Discover Your Financial Roadmap with the 4 Seasons GPS

How Does The Financial Tool "4 Seasons GPS” Work And What Does It Entail?

Are you ready to take control of your financial future? In this episode, we explore the 4 Seasons GPS, a groundbreaking tool that simplifies retirement planning, allowing you to visualize and achieve your financial goals. Through dynamic interaction with financial advisors, clients engage in an insightful process of defining their lifestyle aspirations, including travel plans and bucket lists, all while considering the realities of financial management.

We break down the retirement lifecycle into the Go-Go, Slow-Go, and No-Go phases, helping you understand how to manage resources throughout these critical times. Elevating the conversation is a discussion on inflation and its impact on your retirement plans, ensuring you are prepared to maintain your desired standard of living in the face of rising costs. 

Join us and subscribe for more eye-opening insights!

To learn more about B&H Wealth Strategies visit:
https://www.BHRetire.com
B&H Wealth Strategies
423- 247-1152

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Four Seasons Podcast
• 23:00 Unpacking the Four Seasons GPS Tool
• 55:00 Assessing Financial Stability and Risk Management

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to the Four Seasons Podcast brought to you by B&H Wealth Strategies, serving Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia since 1966. Here we guide you through the ever-changing seasons of your financial journey, offering insights to help you grow, protect and enjoy your wealth. Ready to turn your financial dreams into reality, dare to dream. And now here's your host. President of B&H Wealth Strategies, jeff Bingham.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Planning for the future can feel overwhelming. The B&H Wealth Strategies offers a roadmap called the Four Seasons GPS to help guide clients through their financial journey. What does this tool do and how can it make long-term planning easier? Welcome back everyone. Skip Monty, your co-host, slash producer, back in the studio with Jeff Bingham. Jeff, how are you doing today? I am doing well, skip. How about yourself? I'm doing just fine. Doing just fine. So, jeff, on our last episode, we talked about financial planning and risk management in retirement, and so I'm pretty excited in this episode to continue that conversation and talk about the Four Seasons GPS, which is a tool that you've told me about in the past. How exactly does that work and what does it entail?

Speaker 3: 1:34

Yeah, this is actually the. I'm excited about talking about this. This is where we, where we have fun with our clients, is where we can talk about. You know, we use the expression dare to dream, and this is where, when a client lays out what they want their retirement to look like, how much money they want to have coming in the travel plans, the bucket list, let's say, of things that have a price tag on. And this is where this retirement GPS tool we call it your roadmap to financial success, financial freedom it's a lot of fun and it is an interactive tool that we use with our clients, and so it's a live, dynamic tool that once we kind of have that data as the client lays out that there are, you know, here's how much money you go through the black and this again I talk about the black and white of a financial plan, the B&H wealth strategy side of it. It's how much money do you have, where is that money located, how is it invested, you know, and that kind of thing. So that's the black and white. So we plug that into this retirement GPS tool we talk about.

Speaker 3: 2:31

You know, do they? How much is your social security going to be your wife's social security. When are we going to start drawing it? You know all that, all that data that's there. Do they have a pension plan? You know, do they not? And you know, are they going to work part-time during retirement? You know all those kind of things. You just take all of that data and that just comes Skip from sitting down.

Speaker 3: 2:51

You know, as a top-notch request for the first, you know 10 or 15 years for a couple, 60, 65 retire. You know we basically people will kind of define these things and I stole this actually from a client you would talk about you've got the early part of retirement is the go-go years and that's where you might have that retirement, that bucket list thing. And then you've got the next X number of years might be the slow-go years, and then the last part of retirement is kind of the no-go years right, where we just can't get out and move around as much. So you know, the idea and the concept that most people have and it didn't always work out this way is that that's those go-go years. You need more money coming in right, and that's where you talk about risk, you talk about portfolio diversification, you know, and how you're going to drive the engine that's going to make sure that you don't run out of money before you run out of time, but also that that money is going to keep pace with the cost of living, right? So when we talk about somebody as I said, maybe a $5,000 a month budget that they need and some of that's going to come from social security and some of that's going to come from their investments the social security is typically not going to go up as fast as the cost of living, but we got to build an inflation rate into that, because $60,000 a day is not going to be $60,000 10 years from now. It's not going to be $60,000. It's going to need more, right? So if you run at 3% inflation, that $60,000 is going to need to be closer to $75,000 to $80,000 over a 10, 12-year time period. So you've got to build that in, and so we plug all that data into this recurrent GPS system.

Speaker 3: 4:21

We look at their current portfolio. If they're not a client and we're evaluating that we can put in their portfolios and put it in whether it's an IRA plan it's either pre-tax dollars or post-tax dollars, right or Roth IRAs we look at all the stuff that they have and we plug all of those things into this retirement GPS and we build in their current asset allocation diversification that we were talking about before. We can also take their client and what they have in the data that we have X 1926 coming forward when we're evaluating whether someone has enough money to retire in the lifestyle in which they've grown accustomed to living and have those 25 year time period you will run 79 different rolling period analysis to look at and it will spit out data back to us based on where they are currently and it will tell us the best time period, the worst time period. Maybe they run out of money in some of those time periods, right In the worst, and maybe it'll tell you how many times and what time period it might've done that. It'll also give you the kind of the average imbalance.

Speaker 3: 5:24

Usually you can take out the best time period. You just throw it out because it's you don't. I mean that's usually pie in the sky. Maybe the next 25 years will be the best, but I doubt it. Will it be the worst 25 years? Probably not, you know, because generally that worst 25 year time period I've done this a lot is that 1929 to 1954 period and I'll tell you just as an aside for people thinking about 1929, when the stock market crashed right, the great crash, the depression started in October, right, really at the right beginning of September, and I ask this question a lot when the market crashed in 29,. You know how many years it took for it to get back to its high from around September 26th of 1929 is where it peaked at that point in time. How many years did it take for it to get back and cross across that peak from 1929? Just a little quiz for everybody out there.

Speaker 3: 6:15

In 25 years, worst 25-year time period that you can typically look at. I mean that's pretty tough. I mean it really took 25 years for the market to get back from its 1929 peak. It was in 1954. Now that didn't mean you couldn't make money during those time periods, because there was bonds and other things in portfolios, right. So you look at those time periods and that doesn't mean that. Does that mean that no retirement plan would have worked? That's not what that means at all. Because there are, because, again, you can diversify, you do the various things and we've got other assets that we can own, from real estate to bonds and all the other pieces in the portfolio. But that's as measured by the US stock market. It did take that long to get back.

Speaker 3: 6:53

So we're looking at real data that's in there right, 79 time periods of a lot to look at. When you look at that and really walk away with confidence, right that when you put together a plan that it's going to work and hold up for a long time period because you've built in inflation, you're building in tax rates, you're looking at their social security benefits, pensions, that they've got their real assets in real portfolios. Right, and that either works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't work and you have a low probability right, if you don't get yourself up to a, I think you need to be a basically a 90% probability rate of not running out of money before you run out of time. You know, when you build and find portfolio, you know I think that's kind of where a comfort level begins to get in. I mean, the goal is 100% right. Looking backwards it's 100%. But if you can get to above 85, but closer to 90, I think, is where we get to a, that's a pretty high probability because most of the time that probability of running out is in that depression era. You know, or is that looming in front of us? I've got a crystal ball sitting here on this desk, that's in front of me, but I have no idea. But you know, I think the tools that we have today to implement from a government and a corporate perspective is a little stronger than it might have been in 29. I don't know. I mean we've got a lot of debt in this country. Can we really stimulate economies if we do get into a really difficult time period?

Speaker 3: 8:23

Coming back to the retirement GPS tool, it is a beautiful tool that we use in here. It is as powerful as anything that I've ever had access to use for clients. When you sit in here with a client and you go through, you can do it live. You can create as many different scenarios as you want to and you can see them begin to see their retirement right. We say you want to see it, you want to feel it, you want to taste it, you want to smell it, and that's as close as we can get to before you're actually in it. And then we can also use it in reviews to see how we are. You know how are we progressing, you know, in our retirement or ourirement and accumulation as well. But again, you know we, you know the the retirement plan is and I don't know if I've used this in here before you know it's, it's. You've got to get up the mountain right and that's the, that's the accumulation of assets, the working years is kind of think about it. We're climbing Everest. The goal of climbing Everest. You know you need to.

Speaker 3: 9:28

You kill one of the one of the spouses off. I mean that's obviously a conversation that you're having in here. Those are delicate things to talk about, but it's reality. I mean it's like if you don't, then why would I be sitting on the side of the table? I mean, we have to talk about, you know the, the inevitable. You know death, and one is going to die before the other. You know what's the impact if the husband dies first. What's the impact, the distribution, the needs, all those.

Speaker 3: 10:00

If the husband has a pension and it's a single life, only he dies and whatever the dollar amount is on a monthly basis goes away, is the wife going to have enough money to live on at that point in time? Do they have some insurance that's going to come in? Are they going to inherit money from a parent that's still alive for them? So we can put all of that in there. We can do different time periods and think about those things. We can adjust upward or downward the income as they need to. I mean, it really is.

Speaker 3: 10:28

I wish we could demonstrate it here, because it really is a beautiful thing that the clients and they can get right. That's where you can see them begin to get comfortable with talking about the numbers. It's one thing for me to sit here and you know and I've been doing this a long time, so I can sit here pretty closely listen to a client, look at the asset base, that they have, the age that they are thinking about their health issues, that they may have their longevity or lack thereof perhaps, and then they give me a number that they think that they can retire on and I can identify whether or not I think that's realistic or not pretty quickly and I can say that to them if I choose to do so. But when you're able to put this retirement GPS program in front of them, then they can see it right and they can. It validates what I've talked to them about and they can see it, feel it, taste it, and that's a beautiful thing to be able to do that.

Speaker 2: 11:22

Awesome, the Four Seasons GPS. That is a unique tool to B&H Wealth Strategies. Correct it is.

Speaker 3: 11:35

I mean, there's a few other planners in an ecosystem that I'm part of that have access to it. A buddy of mine that played football up at Virginia Tech developed this program. In fact, they were what we call a retirement GPS powered by beta vest technologies. I played football at Virginia Tech and married a Tennessee high girl over here, so a bit of a connection around here. I met Jeff probably 20, maybe 26 years ago, at a meeting where he was just rolling this out and it's been refined, continues to be refined and perfected and, you know, updated, if you will, as technology changes and has more access and more just. You know, it's just become better and better. But yeah, mander, he loves working on it, he loves talking about it and he should, because it's a heck of a tool that he's made available to some of us that are lucky enough to know him and have been introduced to it.

Speaker 2: 12:23

Very good. Only available at B&H Wealth Strategies. Awesome, Jeff. Thank you so much. Very useful information.

Speaker 3: 12:30

I would say to anybody that's out there listening, that has not gone through a tool like I'm describing right there would benefit at the least with a second opinion to see that in front of them done and then to validate the track that they're on. Or, as we say, if you don't change directions, you might end up where you're going.

Speaker 2: 12:52

We'll wrap on that note. That's a very wise statement, jeff. Thank you so much, very useful information, and we'll catch you in the next episode.

Speaker 3: 12:59

Thanks, Skip. Have a great weekend and we'll catch you in the next episode. Thanks, Skip.

Speaker 1: 13:15

Have a great weekend. By calling 423-247-1152 or by visiting bhretirecom, take the first step toward making your financial dreams come true. Until next time, remember every season is the right season to plan for your future. Securities and registered investment advisory services offered through Silver Oak Securities Inc. Member FINRA, sipc, b&h Wealth Strategies and Silver Oak Securities Inc. Member FINRA, sipc, b&h Wealth Strategies and Silver Oak Securities Inc are not affiliated.