Facing a Layoff? Here’s Your Financial Gameplan

12.12.25: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

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

Speaker1:
Hey, this is Ford Stokes, host of retirement results and founder and CEO of Active Wealth Management. As a registered social security analyst, I want you to know that municipal bonds contribute to additional taxation on your Social Security income, as well as additional Medicare surcharges. Visit retirement results. Com or call 1888814030 for to get in touch with us today, not.

Speaker2:
Affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. 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.

Speaker3:
Welcome to Retirement Results, the national radio show and podcast for listeners like you who want to protect and grow their hard earned money in a world filled with so much uncertainty and financial risk, we seek to cut through the noise and build successful plans for hard working Americans on their road to financial freedom. Retirement results is powered by Active Wealth Management, a team of fiduciary advisors who always place your needs first and now your host. He's a registered social security analyst, member of the Forbes Finance Council, and author of multiple books on retirement planning. Here's your chief financial advisor, Ford Stokes.

Speaker1:
And welcome to Retirement. Results. Result. Drivers. I'm Ford stokes, chief financial advisor. Got Sam Davis here with us, our senior financial advisor and co-host on retirement results. Thanks so much. For so many people that are subscribing to the channel, please do me a favor and subscribe to our YouTube channel or subscribe to the podcast. Um, and also like the video, uh, really important to us. Um, we're continuing to grow. We are transitioning from Predominantly radio to our podcast format and our YouTube channel format, just simply because we felt like it was time to really focus on that part of our media sharing and content sharing. And Sam, on this episode, we are talking about layoffs. There's been over a million layoffs this year in the United States. We are seeing AI take a pretty big cut. We're seeing a lot of CFOs take advantage and look for efficiencies within their companies. And and their largest expense many times was labor costs. And they are restructuring and they are laying people off in droves. And we felt like it was really important for us to share what to do during a layoff, and also get some examples of what's going on with some layoffs right now, but specifically give you an action plan of what to do if you're being laid off, especially if you want to continue working, and how you really need to get control of your money as well. Because remember, it's your money. It's not the corporation's money. And we want you to be able to retire someday. And we want you to be able to really thrive in retirement, not just survive. But, Sam, you've got, um, some actual clips and some information you want to share about these layoffs that are just coming down the pike, specifically from Verizon and Amazon.

Speaker4:
Yeah. If you're listening to this on the Retirement Results podcast or watching on the retirement Results YouTube, it's likely that you or someone you know has been affected by layoffs this year. In fact, announced job cuts from US employers moved past $1 million for the year in November. Or sorry. In fact, announced job cuts from US employers moved past 1 million for the year in November as corporate restructuring, AI and tariffs have helped pare job roles. Consulting firm challenger Gray and Christmas reported Thursday. The firm said layoff plans totaled 71,321 in November. This was a step down from massive cuts in October, but still enough to bring the 2025 total up to 1.17 million. This is 54% higher than the same 11 month period a year ago. This is also the highest level of layoffs since 2020, when the Covid pandemic rocked the global economy. In November, Verizon announced that it would slash more than 13,000 jobs. That really helped drive that total up. And we have a clip to play about that right here.

Speaker5:
Layoffs at Verizon have begun, the telecommunications giant revealed last week it is cutting 13,000 employees in an effort to, quote, reorient the entire company and simplify operations. In a letter to staff this morning, Verizon CEO Dan Schulman also said they're planning to significantly reduce outsourced and other outside labor expenses. It's the largest ever layoff in Verizon's history.

Speaker4:
Some more details on this. Tech companies, driven by innovations in artificial intelligence listed more than 12,000 job reductions. That pushed the sector's total up to 17% from a year ago. Ai itself has been cited for almost 55,000 layoffs this year, and while hiring prospects have been dim in 2025, according to the report, employers have announced almost half a million planned hires, but that's off 35% from the same point last year. So Ford a tough spot in the job market currently. Really the worst that we've had in about five years.

Speaker1:
Yeah, it's just this economy is transitioning and nobody's impervious to it. Obviously you're in America. You can still outwork people, so make sure you're working hard, make sure you're working. You're working so hard that you become, um, indispensable at your job. I'll definitely do that. But we wanted to give you kind of a quick little five step thing you need to do to consider. These are the five steps that I would do if I was just being laid off. And I've worked in corporate jobs before as well. I mean, I'm I'm the president and owner of Active Wealth Management, our small private wealth management firm, but where it's also nice that we're part and we work with Brookstone Capital Management, which now has over $9 billion under management. Let's go ahead and go through these five steps that we recommend you do. Number one is let's get your resume set. You can use ChatGPT to do it. You can also go to resume service. To do it. You can go use any of the AI, um creative writing AI, just different ways to get your resume done. It also research the type of format for your resume that you want to to get like which one looks the best. If you're in a design or an advertising world, you might be a little bit more creative. If you're in a manufacturing setting or an engineer, you might want to be much more straightforward. If you're in banking, you may want to make sure it looks something like would be on a bank letterhead, things like that. Number two is we want to reach out to contingency and retainer based recruiting firm. So reach out to recruiting firms and get your resume uploaded into their databases. Like Korn Ferry, a recruiter is going to spend between 5 and 15 seconds looking at your resume, but they've got AI crawlers that are going to research all of your resumes and look at it.

Speaker1:
So make sure you've got all the keywords in there for your resumes, but really reach out to those recruiting firms. Get started on the job search. Number three is you want to open up an IRA account. And we would like you to open up an IRA account with us with active wealth management. Uh, Charles Schwab is our primary custodian, that they kind of act as the banks. Therefore, there's no mad off with your money situation. And you can get that money away from that target date fund that's high in fees. It's high in expense ratio, probably higher in standard deviation, which is a measurement of risk. And let's try to get more optimized in your IRA and get control of your assets. Because remember the money you placed into the for1 K that's also been matched by your corporation that you've got fully vested in there. It's not their money, it's your money. You've worked too hard for it. We need you to retire someday just because you got laid off and you're separating from employment, doesn't mean that they need access or should or deserve access to your money anymore. You need to go ahead and move that money. I would encourage you to roll your money over to us with active wealth. It is a non-taxable event. There's gonna be no tax situation because we're taking we're going to do what's implementing a traditional 4k rollover from your 401 K into your IRA with us. Then next, which is number four is to complete the IRA number. Number four. Number five for us is let's take that.

Speaker4:
Now we're on number four.

Speaker1:
Okay. Sorry. Number four. So number four is we would complete the IRA. That will not create the tax amount. We open up the IRA account. Step number three. We are going to complete the IRA rollover as step number four. Get it into our IRA. And then we're going to invest it to an allocation that fits our risk tolerance. And then number five is we're going to invest between 20 and 40% of that IRA money immediately and roll that into an IRA based fixed indexed annuity. So we can start the tax deferral and income deferral and account deferral period to let that money keep growing over time. And I'll give you an example. With the nationwide peak ten, you get 25% immediate bonus into the income account, which is what counts for you. If you're going to take income from this, let's say 40%, let's say you're rolling over $1 million, you've got 400,000 going into the nationwide peak, ten, you're going to get 25%. So all of a sudden, your income account is going to be worth 500,000 USD. Then the next thing that's going to happen is they're going to give you 8% guaranteed interest growth each year. You defer. Let's say you're you're 50 years old and you want to retire at age 67. You have 17 years of 8% guaranteed. That's going to grow and grow and grow and grow. If you just defer for years, you're going to get up upwards, you know, get 32% growth guaranteed on the income account, but you're going to be able to start taking out with payout factors.

Speaker1:
You're going to be taking out plus or -10% of your original principal. So you're going to get over $40,000 a year from that 400 grand. That's a lot better than the traditional 4% withdrawal rate. Sam and I talk about it all the time. You take 4%, which would be $40,000 out of your your IRA in total if you leave it all in the market. But imagine if you can get $40,000 from just 400,000 and let the rest of the money grow. You're going to do a lot better over time, especially if you pair that with a maximized Social Security strategy. A bonus one here, a bonus step number six would be to go to Ssa.gov and get your Social Security statements in the form of an XML file. Its x ray Mary Lima XML file from SSA gov and get that over to us. Matt McClure and myself, who's another advisor with us here at Active Wealth Management. The two of us are registered Social security analysts, and we're here to help you. There's only 23 registered Social Security analysts in the state of Georgia. We're almost 10% of the Rsas that are certified and registered in the state of Georgia. We can help you maximize your Social Security income and make sure that that we pair that with your own personal pension. It's going to allow all that other money to really grow. But also, if you're looking for income and you're concerned or you're really close to retirement, you don't know if you're going to go get another job and go back into the workforce getting that money into a fixed indexed annuity is a really good idea to do it as soon as possible.

Speaker1:
The best time to start is as soon as possible. So I'd encourage you to reach out to us, and you can call us at (888) 814-0304. That's (888) 814-0304. Just give us a call today and we'll walk you through the steps and what you need to do. We are here to help you. We're not going to be like the government and say, hey, we're we're the government. We're here to help. We want to really help you. We want to make sure that we are maximizing your retirement income and also maximizing your enjoyment during retirement. We want to make sure that you're thriving during retirement, not just surviving. And we want to help you through this process. If you've recently gotten laid off or if you're considering retirement. We also talk about the retirement red zone with retirement. That's the first five years before retirement and the first five years after retirement. Those ten years are crucial. If you're taking out 10% a year, you're you're literally going to run out of money in 10 to 12 years. Maybe with us, you're going to you're going to be able to make it, you know, 14 to 16 years. But if you're if you're with a private wealth management firm, that's going to minimize the standard deviation, minimize the risk and maximize the average rate of return and also minimize your expense ratio.

Speaker1:
It's a big deal. Here's one other really important point. When you implement a an IRA rollover, and you also take out 400,000 of that and roll that over into a fixed indexed annuity. Guess what? You've reduced your advisory and portfolio fees by 40% because there's no advisory portfolio fees with a fixed indexed annuity. The the annuity companies pay us as advisors on the front end. We get an upfront one time fee. And then we are responsible for servicing that fixed indexed annuity for the life of the annuity. And we get no additional money. So we're here to help you. We can't double dip. We're not going to charge an advisory portfolio fee. And by the way our advisory and portfolio fees are less than what you'd see at a typical wirehouse like Edward Jones, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS and others. So if you want to be more efficient at a minimum, which is something you can guarantee they'll drop to the bottom line, let's reduce those fees. Let's also reduce the risk. And let's lock up at least the income portion of your portfolio. Sam I'm going to toss it to you. You talk about guaranteeing your the income portion of your portfolio quite a bit. Talk a little bit with the folks that have potentially been laid off, how they can get started on the right plan, and how important and why it's so important to really protect that income portion of their portfolio.

Speaker4:
Absolutely. If you've been laid off recently, this is honestly one of the best uses of your time and one of the best suggestions we can make a simple bond replacement. Replace that 20 to 40% portion of your portfolio. Eliminate risk, eliminate fees, and guarantee yourself another income stream in retirement. That goes right along with Social Security. So you're not just counting on that Social Security check every month. You're also getting that income payment from your fixed indexed annuity, from whichever carrier, whichever product you choose that fits best in your plan. If you've been laid off, it's also another good time to take a look at that budget. Take a look at what your expenses are every month, because when we're building our plans forward, we want to help you make sure that all of your expenses are going to be paid for on a guaranteed basis. If given the choice, would you rather have your retirement income be guaranteed or non-guaranteed? You don't want to be guessing and reacting to how the market is doing in any particular month or quarter, and letting that dictate what you withdraw from your accounts. Get an income plan in place, work with a registered social security analyst and diversify your income streams by implementing this FIA replacement. We do this all the time. We look forward to helping you, especially if you've been affected by all the cuts in the job markets recently. This is a really important time. And you mentioned the retirement red zone forward. I think that's a really important point. If you are in that 5 to 10 years before retirement or the 5 to 10 years you've just retired, it's such a critical time to make sure your plan is dialed in. You can really maximize those dollars that you've saved for yourself and most importantly, maximize that income for yourself in retirement.

Speaker1:
Yeah, I mean, my favorite thing you talk about regarding income is if you take 40% of your assets of your of your IRA, let's just say your retirement accounts, 40% of your retirement accounts, you put it into a fixed indexed annuity that has the exact same tax treatment as your IRA or your 41K or four three, or your 457, your sep-ira, your simple IRA. My favorite thing you say about it is you should just declare victory, declare victory, get the income you deserve that you've earned because you've got hard earned, but also hard saved money. A lot of times it's harder to save the money than to earn it. Amen. And so I would encourage everybody to reach out to us, give us a call at (888) 814-0304. We're so glad you're listening to our retirement results. We're so glad you're listening to the podcast. Make sure you're subscribed. Make sure you actually like the video really is important to the channel. It's important to us. But let's get started on the right path and the right plan. There's over a million people. We want to just at least help out a few hundred people that have been laid off. So go ahead and reach out to us at (888) 814-0304. We're going to be a free pension x ray, and we're going to give you a free financial plan. Your 95th birthday, absolutely at no cost to you. It's about a $2,500 value because we also give you the Social Security maximization report.

Speaker1:
We give you a portfolio analysis of your current plan and your current portfolio. We also give you a financial plan. Your 95th birthday with has nothing to do with us. That's your current plan? All the way to your 95th birthday. And then we give you a financial plan, your 95th birthday with our recommended allocation. It also includes a true diversification. And then the next thing is we're going to give you a financial plan, your 95th birthday with true diversification, but also includes a Roth ladder conversion that will convert your IRA money to a Roth IRA and delete the IRS from being your partner in retirement. If you'd like to get a tax free retirement. If you'd like to get income that you can count on and you never outlive and get started on that right away, and also get the deferral period going so your money can grow at 8% guaranteed on the income account value. We're here to help you do that. So just call us at (888) 814-0304 or reach out to us at retirement results. Com forward slash plan. Sam will put the link in that in in the, um, the actual comment section right underneath the summary of this video on our YouTube channel. Um, but also if you're listening to this on the podcast, hopefully you've got access to retirement results. Com just go to any website and go to any browser and just type in retirement results. Com you can get access to us and just reach out to us and call us and we'll walk you through it.

Speaker1:
And again the meter's not running. We're not going to charge you any money up front. We want to make sure you can make an informed decision about your retirement future. So we're going to give you all the information, let you make the decisions. There's zero sales here. It's 100%. Just here's what your current fees are with your expense ratio. Here's what your current risk level is with your standard deviation. That is typically measured by an institutional level Morningstar report and or a quantity report. We give you both. Then also here's what your results in advanced planning looks like with your current plan. And here's what it looks like with our plan. And also if you're interested in deleting over six figures in fees and taxes over the life of, you know, 30 to 35 plus year retirement, we can get started on that right away, too, by eliminating advisory and portfolio fees over here, but also eliminating taxes with any Roth IRA. And by the way, here's another hint. You can actually delete the IRS and get a tax free income from a fixed indexed annuity. If you invest Roth dollars in it, or convert Roth to Roth dollars within your annuity later, we can help you do that. We can show you how to do that. Just reach out to us at eight one at (888) 814-0304. That's (888) 814-0304 or reach out to us at retirement results.com.

Speaker3:
Thanks for listening to retirement results. You deserve to work with an independent team of fiduciary advisors that will strategically work to protect and grow your hard earned assets. To schedule your complimentary financial consultation, call us now at (770) 685-1777. That's (770) 685-1777. To connect with a qualified advisor. To learn more about our mission and our team, visit retirement Results.com. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management, LLC, a registered investment advisor 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.

Speaker2:
Registered investment advisors and investment advisor representatives act as fiduciaries for all of our investment management clients. We have an obligation to act in the best interest of our clients and to make full disclosures of any conflicts of interest. Please refer to our firm brochure, the ADV two, item four for for additional information. Fixed annuities, including multi-year guaranteed rate annuities, are not designed for short term investments and may be subject to restrictions, fees, and surrender charges as described in the annuity contract. Guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims paying ability of the issuer. A Roth conversion may not be suitable for your situation. The primary goal in converting retirement assets into a Roth IRA is to reduce the future tax liability on the distributions you take in retirement, or on the distributions of your beneficiaries. The information provided is to help you determine whether or not a Roth IRA conversion may be appropriate for your particular circumstances. Please review your retirement savings, tax and legacy planning strategies with your legal or tax advisor. To be sure, a Roth IRA conversion fits into your planning strategies. Any comments regarding safe and secure investments and guaranteed income streams refer only to fixed insurance products. They do not in any way refer to investment advisory products. Rates and guarantees provided by insurance products and annuities are subject to the financial strength of the issuing insurance company, not guaranteed by any bank or the FDIC.

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