337. What Should Be Included in a Financial Plan?

Most people don’t actually have a financial plan, they have a scattered collection of accounts, insurance policies, and investments they’ve picked up over time. In this episode of A Wiser Retirement® Podcast, we break down what financial planning actually looks like behind the scenes, and why so many people are missing it entirely.

Related Podcast Episodes: 

Ep 327. What Tax Planning Strategies Should You Implement for 2026?

Ep 224. Living in the Moment While Planning for the Future

Related Financial Education Videos:

Financial Planning Tips to Thrive in Your 40s

What is flat fee financial planning?

Other Links:

Our Financial Planning Process

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Transcript

Why Most People Lack A Plan

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most people don't even have financial plans. They just really have a collection of accounts and some random insurance maybe they picked up from a sales guy along the way. Today we're going to talk about what is financial planning, what's in a financial plan. What do you even talk about when you do financial planning? Stay tuned for more.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

Welcome to a wiser retirement podcast, where we cut through the noise and bring you real, honest conversations about investing, retirement, and building lasting wealth. No sales pitches, no gimmicks. Just insights to help you stop guessing and start planning your financial future.

Sales Culture Versus Real Advice

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Welcome to a wiser retirement podcast. I'm Casey Smith. Today I'm joined with Financial Planning Associate Grace Kennedy. Hello, Grace. Uh, today we're discussing how financial planning really works here at Wiser Wealth Management. What do we talk about when we go through planning? I think this would be a great uh intro to kind of profile what comprehensive financial planning really is and what it isn't, uh, which kind of reminds me a little bit. I got myself into a situation. Not really a situation. You know, I like I like poking the bear.

SPEAKER_04 1:08

I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Did you learn this about me?

SPEAKER_04 1:11

Maybe along the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

I don't mind poking the bear. Um, so there there was this post on um on LinkedIn that got served to me. I'm not anyone's friends that posted this, but it was a young man who said the journey to be a financial advisor uh is really kind of two things. You can go to school, go to college, major in finance or financial planning, you can get a job as a planning associate, you can go get your CFP, you can do some plans, you become a associate advisor, and then eventually you become a senior advisor. Right? Sound familiar, Grace? Yeah, it's kind of the track you're on.

SPEAKER_04 1:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Or and he's a it's like a whiteboard he's written on. He goes, or you can skip all of that and just be really good at sales.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

Oh, I think I know which one he wins, or I did sales, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

So, so so your reaction of like, oh, oh, yeah, is a normal person's reaction. And you would read that and go, ugh, that's yeah, whatever. He's selling, he's selling uh insurance products, yeah, mostly.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

Well, someone in the industry and thinking of it as what if he was my advisor? I would still be like, oh, I wouldn't like it either way.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

True. Okay, good point. Um, so most people just keep scrolling, right?

SPEAKER_04 2:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Well, I didn't didn't keep scrolling.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

You can't possibly do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

No, no, you can't do that. And so I had uh kind of a long little I was like, yeah, I mean, that sounds like the easy way of doing it, but you know, or you can, you know, take the harder path and actually be educated in tax and a state and learn how all these things work together, yeah, not sell anything at all and just give give solid advice to help people live better lives, and it's more meaningful work. Uh and then that's when I got into or you can do insurance sales, which is kind of empty work. We have people who who sell insurance and they're great people, and we prefer to them because we trust them. Yes, and they do a perfectly good job. So I'm not talking about them, but these insurance people that think they do financial planning, and then at the same time, uh, they talk down to people like us who have to do it. Yeah, that are just doing along their path, right?

SPEAKER_04 3:40

That didn't go to sales right.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

So I may have used little other words in there like sleazy salesman, uh, you know, and so why not? Oh my gosh. The reactions bad. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They they I I didn't read them. I mean, I I I saw read a couple of them and I responded to them, and then uh further down, it was like so many comments. There's there's really I haven't I think there's over a hundred thousand views or something like that. Oh dear for LinkedIn, that's like pretty big, yeah. So we yeah, I just I just kept uh uh then I got really busy and I kept getting all these alerts, all these comments. So I just left, I just but I just left it alone. And then I get one day uh we were we were in the in the uh uh break area and I and I was like, oh right. And so I go back on my phone, it's like, oh wow, these are really nasty comments. One guy was like, I could take my insurance sales company and uh I could run circles around your company.

SPEAKER_05 4:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

I'm like it's like okay, under what basis are you? Yeah, yeah, you know, and then he's like, Oh, all you guys talk about is assets under management, you don't talk about anything else, blah, blah, blah. Um but we you know what's common, and I'm getting closer to looking like these guys, and I will acknowledge that. But what was interesting was there were no young people that made negative comments to my comment. It was mostly, I would say, late 60s insurance guys.

SPEAKER_04 5:13

Yeah, because that's the only way they knew.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Because that's the only world that they that they knew. They never evolved into no financial planning. They they just sell they sell product.

SPEAKER_04 5:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

And and their product, their their tool belt is made up of widgets not built by them, built by the company they work for, or honestly, built by the industry. If they were even if they're independent insurance guy sales guys, they they there's only so many widgets you can put in that toolbox, right?

SPEAKER_04 5:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Uh none of them were certified financial planners, none of them a lot of them had CHL U, which is like the big insurance designation. It's insurance halls, everything. Uh, I I mean, you gotta have to remember, I I literally worked in that world for a year. It was horrible. I I had we had whole meetings of, you know, we we have these young people uh now and and they're gonna have kids, and then those kids are gonna buy cars someday. And so you guys can push this whole life policy that that you save into this whole life policy, and you can borrow from it to pay for that car. You can you can borrow tax free from it. You still have to pay interest, and the interest goes to the insurance company. But we have whole podcasts that are centered around why this stuff is crazy. But I just thought that was interesting. Um, now I will say this there weren't any uh nobody really wrote anything positive to my comment.

SPEAKER_04 6:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Uh, but my comment itself had way more likes than the negative comments. So we had a bunch of angry old men who are aging out, or maybe not, maybe they didn't save well, but they're aging out of their industry, and then we had a bunch of people like my comment.

SPEAKER_04 6:46

Yeah, well, they're probably, I mean, you can almost expect that reaction a little bit, you know, because we are such a small percentage of the industry.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Four percent, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:53

Yeah. And, you know, I do think it is the younger people like coming into the industry and they're like, wait, I don't really like how this is built. Like there is a conflict of interest. Like I think, and that's why we're also such a young firm because we're the ones with the young the mindset of that. Um, and it's very different to it's hard to find someone already in the industry wanting to pivot because that's the only way they know, and they're probably making a lot of money too.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Yeah, we we go to career fairs, the line's so long at our career fairs because they know they've done the the ones that have done the school that have the financial planning pathway.

SPEAKER_04 7:25

So, yeah, it is it's a different way to do the industry, but it's the one that benefits the client the most.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

So I just couldn't keep my mouth shut.

SPEAKER_04 7:34

Yeah, it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

But anyway, uh if you want to see the comments and and how ugly they were, you can go to my LinkedIn page and probably look at where uh look at look at who made the comment or uh what comments I've made. Because I my comment was on right, another post, and then you could probably find it that way. But it doesn't, it hasn't it's not really hot anymore on as far as uh views is kind of simmered down. There was another lady had posted something similar, and I kind of gave her the that girl, and it was some of the same uh type, same demographic of people that were commenting negative on her. And I couldn't tell it's because she was a fee only advisor or because she was a woman. I didn't I didn't know what, but it's like, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna stand up and help help this lady. This is ridiculous that they would be saying such ugly things. Uh and and yet, you know, I don't expect anybody to do that for me. I have no problem standing on a podium by myself. I'm sure you give it to me. I would have won with my sword. I have no problems doing that.

unknown 8:33

That's funny.

SPEAKER_04 8:34

Yeah. So we're gonna go into what you were trying to defend in this comment.

Data Gathering Beyond Investments

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Absolutely. Uh all right, so let's talk about financial planning. And what we're gonna do is uh walk you through our discovery, um, design and delivery process. It seems really, really simple. We talk to prospects, I think we simplify it sometimes too much. It's like, yeah, we're gonna do these three meetings, we're gonna talk about these things. Uh, but it's it's very high level because you have 30 minutes. For sure, super high level to engage with somebody over why we think why we think we're probably the best firm, uh best fit for them. So uh, you know, after you've booked a consultation, you decide that we're a good fit for you, we immediately go into the gathering uh gathering data process. So it's it's all pre-discovery meeting. Uh we send you an email that says this is what you can expect to go through the uh as you go through this process. Probably send a lot we send almost too much communication at the very beginning. I feel like we've been inundated with emails from different departments. Uh, but it's very clear as to what the what what we're gonna be doing. Um, really is gathering data. So that sounds so simple.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

It's not because we send you a long list of everything that we need.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Right. It's it's uh so the so the gathering data, I think at most firms, you're walking in with your brokerage statements.

SPEAKER_04 9:51

Yeah, just like your investment statements. And of course, those are important. We're gonna be looking at those. We need the numbers, we need to know what you're allocated in, but we need so much more than that. I mean, pay stubs, even life insurance that you have outside or of work or what your work offers, um, social security statements, not even you don't have to just be claiming insurance. We need to know what you're gonna have in the future because that's something that we project and look at. And there's so many times like we have this really long list, and you know, there are the occasional clients that like give us absolutely everything, and we're like, wow, star student. Yes. Um, but then, you know, sometimes they'll come to the meeting and they're like, Oh, I didn't know you needed that, because it may not, they don't think it maybe pertains to them. And we're like, no, like even though this may seem so far off to you, like we're going into the details of this, like the property casualty statements. Yeah, like, oh, you need my home insurance. Yes, we're we want to analyze it, look at it.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yes, for the decorations page, and you get like the renewal statement or something.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

Or the bill.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Or the bill, yeah. They just need the bill.

SPEAKER_04 10:51

Okay. So it it is overwhelming. And we've we've heard that from clients sometimes, like, wow, this is so much information, especially if they books like two days out, which is honestly really hard to do these days.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Probably shouldn't even allow that.

SPEAKER_04 11:02

Yeah, like you minimum, you need a week or a solid weekend to just hone in on it and gather everything that you need, but it it is a lot. But we are looking at probably every inch of your life that you probably didn't even think a wealth management firm would do.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Current estate planning. If you have it, will bibertin medical directors. We have great software we run that through that gives us a a a good summary and helps us find errors if if or for sure. Um, but yeah, uh I think the um yeah, the W-2s is to understand pay and um what you're contributing to 401k. Yeah, everyone says I'm contributing 10% my 401k, and then you do the math, you're like, you're contributing like three.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

Yeah. Yeah, it's just someone to come over your shoulder and make sure you look at anything. But again, with the estate planning, we me and William were going through a plan and um uh the clients handed us their stuff never been opened before, like fresh wills. Oh I was like, I've never like 25 years old. And they're like, Yeah, we've never looked at it again. I was like, Well, they were like, We've had a kid since then.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

They signed it, they put an envelope, they sealed it. That's probably normal. But not sealed an envelope.

SPEAKER_04 12:09

Yeah, it was really cool. I was like, Wow, I feel like I shouldn't be opening this right now. Um, but yeah, I mean, that's they sit it and forget it, and we're just the ones that are gonna come in, make sure everything is still up to date. And so, yes, all of the documents are very, very important.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Debt too, mortgage, that's right, car payments, minimum not only just the amount of debt, but the um interest rate and the minimum payment. Something that I think people have struggled with the most are company benefits. So your disability policy from your from your job, your your like what are your options?

SPEAKER_04 12:40

Let us go through it. Yeah, what do you need to pick up the disability?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

I think you and I in review meetings went through a little string of people said, Oh, I do have long-term disability, but I never sign up for that at work.

SPEAKER_04 12:50

And it's like, oh, well because they may not understand the importance of it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

So thank goodness for Google uh schedule send on emails.

SPEAKER_04 12:59

The amount of times I've like in a meeting, and I'm like during November, October, whatever, um, I send little reminders, make sure you sign up for this.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

So it's funny it sends it out, then you get a response back later. It's like, oh, thanks so much, Grace, for reminding me of this. You're like reminding you of what?

SPEAKER_04 13:13

And I'm like, I don't even know what I just sent you.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

I sent it to you.

SPEAKER_04 13:16

Thank goodness for that. So yeah, that's kind of the the that's before the discovery is all that stuff that they're sending us.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

And then that's before you even step a foot in the office.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

We just make sure that we have all the information um on our client profile before we start building the plan.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

And that gets uh uploaded through um uh through a secure uh online cloud file.

SPEAKER_05 13:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

All right, so now we've made it to your first meeting. And this is this is uh these are pretty easy meetings for me. I mean, for the client, they're like, oh my gosh, I'd you know, I've been running here with all this stuff. Right. But for me, um and I don't do as many of these anymore. Michaela, who passed her CFP yesterday.

SPEAKER_04 13:56

Ooh, got Michaela big accomplishment.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Huge. Um so uh you know, Michaela does a lot of the planning on on our team now. You support her, uh uh Caroline supports her. Uh but uh that that meeting, we we all kind of do these the same format. Yes. Is that a fair statement?

SPEAKER_05 14:14

Because you work with all the advisors. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

We all do these in the same format, and that that's on purpose. We have um or just a repeatable process. Right. Uh but so typically myself or somebody, somebody like a Michaela William or Oshana, they're gonna basically start off with like, you know, you're you're 80 years old. Uh well, there's a profile form, I guess. But but once we got the basics, but we we I love asking the question, you're 80 years old, you look back in your life, what's gonna be important to you? Because for the young families, they're just trying to get through the week, maybe the day.

SPEAKER_05 14:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Uh with especially with young children, even kids with teenagers, there's their schedules are so full. There's just even my my own mother-in-law sometimes says things like, We all just never, we just never see you guys anymore. You know, it's just trying to guilt trip my wife into you know, we never see you. And he was like, You don't understand, like we have three of these things.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

We're going all the way around. I have my own schedule, we got three other schedules.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Three a traveling baseball person, uh a horse person, and uh and a golf person. Like there, there's just no like I don't even see my own wife. We were we're divided up trying to accomplish different things, right? Uh, but so I try to give them this like come out of that for a second and let's just think about you're 80 years old, what's important to you? Like, what are we what are you doing this for? Yeah, we all we all don't want to have, we all want to be financially secure and know that we can retire, we're not dependent on a paycheck anymore. I mean, that that's that's part of it, but I think every planner probably asks that question. I want to know what's important to you. And that will change if you're if you're doing a plan with a 30-year-old, that's gonna be different. Uh, but the time you're in your 50s and 60s, you probably have an idea of like, okay, this is what I want to really want to be doing.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

Right. Because you can see it and feel like probably 10 years away for retirement, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

A lot of times it is a little cliche, but it's travel. We want to travel, we want to go to these five places.

SPEAKER_04 16:03

But that's freedom and that's a feeling, and that's very important to people. So that's on their list. How can we help you accomplish that?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

There's two types of grandparents. There's grandparents that we raise our own children, it's time for them to raise their children. We're gonna do the old things we've been wanting to do, and we'll peace out. We'll see you in six months. Uh, and then there's other grandparents that like, oh my gosh, these are grandbabies, we have to be there every day.

SPEAKER_05 16:22

Yes, all the things, yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

So I see that I see that two different types with clients, neither one is right or wrong.

SPEAKER_05 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Um, but but you know, the ones are gonna be buying stuff and taking entire families on trips, you know, that's what that's gonna cost more. So the lifestyle.

SPEAKER_04 16:36

So, how can we do that?

SPEAKER_01 16:36

So we're hunting for a dollar amount as we talk about those goals, but also just just take us, just take a second, stop and breathe. Like, what's in what is important to you? What are you what are you doing this for? What what's what what is the meaning of your life?

SPEAKER_04 16:50

Which takes some clients back. They're like, you know, we just got we're like confirming all of their basic information and we talk about, you know, when do you want to retire? What do you want to live on, all these sorts of things. And those are hard questions for a lot of people. They're like, what am I gonna live on in retirement? Like, how much is that number? And people don't know half the time. And then we're like, okay, we're gonna take a step back, actually. Um, because we do just want to take you out of all the numbers and calculations and truly know, like, okay, what brought you to the table? Like, what do you what are you trying to accomplish?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

I mean, in fairness to the client, they typically come in because we're trying to solve a problem. Of course. Can I retire? Um, am I gonna have enough money to do what I what I think I want to do in retirement? We're solving these problems. And so they're they're coming in as like, I need our order of operations as far as withdrawals or they're having some tax problems that are bigger than just looking at one tax return. These are all problems that they come in with that we're trying to solve for them. So I wish in a perfect world, I wish that uh we just had a whole meeting just around goals.

SPEAKER_04 17:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Because after we've solved the problems.

SPEAKER_04 17:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Because you use it's it's it's just kind of like you're you're lost and you're trying to go somewhere and someone's asking you, What do you want to have for lunch?

SPEAKER_05 18:04

Like, what am I not even thinking about?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

I just need to find the airport.

SPEAKER_05 18:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

In a city I've never been to. I'm really worried about lunch right now. And someone's sitting next to you going, but what do you want for lunch? You know, this is really important. Uh, so it is it is a little bit of an awkward time to do it, but I think it has to be done at the beginning. It has to be from a from a financial standpoint. Yeah. But but I think as as especially the clients who don't do one-time planning, the clients that have an ongoing relationship with us, right?

SPEAKER_04 18:29

Uh, we can we we catch back up on that of course in review meetings and and yeah, and we're continuously they're updating us on their lives, you know, and we we know what's going on a little bit more than we do with the the financial planning only that kind of come in once and then just they can come in again a year later or not. So because we're we don't know if we'll ever see them again. Yes. Sometimes we don't. We've had some five years, five year services surfaces.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Honestly, I think they all resurface eventually. It's just how we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_04 18:56

We're just like, oh wow. Yeah. But yeah, that is that's a good point. The problems are different than goals.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

So uh sometimes goals become more um uh more short-term goals, and that and that's in relation to debt. So we really want all of our clients to be debt-free by retirement. And and I've been doing this for 26 years and I've learned that uh if you don't have debt, that it just makes retirement that much easier. Retirement is it's really not always about rate of return or how much you have, it's really about cash flow.

SPEAKER_05 19:31

For sure.

Debt Free Retirement And Cash Flow

SPEAKER_01 19:32

So if if uh you know you have a dam and you're letting all the water out, you're what's on the other side of the dam is not gonna get very full, right? And so it's the same way with cash flow and retirement. If you don't have much going back out that's required, then your reserves are gonna build up or your money's gonna build up, or when you let it out, you let it out because that's money you want and you're gonna go do things with it. So so that that's something that we really hone in on. Um is is is debt. And then for young people, it's like, hey, like why why do you have this debt? Let's get rid of this, let's think about this differently. Let's go through six to eighteen months of pain of paying all this off, and then after that, man, you guys are gonna be able to get a weight lift in the lost control.

SPEAKER_04 20:11

Yeah. And you it'll help you reach your goals a lot faster too.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Cause the cash flow that you can I have a assistant client that came in last week. I I think you were um you were out of town, but uh he um he got into some debt and he's like a couple years from retirement, and I'm like, gotta get rid of it. Right. And he he kind of fought me on it just a little bit, not not rude in a rude way, but just like, I don't know, maybe I can do this, maybe that. And and I saw he emailed me on that Saturday and I and said, Hey, I don't I don't know if I want to do this. What could you know, what are my I feel like there could be other options. I was like, Well, there are other options, let me lay them out for you. And I did all the math and calculated the tax implications of all the different ones, and then I sent it to him. He's like, Yeah, I just want to pay all this off.

SPEAKER_04 20:53

Yeah, yeah. It is scary though to see all that come out.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

And then by and then by Sunday afternoon, there's another email going, When do I get this these funds? Because like I'm excited about this. Can you do it now? I'm gonna, yeah, can we do this on a Sunday? I'm I'm so excited about this. I'm so excited about being able to then now repurpose that money into in my 401k and other places. So it sometimes it's just helping people go through that journey. You know what the right thing to do is, and as as practitioners, we jump right to it because we know, okay, this is what you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_04 21:21

And we're not attached to it either. We're just like, yeah, just pay it off.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Right. Where where I think uh in his case, I should have gone a little bit slower and let him go through the decision tree journey with me, as opposed to me just saying right, this is the best one. Um, we'll talk about emergency reserves. These are sometimes people come in with too much reserve, and sometimes people come in with with no reserve.

SPEAKER_04 21:42

Right. It's it's see both ends. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

I mean, we just we're making$500,000 a year and they got five thousand dollars in the bank.

SPEAKER_04 21:47

And you're just like, we don't need any much more.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

We're like, uh uh okay.

SPEAKER_04 21:52

Does your roof need to be replaced? Because you don't want to put that on a credit card, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:56

So so yeah, the uh emergency reserves kind of big deal. Um we talked about About high yield savings. We get a lot of questions about that. I'm not sure why people uh question online savings so much. These are real banks.

unknown 22:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:10

Maybe they look weird online. You can't get fishing. Or maybe they're just yeah. But they they often do offer the best rate of return. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Um a lot of the high yield banks I recommend, they do have locations. They're just not in Georgia.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

They're in the Northeast or something. And but you could drive there.

SPEAKER_04 22:27

They're probably just don't want to, yeah, they're probably just nervous about finding something online. And I mean, it's better for them to be nervous, I guess, than just sticking it in something really quick because we've seen that too.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Um so we've talked about your goals, we've talked about debt elimination, we've talked about how much cash you need to have. Now we're analyzing all these documents you upload and asking questions.

SPEAKER_04 22:45

Just confirming everything, making sure the numbers that we have also are what you thought that you had, or maybe we open your eyes to some stuff.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Super organized people. We're probably done in an hour. Yeah. Um other families, maybe an hour and a half.

SPEAKER_04 22:58

If we're gathering more stuff as we're sitting down, which happens a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah. If you're bringing online logins in a computer, your own computer, that sometimes make things go a little bit faster.

SPEAKER_04 23:08

Yeah. And invest we need investment options a lot of the time from like 401ks and stuff. And that can be hard to find. And it's so it is beneficial for us just to like pop open the computer really quick, help them log in and get everything. So but yeah, that's that's mainly what we go through, just making sure that we have everything we need to step into the next meeting um and make sure it's the most efficient for them as we start building the plan.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

And there's a checklist for this. We provide checklists prior to the meeting that so it it there's not, I don't think we're surprising anybody with what we need. Or if they did, they just didn't uh have a chance to look at the checklist.

SPEAKER_04 23:40

Yeah.

Design Meeting With Planning Software

SPEAKER_01 23:41

So that that's anyway. That's the discovery process. Uh now we take a probably a week to work on this in the background, uh, and then we move into what we call our design meeting. And inside the design meeting, we start off right away with data entry. So we've taken all the information from meeting one, we've now put it into our software program. So we're there's three software, three different types of software we're using. We're using financial planning software, we're using tax planning software, we have estate planning software. So three separate things. Two, have some AI built into it that helps us uh work a little faster, uh, also helps us find mistakes or things that could be done differently to the client's advantage. Uh, and the other one is just more data in, uh, data out, yeah. Kind of a kind of a setup. Um, so that takes a little while to go through there. We we for the third time in the process, you know, we we talked to a uh talk to you in a consultation, we've asked you what are your hopes and dreams. And we've talked a little bit about that and goal setting in our second meeting. And then in the third meeting, we do it one more time. Yeah. And we ask you to visualize yourself in retirement. And there's these check boxes that we go through in the software. And and honestly, uh, people are like, yeah, I think I've only had one person. I think most people just kind of go along with the process. I think I have one person that said, I've told you this already. So that that shocked me a little bit. And I was like, oh, oh, okay. So I always start off my meetings with, I know I've already asked you this twice. Right. But this is a third time because we get sometimes we get three different answers.

SPEAKER_04 25:16

And so now like they're also still thinking about it. Probably something new could come up.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 25:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Uh it's it's yeah. So so we ask you for the third time, hey, envision your retirement. What does it look like? Are you active? Are you are you more quiet lifestyle?

SPEAKER_04 25:31

Are you part-time working? Do you want to keep doing something? Do you have expensive hobbies? Yeah, do you want to travel? All the things.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Charitable, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

All the things you're gonna be bored.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 25:42

All the things.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

My favorite question is the last one in the last section that says uh your concerns for retirement. And when is this too much time together?

SPEAKER_04 25:50

That's always a fun one.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

You're about too much time together, and and yeah, it's 50-50. Half half people are like, uh, absolutely, like, I don't want him in this house.

SPEAKER_04 25:58

Like, oh yes, click that. And others are like, what never? Right. It's like no in between.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

No, yeah, that's right. It's it's either one or the other.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

Before we jump back into the episode, do you know if you are ready to take off and launch into retirement? Get your pre-retirement checklist, a free guide from Wiser Wealth Management, from cash flow to social security. We've got your account down covered. Go to wiserinvestor.com slash guides to download your free guide today. Now let's get back to the episode.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

And then we hop right into retirement projections uh based on your current assets and savings rates. So this is the fun part because it's we prepare for it, but we don't we can't really finalize it without you.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

Yeah. So we want your input. Is this what you thought it was gonna be? Or we can change it.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

So now we just went from like accounting.

SPEAKER_04 26:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

And now it's art.

SPEAKER_04 26:58

It is. It's fun, honestly. So you get to change it.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

So there's this blank canvas, and it starts off with this is how much you have saved, this is how much you're saving, and this is where it's taking you. And we're gonna take into account inflation, which is we use two and a half percent. Health care is a separate line item for expenses in retirement. That's 5.3% increase. And then we can add all the other goals we want to. Yeah. Sometimes we have to add long-term care costs, sometimes we add um travel expense, long-term care insurance costs, I should say. Yeah. We add travel, travel expenses, we uh paying off a home, buying a second home.

SPEAKER_04 27:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Uh, I mean, the list goes on. Weddings too, absolutely. Yes, that's right. Weddings, cars, retirement, yeah. These are all the things that that get added into this, uh into this goal board or um uh financial goal board. And from from there, um a software or a the client is very interactive. So the client says, What about this? Or what about that? Or what if I what if I work till 65? What if I went to 67? Well, wow, this looks really good. What if I what if I quit at 60? It's like, oh, that's good. What if I quit at 55?

SPEAKER_04 28:03

Yeah. And we like we have them all lined up, like we have your different scenarios, um, most of the time, one by one next to each other, so they can actually visualize the differences between both. Like, okay, if I did work five years later, I could spend more retirement or more money in retirement. But do I really need all that? You know, like they're this is all going on in this one design meeting, um, which is really fun because especially if they have options. Um, and even if even if it's the plan doesn't look like how you wanted it to, we're we're not gonna leave the table until we have a plan that you're comfortable with, and that's also successful in all the different calculations we run. So you're gonna leave it either knowing what you need to do to make something happen, or you'll leave knowing that, like, okay, I've done a good job. This is still what I thought it was gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

You know what's cool is we we work on so many plans. Um, we have a traditional asset center management business. Well, we call it wealth management, right? That includes all this planning that's done on a regular basis. And then we have people who come in and pay a one-time fee for a one-time plan. Because of that, our advisors are working on nine to twelve plans a week. So you think about our all of our advisors now are super seasoned, uh, very, very good at what they do. Planning associates, think about where you are now, Grace.

SPEAKER_04 29:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

And yeah, how many plans you touch every single week.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

You've been here a year and a half, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah, year and a half. So the closer you get to 10,000 plans, you become the expert, right?

SPEAKER_05 29:34

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

So you're touching nine to twelve plans per week. Uh between holidays and vacations, we probably work 44 weeks out of the year, right? Uh that is uh that is a lot of plans. That is a ton of plans. Uh, so that I think that gives us an advantage. One, we're helping our community with people who either don't want to pay an asset management fee, uh, we don't think should be paying an asset management fee, or um they're in a position where they don't have assets to be managed because it's either all in a 401k, or if they just don't have assets yet. Um so that those one-time plans really help our firm uh become experts in our craft and what we do. Where a normal wealth management firm, even you know, you're you're a uh a big box company, you are not touching that many. You might touch three plans a month. Yeah. Maybe maybe.

SPEAKER_04 30:30

So we see a lot of different things too. And it's not like we have like some average client that comes in, like, oh, this is just data in, data out. It's no, it's like everyone is so unique in how they want to run their plan, and everyone's goals and aspirations are so different. So we get to see a lot of different things. So it's like, you know, you can bring something up to us. We're not gonna be like, oh, we've never seen that before, because we probably have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Um, just somebody in this building has.

SPEAKER_04 30:54

Yes, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Between 18 of us, some somebody has.

SPEAKER_04 30:57

Which is it probably comforting to the client too, because it that can be very scary to them and overwhelming. And then we can just, you know, take the pressure off. Like it's okay, this is how we handle it.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

I think, I think financial planning, well, I don't know. It's also unique. I was about to say financial planning could be can be a little more talk to the masses. You could talk about financial planning, but honestly, uh you think about all the airline pilots we work with. Airline pilots love teachers and nurses receivers, and both of those tend to have pensions. Uh and so that but so they're planning versus like the other segment that loves us a lot is business owners. We have so many business owners here. Uh they don't have pensions at all.

SPEAKER_04 31:37

Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Uh that we're trying to figure out the valuation of their companies so that we can do good planning around that.

SPEAKER_04 31:43

Yeah, their plan looks totally different than an airline.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 31:47

So you can't speak to the masses when it comes to that, like maybe some things, but but definitely not in taxes. No, never in taxes.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Everybody has a different tax scenario.

SPEAKER_04 31:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

I had a phone call uh last week. Someone said, Oh, um, I have a buddy of mine, he's been doing this, and I was thinking, I need to come in and see you because I'm not doing that. That must be the better way to do it. Yeah. And I said, No, every based on you, every tax strategy is it's like a thumbprint.

SPEAKER_04 32:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

It's unique, it's unique to each each person. Everybody has a just a different, there's different twist to every single person or family. Exactly. Uh so knowing that when we go in to start these retirement projections, uh, everything's a little bit, it's just a little bit different. It starts kind of tailored to you. It starts generic. Yeah. Because we we don't know you.

SPEAKER_05 32:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

But in that meeting, we get to we learn a lot. We learn a lot. And so then we start we start crafting it uh uh to ba based on your exact situation. So this is kind of where we s we talk um, you know, we've already talked about debt, we've talked about savings at this point, we've talked about um retirement projections, uh assuming you know, college planning. I typically put in the last meeting, but every family's so different on that. We'll so we'll get that to eventually. But then this is and sometimes we go, oh wow, you actually have more than what you need for retirement.

SPEAKER_04 33:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

And so then we call we call any additional dollar opportunity money.

SPEAKER_05 33:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

And so opportunity money is really fun because that means you've just talked to a person that they're they've checked all the boxes pretty easily, but now he's like, okay, what do we do with that extra dollar or that 20 bucks that keeps disappearing out of your pocket, right? So the opportunity money, that's where the real estate conversations come in, or all term investments, or just building up an account that's not related to related to retirement, but something's gonna come up, an opportunity.

SPEAKER_05 33:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

See what I did there? Clearly. Um opportunity will come up and you have the resources to then go and and uh and and execute because you've been saving those extra dollars that you weren't that don't need to be used.

SPEAKER_04 33:57

Yeah, and this is also on top of like your standard emergency fund. Um, this is money on top of that. So like it's invested, it's not just sitting there. Um, so it has the opportunity to be something big, like buying a second home that you never knew you could actually afford. And so it is really cool, or buying a new car that you've always wanted. Like it can be endless opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Yeah, anything. Anything. Yeah. Uh preferably things that appreciate this and not depreciate, but but there is, you know, you still gotta have fun. It's like it's like uh, you know, it's like dying happy or dying healthy. It's a very fine line, right?

SPEAKER_04 34:32

Sean is not gonna like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Sean is not gonna like that at all. Everyone must die healthy.

SPEAKER_04 34:36

Always healthy.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

I go for my weeks of healthy, and I I have weeks of I love, I love pecan pie and crispy cream donuts. Yeah. I grew up in the south, you know.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

Right. You gotta have a little sweet treat. But yeah, there's also there's also the other side of that. We don't always, of course, see people come in with all this extra funds that they can save to an opportunity fund, like William and I did a plan, and that was not their situation, and that's totally okay. Yep. And they had they were so tense in those first couple of meetings, like they were just like, I'm sorry, like we're just all over the place. We were like, it's okay, like we don't care. This is fun, like this is like we just want you to be comfortable here. Like, we're not judging, like, why would we judge at all? But it people come in like that, you know, because they're because we don't, you don't always have to have like an a stent a substantial amount of money when you come in here, you know, because we are doing one-time plans.

unknown 35:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:25

Um, and I feel like when you're walking to a wealth management firm, people are a little scared. Like, oh, I'm gonna be judged. Like, I don't have two million dollars walking in. But it's okay. Like, we're trying to help you accomplish whatever it is that you have set in your mind. And so um, they had a situation where, like, okay, you should we pay, they were so close to paying off their mortgage. Um, but they were like, they had so much debt that needed to be taken care of for them to be able to save for retirement properly. Um, and so we eventually like that, we left the design and they you could tell that they were just a little defeated. But then by the time we got to the delivery, they were fired up. Like they were so excited just to like hone in on the plan. Like William had outlined everything. Um, and they were just excited to like, you know, it's a relief to get rid of debt because I don't think you realize how much it weighs on you.

SPEAKER_05 36:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:16

Um, and they were so excited just and William's like, oh, thank goodness. I'm so glad like we're all on the same page. Like, I mean, they were above the page that we were, like we had no idea what they were gonna come in saying. So um, and we see a lot of plans like that. And it it's just encouraging, even as a planner, knowing that like we can help you in a circumstance like that, like feel more comfortable and amped up. And like we're gonna be checking in with them um moving forward, just making sure that they're doing well and working towards the goals. But so there, yeah, there are people with lots of extra income, and there's people that aren't, and they've got to start tightening up and work towards something. And so we've seen it all.

Stress Tests And Conservative Assumptions

SPEAKER_01 36:54

So yeah. Uh hundreds of news. And this is all talked about in the design. Hundreds of new plans a year. Uh, so it like gives us perspective. Um, so what once we have those that part of the meeting where we talk about um say making sure retirement's on path uh on the right path, opportunity money's there, uh, or gonna could be there in the future. Uh, then we just try to break everything at this point in the same meeting.

SPEAKER_04 37:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

This is all in one thing, everyone. So now we try to break it. So we're running a thousand stock and bottom market scenarios. We're not using like, oh, this works if you get an 8% rate of return per year. Like that that's not realistic. You want to, you want to be, you want to assume a higher rate of inflation than what probably will happen. You want to assume a lower rate of return, uh, and and and you want to deally want to allow people to delay social security. So those are three things that most advisors aren't going to recommend uh simply because um it doesn't really benefit them. Yeah. But if you don't have a dog in the fight, you're just looking, you know, you're getting paid by the client to help them, yeah. Uh then your your advice tends to be a little bit different. Um, so we're looking at a thousand different bond stock and bond market scenarios come up. The probability I typically want that at between 82 and 85% chance of not running on money before age 95 is typically what we plan to. Uh the reason why it's 85 and not 100 is because again, the plan's so conservative.

SPEAKER_04 38:19

Yeah, we're already so conservative.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

You're gonna leave millions and millions of dollars to the next generation. Maybe you didn't live your best life.

SPEAKER_04 38:23

Yeah, and you're living on nothing.

Disability Life Insurance Long Term Care

SPEAKER_01 38:25

So you want you want you want that. Some people get all, some people get have large estates and pass on, but for normal people, uh, I would say that uh we want to make sure that that they can make it to age 95. Yeah is what we're looking for. Um, and then you think about other things that could possibly derail you, uh disability. So if you were disabled, that's more likely of you being disabled than than dying.

SPEAKER_04 38:47

You to die, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

So if you're disabled and you can't work, uh there's an acquaintance, not a client here, but an acquaintance of mine um was misdiagnosed at the hospital of a stroke and ended up being permanently um disabled because they didn't treat him properly. And he had other complications, which so it's not like a cut and dry lawsuit, I don't think, although I'm I think they should probably take legal action. Um, but they they uh uh all of a sudden husband can't work, wife has to go back to work. And the disability is 50% of his pay. And you think, oh yeah, 50%, that's not bad. Until you actually have to do that with young kids.

SPEAKER_04 39:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

This is a person like 150 years old.

SPEAKER_04 39:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Uh yeah. And so if you're not budgeted for that, then that disability and then also to your medical expenses are gonna be skyrocketing most likely. So that 50% is probably just covering that most of your medical.

SPEAKER_05 39:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

So those are things that uh, or you may not have medical, you have to go on Cobra because you don't have the job anymore. So there's like so many variables that people um probably have exposure to. And unfortunately, the only people who are selling that are insurance people, and they walk in with like scorched the earth mentality of like, you need as much disability as you can possibly buy. And you're looking at$800 a month for disability. That's crazy. So you you gotta put a realistic lens to it and figure out what the reality would be. Uh, and so that's that disability conversation. It's easier, that's a harder conversation of the three between uh disability, life insurance, and long-term care.

SPEAKER_05 40:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Uh long life insurance, it's more of a math problem. Uh, you know, we're we don't typically recommend these permanent policies. We really like to see you building your own net worth uh with through investments, um, either investments, real estate, all the normal things, and then uh life insurance. Uh we want to see term typically until retirement age. Most of our retirees, I think all of our retirees. Well, I'll say most since since I probably don't remember every single family at this point, uh, don't need life insurance. They they've saved up enough over the years that that they're just falls off in retirement.

SPEAKER_04 40:53

That's correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

And and a lot of times we got sold whole uh uh permanent policies because uh a death tax, but now your net worth has to be over$30 million before we're worried about you paying estate tax as a as a married couple. Um so there's a life insurance component. Uh, if we need that life insurance, we don't sell it, we don't sell any products. So we're gonna refer out to uh one of our partners that but that will sell you a policy and doesn't act like these people who are coming on my LinkedIn page.

SPEAKER_04 41:21

Yeah, and they'll take really good care of you. We uh connect you in an email and we tell them exactly what you need so there's no confusion on your end or their end. Um, and then they send back the quotes that were copied on and we help you go over them. So it's a pretty seamless process if that is something that you need to get um added on.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Yeah, and then uh long-term care is an additional conversation that we have. So if you're above the age of 50, we could start looking at that a little more closely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:48

Uh but we do look at it no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

But we do, but sometimes it's a 30-second conversation and sometimes it's a 30-minute conversation.

SPEAKER_04 41:54

Because some people are also more worried about it than others. And so if if that is, you know, one of your worries, then of course we're gonna walk you through it a little bit more than someone that may not. And if you have any your family too.

SPEAKER_05 42:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:04

Like if you've had a parent go through that and maybe have had a bad long-term care policy, you're obviously, you know, you're more familiar with it than you'd probably like to be. So you want to make sure that you're also taken care of. So we talked about it.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

We have a client recently who's very stoic and she never needs help, but she did say, I need to go to assisted living. So she went to assisted living. I was like, Great, you have a policy for this. Yeah, they'll pay$6,000 a month.

SPEAKER_05 42:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

And she did the interview for the policy, and they asked her, Do you need help going to the bathroom? Well, she's not gonna tell somebody that she needs help going to the bathroom. She's like, No, I can do it myself. Because she doesn't know this person who's interviewing.

SPEAKER_05 42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

And then, but she can't. Yeah, she has to have help. Do you need help showering? Oh, I can shower on my own.

SPEAKER_05 42:47

I mean, she can't.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

And she can't. And they and then they were like, Well, do you need help, you know, moving long distances? It's just like, no, I know I'm doing, I'm doing very well. How are you?

SPEAKER_04 42:58

I already know who you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

She she got she got denied the policy. Of course. She's like, Why do I have the policy if I just get denied if I'm here? And it's like, because you answered all the questions incorrectly as to what's actually happening. Yeah. Um so, but yeah, that there's there's so many different types of long-term care now. Uh, even if you don't qualify for the insurance-based uh long-term care, like like the permanent policy or kind of like term and how they do uh you pay every month uh for your entire or every year, every year for your entire life, and some policies are paid up. Even you have annuities now that are uh twisted into life insurance. And that sounds horrible, but if you don't qualify for the others and you have extra assets, like maybe opportunity money, you could fund it and you'd get you'd get like three or four or five times that amount um uh back and and long term care payment. And then if you pass away, the money goes on to um the next generation. So it's not completely lost.

SPEAKER_05 43:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Uh those are those are policies. Of course, the downside is uh that money's out of the market, it's not earning anything. Um, They they basically give them a free loan. But if you needed it, it would be there, it would fill in a gap and protect the rest of your net worth. So those are policies again. We don't sell any of these policies. We we uh just help you um sort out and pick one. Uh again, it'd be the same same couple of firms that we use uh that would sell those. So that makes up a design meeting. That's that's a lot, you're head spending, honestly.

SPEAKER_04 44:21

Yeah. Uh we go over a lot of stuff.

Delivery Meeting College Tax Estate

SPEAKER_01 44:23

And I think that's probably the family you use. You say we weren't really sure if they're designing how they were feeling, is because they're trying to process it all. Yeah. But once you process you come back the next week for the delivery meeting, and inside delivery, we're gonna start off with college planning. Uh, every family does a little different. We have families that say, I paid for my college, my kids can pay for their college. We have some say, Well, I have$50,000 seat up for them and they can use it as they wish. And other people are like, no, we got to cover 100% and they're going to Harvard. Uh so it's all over the map, and there's not a wrong way, a right way to do it. It's it's uh uh the wrong way is probably just not to have a plan and and not even discussing it and not even discuss what what the child's uh options are. I I feel like if you if you lay it down at the very beginning, even in the beginning of high school, and say, this is what you're gonna have saved, this is probably the schools that we can pay for, then then you can It's an easier transition into that. Yeah, yeah, easier transition, but also get your studies in line for what your options are.

SPEAKER_04 45:19

Yeah. And we have really cool software for that too. It's like we're putting in the kids' state of birth, where they potentially want to go to school.

SPEAKER_05 45:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:26

Um, and I ran one just because you know, if you have kids, I just am like, I'm gonna run it for you. But um there's like a one-year-old, and I was like, I don't know if this is really helpful. I'm like, Do you know we're supposed to go to school? Um, you can just put a four-year public or out or out of state or private, but we can also choose a specific school.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

If this is something that they're like in high school, if you went to Princeton and your kids will be in Princeton no matter what, then yeah, we can we will tell you exactly how much you need to save in order to fully fund it or halfway fund it.

SPEAKER_04 45:55

Um, so it's a really cool software that I think takes off the pressure of the of the parent, knowing like, okay, now I because who what other software is there out there to do that? No, in a specific school and all that, you have to run the numbers yourself.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

Correct. Um, and the inflation rate. So our software tells us what the average inflation rate is for that school intuition.

SPEAKER_04 46:15

Yeah, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

And adds in all the stuff they don't tell you about.

SPEAKER_04 46:18

Mm-hmm. I know that you just figure out as you go.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

I know. I've noticed at my kids' school. It's like, oh, is this school is X amount per year? And then you start getting the bills and it's like, it's like 20% more than that. It's there's the parking fee, there's the there's the um, you know, the sign up fee, then there's the sign off the fee, and then there's the sign in fees, all these sign fees. I'm like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 46:39

I was like, hey dad, I need like six hundred dollars just to park on the property.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 46:44

Yeah, there's a lot of hidden fees. So we'll help out with that.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

So that those conversations actually are are pretty straightforward for in most situations. Yeah. Uh so then we go into tax planning. Tax planning is a little more involved than you might think. So this is where uh maybe some asset location comes in. So we kind of cross tax planning is a little bit of a cross of portfolio management and traditional tax planning. So we're looking at you know, last year's tax return, what happened with with that, but then more importantly, we're more focused on how do we have the most tax efficient retirement.

SPEAKER_05 47:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

And so that could be saying, hey, in your brokerage account, your opposition slash opportunity money, um, you have ETFs, but you could really be doing direct indexing and you could might be able to create$30,000 worth of tax credits every year. If you have enough um, if you had probably$750,000 or more in a brokerage account outside of investments. Uh so you might be might be a good candidate for for that. And let's rethink how we're investing for the future. Or you're gonna have a larger brokerage account. That means when you're 65 to 75 and you're not working, your income could be really low if you lived off your brokerage account, and then you could convert from IRA to Roth during that time period.

SPEAKER_05 48:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

Uh all all the things. Um, then should you be saying where should you be saving your money in your Roth 401k inside your pre-tax 401k or into a brokerage account? Do you need to be doing backdoor Roths? Do you need to be doing mega backdoor Roths inside a 401k plan if your if your plan allows for that?

SPEAKER_05 48:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

These are all things that you need, you you just can't decide based necessarily on what tax bracket you're in. That that's a part of the equation, but also what tax bracket will you be in the future. In the future.

SPEAKER_04 48:32

And we'll see that.

SPEAKER_01 48:34

And then we're basically doing those future returns and coming up with a with a uh average tax rate to then help us make a decision on where you should be saving uh money based on the current tax code. One thing I will say you need to be very cautious of is a lot of people do this tax planning, if they do it at all. They do it and they say, Oh, well, the deficit, the deficit in the US is so high we're past$39 trillion. Taxes have to be higher in the future. No, they don't. No, they don't. And I think it's um not a good idea to be doing your tax planning with the assumption that you need to do tax planning with the reality of what we're in right now.

SPEAKER_04 49:09

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

And that's the current tax code. You always plan on the current tax. You know how many times I've seen things in committees and say, oh yeah, this is definitely probably going to get passed. They never make it out of committee. And then if we had if if we had to plan to everything that might come that might happen, you you just you wouldn't know which direction to run in. So you plan on with what you know.

SPEAKER_04 49:27

Yeah, not a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

So when a secure act 2.0 comes out, we have to dive into it and figure out what's changed, how does that benefit our clients or hurt our clients? Those are all things that we're continuously doing for our wealth management clients. Um, but those those are things that are uh you have to you have to just have to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Uh not you know, I at traditional firms, I feel like they get your assets and they're just gonna manage the money and then the dude's out paying golf someday. When's the last time you saw me take a day off playing golf? So so you need to have a team that's that's paying attention to those things and doing real monitoring of of tax and planning changes uh because that's that all intertwines with asset management. It's not just about managing assets. So after we have um our tax conversation, oh, we're looking for underpayment penalties, oh that. I see a lot of families that don't pay enough in and you're like, oh, you paid 500 bucks in an underpayment penalty. If you just adjust your withholding by X amount, then you won't have to worry about that. That's 500 bucks you keep in your pocket.

SPEAKER_05 50:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

So it's just a little just a little fine-tuning of things. I I also find that CPAs aren't doing as much planning anymore. There's more um, they just do tax returns and people think that's planning and and it's not. Uh then we would talk about estate planning. If we have if you already have estate planning done, we're simply reviewing the work and trying to determine if there's any changes that can be made because of laws or changes that need to be made because that we have um uh uh you know family changes. Uh if you don't have it, we'll talk about different structures, the the plus and minuses of a revocable living trust, or do you just need a basic will? These are all things that we will uh discuss. If we need documents prepped, we have um attorneys that we partner with that would then uh help you uh actually sign new documents.

SPEAKER_05 51:18

Yeah.

Portfolio Policy And 100 Day Plan

SPEAKER_01 51:18

And then finally, you think we talked about this sooner, uh, but finally we talk about portfolio allocations in our delivery meeting. So now that we have all this information under our belts, now we can actually make real portfolio recommendations for 401k plans, how we invest your assets here at Wiser. These are all the things that we come up with. And we basically draw out a um investment policy statement for our wealth management clients and say, okay, this is uh this is how things should be managed going forward. Uh and and everyone signs that so our team understands what the objectives are of the portfolio uh and uh and the client. So everyone meets uh the expectations that they have of our of our relationship. If if you're a one-time planning client, we're simply giving you allocations to DIY yourself.

SPEAKER_04 52:03

Telling you how to do it, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:03

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 52:04

And we'll even help you, because I know that's sometimes confusing for a lot of clients. Like even if you have your laptop with you, like we'll help you like put in the percentages, that kind of thing. Um, a lot of times it is straightforward, but I mean, also making sure you're doing your current allocation and your future contributions because sometimes we have people come in a year later and like they still had their old allocation kind of in there, only the future contributions are going. So it's just very detailed things like that that we're also trying to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Yeah, it's a delivery meeting is more of uh we're still talking about some heavy topics, but not as not as much heavy, not as heavy as the middle meeting, but it's definitely more of a wrap-up uh and execution plan. So here's a here's a summary. These are five things you should do in the next hundred days. So we're giving you a hundred-day action uh action item plan. Uh, we're giving you access to the plan online. You can move all the dials yourself, you can run hundreds of reports. So now you have access to one of our online tools. Uh, and it really helps sometimes we have to revisit um the planning set uh the retirement planning part of the meeting prior. The client has uh other ideas that they've come up with.

SPEAKER_04 53:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

Um sometimes we present problems in that meeting and they come back to this meeting with, hey, we've thought about this. I think we can do it this way.

Business Owner Planning And Succession

SPEAKER_04 53:16

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, of course, there's gonna be continued conversations between us if we did refer you out to people as well. Because, like, you know, a lot of times you don't get the quotes for the life insurance back until after delivery. Or we also double check on we refer you out to get our property and casualty um reviewed. And how did that conversation go? What were those action items? We make sure we put those down there. And, you know, you could be meeting with an attorney that you could meet with in the office, and we're we're also alongside you on that, making sure you you know who you want your beneficiaries to be, how those are going to be allocated in the future. So um very, very hands-on and make sure we follow up.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

Some people uh get a bonus meeting. Uh, this is called business planning. Typically, all business planning is always done with me.

SPEAKER_05 53:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 53:57

Uh, because I'm an entrepreneur uh business owner, and this is where we're diving into bylaws and operating agreements and your succession planning, looking at your PL and your balance sheets, see what we can learn from that. And we just nerd out on business stuff for about an hour and a half. And I love those meetings. I don't really prepare for them because everyone was not it's winging it, it's just that everyone's so used to you don't you can't prepare. Yeah, yeah. You just walk in the room and let's talk about your business. And of course, I have I have key things that I ask, but it's just it's just a conversation. Every business is like its own living, breathing uh organ and how they do it, yeah, yeah, mechanism and and it it's uh and how they do it. And uh sometimes I have to I feel like I have to really encourage people and say, look, you need to be doing this, you need to be doing that. Uh if you want your business to be worth something, you need to not make it about you. Yeah, you need to you need to have yeah, can you go on vacation for a couple weeks and let your business operate?

SPEAKER_05 54:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:55

Uh and what would happen, you know. So it's just those are fun conversations. Uh we are we charge a little more for um uh for for that component business. And a couple of times that those meetings have uh recently, one of those meetings drew out to three more meetings because of all the work they had to get done. But it that is a component that gets added uh for our business owners uh that go through not not your little hobby businesses, but but for people who they're the 100% of their income comes from out of their comes comes out of their business planning. So I I think that this is this is uh uh you realize how much we do. This is this is become a long podcast now.

SPEAKER_05 55:29

Yeah.

Closing Thoughts And Subscribe Reminder

SPEAKER_01 55:30

But but but uh I think the important things, these are things that, in my opinion, sometimes not business planning, because most financial advisors aren't also business owners. But uh the rest of these components, every financial advisor should be doing. And this is what's wrong with our industry is only 4% of us are doing these things in depth. Yes, in depth. And and and 4% that also aren't trying to sell you products. You have to be careful with some firms that will go through some of these steps with all they're trying to do is find things that they can sell you. So that's why you have to ask at every beginning of every new relationship within a financial are you a fiduciary and are you fee only? And if they say yes to those things, then I think you probably have a pretty good person, assuming they have people around them that are super smart and and can tie all this together. But uh anyway, we'll wrap this up. Um, thank you, Grace, for uh doing this little journey with me. Yeah, and thank you, listeners, for sticking with us. And we'll see you guys again next week on the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

Thanks for listening to a wiser retirement podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. That way you don't miss any new episodes. We'd also appreciate if you could leave a rating and review. If you have any questions about anything that was discussed today, head to wiserinvestor.com and reach out. This podcast is strictly for informational purposes only and is not to be considered as investment advice or solicitation to buy or sell any financial products, securities, digital assets, or any other investment vehicle, or basis to make any financial decisions. Wiser Wealth Management Incorporated is a registered investor advisor with the SEC. The host and or guest may personally own securities, digital assets, or other investment vehicles mentioned on this podcast. Neither the host nor guest of the show are compensated for their participation, and no referral fees are paid to or received by any host or guest for clients, listeners, or similar interests. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor, tax professional, insurance professional, andor legal professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.