A Plan Makes The Complex Simple

Brian Akers and Paul Franco discuss simplifying complex financial issues through comprehensive planning. They emphasize the importance of understanding clients' financial goals and situations to provide tailored advice. Key points include the overwhelming nature of financial management, the necessity of tax and estate planning, and the benefits of having a financial plan. They highlight the importance of beneficiary updates and proper estate documentation. The show aims to educate listeners on making informed financial decisions and the value of professional financial guidance in achieving retirement goals.

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Unknown: 0:00

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, good morning and

BRIAN AKERS: 0:16

welcome to winning in retirement. I'm your host, Brian AKERS from AKERS Financial Group. I'm a certified financial planner, president and founder of AKERS Financial Group. Here with me today is financial advisor. Jay Paul Franco, Joseph Paul Franco, Paul Franco, good morning, Brian. I'll go to Paul today. You can call me whatever you want.

Paul Franco: 0:35

Jay Paul. JP, but I

BRIAN AKERS: 0:36

do go by Paul, yeah, and the clients call you financial advisor, which is fun. That's right on the radio show. It's co host. So we've got a lot, lot of things, and we call you lot of nice things. That's right, we try to All right? So Paul and I've been working on a show. So we started out with some ideas of how to talk about all these complex issues out there that people face, and how we help them make it simple. And so through the process of planning for a show, we came up with the name of the show, a plan makes the complex simple. Many times in life, you might be overwhelmed with your finances, you might be confused on what's going on. You might have been sold something that you don't understand. You might just not sure what to do. And that's the role of a financial planner is to make the complex simple. So today's show, we're going to talk about these issues, these situations where there's a moment of time where it's like you get almost frozen in your moment of thinking, that's right. Have you experienced this with clients? Paul, Oh, absolutely.

Paul Franco: 1:35

It's a, it's almost a very it's a, it's a very hard thing to process. For some people, how important it is to get your finances in order, and it's it's critical, but so that, because of that, the like weight of that, it can be overwhelming. For a lot of people, I found

BRIAN AKERS: 1:53

it better on the finances in order. If they want them in order and they're willing to do the work, you just can't come to us and say, Hey, fix everything I got going on. Yeah, it's very hard, very hard to do that. So like, those that might be overwhelmed could be from too much success. You know, it's like raining dollars in your life, and things are going well, but the taxes and all those things happen. And he's like, I need to do something, but I don't know what to do first. There's just so much going on. And so the great situation is we like to talk about it and then walk you through a process that helps us understand you understand your goals and purpose, all those things, and that leads to an answer. And then, I think we do a good job of making a thing sound simpler Absolutely, and help people apply it to their life so they aren't frozen with basically the decision not to do something right.

Paul Franco: 2:43

It's like we want to not over, over complicate. We want to not use overly sophisticated language to make it seem too difficult. We want to simplify it as much as we can. And one of

BRIAN AKERS: 2:55

the things that's really big is things such as, oh, it's not too late to get started. No matter what age, it's not too late to look at Ross and not too late to fix things, not too late to look at the tax law. To make your money last longer, to make your money provide what you wanted to do. Planning is truly for everyone, zero to 107 107 was my oldest client. That's why I use 107 incredible.

Paul Franco: 3:17

Yeah, it's, you know why? A big reason to why Brian, it's never too late is because the rules always change.

BRIAN AKERS: 3:23

Yeah. So once you become a client, we keep up with all that for you prior to that. So on coming through the door, there's not an age limit, right? We don't card you on the way in. We also don't card card you above when you don't even have an ID anymore. We still like we have some clients that will they'll come in, their parents will come in, their kids will come in all kinds of layered, multi generational ideas and things, but all usually it starts people are overwhelmed with something, and they have a question, and they're, what should I do? And they're almost, maybe not totally frozen with that in their life, but it's like, I'm here for this reason. So that's one of the first things I do in a meeting. Do you do that with new clients?

Paul Franco: 3:59

Yeah, it's a Hey, Paul, I've worked incredibly well for my career. I've built up a sizable sum of money. But what do we do? Right? What do I do? How do I keep this what I work so hard to build up? How do I ensure that that money is going to keep growing and it's going to last me a lifetime? How can I protect from unwanted taxes, unwanted, yeah, fees, other things that you can avoid. How can I then leave that to my family? There's, there's so many things that people come in and want to work through, and they know, so they listen, they listen to the show, they listen to us, talk about these. They know it's important. It's like, Hey, I know tax planning is important. I know estate planning is important, but where do I start? That's that's where we help. That's where we help fill that fill in that gap.

BRIAN AKERS: 4:48

Yeah, I think about people when they walk in the door and they have a reason, and that reason is sort of like one decision, but then we actually go backwards with them to figure out their. Financial fingerprint, which is a process of understanding where you are now, what you own, and then realizing what are your really, your goals now and goals in the future. And then that gives us the answer for that. You asked the question about it's hard to answer a question, in my opinion, without information and understanding the client and understanding what's going on in their life. Now, I believe we will find that our advice is counter to sales. People who have one product and it's going to squeeze it into your situation. But when clients come in that have done that, they've had people sell them things, we look at what they've been sold, look at what's going on, and we see what still fits, what is the right thing, yeah. Yeah, and

Paul Franco: 5:40

guide them. Yeah. That's the big benefit of us here at AKERS Financial Group, being independent is we're not tied to any specific company. We are independent, meaning we have to answer to one person. It's to our client, absolutely.

BRIAN AKERS: 5:53

So our role is to take the world of finance and apply it to your exact situation. So if you're feeling overwhelmed with taxes, with just normal choices of what's going on with your finances or investments. You know, like, where to put my money? Uncle Jim at Christmas was telling me one thing to buy, right, right? And should I buy that? Or should I start day trading, that kind of stuff. And then there's things like death benefit, estate planning. Some people get really overwhelmed after a family member dies, they have to settle the estate. They only know where to start. All of these are reasons to have a planner, to have a financial advisor guide you through these situations.

Paul Franco: 6:30

Yeah, I had somebody come in Brian, and they said, You know, Paul, I've, I've, I've worked an incredible career, and I've been able to save but, and I have air quotes up now, but I've air quotes, sort of winged it, and I've winged it to be somewhat successful, which is a lot of people you can almost, especially in the accumulation phase, if you know the basics of saving, and kind of an idea at least how much you need to save, you can almost sort of get there. But you know what he said when we were in that meeting? Goes, I know there's parts that I could have done a whole lot better, and I could, I absolutely agree with that. And it's I believe that any person, any individual who sets their mind to something that they want to save, they want to retire at this goal, they want to retire at this date, can absolutely do it if they have a plan. And so that's where we want to be able to help out with that. We want to help fill in. We want to help work through ultimately, what are your goals? What are the tax impacts? How much money do we have pre tax? How much do we have? Roth, how much do we have that's going to be able to take care of you for the rest of your life? That's what we do. That's what we help. That's what we help do with our clients.

BRIAN AKERS: 7:42

Yeah, I when I think about this, I think about people that are very successful because they sort of just collected and gathered. They end up coming below where they could have been exactly. And then the hardest part is adjusting their life from while they're working, very successful, very high pay, and adjust it down to what they've actually built during a lifetime. Yeah, the sooner we get the situation where we can be with them and guide them and teach them what to do. We can get them to multiply their wealth, but generally, like one old school way was take 1010, times your income, and you should at least have that much saved. There's a lot more complicated calculations nowadays, but that means if someone makes half a million a year, they need $5 million in the savings. So have a couple of millions, nice, but nowhere near what they need to sort of replace what they're doing. Absolutely. The exact math, I believe, is you take three, 4% you do a multiplication, gross it back up, depending on if you want a legacy or not. Legacy. There's a lot to it, but generally, when it comes to these complex issues of where I'm at and what can I do, and can we do better? I believe we add more and more value, the more there is to add value too. I believe there are people that live within their means, on a tight budget, and we can make it work very quickly for them by getting their cash flow right, getting them to save some money, and they balance that and all sudden they're good to retire. So almost like, if you lived off little, you can make it retirement very a lot easier than those that have made a lot

Paul Franco: 9:08

of money. Yeah, I had another case that was kind of like that, where I was able to show her, ultimately, when she retires, she's going to get a raise in retirement. Yep, she lived so much within her means where she's like, Paul, I don't know if I'm able to retire. Well, let's run the numbers. Let's calculate these, what's your what's your living expenses? How much are we having a fixed income, Social Security, pensions? And here's how much we can generate off the investments. You actually are going to get a raise of a few$1,000 a month. And she goes, Really, yeah, those are really. And then she retired six months after that. I mean, it's, it's incredible, yeah, so one of the

BRIAN AKERS: 9:44

tricks I like is a What are you bringing home now? And let's take that number and see if we can match it. And that's a good way to judge, because you don't have to do a little quick budget, but then you got to add on what else you want to do in retirement. And not everyone has that figured out, and that's okay also, but we have to have some AKERS. Should rather cover the extra, right? Yeah, sure do. All right. So we're talking about this topic is a plan makes the complex simple. So the first idea is, this is you're overwhelmed by things. Some of the things you're overwhelmed by is just getting started, getting invested, understanding that I got to do something. But where do I start? A lot of times, investing becomes the first way to start, because it seems simple that, hey, we all need to start investing. So the younger you are, you need to invest, the older we are investing. Is still a very important piece of this overwhelm is that, are you investing properly? Are you just taking what the company tells you to do, and you're taking the right the target plan only you're not really investing aggressively. We have to build it all out. What's the right answer?

Paul Franco: 10:41

Yeah. And for some people, it's protecting. It's Hey, I've invested so much, and now what do I do to protect?

BRIAN AKERS: 10:48

Yeah, so that it changes as you go from accumulation to distribution. The more income you need, the lower amount, lower amount of risk you should take. And that's what a planner adds to you. Is this advice to guide you into Hey, what should my thinking be? Now, this is my situation. It's fun for us, right? It's a lot of fun for

Paul Franco: 11:05

us, but, and that's why we want them, we want people to push that overwhelming feeling onto us, because that's what we do. That's what we do to help our clients.

BRIAN AKERS: 11:12

I believe that from beginning to about third meeting, fourth meeting, that's when they start to lean back in their chair and understand I'm at the right place. I got a right trusted advisor. We're headed in the right direction. And within that first year, they start seeing everything in the way that they should. And then as we get closer and closer retirement, they're like, Yeah, I'm ready to go. Financially, I'm ready mentally, I'm ready. And I told my work I'm gone, told my work I'm going exactly. That's very good. So as we talked through this first quarter. Our show is called a plan makes the complex simple. As you're thinking about complex things, we're going to try to cover them throughout our show today. AKERS financial. We're local, we're independent. We don't report to a big company on Wall Street. We report to you. We have offices in Lutherville and far still, clients all around the mid Atlantic region, clients 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 830 3w I N r e, t i r e, that's a three 3w, I N, R e, t i r e. We'll give you a call on Monday to schedule your free in person meeting after you contact us right now. So go to AKERS, financial group.com to do that, or call us at 833-946-7384, to start planning for your retirement now. What to do when you can't decide? We'll talk about this in a moment.

Unknown: 12:37

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 winning

BRIAN AKERS: 12:53

in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS. Here with me today is Paul Franco. Our show is called winning in retirement. It's our radio podcast. You're always welcome to go to our website, at AKERS, financial group.com that's a k, e, r, s, financial group.com and check it out. Check out our radio podcast tab, and you can listen to any air past shows. There's hundreds of them there for any topic, anything you want to learn about. There's so

Paul Franco: 13:14

many of them. And you can just scroll down and pick the exact one you want to hear. And you can

BRIAN AKERS: 13:18

hear any educate yourself about the way we handle things, and then you can understand what applies to you, and then you call us and set up that free meeting to go over your situation. Now the reason we do radio shows is to educate people, educate a lot of people at one time, and then those that like what we say and listen and would like more help, they call us, and we've built a great business with wonderful clients that we helped over the many, many years. This is my 39th year doing it. Paul Frank has been with me since

Paul Franco: 13:47

17, 2017 years.

BRIAN AKERS: 13:50

Yeah, he got his MBA, and then he joined us. Actually is during college interning too. Here, that's right, our minor leagues at AKERS Financial Group is our interns, and then they become financial planners, and then they become financial advisors over our learning process we have. And Paul's one of our superstars we've had over the years, and he says, Great job posting our show with us. So today's show is called a plan makes the complex simple, and what we're trying to do today is talk about the things that prevent us from doing what we need to do. It's hard to look inside yourself or talk to yourself about, hey, I need to do this. And then where do you start? And that's really what we do this show all about this quarter is what to do when you can't decide, when you just don't know what to do. And that's exactly we're gonna talk about this quarter. What's your basic advice when you hear someone says, I just can't decide?

Paul Franco: 14:39

Yeah, it depends on what they can't decide about. But there's so much that just go with Snicker bars if

BRIAN AKERS: 14:45

you're trying to sign doing candy bars at the counter.

Paul Franco: 14:47

Oh, makes life easier. Or Reese's. I'm a big Reese's guy, but yeah,

BRIAN AKERS: 14:50

I know you're a big snake. Try a zone break once in a while. I don't know if it's a combo with little marshmallow in there. I'm sorry, huh? Moving right along.

Paul Franco: 14:59

But. Have to, I have to see if I

BRIAN AKERS: 15:01

can find one of those that's right at the counter too. It's not as famous. Oh boy. All right. So back to um, back to air. Sherpa, a plan makes the complex simple. Complexity is things that cause us not to understand. We get up basically, if you do anything now, there's so many disclosures, so much information, so much out there. If you search on the internet, you do AI search, you talk to your family, you talk to other advisors. You're gonna hear all these different things. My first thing I tell everyone is, there is no book with your name on it that says exactly what you should do, right? You have to develop that

Paul Franco: 15:36

over time. Yeah. And that goes right back to your financial fingerprint, of what makes you unique versus anybody else. There is no bit of advice you can get online, no bit of advice you can get from the water cooler at work that somebody's talking to you what they did, and it ultimately be exactly what you have to do. It could be, in some cases, depending on right, depending on what it is, but it's they don't know your plan, they don't know your goals, they don't know your exact situation. And so it makes your plan, makes you unique versus

BRIAN AKERS: 16:11

anybody else. I mean, we've have clients that refer us to younger clients, like we have officers and police officers, and they recommend to the new rookies. Hey, start investing. Start doing this. Go see AKERS financial get started. And so their boss is telling right away, sign up now. That's right, because then you'll be in better, better shape than they might even be. Because a lot of times you got to understand that you might have a great job. You might work for our government. You might work for a large corporation. You have certain promises, but things change, you got to count on yourself when it comes to your finances. You got to have them under control. And no matter what age and what dollar amount you you are going to be responsible to make sure you do it right. So when you hire a financial advisor like AKERS, Financial Group, where a fee and or commission, depending on the situation and what people need, what happens is you begin by a meeting that's free, and you talk about things, you figure out what's going on in your life. But then, how do we help you decide information? What kind of information do you like to talk with clients about? As they say, Hello, yeah.

Paul Franco: 17:12

Information would be we need to see your pay stubs. We need to see your statements. So bank statements. We want to see 401, K statements. I want to see a budget, if there is one. If not, we can sort of work through just off the pay stubs. It's not the end of the world, right? We want to see taxes. That's a big one. Brian, we like to see tax returns. It gives us a pretty good picture of the tax situation. But we asked for a lot of information, and it's it can be overwhelming sometimes. That's why we don't do it all in one meeting. We take these plans and we we do it over multiple meetings, 345, meetings to get the plan set up. But there's so much information we ask, because we are comprehensive financial planners, we want to make sure that we are bringing the whole

BRIAN AKERS: 17:54

picture together. It doesn't make sense to me, and it's never made sense to me. I'm supposed to answer things for the rest of your life, and I'm supposed to answer as like a broker, as a one investment. Supposed to answer that to solve all your financial problems. And my thing years and years ago is I got to do planning first. I need to understand everything about them. I need to know by knowing about them, I then can help them make the decision that's best in their situation, within what their choices are. Because our choices are limited by what we have at work. We're limited by what we could save. We're limited by our risk that we want to take, versus not people. People will just say, Yes, Brian, let's go. Go with all that. It's a balancing and then there's what have you done so so far? What does your company offer? And you got to start selecting all the right things. And then we take all those pieces to build a financial plan, and then we guide step by step on, onward to the future. So important. So your needs are motivated by your Why? Why are you doing it like what really motivates you? Now some people, the younger they are, normally, they want to accumulate, they want to buy things, they want to do, things they want to travel, and they list 1000 things they want to do. Usually takes double their income to accomplish it all. Yeah, and so we got to learn to live within our income first and then have a pursuit to create more income down the road through the way you get yourself ready, prepared

Paul Franco: 19:22

for careers, absolutely. Yeah, I had a case, basically, and this is a, this he's a, he's a, he's a longtime radio listener as well. I'm sure he'd be happy for me to explain his case. I know, I know he will

BRIAN AKERS: 19:35

actually call him Fred Flintstone.

Paul Franco: 19:36

I'll call it. Let's call him Fred Flintstone. He's awesome. But he came in years ago with he had gotten some inheritance. He'd received inheritance, but he's worked his way up through his career. He's in his mid 50s now, and the problem was he goes, Paul, I have this through this inheritance. I had dad. Dad's advisor handling this inheritance, and had all these legacy dividend stocks paying almost $100,000 in dividends that were getting paid out and his situation. So basically, he's like, Paul, is there anything we can do to help lessen this tax impact on us. Now, what the other advisor wasn't doing, and I'm not here to talk negatively on somebody else as an advisor, but, but, but hear me out here. Well, it

BRIAN AKERS: 20:31

was the father's portfolio, correct? And it was designed for the Father. He might have been 8090, years old, right?

Paul Franco: 20:35

Absolutely. But not once did they have a conversation about, hey, what's, what's your situation? Okay, what's your what's, what other

BRIAN AKERS: 20:44

money's coming in, just put in the son's name and

Paul Franco: 20:46

forget about it, right? Forget about it. And just, and he paid all this money in tax that he could have avoided, right? By just doing some simple tax planning of more tax efficient investing in a taxable account would have saved him, I mean, 10s of 1000s of dollars in taxes just in each given tax year, right? And there was just never that conversation that was

BRIAN AKERS: 21:07

had, yeah? Well, that's, that's one of our arguments against large wire houses or people that come from that view, that they are focused on one thing and for one style investing. And they're actually not planners, not tax advisors. They don't have a tax company that works with them. They don't have that and so it's not a tool in their firm to be able to offer the advice. And so that's a limiting factor, and also limits what they can do for people. A lot of times, people will get this, almost like phantom income at the end of the year. They throw 100,000 dividends or whatever on your tax return, like, Where'd that come from? And we tried to prevent that through how we make decisions,

Paul Franco: 21:43

right, right? And there was no way where we could get the dividend income to nothing. But what we did was we ended up having dividends get sent to him. We took basically his whole paycheck and saved it into his 401, k, right? And he and he goes, I just can't believe that nobody ever had this conversation with me before. I didn't know I could do this. And that's what

BRIAN AKERS: 22:00

differentiates us. So you take the world of finance, all the choices, all the complexity out there, and we try to direct what applies to you, that person, and then work through what's the best decision. Now, if you have done anything, we can start from the bottom and just start, hey, let's save 100 bucks. Let's start building that's one way of doing it, but that's where we're successful. And we have all kinds of scenarios in our life. We have a collection. We got to make that collection work totally for you, so that this quarter has been all about, what do you do when you can't decide? We're guiding you through what we do? How do we decide? Well, we don't just have a magic eight ball that's called when you shake it and it says, or no, no, we don't do that. We get the information, then we present ideas. We present, hey, we could do these options. What path do you want to go? But knowing the idea of you want to retire, what does one look What do you want that to look like? How do you not want to retire? That's good. What do you want to do is legacy? Do you care about legacy? Care about charities, care about family, care about different grandkids, g2, g3, levels, whatever they might be. So the idea is this, how do you make decisions? How do you decide? Some people have all just just, I'm gonna do it myself, right? Yeah. And then, when do do it yourselfers come to us that you've seen in your career, a

Paul Franco: 23:21

lot of times it's they, either they get a big tax bill, or they got something like that, or they unfortunately the or, like in 2022 for example, where they lost a lot of money because they were way over concentrated certain stocks, certain sectors, and it's, you know, it's the what did so well over the past decade, and then that's where I put all my money, and then, whoa, I lost 40% of the value. Where'd that go? And that was it's like, Well, I wish we would have had these conversations before.

BRIAN AKERS: 23:48

Yeah. So sometimes people retire, they become a do it yourself investor, and then their spouse doesn't want to be a do it yourself investor. And if the one doing the investing starts to have medical issues, we get some of those visits. They come in and say, we're trying to pick the right firm to help guide us through the last 20 some years of our life. Even though that person might understand some of finance or what, how they manage, we try to guide them in that situation through financial planning.

Paul Franco: 24:15

Yeah, that's a brutal one, but yeah, it's a it is one we deal with, yeah.

BRIAN AKERS: 24:18

Now we're not asking someone to walk in and say, hey, just do everything you want. We we want to know what you want. We want to know what, what? Basically, almost like a boat. You want, a bouncy boat or a very solid ride. What do you really want? I'm sorry, that's pretty funny. Yeah, the reason we talk about this because it's all about winning in retirement. Winning in retirement, we know what that is. That's when, in retirement, the biggest worry of your day is where you want to drink your morning cup of coffee, where every day seems like a Saturday free of stress, your retirement income and investments are taken care of by the team of advisors at AKERS Financial Group. Is that the future you want it's not too late. What you do is you give us a call at eight. Three, three, win retire and schedule an in person meeting with one of our team advisors. That's 830, 3w, I n, r, e, t, I R, E, or 833-946-7384, or visit our website at AKERS, Financial Group Comm, scroll down to the bottom of the home page, schedule a meeting right there. So go ahead and give us a call, or go to our web page when it comes to your finances, what is the most complex issue that you face? We'll talk about this when we return for the second half of winning in retirement.

Unknown: 25:31

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: 25:47

Welcome back to winning in retirement. It is the second half of winning retirement radio show we put it on from AKERS finance group. From AKERS finance group, financial advisors. Paul Franco is with me, and I'm Brian AKERS. We are financial advisors from AKERS Financial Group. As we give our talks today, what we're trying to do is just give you some information so you can make real, sound decisions, such as calling us to sit down and go over your financial fingerprint and see where we can begin. Today's show we put together is called a plan. Makes the complex simple, a plan. Now a lot of people don't want a plan. They don't want to do the work. That's why we get hired, right? That's right, because we love

Paul Franco: 26:20

doing the work. We do the work, and we do it well. And that's a big that's a big reason why

BRIAN AKERS: 26:24

people, absolutely, we're built AKERS, Financial Group as independent financial firm, guided with financial planning leading into implementation, full money management, wealth divisions, things, insurance, whatever the client may need, which is all very, very important to have this quarter. I had this question. It says, when it comes to your finances, what is the most complex issue that you face? Now, the first thing I think about is all the questions we get there when tax season is around, right? Absolutely. Do you remember some questions you got during tax season?

Paul Franco: 26:59

Well, the first one is, why? Why did I owe so much money? I get that one a lot. Oh, yeah, so,

BRIAN AKERS: 27:05

why did I owe so much money? And then you look at the return, and the first thing is, you made more money.

Paul Franco: 27:11

Yep, right? Yep. Or, or there's, or you make, exactly, you made more money, or there was more income that you know that surprised you, dividends, interest, something like that.

BRIAN AKERS: 27:20

Yeah. So, so we have a tax company. It does tax prep, and we also have our financial planning firm. Not all clients are in both, but some of the tax prep people are interesting. I'll just go and talk to them once in a while. But there's a this one guy, because I'm retired, I shouldn't be paying tax because he's retired. So that was like, the conversation, I'm retired, I shouldn't pay tax. And then on his return, he worked a job, and he took taxes out of there. He's on Social Security. No withholding from there, sure. And he had another business, a side business, where he it was independent contractor, where he it comes as a 1099, he gets taxes and Social Security. All that kicks in there, yeah. And it's like, Why do I owe all this money? I should know all this money. I thought I was supposed to be all tax free and and then there's just so much information. So he's, like, 69 years old, and he's going to be retired, he says, this coming year. But the key thing is, he filed married filing separately, huh? If you do married filing separately, do you know you don't get the senior credit? Yeah, from that that makes Social Security tax free. It's brutal. Is that brutal? But then the more you dive into married filing separately, you lose a lot of deductions. And so it comes down to only a few reasons. Does that ever make sense? And the accountants that we have. They run through scenarios to see if it makes any sense at all. Yeah, that's a tough one. That was a brutal one, because it's like, well, you made too much money, and so you're filing married filing separately. You popped to that next bracket. You didn't withhold anywhere near enough. Yeah. And you're not really retired last year. This coming year, you might be. And so end up owing like 5000 or whatever, but there's a lot, yeah, and a

Paul Franco: 29:03

lot of people don't realize that no social security is taxable. In fact, federally, it's taxable. In Maryland here it's

BRIAN AKERS: 29:09

not yet at this point, it's not, not for a while, hopefully. But the federal they you hear out there that so Security tax free now, and 86% of Americans, they say, will be tax free. The other 14% would because of the way they have all this income, the deductions phase out at different income levels, and then all sudden, you are paying some tax in your Social Security. Yeah, so it's not totally tax free. I had I

Paul Franco: 29:33

had an I had one during during tax season, where the the individual owed about$10,000 between federal and state. And every year before that, she had gotten some refunds, and she goes, Paul, what? Why did I Why did I owe so much this year? You know what it was, Brian, which was so interesting. Every year before last year, we took her refund and rolled it into an estimated tax payment. For the for the year. And I'm going, What on earth did I do back in April before the year before, to decide that we weren't going to do that this year? And I checked my notes, and of course, she had a big withdrawal she had to take for giving to her grandkids and taking a big draw out. So we use the refund money for that. And said, and and so it was really funny. I'm like, well, we just now you had no penalty or anything, but she had to just owe it at tax time because we didn't roll it into the future year. But for some people, they're they just see the taxes and they go, Well, why am I owing? Yeah, we can help under Help help simplify and make it make sense for that. For those

BRIAN AKERS: 30:34

people, all right, let's go with two things. One question is this, I got a refund. The government was good to me this year. I thank the government because they gave me money. How do you explain

Paul Franco: 30:45

that one? Yeah, number one, it's, well, how much? Because we got it, we almost well, so if you get a refund, so how we would explain it is, you, you overpaid throughout

BRIAN AKERS: 30:55

the year, you overpaid is your money. That's right. In most cases, you get it back, unless you have earned income credit and a couple other couple ideas where they actually have government money to you, but generally it's your money coming back because you overpaid. It's nothing more than that.

Paul Franco: 31:06

That's right. And so some people, when they say they love getting a refund, we might, we might say, that's great. And for some people, I think it's wonderful to get a refund. It's almost a forced way to save, quite frankly. But we like to get a little bit small of a refund so that more that money can be utilized throughout the year to save, to build up, and because it is, quite frankly, a there's no interest that the government pays back to you in

BRIAN AKERS: 31:30

that refund, unfortunately. But there are some that says, I like big refunds, and they come in and that's their vacation pay, yep, and so they don't miss it on a daily they just know that they if they saved it to their bank, they'd probably blow it come vacation time, it'd be no money. So because of their own habits, they basically give attack, basically let the government keep the money with no interest, and then they get a big refund. So we would recommend that you do the opposite. You take the money, but once it lands in your bank account, you invest it right away. You have a plan for it. You don't just leave it in checking or savings making zero, throw that money to your own future so you can do vacations with it.

Paul Franco: 32:07

Yeah, and it actually starts with, hey, when the when the client comes in, do you do you like to get a refund? Or do you want to owe a little bit? Because we can work it out either way. You know what I mean, but it's but what do you want? What do you want individually? Do you want a bigger refund for that benefit? Or no, Paul, I don't need that refund. I'd rather keep that money throughout the year. But it's your decision. We help work through that based off of your decision. Yeah, I had to

BRIAN AKERS: 32:31

own the complexity of tax brackets, right? And so tax brackets are like steps. How you try to explain I do, Yep, yeah. And what do you mean by that?

Paul Franco: 32:39

Also steps, meaning it's tiered. So it's a it's like, you might have a marginal tax rate that's higher, might be 22% 24% but the real tax rate you're paying the tax on is an average between the 10% the 12% the 22 it's like, it's kind of

BRIAN AKERS: 32:56

so like for people that are walking up a step. So let's say the first steps 10% and 12 and then you jump to 22% so Married Filing together, you'll be like almost 96,000 before you jump to 22% if you're single, it's half of that, so about 46,000 all sudden, you're at 22% now if you have two spouses, and you both Make under 90,000 they're withholding at a 12% rate. You put the money together, you squeeze it together, it's like it pops up to that next bracket, to 22 it's not a marriage penalty, because if you were single, you'd be paying 22 it's actually just because of the withholding your job thinks you're the only one in the family making money. They don't withhold enough money, yeah. And so this idea of complexity of taxes is the simplicity of it's your money. If you get a refund, you gave them too much of your money. If you owe you didn't give enough money out of yours, you ought to pay more. Of course, breaking even zero, they send you 100 bucks is the best way to do it, yep, in our opinion. But the surprise, surprise, surprise, that tax season in the and the concept of they're out to get me, that kind of thing, we try to explain that we is balancing what we need to owe based on our decisions with our finances.

Paul Franco: 34:13

Yeah, and we do these tax estimates. Brian, we do these tax estimates in the fall, in the right, you know, right, in that October, November timeframe, so we have a very good feel at what your income is going to be.

BRIAN AKERS: 34:24

And so absolutely, and we want to put Roth conversions, where we pay tax now, put into a Roth and let it grow tax free to the future. We love doing that, yeah, but we got to play the taxes, make sure we get the right amount, not jump to the next step.

Paul Franco: 34:37

And it is, it is fun. It is fun on our side, to compare the tax estimate to the actual tax return the following year. It's a it's a

BRIAN AKERS: 34:44

pretty cool thing. So complex issues are things that cause you to make possible poor decisions, you know, like, Oh man, I don't I don't like taxes, so I'm not going to file. We've had that situation. I don't like taxes. I don't want to owe so. Want to overpay in during my work and I get a massive refund. We don't really like that either. We rather you money. Let your money work for you. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so complex issues that you face, I found that people, when they get a new job, they get the group benefits package and they just file it, and many times, they don't know how important it is to check the box if we're changing jobs, in most cases, no matter what the age, if I check the box for life insurance, that's a guaranteed issue policy. If I'm not that insurable, I check a box on my group benefits and take life insurance. I might get life insurance I couldn't buy anywhere else, just as a possibility, right? Yeah, and that's that's

Paul Franco: 35:43

part of what we do in these in these planning steps of getting together and working out what is your package you get through work. Let us help make those decisions, and we will do it. What's in your best interest. So we want to be able

BRIAN AKERS: 35:54

to do that with you. So the hardest part in this economy is that there are certain industries that people are losing their jobs, and then they have to readdress what they're doing now, what they're gonna do next, how they're gonna make their money. And then they have to address some surviving at the moment, and then working and getting ready for the next piece. And there's a lot of tricks to that, depending on your age and the ability to access your 41k prior to 59 and a half, the rules of being unemployed, how to make it, how to draw money, if you need to, how to use it. It's all interesting. It's all part of planning.

Paul Franco: 36:26

It's all part of planning. And I have a case like that, Brian, where the we had a federal government employee. She's wonderful. She's in her early 50s, and there was a lot of uncertainty around her job. And so we had been saving so much of that income into these other investments. And you know what we decided? We said, well, because of this, let's we want to, we want to double our buffer into the bank. Let's put we want$50,000 in the bank. Yeah, because that's going to that gave her peace of mind. And ultimately, there was so much complexity. Hey, the complexity of, am I going to change jobs? What am I going to do? You know what just simplified so much of it and gave her a lot of peace, is having that extra cash in the bank exactly there are

BRIAN AKERS: 37:05

I use the word cash is king. And there's certain moments in life. Anything changing more cash, the better. So you build your cash so you can absorb it. It lowers the stress and gets you through tough financial times by knowing there's there's money there to handle. It definitely all very true. Now we all want to retire perfectly in our own terms, because we know the best part of that kind of retirement is getting your time back or you decide how to use it. Before retirement, your time is always 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, you go to our website at AKERS financial group.com scroll to the schedule meeting section and let us know you'd like to schedule your free consultation with one of our team of advisors. That's a k, e, r, s, financial group.com or you can call us at 833 when retire. That's a three, 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 dance group.com, or call us at 833-946-7384, to start planning for your retirement. Now, no one likes to talk about death, but it could be the most loving thing you do. We'll explain in a moment

Unknown: 38:18

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: 38:33

welcome back to winning in retirement. I'm Brian AKERS. Here with me today is Paul Franco, and this is the fourth quarter of winning in retirement, put on by AKERS Financial Group. If you missed any of our quarters that we've done today, just go to our website at AKERS financial Comm, hit the radio podcast tab, and you get basically listen that show right there or on your favorite location, whatever fits you best,

Paul Franco: 38:54

right Spotify Apple Music. There's so many

BRIAN AKERS: 38:57

of them. Yeah. So the idea is, really what we're trying to do is educate people on a lot of things financial today, we want to just cover a basic thing of complex issues of finance and what to do, how we address it, what we think you ought to do when it comes to taking complex. So we built this show. It's called a plan makes the complex simple, and that means that without a plan, your complex is complex because you make it complex, there isn't going to be one can solution out there. And many people that are selling to you might think there is, and there might be some solutions that fit well for a situation, but not for every situation. That's right. So understanding that how financial planning fits is very, very important, all right. So in this quarter, we want to talk about the following, and that is, no one likes to talk about death, but it could be the most loving thing you do. All right, Paul, what's your thoughts on my question? Right there?

Paul Franco: 39:51

Yeah, it's a it's very hard to talk about death, and even in the concept of planning is to plan for death,

BRIAN AKERS: 39:59

it's very hard to do. Do well, they don't want to talk about it. Want to put it off. They rather not do it.

Paul Franco: 40:04

Yeah, rather not do it. There's, there's a some, some people think that when they do it, it means they're going to die sooner, which is just not the case at all. But it's really interesting.

BRIAN AKERS: 40:14

So what happens is people think about complex things in life, and we hear all the time about, oh, I'm settling someone's estate. It's really complex. It's a big issue. And then I think, Oh, well, tell me about it. Tell me what happened. And a lot of times it's some some relative that they get called into to help correct and fix things after the fact. And a lot of times there was no planning involved. It's sort of a what do I do now? Things were in my aunt that passed away, his name, there's no will. Where do I start? Yeah, and there's a path for those that don't have wills, and that path is difficult, is complex with proper planning, it does not have to be that complex. I like to say it this way, I care about my family so much that I've made the decisions for them on what I want done with the money, how it's going to go, who gets what, when they get it, how they get it. I made those decisions now I can change my mind through my years, but I put it in place where, if I pass away, the I had assigned certain people to take over, to implement my plan, that's proper estate planning, and that just doesn't happen quickly. Takes time. That's right, yeah,

Paul Franco: 41:27

it's legacy. I mean, that's a huge legacy in and of itself. There's a living legacy, but also there's legacy after you're gone and they there are so many complex estates out there that really don't need to be overly complex. And I think a lot of times people hear even the term estate or estate planning, and their mind kind of just shuts off to it almost, it's almost like a, it's like a, you know, I don't, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to deal with it. But simplifying that like we do in trying to make sure all your documents are set up, the people you have in charge, or the people you want to be in charge. I can't tell you many times I've had where, when we this is why we asked for copies of wills, power of attorney, healthcare directive, because I've had cases where, oh, I have that person listed, yeah, right. It's, that's what it says. Well, I don't remember doing that, or it's, it's, it's very interesting just to people's opinion on it, but that's what, that's what we do as planners, is make sure that your goals, your wishes, are set up how you want them to be.

BRIAN AKERS: 42:36

Yeah, I guess when people come in the door, no matter what age, what net worth, what occupation, I would say, one of the things is missing is usually any estate documents have nothing, and that's a situation where we have to talk about what they want. They usually, they're in there worried about retirement, make sure they have enough saved those kind of things. And they never, ever addressed what if things don't go well? And there's this emotional idea of, how do you talk about it? And the way I like to approach it is this, if we can plan as if we would die tomorrow, bless the beneficiaries, have it all set up as if we die tomorrow, what would happen? And we get it set up with documents and paperwork and beneficiaries and get everything organized like that for you, then everything else can be about you living and retiring and making that money last a lifetime, and tax planning all that because we did the hard work. We did the work that makes a legacy a loving plan for your spouses, your kids, everything down the road. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it's something that once you get things in place, it's easier to make some changes down the road, rather than having absolutely nothing, which is our normal situation.

Paul Franco: 43:50

Yeah, you're right about that. And unfortunately, and even for some people, well, I guess it's not as much, unfortunately. But the The hard part is, is that not having it, like you mentioned, like Maryland, and if you don't have a will, there is a will

BRIAN AKERS: 44:07

for you, intestate,

Paul Franco: 44:09

yeah, it, it's not, it's not what you think it is for a lot of people. And I don't want to go into the deep dive into that now, but I would just warn people that, oh, I don't, I'm not going to worry about that. It's, I'm not worried about what's going to happen. While I'm going that, I just, I really think having a plan is

BRIAN AKERS: 44:26

very important. Yeah, so, so when we're doing this, we also ask, asking people about beneficiaries. One thing that frustrates me is that when people set up bank accounts, they typically open one, it might be in the one person's name. They don't put any beneficiaries on it called payable on death. It's a simple thing. When you set up an account, the beneficiary doesn't have to sign. You just have to add payable on death beneficiaries. So the first thing it does is, if I have an account, it's just my name, FDIC is 250,000 if I have a payable on death to my two kids. All sudden, 250,000 per person. That's three of us, 750,000 of FDIC insurance on the money because they name a beneficiary. Beneficiary has no control over the account, unless I pass away. The only way they control the account is through power of attorneys and other documentation. We're not recommending that you add joint make people join on your account, because that's like a total gift, sure, that also gives them all the power on the money. And might, might not want to do it that way, yeah?

Paul Franco: 45:27

But again, it always it goes back to, what do you want? About the power,

BRIAN AKERS: 45:30

but the power, but payable on death, is a problem. Never see that with most bank accounts. Then you start talking brokerage accounts, and they have each other. They don't have contingents. Contingents are things such as a this goes to each other, and then it goes to the kids by listing them by name. They have a 10 year ability to take money out if you don't go through your state and there's nothing there. So the hard thing is this, I would bet all your beneficiaries are not in order. I would bet that that you might have have the documents. How does that start? What do you do? What do you do? Can I give you

Paul Franco: 46:05

can I give you a bad example? Oh, sure, it was a sad example. Oh, yeah, they have to. Beneficiary was ex spouse from 20 years ago. Yeah, both, both of the both him and his new spouse sitting in front of me. Yeah, and we go in check. Hey, you've beneficiaries, yeah, I think I set those up. Well, we log in and, yeah, it's there. And I the look, if you could have just seen the look like you didn't think to change that. You know, it's, it's, but that's what we do. We help make sure we fill any of those gaps in.

BRIAN AKERS: 46:36

One of the cool things on a power of attorney, if you don't update the ex spouse too quickly. Once that, once you're divorced, they actually can't be your power of attorney. So even if they're there, they can, don't get that power but you still should redo your power of attorney, definitely. But sitting with someone dive, diving into their 401 K, seeing who's who's who's set up is very, very important.

Paul Franco: 46:57

It's terrible. Just, I just kind of sat there when

BRIAN AKERS: 46:59

their sister, their brother, and they've been married 10 years, it's like, yeah, I

Paul Franco: 47:05

would not have wanted to hear what that car ride home was like.

BRIAN AKERS: 47:09

Well, sometimes when they bring statements, we already see it on the statement, the beneficiaries not not the same person who's in the room when you're like, Okay, I gotta make sure I get ready for this conversation. But that's not a lot. Honestly, it's not a lot. So it's not a lot at all. Usually the new spouse is very make sure things

Paul Franco: 47:26

are let's have bad we just have stories. We've seen, seen a lot. If you

BRIAN AKERS: 47:31

see 100 people, you have one story or two stories, maybe a couple more. All right, so the idea is this, make sure your beneficiaries are very correct. Make sure you have documents. I have people who are paying for a lawyer through their group benefits plan, but they don't use a lawyer. So we say, go to that lawyer, pick up get a list of lawyers that are approved, that are prepaid, and let's pick one, and let's go to work on your what you need done, or they have it free for their job. Just take the time and go get it. We'll prepare what you need to take with you. There's something we do called a state, basically a state flow, is what I call it. A state flow is, this is what you wrote down. These are your beneficiaries, and then, based on all your wealth, this is who gets what and when and how much. And I show it to them, I say, Is this what you want? And they're like, No. And it's funny, because they never, ever taken all their money together, their house, their life insurance, all these all this money, especially if they're in their 40s and 50s, at that peak, with all that life insurance too. And you're like, How much is it? And then who does it go to? And then you start naming it and trying to figure

Paul Franco: 48:35

it out, yeah, those estate flow sheets. And the response is, they're getting how

BRIAN AKERS: 48:39

much right. And so then a couple dies, and then we have that meeting, we have the safe flow sheet, and we say, You guys are getting this much. And they're like our parents, that's incredible. Our parents did that for us. And then we tell them how to, how to handle the money. It's so much easier on us by doing the estate planning ahead of time to do that complex talk about death, so that when it happens, or the illness, the sickness, the terrible event happens. Everything's ready. So we can help that family. We know what's ready. We can move money in the first couple of weeks. First month, there isn't this nine month the state, wait, there's no. Three years of different type of work done. It happens very quickly. All very important. Yes, all right, so Paul, we've talked about a plan makes the complex simple. So is that the answer a plan.

Paul Franco: 49:23

A plan absolutely makes the complex simple, and

BRIAN AKERS: 49:27

the plan is how we decide. So we're trying to teach us how we decide, how we take that complexity and make it simple. Understand what you have, give us a copy of all of it, so we can understand what you have, too, right? That's right, and we make

Paul Franco: 49:38

it simple by doing, planning, getting to know you, getting to know what your goals are, sure, yeah, and then helping you reach those goals. You want to

BRIAN AKERS: 49:47

be winning your retirement. You want to be winning right now. And the way you do that is by having control of your finances, no matter how complex they may seem to you get some help, get some people to guide you so you can understand and how it. Apply so that you can progress and be successful in the life that you like to lead on your finances, right? Paul, that's right, and we love to do it. Thank you very much for a very good show. Paul, I appreciate it. Thanks, Brian, thank you guys out there for listening. We do look forward to meeting with you. We want you to win in your retirement by taking 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 through the schedule meeting section and let us know you'd like to schedule your free meeting. That's AKERS financial group.com or you can give us a call at 833 win, retire. That's 830 3w. I N, R e, t, I, R, E, we will call you on Monday to schedule your free in person meeting with one of our team of advisors. Start planning for your retirement now. Go to AKERS Financial Group comm 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. You've been

Unknown: 51:03

listening to winning in retirement with your host, Brian AKERS of AKERS Financial Group. AKERS Financial Group offers securities through arcadios capital. An SIPC and FINRA member firm. Advisory services are provided through arcadios wealth. AKERS Financial Group and arcadios do not share any common ownership. Neither arcadios nor AKERS Financial Group provides tax or legal advice. Advice 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.