It's okay. We've seen it. I promise we won't laugh at you.

BRIAN AKERS:

We'll bring you plastic cartons. When people bring suitcases on a roller, we had somebody bring it where they scanned it all into a thumb drive. Thumb drive, yeah, I was thinking floppy drive. That was a wild long time, long time ago. But the idea is this winning in retirement. How do you win in retirement? You gotta get started. That's the first thing. You gotta learn how to win a retirement. You have to decide, no matter what background you have, what family you come from, you can be different financially. If you start you have to do it. No one else is gonna be as good at it when it comes to creating your plan, because we have to hear from you to start it right. But let us help you absolutely. So AKERS financial, we're local, we're independent. We don't report to a big company on Wall Street. We report to you. We do have offices in Lutherville and far still, and we meet clients all around the mid Atlantic region, all around the country and even a few around the world, it's so easy to begin winning in retirement, 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 back 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 lean back and everything will be all right. We'll talk about this 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, indeed.

BRIAN AKERS:

Welcome back to winning in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS. I'm president, founder of AKERS Financial Group. Here with me today is Jeff AKERS, Vice President of AKERS Financial Group. We are both certified financial planner practitioners through AKERS Financial Group, our broker dealers and our RIAs and all that. We are here to answer questions for you by you going to our website, AKERS financial group.com, reaching out to us, calling us any way possible as you come over and think about how to win in your retirement years, you might need to talk to an advisor. That's exactly what AKERS Financial Group is set up to be, is it guide you and help you and help you implement and manage the money that you need now into the future? Yep, today's show is called How to win in retirement. The show is called winning, it winning in retirement. But today we're telling you the secret how to win, right? How to get there. So what did you learn the first quarter? Jeff, about how to win. Oh, well, you got to start. And sometimes it seems like a mess, but you got to gather information up and bring it. It's almost like weight loss program. Hey, I'm gonna start tomorrow. I'm gonna start next Monday, and that's 30 years ago, but the next, but the, you know,

Jeff Akers:

the start right after Thanksgiving, right after Christmas, the

BRIAN AKERS:

trigger for winning in retirement is you got to wake up and say, you know, I'm working hard. I don't want to work hard at this level for every day of my life, right? I need to throw my future self some money. I need to make sure I take care of my daily then make sure I have a future when it comes to my money. I need to be that top 2% of Americans who've actually prepared and prepared well, yeah,

Jeff Akers:

for retirement, and part of the key is you spend less than what you earn. Seems simple

BRIAN AKERS:

another secret, yeah, that means you know where your money's going. That means you have a plan. When a paycheck comes in, you pay yourself first you. Tithe you pay yourself first, you live off the rest, and you're building towards your goals right now. This section, the second quarter, we're talking about, lean back and everything will be all right. So we're going to talk about some people that have done the work, and there's this great day after they retire. I got to tell the first story, Jeff, and that's going, I know you want to tell I'm gonna tell my story first. Okay, so I have a police officer working hard overtime, all kinds of hours, and then his wife is an accountant, ended up getting laid off from a company. And then that's when I first met him, and we got him ready to retire. We got through the hard parts of things, the tough parts of life, getting them through losing a job, and getting ready to not go further in debt, but to clean up all their debts so that there'd be a day when they could retire. About a year ago, they got that mark. They everything's clean, everything's good, their budget, their cash flow, the net income works perfectly. And we have a talk about retiring. He's all excited, turns papers in, retires, gets a drawing, and then this year he pops in right after they've done their first retirement cruise, and he sits down and he points at my table. There's a mouse bad says, winning in retirement from the radio show. He goes, points on, goes, Brian, I'm winning in retirement. Oh, that's winning in retirement. And I like saying retirement, that's another client of mine, but winning in retirement. And then he leans back in the chair. He'd never done that before. He's always on the edge of his seat. I gotta do this. I gotta do that. I just working out all this extra work. And it's like all of a sudden he just leaned back, and you can then see him breathe. And it's like, You're doing all right, he's relaxed. And he's relaxed because the stress of getting to retirement, the stress of not knowing if he ever could have retirement, was gone. And it was gone not because we double and triple the money real fast or anything like that. It's because we know that the money's gonna be reliable, sustainable, and keep up with expenses over the rest of their lives, that they are in good shape, right? And that's what winning in retirement is,

Jeff Akers:

yeah, so I'm gonna use an example of someone. They're still working, but the plan is in place, and so it's kind of on autopilot, you know, we have to review, but they don't have to worry about, will I have enough? It's, I'm doing the things so that I'll be able to retire when I want to. And you talked earlier about retirement. May or may not be working or volunteering or whatever you want to do. We've, we've referred to it as financial independence for most of your life. You work because you have to. You need money. When you're financially independent, they need you more than you need them. So you come at the job there, right the job? Right the job? Yeah. So at that point you can, there's a freedom, because the day can come. And I've heard people say this before, you know, if that, if my boss takes me off one more time, I'm done, I can leave, because they've done the work to be financially independent. And so this couple there, they've set money aside, they've got the plans, they've got the things in place so that when the day comes, it'll be a few years yet before they want to retire, but when the day comes, they'll be able to and they can sit back like your police officer did. Yeah, that would be nice.

BRIAN AKERS:

All right, my turn until next time. Right. Okay, all right. So this client came in with all the spreadsheets. He's a finance guy with a big company, and had all the spreadsheets about numbers, where he wanted to be, and then we just sat down, talked about what he what he'd written out, and he's like, I just don't know if I can retire. I just don't know if, if it's not right, if it's enough to have in the right spots, how? And basically all these questions were, how do I make sure I'm okay? How do I make sure we're doing it? All right? And that's what was the fun part. It's like you got a brilliant financial mind, with all the work already done for me, it was already spreadsheeted out. And I'm like, All right, so forget the numbers. What do you want retirement to be like? Right? And he goes, Well, we want to travel a lot, so what does that cost? Do you have a budget now? Oh, no, we just spend every whatever's left. But we do save, and they saved really well. I mean, they had, I think, three to $4 million invested and saved everywhere. But the thing would be, is where I'm gonna take money from, where's my checks gonna come from, monthly, the taxes, the transitioning out of the corporation, the couple years of bonuses, the stock that come later, the health care, all the logistics of retiring. And I'm like, that's all stuff we work through. Just a matter of, let's set a date, let's get ready. And the fun part was we had to work hard through it. And we met a lot getting it down, one thing at a time. He worked. He had to negotiate. Leaving, because when you're the higher up you get, you got to sort of have them prepare the ship for you to leave, right? And so you have the talk. And then they, they say, Okay, let's have you leave a certain year, and then we're going to want you back for a little while, and then we'll do health care and all these things, trying to get them to 65 you know, a combination of all that. And so he finally retires. All totally retires and done. He comes in with a video, and he's already dressed in Hawaiian shirt for the meeting, instead of his business business attire. And then he leans back and goes, Look at this. Look at this video I did, Brian. It's him going to the final board meeting to lead it with this Hawaiian shirt on in the board meeting, fire me. And he's like, this will be a great day today. It's my last day. He had a really fun time with it. The fun part is that that was a few years ago, and so each each meeting is like that. It's like, is the plan working? Yeah, is the budget working? Yeah, it's right about what we need next year. We're doing these things. Okay, does that fit in? Is anything extra? And then we start where to take withdrawals. Because you got to, every year decide taxes. You watch Irma. You got to make sure you're underneath that 218 for married filing jointly to avoid Medicare excess premium charges, things like that. You got to watch taxes, tax brackets. You got all the new one, big, beautiful Bill comments, or you got the Maryland tax laws, all that comes in and we spreadsheet things out back to him. He doesn't even look at a spreadsheet anymore, just our spreadsheets. And what's fun is he leans back in that Hawaiian shirt and lets us handle it, and he goes, he has fun, and he's went. He's been a bunch of places last couple years. The thing is that, like I tell everyone, if you want your family to go with it, you gotta go with you. You have to pay for it. He learned that one, yeah. And so that was that was good. He's got to adjust his trips a little bit. But the thing was this, no matter what high quality you know, your finances, the coaching and the guidance to be able to do it, financial planners, advisors, we help do that. And I think that's a great way to work. You do the very best thing that you do, and we do the very best thing that we do, and we combine the two, and you reach your goals, right? And so very good thing.

Jeff Akers:

Yes, it is all right. So my next example is a couple that it's not that they earned a lot of money as they were working, but they were excellent at saving, just setting money aside and preparing and so the day came where it was time to retire, and they retired, and they got to do some things that they like to do. And then there was an inheritance. And so now there's a lump sum that came in and they're like, Well, what do we do with this? I'm like, you can you can take more trips, you can do more things. And so for them that they were already content, they were already settled, because they had those good habits. They had done the hard work to get there. And now when extra money comes in, they're like, Okay, this is different. And sometimes that happens, you know, you you receive an inheritance that you didn't expect, and what do you do with it? And that's one of the things that we can help you with. So right now, we're kind of working through all right, here's some things you can do. You can take more trips. You can, you know, do more things. You want to do some work on your house. You can do the work on your house. You know, you don't have to worry about going into debt. You're not going to need any debt to do anything. And so getting debt free, they were already there, and now they've got extra money that they can use for things. And so they're, they're enjoying that quite a bit.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. But how did they act in a meeting? Do they lean back? Do they relax with you? What's going on right now?

Jeff Akers:

So right now they're very lean back when, when we first met, they were kind of arms crossed and everything. And then we talked about planning, and that kind of struck a chord that, you know, they liked the idea of a plan. And so then they started leaning forward, but that was years ago. Now it's very relaxed, very at ease, because they're they're content, and they know we have a good, solid plan in place. They don't have to wake up in the morning worried about money. Yeah, so

BRIAN AKERS:

today's show is called How to win in retirement. We're talking about right now the leaning back part. So this is like the reward of winning in retirement. But the thing you should learn from this quarter when it comes to how to, well, guess what? They have an advisor is how to right, how to win in retirement. Have that coach, that advisor that's going to guide you based on all your needs, all that's going on to help you be able to retire. So we've been talking about this, how to win in your retirement years. This is what we do for a living, so you don't have to figure out all this out by yourself. We help you. We love doing this, planning for the unexpected, planning for the worst case scenarios. All of this is part of a financial plan. It might not be your favorite thing, but it is ours. We know that, and we are able to help you. We love that. We want to make sure that your life is easy and more comfortable than you can imagine. When it comes to your retirement years, you have the freedom that you want and the money to provide what you need. So as as we meet with you and put a plan together, includes all these things that you plan for, and then it happens, you're like, Oh, we plan for this. Yeah, that's what the money's for. That's what the plan was for it. 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. It's a retirement plan based on your unique financial fingerprint that determines where your money should go. It's not about us, it's about you. So give us a call at 833 when retire or go to our website, AKERS, financial group.com not everyone wins the same way. 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.

BRIAN AKERS:

Welcome back to winning in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS. Here with me today is Jeff AKERS. We're both certified financial planner practitioners from AKERS Financial Group. We welcome you to the second half of our show, winning in retirement, with the title of this show, how to win in retirement. So guess what? It all works together. Jeff, are

Jeff Akers:

you ready for the second half here? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We had the orange slices and everything. I'm not an orange slice guy. That was all you Oh, really, yeah. Well, my fingers are still sticky,

BRIAN AKERS:

you know, I've had during my high school career. I had a hot dog at halftime and a Snickers bar a few other things, because I sort of ran out of energy after first half because I played too hard.

Jeff Akers:

The Snickers bar does not surprise me. Snicker bar is a lifetime

BRIAN AKERS:

commitment there. All right, so how do you win a retirement Snicker bars? That's how you do it. Make sure you have a certain amount, and you have to have a budget, because they've quadrupled the price over the years. Yeah, that's

Jeff Akers:

inflation, and that's one of the things that we have to account for in order to win in retirement.

BRIAN AKERS:

All right, so it's still a serious topic, and that is this, people want to win in retirement, but guess what? Winning every time is different. It's different for you, it's different for me, it's not everyone wins the same way, right? So we need to talk about this. What does winning retirement look like to to you, or to those out there, or those driving, those on their lawn mower, wherever you're at,

Jeff Akers:

right? You know, those on their lawn mower. I'm thinking it might be hard to hear on the law.

BRIAN AKERS:

I'm joking. We have a client who became a client from being on the lawn mower listening to us with the the am or not, AM, the FM, and you know, all the channels on it, on his headset there. That's dedication, right there. He listens every Saturday, mowing the yard during the summer. I'm impressed. I met with him two weeks ago.

Jeff Akers:

So for some people, mowing the grass might be winning in retirement, not for me personally, but for some people,

BRIAN AKERS:

nothing's like most getting on a mower and getting away and not thinking about anything

Jeff Akers:

else. That's true, but he's listening to us, so he's thinking about something, yeah, but

BRIAN AKERS:

not, not your job. You know, it's like you think about life, and you think about what's what does retirement mean? Well, you got a job, your job might be working very hard with your with your physical body, and you're just wearing out, or it might be the mental side, which you're wearing out. Either of them, when you retire, you want certain things, which is, might be the opposite of what you did as a career,

Jeff Akers:

right? I mean, there are folks that for them winning in retirement is they get to spend more time with the grandkids. They Yeah, the grandkids may or may not live nearby so they can go visit them. Sometimes grandmothers find a new job in watching the grandkids.

BRIAN AKERS:

Can we talk about the grand the grandkid? The concept of, I want to do that, and then the reality of, I am babysitting four days a week. I'm tired. I need to take a vacation from my grandkids,

Jeff Akers:

right? They're more worn out from that than they were from working.

BRIAN AKERS:

But, yeah, I've had a number of those meetings also. So the idea is taking care of family and being there for family is a wonderful thing, and that's why a lot of people don't retire away. They understand that retirement isn't going to be a beach every day reading on the beach every day. That might be good for a year or so, but what happens is people realize my retirement is really about time, quality time with family and friends, right? If I move away, I may not get that

Jeff Akers:

right. And we've seen a number of folks that say, when I retire, I want to live somewhere else. Yeah, wherever that place.

BRIAN AKERS:

That's a normal thing. And when you're in your 50s and you're dreaming, it's nice to think of your vacation spots as I'm going to be sitting on that or going there,

Jeff Akers:

right, right. But then the grandkids come along and it's like, okay, the grandkids are here. I can't be away from them. So then they they may or may not, buy a second home in the place they wanted to go, but they're not going to live there full time, there they might split time, or something like that. Have a place to take the grandkids, that kind of thing.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, so let's think about winning in retirement. What is it for you? Is it having a boat? Is it having the RV that you want to run around in? Is it trips? Is it not trips? Is it more time in the backyard? Is it more gardening? Is it a new career where you can volunteer, a new career, where you can do more work at your church? What is winning for you, right?

Jeff Akers:

And as you're talking about trips, I've got several clients that they just love taking cruises. That is their retirement. They take cruises everywhere, so that that might be what winning for you is for other folks like you mentioned you might want to work in your church, and there, I love that when people say, Okay, I got time. Now, I've got a guy at my church that retired. Now he works more at the church probably than he did at his job. But that's another story.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, well, all right, so let me ask a personal question, Jeff, let's say someday you retire. Okay, was Jeff, Jeff gonna do and retire? What? What have you ever thought about that yet?

Jeff Akers:

So have I thought about it? Yes, but settling on an answer is hard, because my kids aren't married yet, so that draw of a grandchild by doing this work, I know that draw is going to be there one day, and so I haven't allowed myself to go too deep into what I want to do in retirement, because I the grandkids are going to change that. Yeah.

BRIAN AKERS:

So I'm in the category of those that love everything they do, and the concept of retirement makes you nervous about who am I next? Oh, yeah. So it's a real deep thing about All right, if I retire as a financial advisor, am I still that financial advisor, or am I now the guy on the couch, the guy in the chair, the guy on the back porch, and then, is that what I want, right? And so I used to call it the I got like a Cracker Barrel retirement, which is I if the office would have everybody here with all the layers of advisors, different ages, and then as I became the older advisor, I could be in the rocking chair, right, and talk to my clients, and then they go see the the active advisor. So it's hard, it's hard when you're a business owner, to to have a break away from it, because it is a lot of who you are. It's been who you are for years, and so, so this mental idea winning in retirement is has become, to me, a balance of life now and retirement. Okay? Because I've helped people retire many times, many, many people. And the hard part is, if they wait to retirement to do the things that they dreamed and hope for, sometimes they're not able to physically right. And so I believe very much in a balance of now and later, very much in Oh, if I work an extra year or two, I can have some the trips now and the trips later. But even when I can't have the trip, I know I've done a few of them already. So there's a balance of life that, if we're all in for retirement, so much so that we really don't have any any enjoyment now, I don't think that's right.

Jeff Akers:

Also right? Yeah, we have to have that balance of in our life, just thinking about folks that don't know what to do after they retire. I'm working with a lady right now as a nurse with babies in the hospital. You know, the the sick babies, and she knows that she needs to stop, she needs to stop working, the stress, the politics, all that stuff she needs to get away from, from working, but at the same time, she's kind of nervous about, what do I do next? This is who I have been for years and years. It's the same kind of thing you're going through, and so you got to find that next purpose in life. What is your next purpose? Right?

BRIAN AKERS:

So volunteering and doing that, it's something I've done my whole entire career. I think having that balance now, continuing and being called to do more things is a wonderful place to be. The key to my answer is financial independence, right? Financial Independence is this, when that answer is there, you're ready financially. So let's get financially ready to win in your retirement as you build the answer as you have opportunities, have you, there might be an opportunity to change your job this year. It could be an offer. It could be a severance package that's better than you ever dreamed of, and you're like, Well, what if I take it? If I take it? If I take it, what I'm going to do? And it's like, like, if you're financially independent, you can afford to take it, right, and do what's next. I got this one guy. He he didn't want to retire. When I first met him, my wife wants to retire. I won't keep working. Okay? She retired. Yeah. And he's like, I think I want to do what she's doing and then, but he's like, I need to know where the money's coming from. So we had to do financial plan with little budget things with them, where the money is, where to count the money's coming. What account, what year he went to know all that. And then he retired this summer. And he gasla, actually, last night, came in sitting there, and oil outfit, you know, half. Happy. I'm not about the Orioles, but happy about what's going on. And what happened was he, he's sitting there relaxing, and that stress from a few years ago, of, oh, I don't want to retire, became the opposite of, I love every minute of it, of it. I like having my day and my my whatever is going on, and because they're financially independent and they can do that. So he leaned back. Oh, my. It was great. It was a very, very good example of people that are successful. Now financial advisors, we help them be successful by guiding them. We that they have to do lots of the work, but we guide them to make wise decisions. When you see your clients come in, one after the other, where they're successful, that things are getting better and better and been enjoying what they need to do that's winning in retirement, even for us as advisors, helping you win in retirement is a great thing and a reward for us,

Jeff Akers:

right? It feels really good to give good advice to someone and have them follow it and then see the progress as time goes on to get closer and closer.

BRIAN AKERS:

But when that new client comes in and they don't trust you, they don't and it's like, just get on board. Get on board the winning environment train. Let's go. And they're fighting with information, and I don't want to give it to you, and I'm like, listen to my radio show. Listen to understand that. Let's do this right and then. But they it takes them a while to go from that nervous, do I do I trust you? Are you gonna do the right thing for me to doing the right thing for them? And then they learn over time, they can relax,

Jeff Akers:

right? Sometimes we have to help them take the next right step. It might not be everything at once, but it's just one step at a time to build that trust.

BRIAN AKERS:

But that's hard. I mean, but it's hard for me in a meeting, because it's like, it's not like a kid or something, where you just say, do it, but you have to basically talk to them into what's best for them, right? It's a hard thing. It's like, you need this, even if you don't realize, hey, and you got to do this. Oh, I read that. I didn't want to do it that way. Yeah. It's like, I want to keep my mortgage in retirement. I said, Well, how you gonna pay your $1,200 a month health care? Right? You got to get rid of that mortgage,

Jeff Akers:

right? Sitting on our side of the table, it's like, I see all these things. I know what you need to do, here, here, here, here, here, but you're, you're not ready to do that. So we have to pick one go with that, and then work our way through the process the rest of those items.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, so what does winning in retirement look like to you? It's not all the same for everybody. It's different. It could be really, truly, whatever you dream it to be, but you got to make wise financial decisions, because we all know the best part of retirement is getting our time back, where you decide how to use it. Before retirement, your time is tied up with other commitments, you know, mainly your job. A lot of that goes away. In retirement, 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 a free consultation with one of our team of advisors right there. That's AKERS financial group.com or call us at 833 when retire. That's 830 3w, I n, r, e, t, I R, E, 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, what does it feel like to be winning in retirement? I'll talk about that when we come back.

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. Today, I have with me Jeff AKERS. We're both certified financial planner practitioners at AKERS Financial Group. What that means is we are financial advisors here to advise you on your retirement. It is us giving you the best advice so that you can make the best of your retirement years. Our show is called winning in retirement, and our show today is called How to win in retirement. That sounds like a great question. So what have we learned so far in our show?

Jeff Akers:

Jeff, well, one you have to start. I already said this, but you have to start somewhere. So gather your information and come see us. There's got to be a starting point.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. This is called a reviewing what's happening on the show. Yeah, you better have said

Jeff Akers:

it. Okay. So I said that before, and next we put together a plan. Then you've got to follow the plan so that you can sit back and enjoy retirement and

BRIAN AKERS:

lean back and relax. The hardest part is this, you got to do the work. You got to get yourself out of debt. You got to save money. You got to pay yourself first. You got to build this money for your future. You have to invest it. The investments need to be in equities. You need to grow this money if you're if your long term goals are to be able to retire, you need to put that money long term investments, right? So how to win a retirement? Invest the money. Right. Invest the money for the law. If you're in a 401, K, sitting in a. Money Market waiting for the best day to buy. I believe you'll never find the best day to buy because you're not putting it in it to work. No, the the key advice we give is for 1k let's go full gas, but that's put the money in the market. Let's go.

Jeff Akers:

Yeah, I tell people that volatility is our friend when we're putting money into the market, absolutely. So if you want to

BRIAN AKERS:

win in retirement, you gotta get that money growing. If your money's in the market, eight to 12% is an expected long term rate of return, not every year. You get up years and down years. The down years are what we want when we're buying right? It's not the best when you're retired, because you gotta withdraw, but hopefully you're ahead of the game with enough cash you don't have to sell a stock when it's down, and that's where the plan comes in. Oh, yeah, very true. And so all of this helps you win in retirement, and it really helps you feel like you're winning in retirement. So what does it feel like to win in retirement? Jeff, well, what is your word that you love to say, I

Jeff Akers:

love to say, being content. Yep, that that content feeling of, I don't have to worry about anything. I've got what I need, I can do kind of what I want, or what I feel called to do, that that's a good feeling. Yeah, the word

BRIAN AKERS:

contentment has always been a hard one for me, because, like when you're planning and you're building your company and growing, you're always thinking about what's next, right, right? So it's not, it's the opposite of contentment, because you can't be satisfied with where you are. You got to be growing and building.

Jeff Akers:

Sometimes it's contentment with the plan, though, when the plan is to grow, yeah,

BRIAN AKERS:

even if you content in everything, right? Yeah. So the idea of being content, having contentment in retirement is the idea when you're living that retirement years. It takes about two years into retirement where you realize, I'm all right. Things are flowing in. It's working. It's what I need. I'm contented with it. Contented the act of being

Jeff Akers:

contentment. Stick with me saying content.

BRIAN AKERS:

I'm a math the English language is difficult. So so the idea is this, how does it feel? What does it feel like to be retired and winning in retirement? The contentment part is where you understand you're okay, there's money. There money for the future. There will be moments of time when there's big decisions. That's when you call the financial advice, right? And that's what we're here for. Now. We don't sell you something and just move on. We need you to come in throughout the years. Now, as you're getting ready to retire, you might come in more. As you retire, you might come in once, twice a year, depending on what's going on, what's changing, how close you are, and tax issues, that kind of stuff. And if

Jeff Akers:

you're winning in retirement, is taking a bunch of trips. We'll see you when you get back. Bring pictures,

BRIAN AKERS:

or if you're only in town for a week, we need to schedule that. I have one like that. They're gone down south till like May, and then may, they come back here, and then they head north, and then they come back through in October, lots of traveling. Yeah. Very true. Now, truly winning in retirement is going to be individual to you and your spouse, you and your family and what you want to do, sometimes, what the one spouse wants, what the other spouse wants, doesn't combine properly. And so we got to help people make decisions associated and make sure there's money to do what they like to do, and then figure out what's best, right? One example I had is a client who wanted to move, and the husband did not want to move, really. So we had to have a constant talk about, does it make any sense to move? And they had to do the old school, write out what you're doing. What are the advantages to stay? Of staying? What's the advantage of moving and work through I told them, I can handle the financial number side. I'm not the emotional side. So there's two parts of every decision, an emotional piece and a financial numbers. I'll tell you the numbers and say you're fine and what the advantage of the other state would be. And then the emotion part is, do you want to do that?

Jeff Akers:

Sometimes the numbers generate an emotion but yeah, we we can't make the decision for you. It has to be your decision about, like, that example, where you're going to live. I thought you were going to say that the husband wanted to move, but the wife wanted to stay here, close to the grandkids, but it was the opposite.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, the grandkids are away. She wanted to. Was chasing grandkids. Okay, I understand, and that's an important thing. Yeah, it is all right. So how to win in retirement? One of our keys of learning how to do your planning is you got to learn some things in life as you get close to the retirement. I call it landing the plane, or you got to get things in place. You have to understand that big losses are hard to make up, taking a lot of risk as we get closer to landing the retirement plane. Getting close to retirement is a difficult thing to do, is to have too much risk. Big losses are hard to make up. So if you have full gas in 401 K off stocks, and you're going up and then all sudden, you lose 30 30% or you have to make more than that to. To get back to where you were, right? And that that takes time. How do you explain big losses are hard to make up. Jeff, well,

Jeff Akers:

one example would be, if you had a 50% loss, just what's the return you need to get back to where you were? And the answer is 100% gain. Now, it doesn't happen often, but there have been 50% losses and more in the stock market, if you

BRIAN AKERS:

think back to Oh 809, during the period of the end of oh seven, into the fall of own of oh eight, and then into the spring of oh nine, there was 68% loss on the S p5 100, right? The NASDAQ lost more the s p5 100 to get fully back. Took from oh nine to 2013 Yep. Now the designs we do for retirement is we don't risk all the money. We believe that target date funds don't really save and lower your risk by adding bond funds. So when the market got hit that bad in oh nine, the bond funds lost a lot of money, and so they also had time to try to catch back up. The hardest part is we want to make that the side that needs to be protected, protected, so we use different ways of doing that right, so that we don't get hit hard where we have to be in a deep hole to come out of

Jeff Akers:

it, right? And when you're retired, we want the income that you need to live on to be set. It's not going to go down, it's not going to go away, it's going to be there. We call that your paycheck because you need it for food, gas, you know, the necessities of life. Now there's some money that's going to be for the future, because we don't know when we're going to die, so there's always some money down the road that we're going to need that'll be invested in the market, but we don't want to be in a position where we have to sell at a loss. In order to get what we need,

BRIAN AKERS:

we got to be ready for big expenses in retirement. What are some of the biggest expenses during retirement years?

Jeff Akers:

Jeff, well, taxes is one of those expenses that people think At what age do I not pay tax anymore? Never. So taxes become a big expense that's sometimes unaccounted for. Health care is another big expense that we prefer not to think about. But we tell people make sure you don't have a mortgage in retirement because health care is your new mortgage payment, you're going to have

BRIAN AKERS:

to absolutely special, unless you're you have a plan that provides you health care in retirement years. I like to say that's a number. It's going to be good for all your retirement years. But we also have to plan, what if they come back and say, here, you got to pay a little

Jeff Akers:

bit, right? Or we're not offering this anymore at all. Yeah. So what

BRIAN AKERS:

happens in winning in retirement is balancing your life and your expenses, balancing your cash flow. I believe retirement is a cash flow game. It's an idea of what's coming in. Is that what I need? And then we manage the cash. So one of the questions we ask when you're retired is, how's your bank doing? Is your number 20,000 in the checking or not seeing checking at the bank? Is 10,000 100,000 what's your number? And if you go below, then we got to pull money out of the other investments to fill it up. I call that milk and the

Jeff Akers:

cow, yeah, I usually ask people when we start, is the income coming in, taking care of everything you need. And they either say yes or no. Most of the time, they say yes. Then we go through the bank accounts. I'm like, Well, this bank account went down. Why'd that

BRIAN AKERS:

happen? Well? And so the reality is, there's, it's almost like someone's sick, right? The symptoms, like, how do you feel? And then the reality, they do the testing and they see you are sick, what the issue is? So the idea is that in financial planning, when we see the bank account, the cash, that's the real answer, right? Of a positive or net that's negative. We have clients that are in retirement living so far below their means that the savings keeps growing and growing, and then we save and invest that money. And then there comes a point in time where we say, Do you want to give any of this away? Right? And that becomes qualified charitable distributions, giving the charities and other people, giving the family all kinds of college funding, all kinds of ideas,

Jeff Akers:

right? What are some things that you've dreamed about doing for a long time? Yeah, all

BRIAN AKERS:

right. Jeff, so the show's called How to win in retirement. The radio show is called winning in retirement. This is for anybody at any age to begin planning and growing and building your money so that you can win your retirement years. So let's give give some of your great wisdom. Advice for people

Jeff Akers:

my great wisdom start. One of the hardest things to do is to well, law of inertia says a body in motion tends to stay in motion. And a body at rest stays at rest. If you're at rest when it comes financially, get moving.

BRIAN AKERS:

One of the things we've seen is that the more successful people have become, the harder it is to retire because they have a high need. It's their needs very high. And then they think, Oh, I say four or 5 million, that that's enough for the lifestyle they've been having. And everybody wants to keep their lifestyle in retirement, right,

Jeff Akers:

right? And sometimes, when you meet with us, it's a reality check.

BRIAN AKERS:

It's Well, the reality is that if you make over a couple $100,000 a year, your 401 k is not enough. They cap you out at savings. It's not enough to be able to have that lifestyle. Lifestyle, you have to save more to be able to have to win in retirement if the answer is to be at the same lifestyle, which is normal planning,

Jeff Akers:

right? And so one of the things we talk about is, if this is all you have, then we're going to have to reduce your expenses. And nobody wants to do that,

BRIAN AKERS:

all right. Well, this show's gone very quickly. Jeff, I appreciate you talking about the show is called How to win in retirement. On the radio show is called winning in retirement. We thank you very much. Go to our website and check us out. All right. We do look forward to meeting with you. We want you to win in your retirement by taking advantage of the opportunity to begin playing with us at AKERS Financial Group, to schedule your free meeting with one of our team of 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 your 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, we'll give you a call on Monday to schedule a 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 our kidios capital and 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 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.