Winning in Retirement

Plan AND Implement (Bring Your Plan to Life)

• Akers Financial Group

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Brian Akers and Alex Monk discuss the importance of planning and implementing financial strategies for retirement. They emphasize the need to bring financial plans to life, not just create them. Brian uses coaching analogies to illustrate the process of planning, executing, and adjusting strategies. They highlight the significance of understanding individual financial goals, the risks of not planning, and the benefits of having a comprehensive financial plan. They also stress the importance of regular reviews and updates to ensure the plan remains relevant and effective. The show aims to educate listeners on the value of professional financial guidance in achieving a secure retirement.

Unknown:

The following is a paid program, and the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of WJZ FM Odyssey, its sponsors or affiliates. 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 from AKERS Financial Group. I'm president and founder of AKERS Financial Group. We welcome you to our radio podcast, winning in retirement. Today we have Alexander monk J monk. Alexander J monk, excuse me, sir, sorry about that. He's a Certified Financial Planner practitioner, CFP with little princess. After that, he's been with the AKERS Financial Group almost, I was gonna say pert near 14 years, right? 15? I mean, it's rolling by. So the idea is this, we invite financial advisors from AKERS Financial Group to a radio show. We sit down and we talk about topics that matter a lot. And so what Alex and I have been doing is working on a show, and we start, thought we'd start with this on this little quote, when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. These words are very true when it comes to actually planning for your financial future. What may be even worse is the plan and then not implement the plan. I mean, you must bring the plan to life. You have to bring it to life. Alex and I put together this show to give an example and explain why this is so important. And the show is called, bring your plan to life. What's your thoughts on that? Alex, I think

Alex Monk:

you're the perfect person to do this show with, because your coaching background, like, how many pre game talks have you had with your teams where you're like, All right, guys, let's go out there and do horrible, like all of you. I want you all to do terrible.

BRIAN AKERS:

Don't remember anything we practice. Don't remember the game plan practice. Oh, we're not gonna do any of that. But you know, when you coach high school, what happens? They weren't paying attention. They didn't know that they need to pick across. They didn't know that. And then, all sudden, you're benching them because they run the play right for the 30th time.

Alex Monk:

And you practice all these things, and then you try to implement it, right? And it's not perfect. They're kids, they're young, right? And it's live action.

BRIAN AKERS:

But over time, you keep with it, keep with the plan, and you keep adding a little bit what they can handle. And then the finished product is supposed to be better and better if everybody stays healthy. Because you're

Alex Monk:

planning for success, for growth, right, right? Like you're trying to move on, you're setting steps to get to wherever you need to be next, right? And that starts where you're at.

BRIAN AKERS:

And that's exactly what AKERS Financial Group over the on the radio shows. In the past, we've done many shows about a financial fingerprint, how AKERS Financial Group, we believe in planning first, and then what we wanted to do is say, hey, we worked on the plan. We wrote everything out. We have things ready now. What are we going to do about the plan? Are you going to take that plan and put it on a pretty shelf? Is going to be a pretty beautiful graph online that you say, Gee, that's nice, or are you going to do something about it? Are you going to bring that plan to life to help your life be better financially? And that's what we're going to spend some time on today. This is after you set up all your goals and objectives, so we should understand you at this point before we try to bring it to life. Unlike some concepts where they have a product to sell you, and then they listen a little bit to your goals and oh, that sounds like this fits, and it's the same product that everyone walks in the door,

Alex Monk:

I have a really tough time with that, because how can you invest money for someone if you don't know why? Like, that's a huge problem

BRIAN AKERS:

for me. Well, that's the fiduciary approach we've done for many, many, many years, and that's a new thing and a new requirement for people. But the concepts aren't, aren't, are still not out there where people actually listen and spend multiple meetings getting ready to give an answer.

Alex Monk:

I hear some commercials out there today. Sorry to jump off top topic, but they talk about these things, like estate planning, like all these tax planning, all these things that we've been doing for years. And I just laugh, like, oh,

BRIAN AKERS:

it's like, oh, we can even do estate planning. What

Alex Monk:

have you been doing? You didn't do estate

BRIAN AKERS:

planning before? Or somebody goes, oh, now I'm a fiduciary. Or they said they push fiduciary, and that means that they probably weren't fiduciary before. So the idea of changing industries. The concept that we want you guys to understand as you listen is this, are you listening to financial shows to get yourself better now, listening to the show is just like writing a plan. Is getting information. But you know, if we don't do anything about it, what happens?

Alex Monk:

Nothing, nothing. That's a decision right there. Like the decision of not making a choice is so like decision.

BRIAN AKERS:

So we love doing your unique financial fingerprint, and that's where we get statements information we want to read about your life, and we want to then write it out where you are now, so we know where we're starting, and then we want to talk to you about where you want to go, yeah. And then we build from there. And I

Alex Monk:

think that the write out. Part is so important, because you sit in this room with us, you know, and we talk this stuff all day long, so there's a lot of information flowing around. That's right? You get home, and you sit down, you have dinner, and you're like, What did he just say?

BRIAN AKERS:

What was and that's why, on our discussion items, we do a things to discuss, and we write them line by line. So if you're a person that likes checking boxes, we have the boxes there. You check them, and we do one thing at a time that makes sense, and when it's agreed upon to be a good decision, and with the whole end in mind understanding why it makes them, makes important, makes the makes the decision important

Alex Monk:

to do right now. Yeah, and that's the value of having the coach, the financial planner, is so that you can see the elephant that you're trying to eat retirement, whatever you know metaphor you want to use,

BRIAN AKERS:

but how you need to cow is me. Yeah, you're a cow guy, you're an elephant guy, eat the elephant. I don't know one bite at a time, eat the elephant. I don't I don't mind the concept of eating the elephant. The funniest thing is, I have a lady from Austria I had, I explained it to her, I said, Well, this is just like eating an elephant. And she's like, Oh, my, I would never, because she'd traveled a lot around the world. Just basically she must have been offered elephant before, and she turned it down. It was funny, but

Alex Monk:

cows don't really move me like they move you so well.

BRIAN AKERS:

They're more about Mooney and really blah. Well, the moolah that really comes throughout a life. You just have to understand the concepts of basic milking a cow means we're not killing the cow. Everyone can't make that cow last a lifetime, so we can hand it on to next generation. All right, so you throw me off there.

Alex Monk:

That's my fault, but that's okay. That plan, right? You got to put it into

BRIAN AKERS:

action, right? So let's just start with one topic. Hey, you need to save money. So how does that go in your conversation with someone? It sounds good.

Alex Monk:

And then I go, okay, when do you want to start? Yeah. And then if we're looking in their 401, K or somewhere, I'm like, Well, how about now? And then

BRIAN AKERS:

they say, Well, how much you think you save? Then they say something like $50 a month. And you're like, that's it. Oh, and then I'm

Alex Monk:

like, why don't we try this? And then, if it hurts, too bad. Yeah.

BRIAN AKERS:

Do you ever do the topic of, I don't want to take food off your table. We're going to save what you can. We're going to save through work. We're going to maximize your matches. Take the free money. We're going to try to do. Roth IRAs, we'll save everywhere we can. And we got to save as much as you can. Yeah.

Alex Monk:

And I usually try to figure out, like, people walk in and if I don't know all their goals yet, like, that's the main thing. Like, there's, there's usually, like, one or two things, like burning things that need to happen, and then there they kind of ease a little bit, or their stress comes down because they whatever it is, their issue is stressing them out. You know, financially,

BRIAN AKERS:

well, I had one younger couple well, they wanted permission to basically spend a lot more that they're going to work longer in life and be okay. So basically, by stretching their numbers out, they could do more. Now they want me to rubber stamp say okay. And my answer was, I can say, okay with that. If you show me where you are now and where you want to be and see if we're on online, one of the things on the reasons to implement and to start now is the fact that you want your money to work hard, for you to work harder than you are.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, I mean, it should double every 10 years. If you're

BRIAN AKERS:

that's at 7% and if you can get your 401, K, 100% allocated to the market over 30 years, you should get a double 678, years.

Alex Monk:

And so especially early, like younger people, I want them to make those investments, whether it's in their career, get get where you want to be so you can make money, or in their savings, something that's gonna compound and really start to grow, because when the numbers start to double, I mean, when you meet with people in life, you're like, Look at this.

BRIAN AKERS:

It's fun when you have great savers, but sad is when they retire, they're great savers. They don't know how to spend the time. That's the issue. So this balance of life of BS, permission to spend but also permission to let it grow some, please. And so trying to get

Alex Monk:

it both to work this conversation, I've had conversations where I just dare people to spend like, go crazy.

BRIAN AKERS:

I one of my one of my widowed lady clients. I said, we'll go car shopping. We'll go with you, because you need a car. And she found a car. Her next door neighbor passed away, and she bought another used car from them, and it's fine. It's her lifestyle. The hard part is, when you save so much money, you let it keep growing, you create other issues, taxation issues, inheritance issues, all that other stuff. We're not really having a balanced life now. This show today is about bringing your plan to life. So what happens is this, a lot of people will think about things now, they won't go hire a financial planner until they have money. And then we say, Well, how'd you get the money without having a financial planner? And sometimes that's just because they save at work. And a lot of times they won't have anything in the bank because they didn't save at work. They wouldn't save anywhere. And so this whole. Learning how to pay yourself first, how to provide for your future self, is a key to why to plan. And today's show is, now that you did some planning, you must implement. You've got to make the needed changes that are in, that are put down on that form. Like, let's get to work on these things so that things can

Alex Monk:

be better. And the toughest thing is, once you know, like, and I tell people this, I'm not gonna judge you for what you did before we met, but I will judge you after, because now you know, like we went through your questions, you know the answers. So now the follow through is on you, not on me, like I'll do all the plan and all that work, but the life part is your life.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, we're gonna try to build a plan for you. The plans have your name on it. It's not gonna have our name on it. Well, we might disclose your form, but generally, the plan is about you or in your life, and the dist and the reason we plan, bring it to life and then implement, and then review constantly. So like some people say, Oh, I have a financial advisor. I haven't met with them in five years. That's not a financial advisor. That means they sold you something.

Alex Monk:

That means you're paying somebody a lot of money to

BRIAN AKERS:

do nothing. Yeah, make them earn their keep, right? So this cop, this first topic, is this, we want to bring your plan to life. Well, that might mean reallocating your portfolio. Might mean updating your beneficiaries. It might be actually knowing who the beneficiaries are on the things you have. It might mean open up the statements that you got

Alex Monk:

in the mail. I added a beneficiary

BRIAN AKERS:

yesterday. That's nice. Yeah for

Alex Monk:

yourself, no for a client first meeting,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah, yeah. Especially on a 401, K and there's no beneficiary at all. And then the wife like, what's going on there?

Alex Monk:

There's a young just starting out, clients niece, yeah, luckily, I knew her dad's info.

BRIAN AKERS:

So, no, it's a shame when you log in for them and they never really realized that they're their mom's still on there, and they're like, 40 years home, that kind of thing. All right, so this quarter has been flying by now at 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 do have offices in Forest Hill and Lutherville. We have clients all around the mid Atlantic region, clients around the country and even a few around the world. It's so easy to begin winning in retirement, all you got to do is just give us a call and schedule your free meeting with one of our team of advisors. You call 833 win retire as 830, 3w, I N, R e, t i R, E, and we'll give you a call on Monday to schedule that free meeting with one of our team of advisors. So go to AKERS financial group.com Call us at 833-946-7384, to start planning for your retirement. Now, when should you apply your brakes? We will explain when we return 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:

indeed, welcome back to winning in retirement. I am Brian AKERS. Here with me today is Alex monk. We are both certified financial planner practitioners from AKERS Financial Group. Our show we put together is about education and planning, and this education and planning, we really believe that as you're listening to these shows, you're going to gather information that can apply to you. And what we want you to do is think about having an advisor to hire an advisor that will then guide you on how to implement these ideas in your life. And that's exactly what the show is about. This show this week is called Bring your plan to life. You're starting to do financial planning. You get information. You gather information about yourself. You start to organize it. You hire us as financial advisor. We sit through the first meeting, get to know you. A second meeting, gather all the information. We write it all out. Second, third, fourth meeting, we're going through what you've told us. And then ultimately we say, this is what we need to do. And then how do clients respond to that?

Alex Monk:

Alex, oh man, it's different every time. Sometimes they don't love the answer. They don't

BRIAN AKERS:

love the answer you give them, yeah, which, look, give me an example. So, like,

Alex Monk:

let's say can't stand the job. Yeah, they went out. They want to borrow. Like, the job is horrible. I want out. I want I'm done. You know? It is what it is. The stress is too much. But then we retire, you know? Okay, well, here's the numbers. If we do that, are you okay with that? Like, this is your life, not mine. You got to make that decision,

BRIAN AKERS:

so And the answer is, then the answer is no, and then go, Oh, I'll get two part time jobs. And then we come back with the answer of the best paying job is the one you have, right?

Alex Monk:

Or the scenario where we're three years after that job, and it's, well, I wish I would have or just stayed and that because, you know, sometimes it's not that bad,

BRIAN AKERS:

all right, so for this quarter, I have a question for you, and that's, when should you apply your brakes? And I know your driving skills. So I really thought this applied to Alex monk in many ways. Yes. Well, according

Alex Monk:

to my new truck, it's before you touch anything that looks like brush or sticks, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

Does your truck turn on brakes? Oh, yeah. And it's terrifying, yeah? Big lights, alarms, yeah. I mean,

Alex Monk:

I was trying to dump some sticks in the backyard, and it wouldn't let me get like, I don't want to carry them. I want to just dump them.

BRIAN AKERS:

Come on. Now. You can't stop you backing up or something.

Alex Monk:

Yes, it was a mess. But

BRIAN AKERS:

I do have a pickup, and says one of the things is that when the car pulls off to the right with a blinker and everything, I let go the gas, but the car Warning, warning, warning, because I didn't touch my brake. So the idea of applying the brakes. So imagine in retirement, when do you apply the brakes? And that concept of applying brakes is, when do you slow down, when you take caution, when you take less risk, when do you do it? Now, just like driving, you need to do it before something goes wrong, right?

Alex Monk:

And it's weird, because driving and investing are a little different,

BRIAN AKERS:

a little different, but like I had, I had an RV, a huge RV, 20,000 pounds, and I knew I had to break a lot more off early. I had to get my Jake break going at a gear down a little bit and that to slow that thing down. I remember watching you drive

Alex Monk:

that thing, and I was terrified, but you did great. I love driving it.

BRIAN AKERS:

For my five years I was allowed to have it, and then I no longer have that but, but the idea is this, imagine retirement where we say, hey, let's put all in stocks. Let's go. And you're heavy in stocks. Been incredible 10 years of market, and you just don't want to stop, and you're at full tilt, 100 miles an hour to retirement, and you've hit your number, but you just want to keep going and going and going. When do you apply to brakes? And you've

Alex Monk:

never been down this road, right like this is, people don't retire multiple times, so you don't, yeah,

BRIAN AKERS:

but when my 401, K goes from 1.5 to 2.5 to three, and also, and I got more money I ever dreamed of, it always keep going up. Alex, so

Alex Monk:

that'd be that's just like being on Virginia road going downhill, hitting 100 not knowing it, and there being a cop right there, and you're getting slapped with a giant fee like that, could be the market correcting 30% right? If you're not good with that, then your allocation is wrong.

BRIAN AKERS:

We had a client like that back in was it Oh 909? They basically met him right after oh nine, probably early in 10, and they had retired to 3 million. They had a 10% withdrawal rate, which is with way beyond what we'd recommend. But they were 100% market, or the market will make 10, I'll pull out 10. I'd be fine. And the 3 million dropped to 2 million. They kept pulling out the 300,000 a year, and you could just see the money be gone in a couple more years. I mean, because they're spending nothing changed. I like a good

Alex Monk:

risk reward proposition, right? Yeah, a 10% mandated return burden sounds terrible, like setting yourself up to

BRIAN AKERS:

fail, but you have to have your portfolio going at 100 miles an hour, right? So when do you apply to break? So in that case, what we did is you got to apply the brakes to your spending, apply the brakes to the taxation on your spending, apply the brakes to all the things they were choosing, and then also take less risk than the mark in the market, because the downturn that they absorbed was too much, and so they had to start eating principle in those down years. And so our planning style will basically apply the brakes, get some cash over to decide to fund the next two years. So no matter what the market does, you know where the checks are coming from.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, see, I mean, that's just that makes so much sense in my brain. I hate it seems

BRIAN AKERS:

reasonable, but why isn't that done these computerized trading programs? What happens is it will send you a check every month. We'll sell stocks every month. We'll send you your 5000 a month off of the stock portfolio, and that means markets up, markets down,

Alex Monk:

they're selling, yeah, but the internet, Brian, the statistics say that if you do that, you know more times than often, you'll be up like I hear that so often, then I tell people, yeah, but are you willing to take that bet that it's your life?

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, you it's your one retirement and the and then the probability of the money not lasting is because you took too much risk. And it comes down to this, what level of risk do you need now? Do you need to be 100% the market from now to fit your retirement goal? Why not take the slower road, the easier road? Protect your money, never to have to worry about it. That does not mean all of your money. We need some of it protected. We need some of it to have a real rate of return, after inflation, after tax. You need to be in the market. Some people do the counter, they ply the brakes all the way, and then they never hit the gas pedal again, and then they're stuck at the light

Alex Monk:

and they never leave well, and that's one of the hardest things to do, right? Like, once you make a call to get out of the market, it's like learning how to drive a stick shift when you're a kid and you're on a hill and you got to go, how do you get back in? I had a

BRIAN AKERS:

situation when my clutch went out, so that's even worse, but I get the idea of it. The hardest part, I believe, is this success in market doesn't mean more success. We're trying to achieve goals by having our money work for us when we hit our goals, because that's part of the plan. We do need. Need to take some winnings off the table. We do need to lower our risk. We don't need to do the opposite, where, when the market's way up, we get people that say, oh, I want to put more in the market, which is emotionally buying when they're getting greedy, and then, instead of selling at the high, they're buying at the high. And when there is a downturn, all sudden, they're selling because they're scared and fearful, so fear, hope and greed, of emotional investing is a driver that we got to take out of retirees. And so when do you apply to breaks for retirement a five to seven years before you retire, depending on your risk tolerance level and how much you fully funded your retirement, and part of that's

Alex Monk:

really knowing, like you said, where your checks are coming from. So if you're never in a forced sell situation, meaning you don't have to sell something. Yeah, you're good take risk, because that makes you a longer term investor.

BRIAN AKERS:

I mean, should I take questions? Why?

Alex Monk:

Like, if you don't need it, what's the upside down sides worse? Yeah, like

BRIAN AKERS:

Roy Rogers in the 30s, after the Great Depression started after the big crash of 29 I think one of the quotes he had was its return, return of his money is worried about, instead of return on his money in retirement. So that was just a basic principle belief in a terrible downturn, long term downturn market. The idea here is this, when should you apply your breaks in your portfolio? What we got to tell you is, when you're thinking about it, you need to analyze to see what risk you're taking are. Is that appropriate risk? Is that the risk that fits the goals and where

Alex Monk:

you're headed? Are things good? Is the question I like to ask when I look at a portfolio right like, how are things should we make changes and while things are good, or should we wait till things are horrible and make an emotional decision? Right? I would rather say, hey, things are fantastic. Let's make sure we're good regardless. Yeah, and then we can take the risk.

BRIAN AKERS:

It's actually well, and it's well, there are some people that we have say we need to take the risk because they they have a pension or social security that we don't think is going to keep up with inflation, because the way they're designed now, with simple interest and basically no increase in social security to the future, once they take the cost of living minus Medicare costs, I doubt that's going to keep up with inflation. So you need other buckets of money to beat inflation, right?

Alex Monk:

And you have to have both. You got to have the goals too, right? Like, if you're trying to pass this money to your kids, like, Well, why wouldn't you invest based on their lifestyle or their lifetime horizon? Yeah, or

BRIAN AKERS:

to the Roth, Roth, or whatever vehicle you want to use it. You might be more aggressive for that money, but not all the money, correct?

Alex Monk:

And then knowing how it fits to your taxes. Like, I've seen people with just a jacked up tax plan based on how their advisors investing their money, like the word

BRIAN AKERS:

jacked up. Can you define jacked up?

Alex Monk:

I mean, like, is that the name of the advisor Jack? No, you got me off off guard there, but meaning just the structures wrong, like taking short term capital gains or having the wrong fund structure and taxable accounts and not the right fund structure. And, you know, just not knowing or caring right?

BRIAN AKERS:

So the broker that they currently have are trading in a way that they do not have any tax considerations, and then within the year, you're just throwing this information all sudden, you owe a big chunk of money because they trade it, or you own a mutual fund that triggered out a dividend or a 19% capital gain on December 29 and you're like, hey, thank you very much. And so you got to have more tax efficient investing. And overall, financial planning is design a plan and say, Hey, we need more tax efficiency. We need to stop paying tax on money we're not using. What can we do better? And then the plan to implement it, to bring that plan to life, is where you got to make some changes. Sometimes you got to take a gain on one fund so that you won't have gains forever that will keep more

Alex Monk:

uncontrollable gains Right. Like, that's the thing. It's like

BRIAN AKERS:

uncontrollable kicks in the Irma kicks in the higher tax brackets, and you didn't want that

Alex Monk:

to happen. And they do it at the end of the year, so you can't even adjust your Roth convert in

BRIAN AKERS:

November because your numbers fit. And all sudden, they jump $25,000 of dividend on the last day.

Alex Monk:

And oh, right. And then if you jump brackets, you might have to pay capital gains, dividend tax, et cetera, depending on where you're at. So not

BRIAN AKERS:

fun, yeah. So what we've been talking about is a retirement and planning, and we want this show to be about bringing your plan to life. This is what we do for a living. So you don't have to figure all this out. We help you. We love doing this, right?

Alex Monk:

Alex, I mean, you love it.

BRIAN AKERS:

Do you think I love it or do I like it a little? Yeah, you love it. Yeah. Planning for the unexpected, for all the worst case scenarios, is one of the things that we'd like to plan for. It's not the fun to live through, but it's good to have. And we know that things are tough and you got to plan for all these things. We want to make this as easy and as comfortable for you as possible, so that as we meet with you and put a plan together, it includes that things are taken care of, it's planned for. And then when it happens, you're like, Oh, we planned for this. We're okay. Perhaps you've been sold some. Thing, regardless of whether or not you needed it, not at AKERS, Financial Group with us, your retirement plan follows your financial fingerprint. It's a financial fingerprint based on your unique fingerprint that determines where your money goes. It's not about us, it's about about you. So give us a call at 833, when retire, and schedule in person, meeting with one of our team of advisors. That's a three, 3w, I n, r, e, t, I R, E, 833-946-7384, or go to our website at a k, e, r, s, Financial Group, com. When did you do your school projects? Last minute, we'll explain why this is so important. When we get 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, welcome back to

BRIAN AKERS:

winning in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS from AKERS Financial Group, and here with me is Alex monk. We've been doing our show. This is second half of the show, bring your plan to life. And the show is called, bring your plan to life. So no one likes to do planning, but we love planning. And then when we do a plan, or if anybody does a plan, we don't mind reading someone else's plan and fixing it. But the thing that we found is you have good intentions, and then you don't follow through. And so we want you to think about, have you brought your plan to life? You've thought about it. What have you done about it? And so this quarter, we're going to talk about Alex and his school. Oh gosh, Alex, when you were in school, did you do your project soon as it was assigned, or at the last minute. What kind of student were you?

Alex Monk:

I have? My brain works differently. So yeah, I never had to study you didn't have to study a

BRIAN AKERS:

project, project where you did type something or get it together. Was that a midnight or 4am or

Alex Monk:

it's, yeah, the week before

BRIAN AKERS:

depends. So you weren't totally

Alex Monk:

last minute. Not totally. Now, my wife, on the other hand, yeah, she uses that as rocket fuel. The rocket

BRIAN AKERS:

fuel to wait to the last minute, yeah.

Alex Monk:

So she got her doctor

BRIAN AKERS:

by when she went, when she did it. She did it. Yeah, okay. I remember trying to do that at Virginia Tech my my first year there, and I had to drive home after staying all night, finishing the last minute and stopping the car, sleeping and trying to get home. Then I decided maybe I should do it differently. And so I went to this thing called a library. It's this magical building, and they had these desks where you could study ahead of time. And I found I would study ahead of time, get my mind prepared and write notes, and then, like your wife, when you're ready, you just sat down and did it. I just felt very prepared for that. So I like that.

Alex Monk:

So there was this one class in college, right? It was a writing class that I had to take. There was, like an initial project that was just a speech, and whoever won the speech automatically got an A in the class. So I won, obviously,

BRIAN AKERS:

obviously, obviously,

Alex Monk:

but then the teacher made me go to the grammar lab because my grammar was terrible, yeah, so I got the grammar out of it, but also the grade, so just different, yeah.

BRIAN AKERS:

So the question was, when do you do your school project? Last minute. So imagine doing retirement planning last minute. So what happens is, they're 6065 years old. You come to a financial planner and you say, Hey, can I retire? And then we look at and go, Oh, have you ever had something like that? They pull in, let's say, let's give them an age at 65 and they want to

Alex Monk:

retire next week. Oh, yeah. Well, they're ready because they're Medicare eligible, and they're,

BRIAN AKERS:

well, they're basically or 62 happens a lot, hey, I'm 62 don't doesn't everybody retire? Have they started Social Security yet? Right? And it's like, they feel like I'm old enough.

Alex Monk:

It's like an age passage, right? Like, Well, hey, I'm blank. Now, sometimes I don't want to generalize, but I see that with people that have pensions are like, Well, I'm 62 I'm ready. Yeah.

BRIAN AKERS:

And if they put in the years the time, and they know that's the right amount of money and done that minimal amount of work, I'm okay with it. In financial planning, the problem is they never met with the planner ever. So they don't know that they have enough money. They don't know they're okay. They think it might work out there, they figured they'll adjust their things down if they if they don't work out they actually work less or not, get another part time job, you know, fill in the gap, or there'll be some answer that the magic would occur. The problem I have is people that would have a pension and Social Security but don't have any savings on the side to help it down the road, when things cost more, what are they going to do? And a lot of times in planning, they've never done the fundamentals of planning, getting everything in line. And I know it

Alex Monk:

sounds horrible, like, Oh, that. People are like, I don't want to do this is terrible, but this is what we like. I love. This is like, I get fascinated putting these puzzles together for people. Like, it's not overwhelming once you start, like, in. You understand that the results will happen if you do just the little basic stuff, right? And it's just, I mean, I absolutely love seeing it in action.

BRIAN AKERS:

So some of the weird things is that we become broker of record of people's current holdings, and we take what they currently hold, explain what they own, because a lot of people don't know what they bought from some person. And then we try to teach them how they can use it in the future. And then ultimately, if it doesn't fit what they want the future to be, then we'll make changes. But sometimes we hold things and keep it because they paid a lot of money to buy it, and we it has some features that can work within an overall plan, but we try to make sure we understand everything and how it all ties together, which is very, very important, yeah?

Alex Monk:

And that's extremely different than any place. Like most places I've seen elsewhere are scorched

BRIAN AKERS:

earth, meaning, yeah, they sell everything, and it all gets into one of their three models, right? And when we get clients from there, they'll have their kids, college fund, the Roth, the IRA, the joint, all in the same portfolio,

Alex Monk:

and they say, Wow, that's just so nice. Everything's so streamlined. And I'm like, well, actually, you're paying twice as much as in fees, right? Taking way too much risk, and your safe return proposition is terrible, meaning you have bond funds in there, you're paying 1% Yep, earning three with risk terrible.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. So, um, yeah, that's definitely one of those decision points when you bring your plan to life, is, what do you do with what you've already bought? And if that collection of investments is really what you need to hit your next goal. Because when you think about planning as an overall view of where you are, and then say, What do you want? And then say, This is what each of them do, and we can turn them on at different times, and this is what it'll give you. But this would be better, and we try to find a better way, if there is such a thing. This happens in a lot of different areas of planning. One of them is updating your estate plan. Most people come in from wherever their money is invested, don't have an updated estate plan. It's rare to find, no matter how sophisticated that person is, that they've done their wills and estate plan, yeah, it's

Alex Monk:

either that or they come in with this binder that cost $10,000 that is an estate plan done but not implemented,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah, that they didn't retitle anything to the trust was created.

Alex Monk:

So it's like, how did you even get this binder? I mean, how'd you get it? Yeah, did they tell you how it works? Can we put it to work?

BRIAN AKERS:

Usually there's a, there's a list there what they need to do, but the client just never does. What does? What's supposed to happen. It's, it's like an idea of a plan. It's not implemented. So that AKERS estate planning, we found a lot of people don't even get an estate plan. Usually, their kids are out of college before they even consider in a guardianship for the kid when they was getting little the power of attorney. Usually, if someone's really sick, oh, I need to get power of attorney.

Alex Monk:

It's like, at least it's all late. Like, how many times have you had that call, like, I need the power of attorney, they're not conscious, and you're like, well, that's why we told you to get it five years ago, when they were healthy.

BRIAN AKERS:

Now the call I got a few years ago, which not a call I want, but my client had a brain enters aneurysm. Three kids flew in quickly, and by Sunday afternoon, they reached out to me about, does he have power of attorney? Does he have these things? We have a website, that website we I had it already uploaded in the website for them to be able to see through the mom's login, and they could see the power of attorney and the healthcare power of attorney, what his wishes were, all right there. And they were, they were amazed that we actually did all the planning for the worst case scenario, which is sudden death, sudden disability, sudden event that changed life, and that the planning was prepared for, that we believe in preparing for the worst case scenario that it might occur and then investing like you're gonna live forever. Let's get done the hard work. Let's get that finished. Implement it. Get it in the right spots, the right titling, right beneficiary, every every J dotted, everything done.

Alex Monk:

And I can't stress the value of of that, because when you're in that scenario, that high stress, high emotion scenario, that is just a hue, you would pay any amount of money at that time, right? Like the money just loses

BRIAN AKERS:

all value, and then they end up paying any amount of money. It's a shame. But the kids were very impressed by the fact it was done and planning. And they they liked the idea that the plan was implemented. We brought the plan to life, and it guided that family through the one of the worst times as the father passed away. Now the things that we also want you to think about is this, life insurance, group benefits. What are you doing? Did you sign up? Or are you meaning to sign up? Now, when you change jobs, do you know when you apply online, you apply for your job. You get the job the group benefits. You're insurable. You get coverage if you work there, and then you say, oh, I need it now. Then all sudden, you have to be underwritten to see if they could cover you, and you might be denied. Yeah. And so if you have any sickness or illness with a group. Benefit. When you switch companies, you need to take, take the benefits. You need to not put that off. They send you a package. You need to read it. If you have a financial advisor, you send it to them, and they say, hey, check these three boxes by long term disability, short term disability, get a little bit of life insurance. You have enough life insurance overall. We know that as a planning you have a free, free lawyer benefit. Let's take that so we get the will. And this is

Alex Monk:

basics, yeah, and it's like, when I see that 25 page document, I can read it in six minutes. It's not over.

BRIAN AKERS:

I can read in five minutes and 55 seconds. Okay, name that name that plan. I'm sorry, all right, auto and homeowners insurance, who wants to bother with that, right? But many people who are wealthy and sophisticated and done well haven't reviewed their coverage limits. They don't know that they have an umbrella. They don't lot of people don't have that, even though they have millions of dollars saved. We need to have some protections, some basic protections, and it's okay to have insurance, but not to have too

Alex Monk:

much, right? And for the benefit that you're going to get for like, an extra 500 bucks if you're getting a nasty car accident, and you don't have to worry, like,

BRIAN AKERS:

very big deal, big deal. Do the fundamentals that truly bring your plan to life? Fundamentals of financial planning is having your insurance the right amount for the right reason, emergency funds and cash available, liquid money available to cover when things go wrong and no personal debt. That's not best, but backed by an asset. And that's the core beginning from fundamentals that we guide people through and

Alex Monk:

expect for things to go wrong. Like, don't, like, plan for things to go bad because they have

BRIAN AKERS:

money, and have money for it, right? You just have to have the answer. So, like, oh, this broke. Okay, I got that's in that account. Or you call the financial advisor, hey, I need a new roof, and we send the money because we had the money there ready to go.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, I don't want the stock market to ruin anyone's financial future if you've put in the work. Like, that's just ridiculous. You shouldn't take that amount of risk.

BRIAN AKERS:

If you have 100% in stocks, and you need a new roof, and you need it tomorrow. You got to sell the stock market wherever it's at. And by planning ahead, you'd have some cash, Project money. You'd have your buckets filled up in the short and medium term, and then you're ready. Yes, it's conservative financial planning. It works, and it works to help you build a plan that's going to work for your life. So bring your plan to life so you can live the life that you want to lead. This is all about retirement planning. That's exactly what we're trying to talk about here, because we all know that the best part of retirement is when you get your 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 meetings section and let us know you'd like to schedule your free consultation with one of our team of advisors. That's a k, e r, s, financial group.com or you can call us at 833, win retire as 833, W, 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, when building a house, do you only hire an art architect? That's so funny. We will explain. We'll explain, and I'll try to learn how to say the word. When we get 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

BRIAN AKERS:

AKERS, welcome to the fourth quarter of winning in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS, president and founder of AKERS Financial Group, and we welcome Alex monk to the fourth quarter. Alex monk, Certified Financial Planner, practitioner, financial advisor through AKERS Financial Group and all around, decent guy. I'm sorry. Yes, we joke a little bit. Alex has been working together with me at least 14 plus years, so we look forward to shows together, and sometimes I get a little little crazy. Hopefully you enjoy our talks. What we want you to understand is that we love what we do, and we want to help you. We have lots of advisors at AKERS Financial Group to bring a mindset of planning. And what we found in planning is a lot of people think about it, but do they actually do it? Do they actually follow through? We want to provide a company, an independent financial services company, that's going to be there for you to help you make decisions now and for your future, and then guide you through each and every decision to the future. Now we don't have to make every decision for you, but we like to sort of walk you through, make sure we're planning ahead, make sure your money is not riskier than it needs to be. And we've talked about a lot of things today, especially about how to build your portfolios, how to make sure you have all your benefits, how to apply breaks, which was a good thing to do. We also talked, talked last quarter about. When do you do your school projects? And so the idea is, I'm in planning. What you got to do is truly plan ahead. Do it now, since you're ready, ready later when it

Alex Monk:

gets easier to like, the sooner you start, the

BRIAN AKERS:

easier it is. Absolutely, it's less

Alex Monk:

money too well. I mean, the less money that you

BRIAN AKERS:

have to save in financial planning, the compounding inflate of investments. If you start with a little bit of money, you can have a whole lot of money later by just the fact of letting your money work for you instead of you working

Alex Monk:

for the money. Yeah, and then you get a good like, for me, it's having the right relationship with the money too, because it only brings you so many things, right? And you have to decide what that means for your life, right? Like, what does that mean? Like, I can't tell you what you're going to do in your retirement, I can tell you you're going to have enough money if we do these things right.

BRIAN AKERS:

What you do with it's up to you. All right, so the fourth quarter, the question I asked on the way in which I fumbled a little bit. It was funny, when building a house go slowly this time, do you only hire an architect? They say it right that time? Yes, I didn't stutter. I know.

Alex Monk:

I'm not gonna say the word Yeah, but

BRIAN AKERS:

architect was an architect, though,

Alex Monk:

I think I don't know. Ask George Costanza from Seinfeld,

BRIAN AKERS:

they build buildings, they build they don't build buildings. They just draw. They just draw. They put the plan together. Yeah, they put the plan together. And then if you only hire that, does a house get built,

Alex Monk:

no, but you got nice pictures, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

You put on the wall, very nice. But you have to hire the general contractor, the builder that you have to hire the subcontractors to do the work. There's a lot of implementing, implementing the plan to make it actually be something you can move into, right, right? Like a

Alex Monk:

lot of different pieces and a lot of different tools and a lot of different steps, all those things combined, right? And you want to get the best foundation right. Your architect probably doesn't pour concrete on the weekends, at least. I hope he doesn't,

BRIAN AKERS:

unless he does it, hopefully he knows a little bit about it, right? Yeah, but

Alex Monk:

he should be like, these guys are really good.

BRIAN AKERS:

But the idea with me is that you're not going to hire the general contractor and start building and then get don't worry about an architect or have a plan or a design. What are you gonna do about the most, the most incredible thing of your retirement plan? Are you going to have someone help to design and help you implement it? A team of people. That's what AKERS Financial Group is set up to do, is to bring your plan to life. So the plan is developed with us and you together, and then we act on it and build on it and apply the best, best things to each and every area of your plan, and

Alex Monk:

showing you what that means. Like, that's my favorite thing, is meeting those first couple of times and figuring out, like, what do you think? And then what's reality and what, what do we need to do to get you there?

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, so you do planning with your house projects, right? I try to now what, what's involved in your plan? Do you write it out, draw it out.

Alex Monk:

I've learned the hard way that I need to know what the end project is going to look like, right? Because you got to make the cuts, you got to buy the wood. And I can't tell you how many times I've done things out of order, and it's like, oh, well, gotta go get another piece of wood, but you're

BRIAN AKERS:

doing it yourself. Takes time, and it costs you more money, because you might have to cut or recut something or go buy more wood. And the second time you buy the wood, it doesn't match the first set of wood, or

Alex Monk:

you forget what you're doing, and you already cut the wood. And then you come back three weeks later, and

BRIAN AKERS:

you're like, What the heck? And that's the hard part about doing things yourself, because you're at your own pace. So imagine investing yourself. You had time one day to trade, you bought things, and then you went away for a few weeks, and you retired and relaxing, and also you realize, oh, yeah, I bought that stock that just wasn't on the news, that dropped 40% and I meant to sell that after I bought it for a day. You know, day trading and retirement years is hard, doing your own trading, trying to build your portfolio, or taking risk, or you just got to watch what you're doing to

Alex Monk:

make sure you do okay. And for me, like, the biggest thing when I'm doing house projects is I need to know when I'm out of my water, out of your water. What do you mean by that? Like, I need to know when I'm getting into something that I can't handle, like, I need, like, rough water, well, like, for example, an engineer. When we took out a couple walls, yeah, I had different people tell me this, they'll tell me that. And I'm like, You know what? This is crazy. I need an engineer before I wreck my entire house, right? Because I wanted to do one thing.

BRIAN AKERS:

Thankfully, you got the engineer. I did, yeah, and the house didn't, like, come falling down or nothing. So good, you know.

Alex Monk:

But I I knew that. I didn't know, yeah, because I asked people who knew more than me, like, that's what I was trying to figure out. And like, that's the thing with retirement that we get to do. And the way that you've set up this, this company, is we all get to win together like it's a fantastic thing.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, we love enjoy that, especially now I did. I did some planning for you recently. You have a three year old son and your wife. We what? I took you to your first experience as a family, to Disney World. It was amazing.

Alex Monk:

And why was that? Because you knew how to do everything. I. And I didn't have to think. I just knew that my family,

BRIAN AKERS:

my family might have been to Disney a lot, and we know the ins and outs and what line to get in when, and just a little bit how to organize your day so you get the most efficient

Alex Monk:

day I can place any trade, like amounts of money don't make me nervous. Going to Disney terrifies me. Yes, I will follow you there any day.

BRIAN AKERS:

That's that's a hobby, organizing and and I'm playing. I like planning. I plan everything. I enjoy it. It's fun, though, to build, build plans, and also the it's fun for us to help your family. Had a fun time there, but the concept there was, you trusted someone else to plan that day, and then we spent the day together, doing it and having a lot of fun. And you didn't worry about what was next or what's coming. You didn't worry about, oh, that ride might shut down, or you just went about your day because it was taken care of, right? And the concept of AKERS, Financial Group, we want it taken care of, taken care of, means this that planning is the beginning of it. Plan. Bringing the plan to life is what matters, and this will actually lead to your true financial independence, and that's where you choose to work or choose not to work. You are the person that makes the decisions, because you've done the work and have a team of advisors to help you. These choices are all triggered based on what you decided. At some point in time when you made a big decision to hire

Alex Monk:

someone to help you, yeah? I mean, and for me, like this example is so perfect, right? I decided to trust you because I've seen what your experience, etc. And my biggest decision that day was, Do I go to the breakfast or the lunch buffet? Yeah, which side? And I did both.

BRIAN AKERS:

So it was great, but that's because we timed it where you got a little bit of both. Because we came in, like 1020 you get a little bit of both there at the Winnie the Pooh

Alex Monk:

Crystal Palace, but knowing that all the all the things that are stressful, like the heavy lifting, is already done, then you get to enjoy, like, the things that you can't put $1 figure on. And that's that my favorite thing

BRIAN AKERS:

to share with people. And the way we apply that to financial planning is we want your money to work for you. We don't just buy things and invest. Just invest to invest. We want to invest with purpose, with your purpose, your goals in mind. Knowing why we do this will give you the patience to keep with it when things don't go your way. And that's all part of the plan. You have a diversified plan, and that is something's not doing well. Other pieces will be that's a big deal. When, if you put all your eggs in one basket, or if you put all in the SMP that has 40% in like seven stocks, they've done wonderfully well. But what's next? Will it pull back? Will that be the year you retire? A sudden, it drops 30 40% and you're trying to figure out how to retire

Alex Monk:

on that, if your financial plan or your investment strategy involves what you heard at the party this week, or what your neighbor or the guy at work told you, and you got trouble like you might do okay, especially now, where you basically could have bought anything and be up. Yeah, I'm sorry.

BRIAN AKERS:

I was at my I had a party at my house, and people came and they gave me financial advice. And after listening to it for a while, I just, I just said, You know what I do for a living, right? Yeah, I've been reading. So, yeah, I know what you've been reading, but that doesn't apply to you at all. Why are you trying to do that? It was, it was funny, because it's like, if you want to listen, I want to help, but if you don't want to listen, that's okay. That's your decision.

Alex Monk:

And I'm always like, I want to learn as much as I can. Like, I love finding new things about this industry, space, everything, etc. But if you're telling me something new, like, I'm a little worried about what

BRIAN AKERS:

I know. Oh, like, brand new. Like, like, I heard this on the radio, or heard us on the internet and I want to buy it's I get 10% guaranteed. I'd rather do that than buy a CD. I said, Well, you don't like risk. You understand that if you if it pays more than a CD rate every time a rates higher or trouble or triple, you're probably adding risk. And you got to understand what risk is. Risk is the loss of your money, it disappearing. Do you want that? And then that person said no, and I didn't know what that. Didn't know everything. And the idea is in planning is starting with the plan. Where's your money at? Let's do your financial fingerprint, write out the information. Second is follow through on that. Now this is no matter what the wealth number is like. I had one, one lady, her husband passed away. They've done tremendously well, and they're with one of the top advisors in Maryland. And the problem was they never did a plan. The money was invested for, who knows the purposes? I couldn't figure it out. It's just sort of invested 20 years ago and left alone like in 98 people bought a lot of Latin America funds. They still had that.

Alex Monk:

They had a lot of Calvert

BRIAN AKERS:

equity, yeah, different ones like that. So the idea here is this, your plan has to be up to date. Has to be your plan implemented based on your goals, objectives, cash flow needs, and with looking at taxes and state planning, everything put in mind. That's a plan,

Alex Monk:

and when you bring it to life, you got to keep

BRIAN AKERS:

it alive. You. And keeping it alive is a constant review. That means the ability to see where things are, and also the ability to meet with your advisor, 1234, times a year, depending on what's going on, there's a lot, lot of more, lot more meetings the years you're before retirement, and right after then, we sort of get into a little bit of a groove after that. Yep, that's pretty nice. Thank you very much for a good show. Alex, I appreciate it always fun. Brian, yeah, today we showed we showed we covered. Bring your plan to life. We do look forward to meeting with you. We want you to win in your retirement by taking advantage of this opportunity to begin planning 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 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 with one of our team of advisors. Start planning for your retirement now. Just go to that website and or give us a call 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 kiddios 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.