3.24.23: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

3.24.23: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Producer:
Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy.

Producer:
Welcome to the Active Wealth Show with your host, Ford Stokes. Ford is a fiduciary and licensed financial advisor who places your needs first. He'll help you protect and grow your wealth. The Active Wealth Show has grown because activators like you want to activate their retirement planning with sound tax efficient investing. And now your host, Ford Stokes.

Ford Stokes:
And welcome Activators the Active Wealth Show. I'm Ford Stokes, your chief financial advisor. And I've got Sam Davis, our executive producer here, ready to welcome you folks. Sam, say hello to everybody.

Producer:
Welcome to the weekend activators. Hope you're enjoying springtime here in Atlanta, Georgia. And thanks for joining us on yet another episode of the Active Wealth Show. And Ford, I got to say, I was thinking on my drive here this morning, it is coming up on the end of March. Three years ago, we were all as a country, you know, sitting in our homes, scared, wondering what was going to happen. And that's when we really started to ramp up the Active Wealth Show and continue our efFords to educate all of our listeners here in Georgia and the Atlanta area particularly. So, so happy to have brought you information for three years. And here's to many more.

Ford Stokes:
Yeah, absolutely. It shows that it really matters when you double down to try to help people. And, you know, we've continued to grow We're the number one listened to radio show on AM 920 the Answer on the weekends and we thank everybody, all of our listeners, all of our activators out there for making that possible. And also, we would just encourage you to reach out and tell a friend to listen to the Active Wealth Show. And also, you know, if you feel like your friend could use our services or your family member, go ahead and reach out to them and just send them over to active wealth. Show.com or ActiveWealth.com. That would be great. We'd love the opportunity to help them. We give free financial plans and portfolio analysis to everybody on the front end when we meet them because we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to make an informed financial decision before you work with us and see, Hey, does this make sense? And also we help you understand the risks you're taking, the correlation of your assets, the fees you're paying. We do all of those things absolutely at no cost to you as an activator. So all you've got to do is reach out to us at (770) 685-1777 again (770) 685-1777. And Diane and her team are standing by this weekend just to take your call.

Ford Stokes:
We're happy to help you any way we can, but specifically, we're going to give you a portfolio analysis and a financial plan, your 95th birthday with a Roth ladder conversion plan and also with a Social Security income maximization report. And lastly, we'll give you a retirement income plan at no cost to you. So that's five things you get. Here's what you get. You get a one. A portfolio analysis. Two, you get a Social Security maximization report. Three, you get a retirement income plan for you get a financial plan to your 95th birthday with your current plan. That has nothing to do with us just to see how does it look for your where you're currently going. And number five is we're going to give you a financial plan to your 95th birthday at no cost to you with our recommended portfolios. That also includes a Roth ladder conversion plan so you can delete the IRS from being your partner in retirement. It's just really important that you try to inspect what you expect about what's going on with your retirement plans. And so now let's talk about what we're going to talk about today. I mean, this show is going to be a pretty important show. We're going to talk about how we help families prepare for retirement and solutions to problems that we're all facing out there.

Ford Stokes:
So we're going to help you with that for sure. And if you want to get in touch with us and you want to also reduce your cost in retirement, you want to come up, Hey, Ford, we're looking for hints and ways to understand how we can reduce our monthly expenses during retirement. Do you have any ideas? Well, we actually do. We've created a report, a free report called the 23 Retirement Cost Cutters for 2023. That's 23 retirement cost cutters for 2023. And we've got a new and interesting cost cutter vignette that Matt McClure put together for us this week with the Retirement.Radio Network. And we're happy to be part of that Retirement.Radio Network. And all you got to do to get that full report if you want to get the entire report and get all 23 retirement cost cutters all in one shot, all you got to do is send me an email at Ford at ActiveWealth.com. That's D at ActiveWealth.com. We're happy to help you. So in this week's show we're talking about how we help families prepare for retirement and we'll give you solutions to problems that we're all facing out there. But here's here's the overview. Here's all the things we're going to talk about today on this week's show.

Ford Stokes:
We'll give you the quote of the week here in just a second. And it's a good one from Thomas Edison, and Sam will give us that. We're going to give you more updates on the failure at the banks and recapping what happened and share new updates. We're also going to talk about our problem solver and how we recently helped a couple recover and cut their costs as well. We'll also share a little bit about will Social Security be around when you retire? I think that's an important thing to learn. We'll talk about that in segment three. And we're going to talk about paychecks and paychecks. Again, that's Tom Higgins term. And Tom Higdon is one of my big retirement expert heroes out there. And we'll talk about how to create a solid retirement income plan. And we're also going to discuss in detail what is the widow's tax and how to financial prepare for the loss of a spouse. And we've got some interesting things in this week in history, and we've got a good little trivia question. How much did the first color TV cost in today's dollars? So we're going to talk through all of those things. Sam, if you could go ahead and share this week's financial wisdom quote of the Week.

Producer:
And now some financial wisdom. It's time for the Quote of the Week.

Producer:
I'm excited about this one this week because it comes from Thomas Edison, who lived from 1847 to 1931. Of course, the American inventor and businessman. His inventions had a widespread impact on the modern world, including the phonograph. So audio technology, maybe we wouldn't be here today with radio without Thomas Edison so fast. So the motion picture camera and of course, the electric light bulb. Edison once said, I've not failed 10,000 times. I've successfully found 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. And he also said, we should remember that good Fordune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.

Ford Stokes:
Yeah, And I would just encourage you if you if you don't feel like you're prepared enough for retirement, if you feel like you haven't gotten all the information you should get, you feel like you've got that nagging feeling like I don't I don't really have a real plan or I may have. I've just been worried about rates of return on or worried about how much is in my nest egg. And also, if you don't really realize that the IRS is your partner in retirement with your 401. K or IRA or 403 B or SEP, IRA or 457 accounts. Then I would beg you to reach out to us at ActiveWealth.com and schedule a free financial consultation. There's no obligation as well. And you can just click that schedule a consultation button in the upper right corner and you'll get booked directly in my calendar. You won't meet with any other advisor, you'll meet directly with me and I'm happy to help you throughout all of retirement. And let's at least help you understand the risks you're taking and the fees that you're paying, and also the correlation of your assets and get on the road to a retirement that is going to be successful and also a retirement with peace of mind that's also got income that you're looking for.

Producer:
Your active wealth market.

Ford Stokes:
Update And now, Sam, why don't you share a little bit of an update on what's going on with the banking crisis?

Producer:
Yeah. And in case you missed last last week's show, check out our podcast where we talked in detail about what happened at Silicon Valley Bank. But here's a quick refresher. Silicon Valley Bank failed on March 10th. It was the 16th largest bank in the United States at the time of its failure. It was also the largest bank by deposits in Silicon Valley Signature Bank. Another bank also failed on March 10th, they were a New York based full service commercial bank. They failed after the customers got spooked because of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse and they withdrew more than $10 billion in deposits. Those two bank collapses were the second and third largest failures in US history historically. This is interesting. If you look at the 20 largest bank failures in US history, ten of them happened between 2008 and 2010 when we were dealing with a financial crisis in this country. So kind of an update on on that since we last talked on March 16th, 11 of the biggest banks in the country announced a $30 billion bailout package for First Republic Bank. So this is a new bank experiencing issues. This was an efFord to prevent the California based bank from becoming the third bank to fail in less than a week. First, Republic serves a similar clientele to Silicon Valley Bank, which failed earlier this month. We just talked about that after depositors withdrew about $40 billion in deposits. It appears that First Republic, which had deposits totaling about 176.4 billion at the end of last year was facing a similar crisis. So forward, pretty interesting. So still some difficulty out there in the banks. And some of the bigger guys came in to rescue one of these smaller banks.

Ford Stokes:
And also the move that the Fed made to get and the FDIC made to give access to funds based on the original purchase price of the bonds and not the actual current pricing level of the bonds. Obviously, with bonds, there's interest rate risk. So as interest rates go up, the value of your bonds go down. And a lot of these bonds were purchased in 2020 when there was an influx of cash that went into the tech banks. Right. Because everybody thought everything's going to be technology based and like Zoom and we're all going to be working from our homes, homes and getting all of our information from our social media accounts like Facebook. And and so those banks were even more exposed than a traditional bank would have been. And so I'm glad that they've made these moves to kind of shore up things. But I would also ask for you to consider this as you're driving around and heading to Home Depot or whatever. I just think about this. Are you really comFordable putting all of your eggs in one basket? Are you comFordable with a 10% financial reserve? Are you comFordable with fractional lending or would you rather put a majority of your money into something that's safe that can also pay you out a consistent income and also gives you market like gains without market risk? That also again has a 100% financial reserve requirement. I would encourage you to consider that type of investment out there and we can help you with that. And come right back. We're going to talk about the widow's tax and also share a new problem solver for this week. You're listening to Active Wealth Show right here on AM 920. The Answer.

Producer:
Thanks so much for listening to the Active Wealth Show. Make sure to rate us everywhere you listen to podcasts, including Spotify.

Ford Stokes:
And welcome back. Activators, the Active Wealth Show on Ford Stokes, your chief financial advisor. I've got Sam Davis, our executive producer, with us. And we've got two things we want to accomplish in this segment. We want to talk about the widow's tax. We also want to talk about not just one, but two problem solvers. So I'm going to start with the widow's tax and then I'm going to talk about a problem solver that relates to an actual widow who called us from the radio show. And listen, if you're a single filer and you're by yourself and you know your kids are really worried about you and making sure that you're well taken care of, I would encourage you to pick up the phone and give us a call at (770) 685-1777. And we're going to spend the time with you. I'll sit down with you one on one and you can either come into our office and the king and queen building, or you can get on a zoom call with me or I can come to your home. And I just, you know, just this week, I met with a widow who went through a lot. And I'm trying to help her right now. And so let me just talk about the unFordunate reality of the widow's tax and how to plan for it. We recently helped a 70 year old woman who just lost her husband, who passed away too quickly and too soon, losing his battle to cancer at the age of 76 years young.

Ford Stokes:
Here. Here's some challenges that she and many widows face when their spouse passes away. She will immediately lose approximately 33% of her Social Security income because while she keeps the larger benefit, which was his the smaller benefit, hers goes away. Number two is she now faces a higher income tax bracket as a single filer. Number three is she loses a tax deduction because she's no longer married. So she's going to lose the tax deduction of 13,850 that her husband would have counted for that deduction. She only gets the 13,850 for herself. She would have gotten two of those. So her taxes are going up right then as well. I and if she's in a 22% bracket, it's 22% times $13,850. Again, she's paying more money. Her Social Security will now be taxed at a higher rate as well because her tax rate is going to go up. Her her marginal tax rate and her effective tax rate is going to go up. But guess what? Her Social Security income tax is going to be taxed at her marginal rate, which is the highest income tax rate she's paying in our progressive tax system. Her Medicare surcharges will likely go up because she's now in a higher tax bracket. She must face all these new financial challenges right after losing her partner in life.

Ford Stokes:
And by the way, she'd been married for over 50 years. Does that seem fair? Doesn't seem fair to me. And. I just want to say this. Widows who meet with us will never have to face these challenges alone. If you or someone you know recently lost their spouse and is experiencing the burden of the widow's tax, I would encourage you to have them reach out to us at (770) 685-1777. Or if you're a widow and you don't feel like you've gotten enough help, you don't feel like you're working with somebody who really cares about you and your situation and they're not even giving you the time of day. I would encourage you to pick up the phone and give us a call at (770) 685-1777. Also you can visit ActiveWealth.com and click that schedule a consultation button in the upper right corner. And here's how to prepare for the widow's tax. If you don't have a solid retirement income plan as the provider and breadwinner for the family, then we strongly encourage you to get in touch with us as well so we can help you build a plan that will keep your spouse and your family safe after you're gone. It's so important to be working with an advisor or financial professional before you pass away and ideally before your health begins to decline. The more time you have to work with, the more options you will have and the better off you will likely be and your family will likely be.

Ford Stokes:
Our plan to help people in advance. Here's how we can help. Number one is we will help you create a smart vision for retirement that includes what happens without your spouse in advance. How do you plan to spend your time with your family and friends? How do you plan to fund your retirement with less income coming into the household? Think about your retirement like this. What are you doing and who are you with? And how are you going to fund it? And for a lot of widows or even for a lot of females. They're going to spend their time with their kids. They're going to do whatever they can to make sure they can travel, to be with their kids or live near their kids or even live in the mother's mother in law's suite in their kids basement or in a in a guest house, things like that. Number two is create a solid retirement income plan, understand your expenses in retirement in advance, establish income sources that you can count on and never outlive. A great way to do this is to replace the bonds you have in your portfolio with fixed indexed annuities. Number three measure retirement income gap, which would be a negative income gap or a retirement surplus, which would be good.

Ford Stokes:
That means you've got a positive surplus. It means you've got more income than expenses before you retire. This involves calculating expected expenses and balancing your budget. Number four. If you're still in your 40s or 50s, we can help you build a plan to receive tax free death benefit when your spouse passes away to help ease the income pressure. Number five. You can delete the IRS from your retirement account by implementing a Roth ladder conversion as soon as possible. Number six Immediately review and reset your plan upon the death of your spouse. You got to do this within 30 days after your spouse passes away. And number seven, consult with the CPA or tax professional annually to verify that you are on track and also that you're going to avoid any audits or at least that you would win any IRS audits. I'm going to give you a little hint here. You would think that the IRS would leave widows alone. You would think that they would leave retirees alone. In fact, it's the opposite. There is a higher incidence of audits. Retirees than it is for pre retirees because the IRS wants to make sure they're getting all their taxes from the retirement accounts because there's trillions and trillions of dollars that they have not taxed and they have not collected taxes on. And they're looking to do that.

Ford Stokes:
Keep in mind, losing a spouse often causes a great deal of emotional stress. The National Council on Aging recognizes the widowhood effect. As a real factor in the increased mortality risk of the surviving spouse. A 2013 study that appeared in the Journal of Public Health showed that people had a 66% higher risk of dying within the first 90 days of losing their spouse. This discovery held true for both men and women. Dealing with the emotional burden of losing a spouse often takes time and support from family members as well as professional counselors. But you can take steps in advance to ensure that financial challenges don't add to the stress that you will experience at that time. Again, I would encourage you to schedule a financial and retirement consultation with us for your entire family today. All you've got to do is visit active WorldCom. We're happy to sit down with you. We're happy to help you. And you can click that schedule consultation button and you'll you'll talk directly with me if you feel like you've built a relationship with me on the radio while you've been listening to the Active Wealth Show. Great. And we really appreciate that. But I would encourage you to go to the next step and go ahead and visit ActiveWealth.com and click that schedule a consultation button. And I'm happy to help you for sure.

Producer:
It's time for this week's Problem Solver.

Ford Stokes:
We recently had a woman call us after listening to the show. We love hearing from our listeners and helping them with their financial and retirement goals. We won't mention names, but she said we were welcomed to share their story on this week's show. The caller is 37 years old and her husband is 39 years old. The wife works at a major bank and the husband has a blue collar job working with his hands in the manufacturing industry. A couple of years ago, they received a sizable inheritance from a deceased family member, allowing them to get a nice head start on saving for their retirement. UnFordunately, the person managing their inheritance was churning. The account funds excessively trading assets to generate more commission dollars that they could put in their own pocket as the advisor. Or the broker, if you will. While fees piled up from excessive trading activity, they'd also experienced a 20% loss on the money that they had inherited. This gentleman inherited $1 million, and now he's got $800,000 left in just two years. And we'll be right back. On the Active Wealth Shows, you can hear more about the solution to this problem solver.

Producer:
When trying to cut costs in 2023. Take a look at your cell phone plan. I'm Matt McClure with the Retirement.Radio Network. Powered by AmeriLife. Cell phone plans with all the bells and whistles like unlimited talk, text and data can cost a pretty penny, especially if you sign up with one of the major carriers. But there are cheaper plans out there. Among the cheapest are prepaid plans from mobile virtual network operators or MVNOs. You'll recognize them operating under names like Consumer Cellular, Boost, Mobile, Mint, Mobile or US Mobile, just to name a few. These companies don't own their own towers. They operate by entering into agreements with the big companies like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, which do own the infrastructure.

Stetson Doggett:
The major carriers sell access to their networks, to prepaid carriers at wholesale rates. These prepaid carriers then sell plans to consumers at significantly more affordable prices.

Producer:
That's Stetson Doggett, cell phone plan expert, YouTuber and publisher of Best Cell Phone Plans. Net That website is a good resource to compare plans determine the features you need, like deciding if you really do need unlimited minutes and seeing if you qualify for any discounts. So are you paying too much for your cell phone plan? That's a key question to consider, and it's one of the 23 retirement cost cutters for 2023. With the Retirement.Radio Network Powered by AmeriLife. I'm Matt McClure. Charlie Kirk here.

Charlie Kirk:
If you're concerned about your investments, rising taxes from the Biden administration, then I encourage you to listen to the Active Wealth Show hosted by my good friend Ford Stokes right here on AM 920. The Answer. Listen to the Active Wealth Show Saturdays at noon and Sundays at 11 a.m. The Active Wealth Show right here on AM 920. The Answer.

Producer:
Investment Advisory.Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management, LLC, BCM, a registered investment advisor, not an actual client of active wealth management. Remember, all of Ford's listeners receive a free financial consultation just for listening to the show. Visit ActiveWealth.com to learn more and schedule an appointment. Thanks for listening to the Active Wealth Show and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Ford Stokes:
And welcome back Activators The Active Wealth Show. We're talking about our problem solver, where a gentleman who's 39 years young inherited $1 million from his grandparents and he's lost 20% in the last two years and even lost money in 21 when everybody else was making money. And he felt like and it appears as if that advisor had been churning the account and overtrading and even trading at a loss so that that advisor could get fees and. I just want to make sure you understand the weed At active wealth, we don't get paid on trading fees. We get paid to manage money and that's the way we make money. And also commissions from life insurance products like index, universal life insurance policies and. And fixed indexed annuities. That's how we make money. We don't make money on the trades. But here's a tip. You want to be careful about who you're working with. The individual who this person worked with. They had no licensure. Or adequate certifications. They got the couple to sign an agreement and then they went to a broker. That this person had designated that then started doing all the trades and then I guess that broker had started sharing in fees with them. And it's really not good in hindsight.

Ford Stokes:
They simply trusted the wrong individual. They trusted somebody that wasn't Series 65 license. And without verifying that their money was being managed in a safe way. And so it was easy. All they had to do was just understand, hey, wait a second, we're working with the wrong individual. In the solution was when we met with them, they were blown away at our fee structure being lower. Compared to what they'd been experiencing. I mean, give you an idea, they had a 325 page statement from 2022 that they gave to their accountant, and their accountant said, you need to call Forde Stokes, you need to call at least a fiduciary. But I would recommend that you call Forde Stokes because he's going to give you the skinny on what the real deal is. They were also excited that they were able to delete the fees that they were paying on the sizable bond portion of their portfolio. We did this by replacing the bond portion of their portfolio with a fixed indexed annuity or actually two different fixed indexed annuities, and the annuities paid them a 10% bonus that helped them make up some of what they'd lost in the market over the last couple of years. We also have annuities that can pay out up to 20%.

Ford Stokes:
The problem was this individual was 39 years old and some of the annuities that pay out 20%, you've got to be 45 to 50 years old to qualify to get those income riders and to get those bonus those bonuses that come with those products. It really disappoints us when we see hard working families being taken advantage of because they don't know any better. We want our listeners and clients to know that there is no amount of money that's too little for us to offer you some help. If your money is important to you, then it is absolutely important to us. This situation with this couple is not uncommon. We find too often that people's savings are being dragged down by unnecessary fees and improper risk management. Contact us today at ActiveWealth.com. Click that schedule a consultation button in the upper right corner and you'll get booked directly into my calendar. We'll give you a free financial and retirement consultation. The only thing it'll cost you is your time. We're going to do everything we can to help you with your retirement future. All right, Sam, let's share some really great tidbits you've got with this week in history.

Producer:
So we've got a couple cool ones. First one, some birthdays on this date in history, March 24th, 1976, American quarterback Peyton Manning was born. So happy birthday to Peyton Manning. And any Tennessee fans out there will appreciate that. March 25th. On this date in history, 1947, Elton John was born. And also on that same date. I think it's pretty cool that these two share a birthday. Forward On this date in 1942, American singer and songwriter Aretha Franklin was born.

Producer:
All right, Ford, Here's the last one. We have sort of a this week in history meets inflation demonstration.

Producer:
Want to know where your hard earned money is going. It's time for an inflation demonstration.

Producer:
On this date in history, March 25th, 1954, RCA manufactured the first color TV set. It had a 15 inch screen. And Ford at the time, it sold for $1,000 in 1954. Today, that TV would cost you $11,000 for only 15in of a color TV screen.

Ford Stokes:
We had a console TV when I was a kid and then TVs got better, right? But everybody is like, Oh, time to get another Curtis Mathes. I remember those commercials. You're bringing up pictures right now. You know, on the Active Wealth Show airing of this show. And it's just interesting that, you know, to see all the console TVs, It's crazy. The price of TVs is kind of come down. And then also the weight of TVs has come way down, too.

Producer:
Definitely. I mean, it shows how the times have changed, not just with inflation, but, you know, because of that extreme cost. I mean, it's $11,000 in today's money. So that was a big investment for an American family. So there were a lot more TV, TV repair businesses out there, whereas today, you know, any TV that's for sale today is going to cost maybe 60% less a year from now. So it's just it's amazing what what capitalism can do. And 1954, first color TV set.

Ford Stokes:
And we come back from the break, we're going to talk about will Social Security be around when you retire? You listen to Active Wealth Show right here on AM 920. The Answer, come right back.

Ford Stokes:
Chapter nine. You can create your own personal pension. Big idea. Using an annuity to create a personal pension helps you create a lifetime income stream, but it also helps you leave a legacy for your beneficiaries. All annuities can create annuity income to supplement the income you need before or during retirement. Those who are approaching retirement are afraid that they will run out of money. But an annuity can help make sure you have income you can never outlive. An annuity can be a great investment for your portfolio, but encourage you to be careful that you don't overpay for your annuity. When you put your money into an annuity, the annuity company will pay you your money back at a date you specify. You don't want an annuity company to charge you too much to simply pay your money back to you. I'm confident that leaving a remarkable family legacy is important to you. You likely want to have money left over when you pass away to leave your beneficiaries. The goal of a personal pension is to generate lifetime income with no risk that grows your money and allows penalty free withdrawals. An annuity can create a lifetime income with market like gains and no market risk, while also allowing you to build enough wealth to leave for your beneficiaries when you pass away. Don't give the annuity company fees for doing nothing. We prefer fixed index annuities for our clients that do not have an income rider fee. But you can still create a personal pension without an income rider on your annuity.

Ford Stokes:
If you get an annuity with an income rider, but don't utilize the features of that income rider. Then you are not getting what you paid for. You are literally just paying the annuity company 1 to 2% each year. You defer annuity paying your annuity without receiving a single benefit for that annual fee. This income rider fee will also draw down your account value or principal, depending on how that index is performing. The growth on your entire account value could be significantly and negatively impacted. Some accumulation focused annuities are built to deliver increasing payments. Without an income rider, you should consider the features your income rider is providing you before deciding to purchase it. As an add on, make sure you utilize the features you are paying for more ways to get the most out of your annuity. The longer you wait to turn on the annuity, the more you'll receive an annual payments. This is because your annuity will spend a longer time in the accumulation phase, meaning it will spend more time building up your account value. Your annual payments will grow as your account value grows. Believe it or not, you can generate your own personal pension by distributing no more than 5% a year with penalty free withdrawals from your accumulation based annuity policy. Many accumulation annuities are set up to be RMD friendly so you won't suffer a penalty when you have to take your RMD. It would be silly for you to be penalized for something you are required to do. Annuity companies take this into account by creating products that make taking your rmds easier.

Ford Stokes:
Inspect what you expect with any annuity. Don't just go with what the annuity agent or adviser tells you. Read it for yourself Specifically, you should read the annuity illustration guaranteed and non-guaranteed tables included within the annuity illustration. Also, please remember that an annuity policy is a contract between you and the annuity company. So caveat emptor or buyer beware applies here. Be aware of the annuity you are buying and choose an annuity that works best for you that will help you build a successful retirement and will offer you peace of mind. Whether you choose to generate income through penalty free withdrawals or invest annually in an income rider know the consequences of both. This is a decision you will make at the beginning of the investment process. One poor decision here can cost you 1 to 1.5% of annual growth over a 30 year retirement. This could come out to be a significant loss. Educate yourself on your options and the specifics of each option you are considering. Making the right decision up front will save you a lot of frustration in the long run. Also, please remember that if you withdraw too much annually, say 10%, you will run out of money in 10 to 12 years. Make sure that you are working with an advisor who can help you choose the appropriate withdrawal amount so that your money lasts for your entire lifetime. As discussed above, we recommend no more than 5% be withdrawn each year from your account.

Charlie Kirk:
Are you concerned about the Biden administration, how rising taxes could negatively impact your retirement? And I encourage you to talk to Ford Stokes and his team at Active Wealth Management. Ford and his team of experienced financial advisors will help you understand the fees and risks involved with your current portfolio. Simply visit ActiveWealth.com to book your free financial consultation and tell them Charlie Kirk sent you.

Producer:
Investment Advisory Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management, LLC BCM a registered investment advisor, not an actual client of active wealth management.

Producer:
Thanks for listening to the Active Wealth Show. If you like what you're hearing, subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch videos from this program and other recent episodes. All right. Now we're going.

Ford Stokes:
To try to Answer the best we can. One of the most asked questions we get in our financial consultations and also when when activators are calling us and and they want to book a financial consult, they're asking this question, Hey, Ford, will Social Security be around when I retire? No matter where lawmakers stand on the future of Social Security, there's almost a universal agreement that the program faces funding challenges that need to be addressed sometime by the middle of the next decade. One of the trust funds that helps pay for Social Security will run out of money, leaving more than 20% of the program unfunded. Many people actually believe it's a 3,233% cut by 20. 32 is what is going to be required if they don't do something to fix Social Security. A report released by the Congressional Budget Office or CBO, warned the Social Security trust fund could run out of money by 2032. As I just said, a year earlier than previously thought. If Congress doesn't make changes to bring in more revenue or reduce benefit payouts. Number three, the cost of the program's outgoing benefits surpassed the amount of funds going into its accounts in 2021, which the Associated Press reported then was the first time such a happening occurred since the early 1920s. Number four Congress passed in 1981 a stopgap funding bill. Number four, Congress passed in 1981 a stopgap funding bill that allowed for borrowing between the Medicare trust fund and Social Security's two accounts, the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, or OAC.

Ford Stokes:
The larger of the two funds that cover the retirement benefits and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which is called DI. So you've got Social Security disability income, which is SSDI, and you've got the OAC, which is there to fund the old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund. Beneficiaries of Social Security are expected to face steep reductions in payments if the program becomes insolvent, with some projecting declines of up to 20% to 30%. The solution Strengthen your retirement income plan. Remember that your retirement is less about the size of your portfolio and more about your ability to generate consistent income during retirement. Many people are relying too heavily on just Social Security to be their retirement plan. You can establish your own personal pension or income stream by investing in a fixed indexed annuity. This provides you with paychecks. You need to cover your expenses and the paychecks you want to live, the retirement you deserve. So kind of think of the paychecks being, hey, we're going to pay for those non-discretionary expenses like a mortgage or power water, utilities and be able to eat things like that. And the paychecks would be there to pay for things like going to play golf during retirement or traveling or buying grandkids Christmas gifts and birthday gifts, things like that.

Ford Stokes:
Annuities provide you with an income you can never outlive, even if you live to be 90 or 100 or even 110 years old. The checks keep coming and are backed by the insurance companies ability to pay and are required to hold at least 100% of their deposits in reserves. When you invest in a fixed indexed annuity, you effectively put a floor on that portion of your portfolio, meaning you can't lose money. Is that something? Sounds like a pretty good deal to you? In many ways, annuities are more attractive than bonds as a means to generate retirement income and manage risk within your investments. Here are some of the reasons why you can get market like gains without market risk. You have no interest rate risk and oh by the way, you don't pay any advisory fee or portfolio fees because the financial advisor can't double dip, they can't charge advisory and management fees and also get paid commissions. We want our clients and listeners to live the retirement lifestyle they deserve. Don't just live a just in case retirement. Were you afraid to spend the money and you saved for your golden years? Establish a solid income plan and enjoy your paychecks. The just in case retirement is this.

Ford Stokes:
It's like, hey, just in case I don't want to spend this money just in case I want to save. But guess what happens when you pass away? Guess what the kids do? They go and they join the country club or they go and travel or they have fun. And you could have done the same thing throughout your entire retirement and included your kids and grandkids more and could have spent more quality time with your kids and grandkids at the country club or at the lake house or at the beach house. We find too many retirees are just afraid of the news and the stock ticker, like we said. As with any investment, there are many different kinds of annuities. Contacts us. Good God. Contact us today to learn more and to see what roles annuities could play in your own retirement plan. Reach out to us at ActiveWealth.com. Click that schedule a consultation button. We'll give you an annuity x ray. We'll also give you a retirement income plan at no cost to you. Let's say you own an annuity or you're thinking about taking your pension or you're trying to decide between a pension or a lump sum. I would encourage you to visit us at ActiveWealth.com that's ActiveWealth.com. And click that schedule a consultation button in the upper right corner. It's the final.

Producer:
Countdown. So let's recap what you may have missed. It's the final.

Ford Stokes:
So we share this quote of the week. This week's quote of the week was from Thomas Edison. We should remember that good Fordune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation. So you want to be prepared for retirement. You want to inspect what you expect about your retirement plan. We always talk about it at the end of every show. Listen, if you're seeking retirement information, if you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly. Be aggressive about getting as much info as you can so you can successfully retire. If you don't know what a structured note is and you want to know more about that, you ought to give us a call. If you want to understand how a fixed indexed annuity could help you in retirement, pick up the phone. Give us a call at (770) 685-1777 or visit us at ActiveWealth.com. Also if if you want to understand what tactical asset allocation is to manage your portfolio, I would encourage you to give us a call on that as well. We also talked about gave you an update on the failure at the banks. We recapped what happened and also sharing new updates. We shared not one, but two different problem solvers. One we shared in a problem solver where a widow was really facing the widows tax and it was deeply impacting her monthly budget. And we also talked about a 37 and 39 year old. Couple who had called us and the gentleman had lost 200,000 and lost literally 20% of his portfolio that he'd inherited just two years prior.

Ford Stokes:
And and some different strategies to help make sure that he could protect the remaining $800,000 of his million dollar inheritance. We also shared a little more information about what's going on with Social Security and will it be around when you retire? We talked about paychecks and play checks and paychecks that you can generate to pay for your non discretionary expenses during retirement and also the play checks to pay for your discretionary expenses during retirement. And we went in detail again about the widow's tax and how to deal with it and how to solve for the widow's tax in advance and plan in advance. And Sam gave us some great this week in history on how much, you know, the first color TV cost in 1954 and all that good stuff. We had a really great time with you today. I hope you did, too. Hope you learned a little bit during this week's Active Wealth Show. Also, if you want to get information or you want to learn more about retirement and how to invest properly and you want more information, I would encourage you to visit active wealth. Show.com that's Active Wealth Show.com and watch some of our other episodes and have those play in the background. We're happy to help you protect and grow your wealth. We take great pride and pleasure in bringing the Active Wealth Show to you every single week with new content. Thanks so much to listen to us on the Active Wealth Show. Have a great week everybody.

Producer:
Thanks for listening to the Active Wealth Show. You deserve to work with a private wealth management firm that will strategically work to protect your hard earned assets. To schedule your free consultation, call your Chief financial advisor, Ford Stokes at (770) 685-1777 or visit ActiveWealth.com.

Producer:
Investment Advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management, LLC BCM a registered investment Advisor. Bcm and Active Wealth Management are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results.

Producer:
Could a recent IRS change actually save you money on next year's taxes? I'm Matt McClure with the Retirement.Radio Network Powered by AmeriLife. When you think of the Internal Revenue Service, your mind may very well recall the sting of forking over your money to Uncle Sam or the hassle of preparing your taxes. A recent study by the American Action Forum estimated Americans spent more than $190 billion. That's billion with a B on tax preparation in 2021. Plus, many economists predict the federal government will have to raise taxes in the future to pay off the national debt. But there's one change the tax man is making for 2023 that could actually mean you'll owe less in taxes next year.

Andrew Paulose:
How much you save will be relative to your personal situation. So it's not going to be the same for every household, but certainly it could have a nice little savings come tax time.

Producer:
Andrew Paulose with Paulose Accounting and Consulting recently told Atlanta News first. The IRS typically makes annual adjustments to income tax brackets, but this year they're bigger than usual due to, you guessed it, inflation.

Andrew Paulose:
Some people will see a savings of perhaps $1,000 per year during tax time on their tax return. Others might see a little bit more. Certainly the brackets have changed. So the those who are in higher brackets will probably see more savings than those who are in lower brackets. But across the board, everyone's going to see some kind of savings.

Producer:
In short, all tax brackets are going up by about 7% for 2023. That means you can make more money and be in a lower tax bracket than you would be this year. The standard deduction is also going up to the tune of a $900 increase for single filers and 1800 bucks for married couples filing jointly.

Andrew Paulose:
Mean, look, it's beneficial for everyone, right? At the end of the day, we're all looking to save money and keep more money in our pockets. In a time like this where groceries are more expensive, fuel prices are at record prices, every little bit helps.

Producer:
Keep in mind, though, that these adjustments are for money you earn next year in 2023, so you won't actually see the results until you file your taxes in early 2024. So could you benefit from the IRS's new tax brackets? That's a key question to consider as you plan your financial future with the Retirement.Radio Network powered by AmeriLife. I'm Matt McClure.

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