Winning in Retirement

One More Year: How to Retire Next

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Brian Akers and Alex Monk discuss the concept of "One More Year" in retirement planning, emphasizing the importance of financial preparation. They share a client story about George and Jane Jetson, who needed one more year to finalize their retirement plans, including paying off debt and optimizing cash flow. Brian highlights the necessity of having a budget, spending plan, and proper investment strategies to ensure a stable retirement. They also stress the importance of tax planning and risk management, advocating for diversified portfolios and regular financial reviews. The goal is to achieve financial independence and peace of mind before retiring.


Unknown:

The following is a pre-recorded show. Welcome to Winning in Retirement with your host BRIAN AKERS, certified financial planner, professional, and founder of AKERS Financial Group. Now helping you win in your retirement. Here's BRIAN AKERS.

BRIAN AKERS:

Welcome to Winning in Retirement. I'm your host BRIAN AKERS, president and founder of AKERS Financial Group, here with me today is Alex Monk. Alex Monk is a certified financial planner practitioner from AKERS Financial Group. Welcome to our show today, Alex. Great to be here, Brian. Love it, love it. Fun time. I'm glad to have you here with me. I wish that we could explain to everyone all the hard work we're doing for our show today. We have an incredible topic. I like it because it's called one more year. I think it's a wonderful way to begin our talk is to say one more year,

Alex Monk:

the final countdown,

BRIAN AKERS:

the final countdown. Yeah,

Alex Monk:

I think I mean the end right of a a major part of a lot of people's lives. That's what we're talking about, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. Well, the reason I did the show is that um we had a couple that came in. They're friends of mine from a long time ago, and they we'll call them George and Jane Jetson just because I like the Jetsons because they're they're a pretty good setting when it comes to futuristic planning and all that. Hey, hey, Alex, do you know when George Jetson was born? Like actually born officially within the show, the car, the classic cartoons.

Alex Monk:

I just remember the little car that puttered around.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. Well, actually, he was born in 2022. They say July 31st, 2022, as a guess. In the show, it's set in the 60s, 2062. So they assume he was 40 years old on that show, and his wife Jane. They don't say her age. She's probably a little younger, right?

Alex Monk:

Well, she could be. I mean, 100 if technology. I mean, anyway.

BRIAN AKERS:

No, the cool thing is they had FaceTime on there. There's so many technologies that we have today that I believe came from the Jetsons cartoon exactly. Actually, that's not what the show's about, but that's what we're going to call my example today. George and Jane Jetson, named after them. So they actually came in to see me, and they've been coming in for at least a decade, and we've been going over things. And one of the coolest things is that where we began to where we are now, our last meeting, I had to say one more year, and I had to say it a few different times. And then at the very end of the show, she had this binder because she's a teacher and he's a construction guy, so they don't make a lot of money, but they make enough to be able to provide for themselves down the road. She had to made a binder up, and her binder said, "I may not be there yet, but I'm closer than I was yesterday. So that was her comment back to me when I said one more year. She put up her binder. That's her motivational binder, getting ready to retire. So the one

Alex Monk:

more year for them was you're there, not hey you need to wait. It was a good one more year.

BRIAN AKERS:

It was a you need to wait actually because the things weren't quite done. It's almost like cooking when you're not quite ready and you eat it too early or it's not quite warm. It's not quite finished.

Alex Monk:

So I'm gonna I'm gonna play devil's advocate. What kind of things do they need to do in that first year?

BRIAN AKERS:

You gotta, we gotta start with from where we where we began. We began with people who had the concept of hey, let's enjoy life, let's live life, let's have camper here, camper there. You need a pickup truck for that. They have mortgages, credit card debt, all kinds of things that they were living the life and all their money was going to that, and then they came in to see me to do financial planning. It's like, well, we want to retire someday, and I'm like, well, we're starting at near zero. We got to figure this thing out. You're going to have to give something up, and so we had to start with that. And we had a couple. These are friends, right? So I'm telling them they got to give something up. They well, we don't want to do that. We like hanging out with people. We like doing these things. This is what we do. So we got to make more money or less expense. There's only two magical ways to

do financial planning:

get more money involved or less expense. There is nothing else we can do. And those

Alex Monk:

sacrifices they can be hard if you aren't used to making them. Right. So the sooner you make them, the easier.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, they they're not used to making them. They weren't considered a save first type of people. You know, ones that have built up their wealth since they were 20. There are people that were had to learn how to save, and so the idea was she had a job as a teacher, and so that job produces a pension. The the husband's a little bit older and turned 67. So while working, we're also drawing Social Security. So we got that money. So we use that to try to reduce that quickly. And so when I said one more year, I was referencing the fact that we got to get a couple more things paid off completely to make the cash flow work. So imagine that you have a cash flow of money coming in, money going out, and it just doesn't show up positive. It shows negative. Like if we actually live off what retirement is, which is less than what they're making now, could they really survive? In my answer, they could not unless we shrunk the bills down.

Alex Monk:

And then the easiest way to do that is getting rid of debt.

BRIAN AKERS:

I think it's an easy way to do it is get rid of debt. I like getting rid of debt. I believe that actually makes the cash flow a permanent decision by knocking that out.

Alex Monk:

And the scenario changes for each person, right? Like, oh yeah, absolutely. This is just one of those awesome scenarios where they put in the work, they put in the time, and now they get to see the results of it, but what about the person that calls in and says, "Hey, I'm getting fired, or the guy that stands next to me just got fired. What do I do? Right. So that's a very short-term

BRIAN AKERS:

thing. The thing is that you would hope that they've had a financial advisor on their team early on, but that doesn't always happen. We do get the phone calls where, with a technology field recently, there's been a lot of changes and people losing their jobs with very short notice. And so,

what happens is this:

is that you got to start where we are. No matter what, there's reality of finances is where you are. If we're losing our job, then we got to look at what what's going on, where what can we do next? And so the idea there is really to figure out what kind of career can they change to to be able to provide for their family.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and you know sometimes some of these people come in and they may have been doing it on their own.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yep,

Alex Monk:

and sometimes they're okay and sometimes they aren't. Just depends on those habits that you build. But like you said earlier, cleaning up your cash flow and knowing what it is really makes you as ready as you can.

BRIAN AKERS:

I I like to say that we never know what's going to happen in our future. We got to be ready for the worst case scenarios at all time, and so that's why we want people to start early in financial planning. Hire a financial advisor to talk to you about your situation to get your emergency built up in case you lost your job that you have enough cash to get you three to six months out. I think I think six months it makes a lot of sense for especially if you're in a field that could be affected by the AI and the technology changes that are coming at us.

Alex Monk:

Absolutely, and there's like weird little tax rules too based on your age. So if you're 55 and over, there's different rules if you're younger, so you have to plan for where am I going to get the money because you need to spend something every month. Yeah,

BRIAN AKERS:

the last time we saw this was back in '08 when there's a bunch of construction changes with the mortgage crisis that occurred in the '08 or nine time period, and that created a lot of people that are a lot of them were in their mid 50s at the time, and what happens was they they lost their jobs. They lost their job rather quickly, and then the industry was not there for them to switch into. Some finally found certain jobs that paid better. I had one out of five that I remembered that could retire at 55 because they were actually ready. The rest we had to find jobs that weren't paying as much and figure out how to bring lifestyle down to fit what they needed. It was tough. And the the most important thing when you retire early is that cash flow. Like, where are you going to get it? Are you dipping into your principal? Because yeah, right. My math says if you're starting to hit the principal in those early years, you're setting yourself up for failure. Especially in your 50s, right? In your 50s, you want that money to be able to grow higher than the withdrawal rate. So, example is if you can make eight to 10 on a portfolio that's balanced and take out 4% to five at the most, you have some growth in the portfolio to be able to keep up with inflation over time and just everything in life as it changes. Just

Alex Monk:

those big, big losses early on can really have a long term effect, and

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah,

Alex Monk:

that's why it's so important to meet with someone that's done it before or helped other people retire. I mean, I've had multiple conversations just this week. Yeah, am I ready? You are. Yeah, the

BRIAN AKERS:

ready. The ready question is all as a calculation, and usually we've had a conversation before to get them ready. the The goal for my show today, and I was thinking about how to write it. It was one more year. I just kept saying that in the in the client meetings, one more year, and then I finally got them to look at me and say, "All right, we'll do one more year. They really wanted to go ahead and get leave this summer, you know, just leave and get out of and retire. But the hardest part for me was they needed one more year to clean up everything to the final point, pay off. One of the things is they had a company car they had to get rid of and replace with a new car that fits. They had figure out what vacations would look like and downsize what that wanted to be and get that paid off. So they didn't have all these extra bills, so that when the pension starts, the security starts, investments, everything else works out well. And that's that's a tough

Alex Monk:

answer to give, especially you know you've known them for a long time, right? And you want to you want to be like, hey, everything's wonderful for you, but that's not always the answer. So being able to to deliver that,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah,

Alex Monk:

and still stay positive and coach and motivate is is really you know the the goal.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, I guess a couple things in the scenario is that the spouse is younger than there's one spouse, but 6768, and the other one's like 61, getting ready to turn 62 and trying to get her to stay to 62. Yes, he wants to retire, but both of them working because they make more money working together at the same amount of years, and that one extra year gets us enough money to mathematically knock it out. Because you have the whole scenario of health insurance, you have the whole scenario of what are you going to do? It's going to cost money. How can we make sure it all works for you?

Alex Monk:

And if you think that your budget's just going to get smaller in retirement, like is that a plan that you want to make? Like that's not something you want to happen, right? Very

Unknown:

true.

Alex Monk:

Like oh, I'm going to retire and stay home and not be able to do anything but eat, and that's not what you're working for. I hope not.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. Well, if you've had people that walk in, they talk to you and say, "I'm turning 62. I'm retiring

Alex Monk:

today. It's

BRIAN AKERS:

not a discussion. It's say I'm retiring, and then we're supposed to figure out if how to make it work. This is sort of a discussion of we've been planning for years. We're getting closer. Have we hit our goal yet? Have we hit almost like I guess a golf way? Is there hit? I guess there isn't a golf term there.

Alex Monk:

I mean, more strokes, the worse. That's

BRIAN AKERS:

so less strokes, right? So you want to have lower strokes. Yeah. Yeah. So in retirement, we want to have less problems instead of more problems. I'm not going to tie it into golf. Alex loves golf, right? Golf. You love golf.

Alex Monk:

Absolutely.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. Anything

Alex Monk:

that drives you crazy, I'll do it.

BRIAN AKERS:

Golf's hide and go seek. The ball takes off and it goes places. I never don't know. It's never where it's supposed to go.

Alex Monk:

It just and it makes you remind you every day how human you really are.

BRIAN AKERS:

And thankfully, financial planning is not like that. We can hit it in the fairway all the time with people. We can make sure that they're on target. We can get we can get the them in them within par. I'm like in regulation. That's the word I was looking for. We get them in within regulation. So it seems

Alex Monk:

like you've been working and not golfing much, Brian. This is a good thing for clients.

BRIAN AKERS:

Oh my goodness! Golf, golf is a fun thing. I believe it will work out someday when I have some more time to make it work out. All right. So 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 Lutherville, Farstill, all around the Mid-Atlantic region, we meet with people. We also have a few country people all around the world. A few people, shoot, 36 different states now, I believe it is. And then we have a few different countries of people that are working outside the U.S. Now, it's so easy to begin winning in retirement. Just give us a call and schedule your meeting with one of our team of advisors by calling 833 win retire. That's 833 W 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 financialgroup.com or call us at 833-946-7384 to start planning for your retirement now. What do you need to be able to retire? We'll talk about this when we return.

Unknown:

You're listening to a pre-recorded show. Welcome back to Winning in Retirement. Call 833 Win Retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin Winning in Retirement. Once again, here's BRIAN AKERS.

BRIAN AKERS:

Indeed, welcome back to Winning in Retirement. I'm the host BRIAN AKERS. Here with me today is Alex Monk from AKERS Financial Group. We are both certified financial planner practitioners, CFPs with a little registration right next to it.

Alex Monk:

Tiny circle with an R.

BRIAN AKERS:

I've been a CFP since 1991.

Alex Monk:

The youngest in the state or the country, I believe.

BRIAN AKERS:

One of. I say one of because there's no way to prove it, but you had to get so much. I mean, you had to get a degree. You had to get so many years experience, and I had all those things lined up before I was 23 years old.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, so mathematically, there's

BRIAN AKERS:

so I called the CFP board back then. I said, "Is anybody younger than me? Well, we don't know anybody. Okay, so it's good. There was very few of us back then, but CFP. The cool thing I say is that we were fiduciary before it was cool. The idea of CFP is that you listen to the clients, you get to know them, you understand what's going on, and by understanding and putting in a full written plan, you come up with what they need to do to get ready to retire.

Alex Monk:

Yes.

BRIAN AKERS:

So in our show today, it's called One More Year. That means that we've already done that talk. We've had those conversations over time. So if you become a client, no matter what the age is, we prepare you for the conversation of one more year.

Alex Monk:

If

BRIAN AKERS:

you come to us and say, "I'm retiring now, it's a different conversation because we got to speed up the warp speed of meet every two weeks get all the information and try to knock things out as fast as we can to get you to where we think is the right way to retire. Yeah,

Alex Monk:

and what you just said there is that no matter where you are right now, we got to figure that out. Like that's our starting point, right? So

BRIAN AKERS:

that's the finger, the financial fingerprint. That's our

Alex Monk:

fingerprint, right? So it starts right there. That's our pinpoint or our fingerprint, our launch pad, finger pad. There's so many puns there, but if we don't know where we are, then we can't know where our problems are, right? So that's what we come in and we try to fix problems. So is it a budget problem? Is it a debt problem? Is it I am not investing my money correctly, not taking enough risk, or. A combination of all these different things,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah.

Alex Monk:

And you spent your entire career doing something else, and now they change every rule for you. So you need somebody to help you. I I don't think it it's responsible to do it alone.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, I call it coaching. Right, coaching is where someone steps in and takes what you're doing and refines it within parameters. Those parameters are your financial goals, whatever they may be. That might mean RV lifestyle, might be second home. It might mean I just want to go home. I want my house to be paid for. It could be I'm moving with my kids. It could be I'm moving to retirement community. There's so many things it could be, and it all costs money. Right. We just got to get everything organized,

Alex Monk:

and getting it all organized gives you almost that peace of mind, right? Like you can see after someone's put the work in, they come in and they've been retired for a year or two, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, everything he said was true, and it's fine.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yes, about two years in after they retired, two years in, they come back and they sit in the chair and all of a sudden they lean back and you can see them breathe and they know they're okay and they're okay because they have nothing to really fret over unless they're a kind of person that likes to fret or worry

Alex Monk:

yeah I mean they're

BRIAN AKERS:

going to worry about something right

Alex Monk:

you got to worry about something I like to give them a list of things to

BRIAN AKERS:

worry about

Alex Monk:

but the money they feel comfortable with

BRIAN AKERS:

that's exactly the goal in financial planning is to make sure that your financial side is doing what it needs to do to replace your job and then to provide for you from now for as long as you may live and that's exactly the hardest part of financial planning is to make this money last a lifetime whatever that may be.

Alex Monk:

So I had a a meeting this week. That's good. The the wife is is very nervous because the husband's company has been cutting people off.

BRIAN AKERS:

Oh yeah,

Alex Monk:

right and left. So last time I met with them, this is I met about a year and a half ago. I said, you know, you guys are on track. Things look great. Like here's the dates that we need to try to make it to. So we came in now, and she's like,"Well, what happens if I lose my job today?

BRIAN AKERS:

Right.

Alex Monk:

So we went through it, and then here's the things that we wanted to change. We wanted to gather cash and do different things based on their age, so that we would have access to money. But these people are only have a little Mortgage left, great rate, save cash, save lots of money, pension, and and health insurance in a couple years. And I, I told him, I said, don't feel bad because you're going to be okay, even if it happens today. Now I know it doesn't feel good for everyone you're working with,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah. But

Alex Monk:

you know who knows what their scenario is? You guys have a different scenario than anyone else,

BRIAN AKERS:

right? And so the challenge is that we can't fix everyone involved, everyone that might lose their job, but individually we can take time with each person and walk them through their exact numbers, where they are, and how to get them to a comfortable level, whatever that may be.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and it's it's tough to see because you see people that put 40 years in at a company, and at the end they're just a number on a line, and that is that's a tough feeling, especially if you have a lot of your worth and you know your

BRIAN AKERS:

oh yeah yeah you're talking about the what I view the hardest part of retirement is actually the the concept of actually retiring, right? Because like, what do you do when I love my job? And a lot of people love their job. That's sort of what they say. Somebody introduces you. They say you are this, and then I'm a financial advisor. Like, if I'm not a financial advisor, what would retirement look like? I'm a golfer, probably not. I'll never be called a golfer. I'll try. I might be called someone that hurts the ball. Well, what do

Alex Monk:

you call a doctor when they're done practicing?

BRIAN AKERS:

We call them doctor, and then they just they peacefully don't have to answer phone calls all weekend long, which is what they enjoy the most when they retire. All right, so this quarter is about what do you need to be able to retire, and the hardest thing is this: is that so? I had the couple, George and Jane Jetson. We're calling them. They came in and met with me, and I said one more year. So, what was I referencing that they needed to do to be able to retire? And it has all has to all all to do with what are you going to spend? How much does it cost? Now, in their case, they are people that like to camp, and so they had a permanent campsite. So we had to put that into the budget. We had to put into all the existing costs of where they live, the fuel, a little bit of everything, and get a budget number to work with. Now, some people are good at that, and they do a great job of tracking the numbers. Some people are horrible at it. There is a little cheat that I use. Have you ever cheated on figuring out what they need?

Alex Monk:

Oh yeah, I do it all the time.

BRIAN AKERS:

I use their net their net pay, what they bring home.

Alex Monk:

I usually track one account where they say they save and funnel money, and then I track it every six months.

BRIAN AKERS:

Okay, you track that account.

Alex Monk:

Yeah. Yeah,

BRIAN AKERS:

so sometimes I'll like a new client. I'll get all their bank statements, try to figure out where the flow is, so that to get it in my concept. But the other idea is this: Are you doing okay on your net bring home, so we can make that the target? But a lot

Alex Monk:

of times that's their their hurdle, right? Like I make 250,000, Brian. Like I need that, and then it's like, well, you only bring home 10 grand a month. If you get rid of your mortgage, you really only need six, which is only 72, which is a quarter of what you just said.

BRIAN AKERS:

Correct. But the 250 pays for health insurance, 401k contributions, all these benefits at work. You need certain benefits when you're getting ready to retire. You need life insurance, disability. But when you're retired, you don't need disability anymore, and life insurance you might need some, but not quite as much, especially if your debts are paid off. And so the idea is this: you need to have a retirement spending plan. You need to know what the need is, what the number is. You need to know how to figure it out. It's it's different than just having an investment number on top of your head that says two, 3 million. You need to have a number of cash flow and then and budget and spending number,

Alex Monk:

right? Because that big number can get you in trouble mentally too. Because you're like, oh, I have all these things that I want to do, right? And you don't write them down, you don't throw numbers to them, and then you come to find out you just came up with$250,000 worth of expenses, and you're in love with all of them.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. So, well, you want to do everything, so like when you some people are ready to go retirement, they have this list that they put off. So I recommend that people balance life now and the future. While you're working, working the last year or so, fix the big item. It's less painful while you're working, knowing that money's coming back in to fill the savings back after you did your roof, your HVAC, whatever was needed but might not be broken yet. Fixing that,

Alex Monk:

yeah. Or if you don't want to check for your vacation, or they're not going to pay it out, start using it. Go on some vacations if things are good and you don't need to retire. You don't need to work. So like having that independence and knowing where you are financially.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. So in the case of George and Jane, I had the 67-year-old husband draw Social Security, and we took that money to target debt. We target the higher interest debt. We let the mortgage had low interest keep going, but now in the final year, I'm wanting the mortgage to be paid off because we're going to need that to cover health insurance because the wife's going to be less than 65, so her health insurance portion will be like $900 a month, based on her as a teacher, where she works. They would have a high number she has to contribute to that.

Alex Monk:

But that's still a good like she's lucky to have that because a lot of people don't even get a pension with health insurance.

BRIAN AKERS:

Correct. So be up before 65. A lot of people have to retire before 65, and when they have to retire, health insurance is the biggest issue. Do you go with Cobra from work? Do you buy it on the on the Affordable Care Act under the different programs that are out there, or do you have to find another way?

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and that can be a tax planning opportunity, and it all fits back to that budget. And are our withdrawals in those early years too high because that's a big big test.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yes, so some people retire and all of a sudden there's a honey to do list that you put off to a retirement and you want to fix them all and it costs money and so we start getting phone calls and hey we're doing the porch we're doing the sidewalk I'm doing the siding I've got into a few more things I got to do and before we know we got 20 30,000 like all at once, and when you retire, it's usually one of your bigger tax years. So you have to be very careful on pulling all their money out too quickly and kicking you your income to a higher and higher level, and even making your Medicare taxable.

Alex Monk:

Right, which is the sneaky thing that we'll watch out for. But most people don't realize that until Irma tells them that they made too much money, and they're like, "Oh, it wasn't even I was working. What are you talking about? So I see that all. All

BRIAN AKERS:

right. So, what do you need to be able to retire? We believe you need to have a budget, a spending plan. You need to know where the money's going. You need to get a list of items that need to get done, what they cost, and then if you have a couple trips planned, let's see what they cost. Get it all written down and plan out in in advance because if you need 100,000 and we can spread it over a couple years, three years, the

Alex Monk:

taxes just

BRIAN AKERS:

I need three years for a lot of a lot of spreading, three to five five. It's a big number,

Alex Monk:

and sometimes like we won't get into that, but using other sources to pay for it, yeah,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah. So the idea is this: is what do you need to be able to retire? Well, you gotta get organized to know the cash flow. You need to know the information, the numbers, the expenses, the budget. You need to know where money is going and what you need to keep it doing. The reason we do all this is because we know that the best part of retirement is getting 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. It's so easy to begin winning in retirement. Go to our website at akersfinancialgroup.com. Scroll to the schedule a meeting section and let us know you'd like to schedule your free consultation with one of our team of advisors right there. That's akersfinancialgroup.com, or call us. 833 W I N R E T I R E. That's 833 when retire. We'll give you a call on Monday to schedule your free in-person meeting. Go to akersfinanchgrip.com or call us at 833-946-7384 to start planning for your retirement now. Retirement is about cash flow. We'll explain more about this when we return with more of winning in retirement.

Unknown:

You're listening to a pre-recorded show. Welcome back to Winning in Retirement. Call 833 Win Retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin winning in retirement. Once again, here's BRIAN AKERS.

BRIAN AKERS:

Welcome back to Winning in Retirement. I'm BRIAN AKERS from AKERS Financial Group. Here with me today is Alex Monk. We are both certified financial planner practitioners from AKERS Financial Group. This radio show podcast is put on at on our website AKERS Financial group.com. Right on the radio podcast tab, you can go there and get information and listen to past shows anytime you like, especially if you want to hear us in faster speed or slower speed, or maybe maybe a little faster.

Alex Monk:

I am a notorious slow talker. My wife says

BRIAN AKERS:

no, but can you imagine slower?

Alex Monk:

Oh man,

BRIAN AKERS:

let's not go slow. We're going faster. We're already here at halftime. Um, so the halftime show's over, and now it's time for us to talk more about our topic, which is called "One More Year. One more year was a conversation I had with clients of mine who've been friends for years. We've been clients probably about 10 years, and we had a conversation a few weeks ago. And I had say one more year to them a few times, trying to understand, get them to understand that we're almost there, we're close. A few more things to knock out will make cash flow so much better, so much easier to be able to make the everything work well for the retirement that we're trying to shoot for. It's a big deal.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and you take it serious, right? Like these people, you know, personally and professionally. So if if they're not ready, you can't let them go. Like,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah,

Alex Monk:

just because it may feel better for them, or you know, it might be the easier conversation to have. At the end of the day, like

BRIAN AKERS:

I was willing to have the harder conversation because I thought they could handle it because I knew them pretty well. The funniest thing is after the talk's completely over. She's a teacher. She pulls out a binder where she has everything in there, and the front of the binder, she had printed a decorative sign like teachers put in classrooms, and it says, "I may not be there yet, but I'm closer than I was yesterday. So to me, that made me feel that she understood that how close we were. Because I can imagine, like I can remember six, seven years ago when I was saying, "You guys have to get serious about retirement planning if you actually want to retire. Everybody talks about retirement, but are they willing to do the work it takes so that they can stop working? Right, so they can retire. The

Alex Monk:

client that starts the tracker, yeah, when you tell them it's time and we've already picked the date,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah, and that's fun because they know they're ready, and it's fun when we know they're ready. It's not fun when we feel like they're not ready and they want to go anyway. We've had some of those. We've had some people retire and then try to become a new client and say, "Is that okay? I retired. And we're like, "Well, we'll figure it out, right? It's going to be what it is. We can't make a lot of changes. We can try to improve places we can, and try to invest in a different way to create wealth. To try to figure out an answer, we we rather have time, right?

Alex Monk:

I mean, time makes it easy, and that's kind of a catch 22, Brian, right? Because the more money that you need for cash flow, the less risk you should technically take because of market volatility, and the downside can hurt you a lot more. So,

BRIAN AKERS:

right, the more and more needs, the more protected you need to be, right, and then that makes it tighter and tighter on the future growth. You can't get more out of it down the road because you

Alex Monk:

have a smaller window of error, right? So it's kind of a, and usually people are like,"Hey, I'm late to the game. Let me jump in and take as much risk as I can.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah,

Alex Monk:

but you don't want to do that at this point. You don't have the time.

BRIAN AKERS:

I had this. Let's just say a police officer came in. Let's let's say he's from New York. He's from Brooklyn, New York, and you know Brooklyn, New York. They're

Alex Monk:

easy.

BRIAN AKERS:

They're very soft spoken.

Alex Monk:

Easy,

BRIAN AKERS:

but generally he has that personality, right? He's like all in, and I, I say, how serious are you at retirement? Because he gave me a list of all his debts, and there's a lot of debt. I mean, a whole page full of lines and lines of debt. And I said, you're not retiring. And he goes, Oh yes, I am. I said, Well, I'm retired in three years. I said, Well, I don't see how you can retire. And then he's he goes. I have to, okay. You have to, and he goes looks at me, goes, "What? What do I have to do to retire? And I said, "Let's look at your cash flow. What is the money that you're going to get when you retire in three years? What is that number? And then we're going to look at what you're spending. And see how negative it is right now. I did that. I did it rather quickly, and I said we're negative, like a couple 1000 a month. And I said that's why I say your cash flow says you cannot retire. And he goes, "Well, what do I need to do? I said, "All right. So you need to look at everything you own. Look at what you can sell. What you can downsize in what you can save money on, and we need to knock out this whole page of debt. All of them, every one of them, has to be gone.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and I I've had that scenario so many times, and I tell the person, I'm like, look, I'll help you do this once.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yep,

Alex Monk:

but if you blow it up again,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah,

Alex Monk:

I mean, obviously, I'll still help you, but

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah, well, the blowing it back up is usually, you know, things happen in life that aren't that don't go well when we don't have enough emergency fund. All of a sudden, we got to go in debt for it, and snowballs out of out of hand. Well, in this scenario, the guy came back in six months; half the debt was gone.

Alex Monk:

Let's go. A year later,

BRIAN AKERS:

he had cut everything out and knocked out almost all the debt, and so we're narrowing it down. And then about two years in, I'm like, you know, you're going to actually be able to retire earlier than you said. And he's like, no, and he's saying, look, the Brooklyn version of don't do it, don't do it of what what he said. He was very impressed. So I I got to visit him in Florida. I got to go see him and his wife, and then in Florida, they've actually moved to another location, really nice area, and I really enjoy the idea that we got we basically defeated the issue, and they've stuck within the plan, live within the cash flow and retirement, and they have basically everything that they want to do right there.

Alex Monk:

Well, and in that scenario, like he made a decision, right? So he made a decision to retire, and he went about what he it became a

BRIAN AKERS:

priority over top of experience and the best of everything, the best car, the best vacation. He cut that back for a couple years to clean it up so that he could retire and enjoy all the years of retirement, and that's what he did.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and so he gets rewarded for that discipline.

BRIAN AKERS:

Oh yeah,

Alex Monk:

but it gives you like you have to prioritize because you like you said earlier, something in life is going to happen. There's always going to be a reason not to pay yourself, or oh yeah, a reason to do this, or you know, there's always going to be justification, and especially if you're like, well, I had such a bad year because this and this happened. I deserve a good vacation. Oh yeah, and then I double down, and it's like,

BRIAN AKERS:

ah. Well, the normal American thing is everything we touch is selling us something. Our phones are constantly showing videos of, hey, buy this, you'll be cool. Buy this, it'll make you look better, and we start buying it, and before we know it, we've run up all this debt, and then we think, "Oh, I want to be better off financially. I really want this. And then the reality is, well, we got to stop accumulating things. We got to stop doing that. We got to live with what we have, live within our means, save and build, because we are the only ones that are going to have our money set aside for our own future. Who cares about our future more than than we do? Than the client does. They care about their future. They need to throw this money to their future self. That's the battle. It's a cash flow battle, and then the cash flow battle is won through properly investing. I believe money has to go to work for you when you're working. Make your money work. Make sure it's in the market. Make sure it's diversified. Make sure it's not just in one thing. Make sure it's diversified for you and design in your with you in mind.

Alex Monk:

And you know what it's doing, right? So that you can judge how it did. Like I have people that I meet with earlier this week, and I was like, "Well, I really liked what what this account did. He had it spread out over all. Let's find more of that. The history, and I'm like, well, you know, it's not about where it was held. It was about what account investment was in.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah.

Alex Monk:

Oh, so just like figuring out the structure and then flipping all those stones over, like, oh, I'll get to that when I'm retired. No, figure out where the money is now. Make sure it's invested for the future, you and doing the right thing.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, so I'm going to mess up a little bit here today. This is going to be tough. All right, so I have clients that have, let's say, they make under 100,000, and I found retirement actually easier to make it fit than my clients that make 400, 600, 700,000 a year because of the need of the ones that have are used to living at a high level to keep it going, and the reality of pensions and four 1k's are all designed with a middle income or lower person in mind. They don't give us the ability for higher income people to save enough in their general retirement plans to even come close to being able to retire and master income.

Alex Monk:

No, it'll never be enough. You got to save outside and buy different types of income-producing assets. Like,

BRIAN AKERS:

oh yeah, I like building a whole herd of them. Right?

Alex Monk:

I mean, yeah, this is this is a cow. Coming,

BRIAN AKERS:

I thought you really wanted to do the cow today. So

Alex Monk:

I have been using your cow example with clients. I think that's

BRIAN AKERS:

wonderful that you've come to that point in your career.

Alex Monk:

I was watching CNBC this recently, and Burger King came on, and they said we're really leaning into beef. Nice, and I'm like, oh well, Brian will really like that because retirement is a herd of cows, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, a bunch of them.

Alex Monk:

And the milk is your money.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, moolah.

Alex Monk:

And if moola eat your cow, then you better be able to sell that beef and buy like a goat that produces milk. I don't know. I haven't really gone to goat

BRIAN AKERS:

after after the cow. I do like goat cheese, but I haven't gone that way yet. But

Alex Monk:

like, what do you do after you kill your cow? You got to sell the beef, or do you just hope that's enough forever? Most people most people

BRIAN AKERS:

eat the beef when they when they spend it. They use it. They consume it. They go on that trip and it's gone, or they give it away to a kid. This is what happens a lot. Yeah,

Alex Monk:

you get that

BRIAN AKERS:

phone call and they they drop 50,000 real quick, and all of a sudden, that's a that's a slice out of the cow. There's not a replacement for that.

Alex Monk:

And then there's other scenarios too, right? Where we have conversations with clients that have saved extremely well, and they need to use their money. Yep, for them, find value for yourself because your kids didn't do all the things that you did, unless that's your goal. So,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah, there's lots of goals when it comes to financial planning. So savers have the ability to make lots and lots of choices, lots and lots of opportunities for them. Those that were not savers their whole life, there is ways to get you to where your goal is through proper planning and coaching. And then there's the whole blend of wherever you're at. That's your your unique financial fingerprint. We got to start there and build within your goal set exactly what you should do to hit that goal.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and what did you accumulate along the way? What do you have that's awesome? What do you have that needs help? What do you have that? Where

BRIAN AKERS:

is it all? Yeah, you love doing this, right?

Alex Monk:

I absolutely have never worked a day in my life here.

BRIAN AKERS:

Right, so you love it. Why? What's the big? Why do you love it?

Alex Monk:

I get to be my client's champion on their behalf, right? So I get to go out there and make sure no one does something bad to my people,

BRIAN AKERS:

and that's a lot of fun because we're on the same side of the table. We're helping them take from where they are to where they need to be, and we're guiding. So every time there's a meeting, it isn't like this big negative meeting is say, "Hey, we're trying to accomplish this, which is very cool. What is

Alex Monk:

this guy trying to do this time? No, I want you to win.

BRIAN AKERS:

And guess what? That's what we get to do for a living. We we get to figure this all out for you, rather than you figuring it out. We help you understand what you should do. Alex and I, we love doing this. Planning for anything like this is our job, something that we love to do, and because we love to do it, we will look at the good things and even the worst case scenarios when we're coming up with our answers. So when we meet with you, we put a plan together. That plan includes that everything's going to be taken care of, it's planned for, and that's what we want to be. Is everything's planned for for your situation? So go ahead and give us a call so we can create this financial plan for you, so that you can retire. But so give us a call at 833 when retire. That's 833-946-7384, or you can go to our website at akersfinancialgroup.com. Are you really ready to retire in one year, we'll talk about this when we return.

Unknown:

You're listening to a pre-recorded show. Welcome back to Winning in Retirement. Call 833 Win Retire now to schedule a visit with Brian and his team and begin Winning in Retirement. Once again, here's BRIAN AKERS.

BRIAN AKERS:

Welcome back to Winning in retirement, I'm the host BRIAN AKERS from AKERS Financial Group. I'm the president and founder. We do welcome you to the the fourth quarter of our show, and here with me today is Alex Monk. You ready to go, Alex? I love this part. I like fourth quarters. Yeah, fourth quarter. I'm a basketball coach, and I love fourth quarter because that's when it's winning time. You get to use your strategy. I get to use all my timeouts because I usually save them to the end. I'm technically a saver when it comes to timeouts in basketball coaching, to the frustration of my assistant coaches, which we want to call a timeout every time.

Alex Monk:

I won't touch that

BRIAN AKERS:

one. No, not at all. Okay. Well, there's no timeouts in radio. We just keep keep rolling. Oh

Alex Monk:

yeah.

BRIAN AKERS:

All right. So the show today, we've been talking about one more year. One more year was a conversation I had with one of my clients, one of friends of mine, and they came in and we were talking about everything they've done the last 10 years to get things right. And then I kept saying one more year, and the one more year was to get things finally ready to where they needed to be. What that meant to me is that one more year is really, I can mathematically get everywhere we need to do. So, how does someone retire next year? How do they get ready to retire? Is this combination of all of these things putting ourselves together? We've talked about the concept of one more year. We talked about budgeting, spending. We talked about. About cash flow, why it's so important, but we haven't given away the secret sauce.

Alex Monk:

No, we haven't. Well, and that's because it's meet with us every month while you retire.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, financial planning advice. Having a financial advisor starting now. Don't wait. Don't wait till you get to a certain level before you call one in. You need a financial advisor now, not someone just going to sell you a product because that product's going to be almost like a tool. It's like buying a hammer or buying one tool. It doesn't fix all the issues that are going on in your life when it comes to finance.

Alex Monk:

Right. Well, the product could fix some issue, right? But you got to figure out what the problem is. Could

BRIAN AKERS:

be a band aid, right? For one thing. Well,

Alex Monk:

yeah, that too. But the lat, like the year before you retire, there's a lot of one last things like a lot of let's get ready, let's identify our cash flow. Oh yeah, let's identify this. Are we doing the right thing? Where's our taxable income?

BRIAN AKERS:

Sure.

Alex Monk:

What do we lose if we don't do it before retirement? Because there's a lot of decisions in that last year that are permanent.

BRIAN AKERS:

Oh, I'm sorry. I got all excited. Yesterday, I got an email. The guy, the guy called me, or not? Not called me. Emailed me saying that. Oh, I just retired yesterday. That was my final final day. I'm ready to go on the next step. And so we had pre meeting. We had the healthcare talk. He signed up for healthcare. We had the pension talk. How to sign up for that? We had Social Security get that lined up. They actually moved out of state, got that lined up, organized. They're in the place. Needed money to fix that place up, so he did that. But then he was working remotely till the end in his final day, and now we have our next meeting planned. That next meeting plan is a rolled over meeting of money that he had saved, and we're rolling that into the income planning, and we have money delivering on the first of every month to keep the cash flow going right away.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and the the logistics are so important.

BRIAN AKERS:

Oh yeah, getting it all lined up so that you don't have to worry about one thing. You just know, hey, let's get this plan through. Let's get rolling.

Alex Monk:

And if you're scared to retire, you're you're normal, right? Like it's it's not like if someone comes in and they're not nervous, I'm like, what what's going on? You know, you yeah.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, that what I'm talking about is an incredible listener from radio shows over the years. He he been talking, planning, and we worked it out where he could work remote. He actually sold his home. He was able to then go remote and buy the dream house. Get into there. Get that all started. And now he's fully retired, and now he can start working on the house and getting everything the way he wants it perfectly.

Alex Monk:

I I like it when the the plan is oh well we're gonna do this. This is gonna be our retirement activity. Yeah, I like to see what people end up getting into because you got to do something with your time, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

Oh, I learned in 1990s one of my one of my first clients. They basically bought a house in Florida, so they became my first Florida client, Florida and Maryland combo. And so the first year they're all into the beach, they're reading on the beach every day, watching every sunset. Year two didn't go to the beach, and then recently, it was about year 34 or something like that, and they they haven't they haven't been to the beach in years. It's like 15 minutes away from their house. It's like it's on the outside. I don't need to go see the beach. Yeah,

Alex Monk:

I mean the the weather itself like is is enough to go, but

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah,

Alex Monk:

having the freedom to go and know that you can be taken care of, or do these things, and the worries that most people or all people have are at least addressed.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, to have change in life is a worry. Change is different. To to rely on your sweat equity and then rely on money and income coming from portfolio is a big deal for it to work, and to see it work is why. After you retire a couple years, it's a wonderful thing to know it's working and know how it works. So in this quarter, we're talking about

this. I call it:

Are you really ready to retire? I mean, ready. I mean, really, really ready. We want you to be financially independent. Financially independent is where we know the money's there, but then are you really ready to retire? And when you think about that, you think about one of your clients, don't you? What's going through? I

Alex Monk:

got so many people that I am just asking them to retire.

BRIAN AKERS:

Okay, because they they love it a lot and they just won't, or what?

Alex Monk:

Well, I don't know if they love it or it's like a sense of loyalty. I'm thinking about this one case. They live in North Carolina now, but like he's a company man. Like he's been there for 40 years.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yep.

Alex Monk:

Finally retires, and he's still working remotely.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. He took his

Alex Monk:

laptop on a three month cruise,

BRIAN AKERS:

a three month cruise. Yeah, so so he has he has he gone from five days to four days to three to two and a half. Now

Alex Monk:

he's like 30 hours a month remote. Okay, I've

BRIAN AKERS:

had that many times, and that's and that's not older though. But that's okay for him.

Alex Monk:

So I wanted them to spend time together.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah.

Alex Monk:

And like I keep telling him, like at the end, if it's just you and the what number on the screen is going to make you not miss your wife? Oh,

BRIAN AKERS:

you went hard on him.

Alex Monk:

I did.

BRIAN AKERS:

What did you say to that?

Alex Monk:

You said you're right, and I said, all right, well, start doing it now.

BRIAN AKERS:

So this was before or after the cruise, a three month cruise.

Alex Monk:

Oh no, he's still working part time. I can't kill that.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, I think that having a little something every day in retirement is a good thing. It's something that keeps us moving and going, growing. The more we are in action and retirement, the better, in my opinion. So we're talking about a lot of things. Are you truly ready to retire, or as we like to call it, financial independence? That's really our big thing. Getting your finances in order. It's just one of the many steps in preparing you for a great and long retirement. Yes, it takes some work, but hire us so that we do most of the work for you.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and the one more year thing-that's the beginning of what is supposed to be the golden years, right?

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah.

Alex Monk:

So you need to know that everything's in place, so that when there's a day that you can't do it, you know that it's going to be done for you and done correctly. And I see that a lot.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. So the idea of golden years might scare people because they they think working is their golden years, and and that's okay. That certain people are like that, and that's why we can scale in retirement. I had one case like that recently where the husband loves what he does. The wife goes, "Oh, he can work as long as he wants. I'm retiring next year, and I said, "Well, let's figure that out. And then I said, "Are you okay with that? And the husband goes, "Yes, we're pretty much going to have to. So there is a lot of different scenarios in retirement. Trying to get this all ready for you is perfect. Is what we try to do. So, Alex, what I was thinking about is this: we try to create buckets of money to diversify. That's some savings to get them out of debt. We use Roth IRAs pre-tax. We get guarantees in the portfolio. All this comes together based on their risk tolerance to provide income.

Alex Monk:

Yep.

BRIAN AKERS:

So that's really what you gotta get ready in that final years is making sure that it's all in place.

Alex Monk:

Yeah, and the usually the first meeting, like two three years from retirement, they show up and everything's in stocks,

BRIAN AKERS:

right?

Alex Monk:

And okay, well let's figure out where it is your fingerprint, but start coming up with these buckets. And the thing about these buckets, Brian's talking about is they're different sizes, meaning they come due at different times, right? So if you imagine like a stair step and it's buckets, right? The longer you go out, the longer you have to wait. So you need to make sure you have something on the shorter side and that it's constantly replenishing.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah, it's milking the cow. Yeah, yeah, filling the milk out,

Alex Monk:

creating the herd, but also balancing your risk. Because our goal for the portfolio management is for the market to not impact your retirement.

BRIAN AKERS:

Yeah. So the market's there to to help beat inflation over time, but we're probably not going to use for market money unless it's up, and then we're not going to use it anytime soon. We're going to try to have enough ladder for three to five years out where the market money is just supporting down the road,

Alex Monk:

yeah, and then that takes the emotion out of it, right? So from a portfolio construction, if the market's up, then we know where we need to trim. If the market's down, then we know we need to go to something that did not go down.

BRIAN AKERS:

So we have buckets like that,

Alex Monk:

and have enough in those buckets so that you never have to go to the market when it's not doing well,

BRIAN AKERS:

and that's why we don't use as many bonds. We buy the buy different ladder fixed annuities because they do not go down. Because we found that stocks and bonds act act alike; they go together up and they go together down, and that's always a terrible thing when things are terrible for what should be protected to lose money. And that's one of the reasons we get out of the bonds when it comes to building a portfolio out for for retirement, if

Alex Monk:

you're looking to reduce your risk with something that has risk and it's correlated to the thing you're trying to reduce, fundamentally you failed. The

BRIAN AKERS:

correlation's too high, which then dictates no, don't do it, don't do it, and then you throw in a dash of tax planning, right?

Alex Monk:

Ah, so that's my favorite thing. Like I, I like to hear the people's story, yeah. And then my brain turns all that words into what does their tax return look like? Oh, really? How do I? When am I going to get them these 100,000? Like, how how do we put this all together? Because that for me is the most

BRIAN AKERS:

depends if they come in with if it all being pre tax. If the whole thing's pre taxed, and you got to go heavy and hard at it. Oh yeah, make that work. If it's a combination over the years, we're able to build Roth and cash, a little bit of everything, and build all the buckets. Then it's a sort of a very easy combination of drawing money over time.

Alex Monk:

But the the the key is let's be a little bit ahead, so we can pay taxes on our terms. Like my favorite thing in the world is tax planning.

BRIAN AKERS:

Really,

Alex Monk:

I think it's fantastic.

BRIAN AKERS:

I don't think it's favorite thing in the world, though.

Alex Monk:

I mean,

BRIAN AKERS:

yeah, finance, finance, yeah, of course. All right, so today's show we talk about one more year. It's a conversation I had with one of my friends and clients, and we just would be put one more year out there. They agreed to it, and so one more year, we're going to see if they retire. Of course, they will. And so a year from now, I'll do another 80. Show maybe we'll do it with Alex and we'll sit down and talk about the one more year. All right, it's tomorrow. We'll call the show. It's tomorrow or something like that.

Alex Monk:

Today's your day. Today's your day. That sounds all sounds good.

BRIAN AKERS:

Well, what is your goal in life? When is your one more year? When is your day? Is your day? Help us. I'll help you just by giving us a call. Thank you very much for a good show today, Alex. I appreciate it. It's

Alex Monk:

fun, Brian.

BRIAN AKERS:

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 a free meeting with one of our team of advisors, go to our website at akersfinancialgroup.com, scroll to the schedule a meeting section, and let us know you'd like to schedule your free meeting right there. That's akersfinancialgroup.com. That's A K E R S FinancialGroup.com, or you can call us at 833 win retire. That's 833 W I N R E T I R E. We'll give you a call on Monday to schedule a free in person meeting with one of our team of advisors. Start planning for your retirement now. Go to their website or give us a call at 83946 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 Arcadio's Capital, an SIPC and Finra member firm. Advisory services are provided through Arcadios Wealth. AKERS Financial Group, and Arcadius do not share any common ownership. Neither Arcadius nor AKERS Financial Group provides tax or legal advice. Advice given on winning in retirement is general in nature, and one should seek further advice from their financial advisor, broker, attorney, and/or tax accountant before investing. Be sure to read each prospectus carefully to understand all the risks associated with each investment. Examples and scenarios shared are meant to be for illustrative purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.