REVISED_AWS_060322_FULLSHOW.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

REVISED_AWS_060322_FULLSHOW.mp3: 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 Act of Wealth Show with your host Ford Stokes. Ford is a fiduciary and licensed financial advisor who places your needs first. You’ll help you protect and grow your wealth. The arc of wealth show has grown because activators like you want to activate their retirement planning with sound tax efficient investing. And now your host Forde Stokes.

Ford Stokes:
Welcome to the active wealth show Activators on Forge Strategy Financial Advisor. And I’m joined by Sam Davis, our Executive producer. Sam, welcome the folks.

Sam Davis:
Welcome to the Weekend Activators. Welcome to June. We are in the middle of summer in Atlanta, Georgia. Can you believe it? It’s time to get outside, enjoy the great outdoors.

Ford Stokes:
And enjoy a little bit hotter temperatures, too, for sure. We’ve got a really good show for you today. We’re going to concentrate and focus on. A smart retirement plan. And I’m going to want you to kind of pull out the notes. Obviously, if you’re driving, don’t try to take notes while you’re driving. But you can also always reach out to us and watch this episode any time. The actual video of the episode on active wealth show dot com or you can listen to us on wherever you get your podcasts on iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher or Spotify, etc.. It’s nice. The good folks have published us all over the place. We’re also on iHeart Radio’s podcast as well. Even though we are extremely loyal to Salem Media and to our radio station here at AM 920 Answer We’re huge fans of everybody here at AM. 920 Answer And thanks to everybody that takes great care of us from Sham. Sham. So who’s the receptionist who takes great care of Sam and me and Austin? Mr. Edwards, who is our our sales guy that helps us with all of our spots to everybody, the station manager, everybody. So we really appreciate you all at AM nine, join the answer and thank you for your professionalism and for letting us be a part of the AM 920 The Answer Family. It’s a big deal for us and it’s also great for us to be able to come out and speak to you all every week.

Ford Stokes:
We love talking to the activators and the activators. You love listening to this show because you guys have made us again, the top listened to radio show on the weekends here on AM 920 the answer. So thank you for that. And Sam and I’ve got kind of a really great show playing for you this week. We’re going to go through this show. We’re going to go all the details, all the elements of a smart retirement plan. So there’s a lot to cover. There’s a lot to take, take notes on. And if you want to take the notes and then go back and review them later, you can do that at active show dot com. That’s active wealth show dot com. The episode will be up there and will the title of that episode will be Smart Retirement Plan. So that way you can just check it out. But first, before you get in to talk about smart retirement plan. I want to play. I was on a national webinar with Laura Ingram earlier in May and I wanted to play a little excerpt from that. I think you’re going to really like what she has to say. It’s really good coaching about how to act and how to react during this tough financial period. And so I would encourage you to to listen to her words and consider what she has to share. Sam, go ahead and play that audio clip from Laura Ingram.

Sam Davis:
I can tell you the questions. Rolling through text chains and emails today are what do we do now? Should I sell out of the market? What about my 401k? Why didn’t we better prepare for this? And then the coulda, shoulda woulda stuff which I always tell my kids I have 16 year old, 13 year old and 11 year old and I could have should have would you know, it’s not helpful, but it’s human, right? So you’re hearing questions like, I wish I hadn’t refinanced my home and I did. I wish I did it two years ago. Or, you know, I told you we should have dumped out of treasuries or not bought and not bought so much tech stock, whatever it is. These are the kinds of questions that the financial world is getting pummeled with. And I should know, because those are just a few of the text messages I sent to my financial advisor today. Those are just a few. I’m not going to share all of them because it would be quite embarrassing for me.

Ford Stokes:
So I think she’s giving us all good coaching, right? We need to be emotionally sound during this difficult time and when it’s the market volatility. Listen, I. Do not agree with the policies that are coming out of the Joe Biden White House. And I’m not a fan and don’t believe he actually truly won the election. That’s just my take. I that’s my personal opinion. I am a huge Donald Trump fan. I like free markets. I like lower taxes. I like less government. And I would imagine many of you folks that are listening to Sound of My Voice do too. And I think you also would like lower gas prices. I know all of us would. And we’re going to give you an update on what’s going on with gas prices here in a second. And unfortunately, it’s not good news. The other is I want to I want to just kind of make sure that you understand what Laura is saying. It’s like, look. You could have should have what is and also, should you stay vest or not? And can you time the market? You don’t want to come all the way out of the market, then go all the way back in the market. It just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work well that way, at least.

Ford Stokes:
And we have two really great reports that came from our investment partner, BlackRock Investments there. They manage some of our portfolios and we’ve got one report that’s investing with emotions can be costly and the other one is strategies for volatile markets. And we have both of those short reports absolutely available to you guys. Absolutely. For free. All you’ve got to do is email me at Ford at Active Wealth. That’s free at Active Wealth dot com and we’ll send these to attachments to you. You can also just call our office at 7706851777. But what’s interesting about the strategies for volatile markets is that. You know, if you invested $100,000 over a 20 year period starting in January one, 2002 to December 31, 2021, if you stayed invested the entire time, you would have had $616,317 in that account, according to BlackRock’s illustration here. And if you even missed the the five top investment days, growth days of the year, for that time period, you would only have $389,264 in your account. If you missed even the top 20 trading days for that year, for those years, your counseling worth 167,000 895. It’s crazy. So the moral of the story is let’s just stay invested. And I think. Having great emotional confidence and kind of stay the hand and and don’t react quickly.

Ford Stokes:
I think it nets into more money over the long term. And listen, if you’ve got an IRA or 401k, 403B or a 457 or a Sep IRA, you’re in for the long haul. You’re invested for the long haul, so why not stay emotionally confident during the time period and don’t react and and also look for buying opportunities. You can make a lot of money when it’s when the opportunities come when we’ve got dips and you can buy the dip and see it go back up. So something to consider there. But also, why wouldn’t you just seek counsel and work with a licensed financial advisor who is a fiduciary, who’s held a fiduciary standard to protect and grow your wealth? That’s what that’s what my clients do and that’s what I would encourage you to do as well. And you can also schedule a free consult with me. Absolutely. At no cost to you just by visiting active wealth dot com. That’s active wealth dot com. We’re happy to help you Sam your thoughts on all this before we kind of go into the next part of what we’re talking about with Smart Retirement Plan?

Sam Davis:
Yeah, really, I think when it comes to making an improvement in any part of your life and in this case personal finance, the key is consistency. So if you want to be a good investor, start by being a consistent investor. If you want to be a good golfer, start by being a consistent golfer. So consistency is key. You don’t have to make huge strides every day. Just stick to that plan and you’ll improve with every passing day.

Ford Stokes:
Yeah. I would encourage everybody to kind of heed those words. But also consistency could equal things like in in real practice, like, hey, what about dollar cost averaging to diversify your risk? If you’re investing 1000 a month for 12 straight months, it’s likely going to be less volatile and you’ll be able to avoid some of the dips and things than if you just invested 12,000 at one time. And so I would encourage you to even retirees, if you’ve got extra excess income from Social Security and any pensions or withdrawals that you have, but you want to reinvest it somewhere else after you take your RMDs as an example, you may want to invest it with dollar cost averaging where you’re investing a little bit each month. As it goes in. So that’s definitely a strategy to consider, but that if you’re implementing a dollar cost averaging investment strategy, especially if you’re in your thirties, forties and fifties, even in your sixties, I would encourage you to make sure you’re consistent, like we’re putting money away and our girls 529 accounts on a monthly basis so we can be consistent. So by the time they go to college, our girls just finish their ninth grade year at North Forsyth High School. Shout out to the North Forsyth Raiders out there because that’s near their cheer gym. And our girls are varsity cheerleaders for the North Forsyth Competition cheerleading team and shout out to all those hard working girls that do that. It’s a lot of work, but I would just tell you that you got to stay invested and you also need to be consistent about any investment you do.

Ford Stokes:
And you’ve got to be consistent in staying your hand and not, okay, I want to be all out of the market. I want to be all in the market. You’ve got to stay in the market. So something to really consider. When we come back from the break to we’re going to talk about we’re going to have our inflation demonstration of the week. It’s all about gasoline prices that just generally drives up a lot of. A prices for other goods and services that were transporting those around these days. And then Sam’s got some information on that as well. And then we’re going to talk the rest of the show about how to build a smart retirement plan brick by brick. And we’re going to go over each brick. So we’re so glad you’re with us. And remember, when you’re looking for information about retirement, obviously you need to come to the active wealth show and listen to us every week. We appreciate that. Or if you miss it, go to active wealth show to check things out. But if you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly, be aggressive about seeking that knowledge so that you can make informed financial decisions and also trust your own instincts. Don’t just trust what some advisor is telling you. Right. So when we come back to the break, we’re going to have our inflation demonstration we’re talking about on this week’s show, How to build a smart retirement plan. Brick by brick. Best is yet to come.

Producer:
And baby fixed annuities, including multiyear 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.

Ford Stokes:
All right. And welcome back activators the active well, Sean Ford Stokes chief financial adviser and despite it being summer, we don’t take a week off because we’re here for you. We’re here to invest in you. We want to make sure that we’re giving you new information every single week to help you make an informed financial decision better educate you on how to build a smart retirement plan. So we’re going to be talking about the rest of these next three segments. So, Sam, let’s go ahead and share the inflation demonstration sounder.

Producer:
It’s time for an act of wealth inflation demonstration.

Ford Stokes:
Prices at the pump continue to shatter records. This summer, the national average for regular gas hit a fresh record of $4.48 a gallon in the month before Memorial Day weekend, according to Triple A. That marks an increase of $0.15 in the past week and $0.40 in a month. Gas prices are now up 27% from the day before Russia invaded Ukraine. Gas prices are now up by 27% from the day before Russia invaded Ukraine. We are living in an ever more expensive world. Increase fuel and energy costs will lead to rising prices across almost all sectors of the economy. This means you need to have a plan. You may be living 30 plus years in retirement. We’ve got to do everything we can to help you protect and grow your wealth and have your money grow as inflation grows. Sam, you pulled up an interesting thing here that had gas prices by state. And I’m going to let you kind of share the information with the folks. I think it was very telling. The California prices just kind of are mind blowing to me.

Sam Davis:
Yeah. So we’re looking at and this is available for anyone who wants to do some research for themselves. Just go to gas prices, triple A and they give you a nice little infographic where you can look at the whole map of the United States and what the prices are at. And then down below, we’re taking a look at the price averages for regular mid-grade premium and diesel and diesel is really an important one to take a look at. And if you sort by the states that have the most expensive diesel gas prices, California is sitting at the top nearly $6.60 per gallon of diesel. New York’s not far behind that 650 per gallon of diesel. And this is what really concerns me for because all those trucks that fill up the highways on to 85, 75 and 85 in Atlanta and really all across the country that are bringing us food, you know, the products that we buy and use every day, you know, those trucks are running on diesel. So increased shipping costs are something to look out for.

Ford Stokes:
No question. Also, we’ve got the rise of health care costs to. So we’re going to have we’re doubling up here on the inflation demonstration for you all this week. The cost of health care is climbing rapidly for retired Americans. A new estimate from Fidelity Investment. Released on Monday shows the average 65 year old retiring this year can expect an average of $315,000 in health care and other related medical expenses during their retirement. That’s a sharp increase from last year, when Fidelity projected that most retired couples would spend up to an average of 300,000. The analysis comes as retired Americans confront sky high inflation with a price for everyday goods like rent, groceries and gasoline surging. So we’ve also talked on the show about CPI and CPI, CPI. Q Is the Consumer Pricing Index urban, which is the basically what we call the headline? I’m doing air quotes here for Sam. The headline CPI index, the consumer pricing index and CPI is actually 5% higher. So if you’ve got a 3% inflation rate, you’ve got 3.15% for elderly because the the costs of the things that elderly the elderly use like health care more than the rest of us, that ends up being more costly for them. And honestly, you need to have a plan for health care as well. And that will be part of our smart financial plan we’re going to talk about here today. But that was really interesting, both the rising price of gas, which also affects all of our goods and services that we consume, and then also the rising health care costs as well. Sam, your thoughts on any of that?

Sam Davis:
You’re living in an ever more expensive world, like you said, and retirees are living longer. So it’s really not just enough to be a good earner during your working years or even a good saver anymore. Having that plan to and being prepared for a for a world that gets more expensive with with each passing year, you know, you get a little bit of relief with your Social Security. They have that built in cost of living adjustment. But when it comes to your other sources of retirement income, you need to plan for things being a bit more expensive as you get older.

Ford Stokes:
Yeah, that kind of is a perfect segue way into us talking about smart financial plan or really a smart retirement plan, what we’re trying to talk about today. So I’m going to give you kind of some bricks in the wall here of the plan. So the first one would be smart inspection. You’ve got portfolio analysis, income gap analysis, a Social Security maximization report, an actual tax plan and a medicare review. And we give all of that to you for absolutely for free and no cost to you. All you’ve got to do is is visit Active Wealth and click that schedule a consultation button in the upper right corner and you’ll get placed directly into my calendar. Or you can just pick the phone up and give us a call at 7706851777. Again, 7706851777. So that first part of a smart financial plan is kind of to inspect what you expect, what we call smart inspection. You need to understand the fees you’re paying, the risk you’re taking, the correlation of your assets. What kind of Social Security income can you expect? Also, are there ways for you to maximize your Social Security income before you start taking it? Is there a way to get more tax efficient with your portfolio? And then also, you know, what are we going to pay in Medicare costs? And also, if you’ve got a chance, if you’re, say, 60, 61 years old, now is the perfect time to start planning for Medicare, believe it or not, because they have a two year lookback and you want to avoid that two year lookback.

Ford Stokes:
And then after smart inspection, the next brick and the smart retirement plan is smart, safe, which includes kind of not in the market investing and also a bond replacement. So not in the market investing would be things like life insurance or annuity products. Both are life insurance products. Annuities can help you generate a retirement income you can never outlive with also market like gains and get some growth and also get income without market risk because your money is not actually invested in the market. So my water bottle example, so I take out a bottle of water here, just my Aquafina water bottle. And let’s say you invest up to the waterline before you open up the bottle of water. They have to save 100 pennies of 100 pennies and every dollar you give them. So you have to save 100% of the money you give them into a safe financial product like the ten year US Treasury, which is paying out over 2% now. And what they do at the end of year one, they take the interest that was generated, that 2% plus interest that was generated by the ten year US Treasury. And they take that interest and they invest it into options like the S&P 500, the NASDAQ 100 or the Credit Suisse Raven PAC or the JPMorgan Cycle Index. There’s all kinds of different indices out there.

Ford Stokes:
Well, it’s important, though, you want to make sure that you’re getting as high of a participation rate as possible when you’re investing in a smart, safe manner. And the way to invest in the right way is to, one, minimize the fees you’re paying. So you want to avoid any income writer fee. Try to avoid those. Invest in accumulation based annuity, generate your own income, don’t you don’t have to pay an annuity company for the right to be able to distribute money to yourself. Most annuity companies allow for a five plus percent penalty free withdrawal each year, so you could do that also. All annuities are basically RMD friendly so you can start getting. Rmds required minimum distributions distributed to you, and you got to pay the taxes on that. But a smart, safe way to go is to take the money that would you would place into bonds. You know, a typical 6040 portfolio, 60% stocks, 40% bonds you take. 40 the 40%, you cut it in half and put 20% at least into a fixed indexed annuity. And the other would be to try to implement a structured note ladder, which would be a bond replacement strategy as well. But that kind of feeds into a smart risk strategy. So right now we’ve got two elements of a smart retirement plan. You get smart inspection of your current plan. Then we have smart, safe investing, which would include fixed indexed annuities or life insurance, or a combination of both.

Ford Stokes:
The society benefits from life insurance because if I were to pass away, my life insurance would pay out to my wife and my two kids and my twin girls who were 15 years old, and therefore they wouldn’t become wards of the state. And oh, I works and she can make her own money, but it would be helpful for her to have that kind of buffer. Right. The next brick in this smart retirement plan is smart risk. Your goal with tactical asset allocation is to capture about 70% of the gains, but only 40% of the losses by rebalancing consistently. Let me ask you, I mean, do you feel like you could have done better if you had just reallocated and rebalanced each month this year? I think so. I think that would be a good idea. Strategic allocation is another example of smart risk where you’re not overturning your account and you’re not incurring a whole lot of fees and you’ve got the right strategy and you change strategies on a yearly basis, on a monthly basis. We try to reduce your fees as part of Smart Risk, too. That’s why the folks who listen to us on the Active Wealth Show, we encourage you to pick up the phone and give us a call. We’re happy to work with you and help you however we can. We’re going to talk more about a smart retirement plan right when we come back from the break.

Ford Stokes:
You’re listening to Active Wealth Show right here on AM 920. The Answer. See. Right. All right. Welcome to the Active Wealth Show. I’m Ford, Stoke’s chief financial adviser. I’ve got Sam Davis, our executive producer, here with us. And we’re talking about how to build a smart retirement plan. The first brick in our smart retirement plan path is smart inspection. The next one is smart safe, which is not in the market investing with life insurance or fixed indexed annuities. Smart risk we talked about with tactical asset allocation, strategic allocation, reducing your fees and also a structured note ladder. I want to finish on that point. So our structured note ladder, what we like to do is invest in five consecutive months with five different banks, with five different structured notes, with five different interest rates, but more specifically, five different starting points on the S&P 500, the NASDAQ 100, and the Russell 2000. And as long as any one of those three do not reach. 30% lower than where you bought them. From a level perspective, your principle is 100% protected and they’ve got to keep paying you out for the 12 months. Now, these aren’t supposed to be compared to bank CDs by any stretch of the imagination. There are different products. I mean, structured notes are securities. They do involve market risk. And obviously bank CDs have the protection of the FDIC and the federal government. The next brick in our path for our smart retirement plan is smart income.

Ford Stokes:
You want to have some income planning. You want to understand if you have a retirement income gap or not, income planning and planning for the income, you’re able to withdraw each and every month, more so than just building the one big nest egg number. And listen, we like to be in the 4% rule. We like to spend less, 4% or less of our principal each year. And so therefore, we likely won’t run out of money. But we couple that with what’s going on in the markets. And if people are losing 15 to 20% or more of their assets, that is not happening with. You know, active wealth clients. But, you know, it’s it’s important to note that you need to have an income plan. And also, you know, market loss can be part of that, not just your withdrawal rates. You want to be careful about what’s going on in down markets. You don’t want to over withdraw. Also, you want to have for smart income, you want to maximize the Social Security income benefit you’re going to see. And the rule this is the longer you wait, the more you’re going to make. And we help people understand how to calculate. Your Social Security income benefit and not just take the Social Security Administration’s word for it. And the best way to do that is you take your top 35 earning years, you give us that your Social Security income statement, and then we will.

Ford Stokes:
Do the analysis of your statement and and kind of give you an idea of what you can expect. And we also have some what if analysis of, hey, if you take it here, this is what you’re going to get. If you wait another year, you’re going to 8% more. This is what you could get, things like that. You also want to follow rules with smart income. You want to follow the 4% rule which states they don’t remove more than 4% of your assets. You want to follow the rule of 100, which is you take 100, subtract your age. So let’s say you’re 60 years old. You subtract 60 from 100 and that’s a remainder of 40, and you’ve got 40% that should actually be in the market at risk. How many of you are at have got over 80, 90, 95% of your assets invested into securities versus bonds or versus annuities or other different financial products. And also you just want to implement it. You want to actually implement a smart income plan. You don’t want to just sit there and wing it. Next is smart health, and that includes Medicare plan, reviewing and having a plan for Medicare starting at age 61. Because they’ve got a two year look back at Medicare to determine how much their your Medicare surcharges are going to be. And so what I would say and what I would suggest is.

Ford Stokes:
Really have a good plan for Medicare Part A, B, D and long term care. Medicare Plan A is for the hospitals. Medicare Plan B is for physicians. And the only thing that makes sense is Medicare Plan D is for drugs. And you know, I personally recommend and like my our clients to work with Bonnie Dobbs with Medicare and other red tape and she likes to put people into either Medicare Advantage or Medicare supplement insurance. A lot of the folks that I work with that are hiring high net worth folks that, you know, got 1,000,002 plus in assets under management. And they they like to cap their costs completely. They don’t want to deal with a, you know, a co-pay or deductible if they get checked into the hospital. So what they’re doing is they’re. Investing in. To a medicare supplement insurance plan. Also we’ve got folks that are investing in long term care insurance. Did you know that there are over 40 million unpaid caregivers in the United States and most of those are the wives of the men who need long term care and the family can’t afford to. To put dear old dad in the long term care facility and. Dear old mom has to take care of them. And I mean right now, I mean, if you’re looking for a private room, long term care because you’re over $120,000 a year. And if they need assisted living and and more care, that’s even more money.

Ford Stokes:
And many of you are self insuring on long term care. We we do so long term care insurance we do share that with our with our clients but it’s not a have to. You can self insure it but I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t try to self insure on long term care unless I had probably 2 million plus of total assets, total liquid assets. And also if you didn’t if you don’t owe any money on your home. So that’s kind of having a smart health plan. Also, you need to have a plan if let’s say you want to retire at age 61 or 62 years old. You better have a plan, a health insurance plan to get you to Medicare to age 65. You need to know what that’s going to cost you and how that’s going to contribute to your monthly expenses when you’re doing that smart income plan as well. And then the next brick on our smart retirement plan path here is. Smart tax. You got tax diversification. You want to have some money in taxable buckets, money in tax deferred and money in tax free buckets. Also, there’s only two types of tax free investments we talked about on last week’s show. Its Roth IRAs and life insurance. Now you can have whole life insurance or indexed universal life insurance or universal life insurance. But I would encourage you to consider investing into an indexed universal life insurance so you can get market like gains without market risk, with your money not being invested in the market, but you still get a death benefit protection.

Ford Stokes:
But you can grow your cash value at a greater rate, more so than that two or 3% that you might get with whole life insurance. Tax planning includes doing Roth ladder conversions, and we gave a hint in last week’s show. What I would encourage you to do is consider. Here’s my big hint. Take money from your IRA. Move it into your Roth IRA. Dollar for dollar. So let’s say you’re moving 100 grand a year for. Let’s say you’re moving 150,000 a year and you’ve got $1,000,000. Portfolio and you’re going to move that over ten years. Or eight. And you’re doing everything you can. To make sure you’re moving all of your money out of your IRA and into your Roth IRA, and you’re using taxable money to pay for it out of your investment account or your checking account. But you’re moving it over dollar for dollar. So as your IRA depletes, your Roth IRA grows. Now there’s some you know, there’s a little bit of medicine with Roth IRA is the medicine is you’ve got to pay taxes. On the amount you convert as if it is ordinary income. But if you’ve got an extra taxable account to take care of it, it’s good to take taxable money to pay the taxes on tax deferred money as it moves into tax free money.

Ford Stokes:
Because our goal is to help you divest the IRS out of being your partner in retirement. Also, we find that a lot of stockbrokers and other folks that work in the major wire houses, they don’t recommend Roth ladder conversions. They don’t want to deal with that in their practice because they want to maximize the amount of money that they manage. So they’re all worried about their compensation. For me, I’m not as worried about that. I’m worried about my clients because I’m a fiduciary. I’m held a fiduciary standard, and taking risk off the table for my clients is very important. And part of that is taking tax risk off the table. And let me ask you, as you’re driving around in Atlanta, heading Home Depot, going to get a big weekend plan to plant some flowers or plant in the garden, get some tomatoes in the ground. You know what? What are you thinking? Are you thinking taxes are going to go up in the future? Because I do, I think taxes are going to go up in the future. Sam thinks taxes are going to go up if you try to even have to ask him. And if that’s the case, then wouldn’t you be better off now trying to start divesting? The IRS sort of being your partner in retirement because they’re not the kind of partner you want. I promise you, the other kind of partner that’s sitting there with her hand out going, What are you paying me? And we want to do a better job with that.

Ford Stokes:
Also, if you do the proper type of Roth ladder conversions and the Roth IRA planning. You’re going to eventually get it where your tax rate and your effective tax rate is around 10% to 14%, depending on how much you’re getting paid in Social Security income or if you’ve got a pension or not. But your withdrawals from your IRA. Are completely different if you’re pulling it from a Roth IRA versus an IRA. If you’re pulling from an IRA and let’s say we go back up to what taxes were during the Kennedy years, the current 24% bracket was actually 56% from 1960 to 1963 during JFK’s years. Well, guess what that means? That’s 8% higher than two times what we’re paying in the 24% bracket right now. And we’re talking more about, you know, Roth IRA and Roth conversions when we come back. And also, you know, planning for life insurance with life insurance to generate that tax free retirement income. We’re so glad you’re with us here on this week’s active wealth show. We’ll be right back. As in AM 920, the answer? And welcome back activators the act of well show. I’m fortunate to be chief financial adviser and I’ve got Sam Davis, our executive producer, with us. And I want to talk about beating bank CDs real quick. Sam, play that beating bank CD Sounder.

Producer:
Need a higher rate of return from your safe money. Listen up, it’s time to beat the bank CD rates.

Ford Stokes:
So listen, if you’re tired of getting 0.05 2.6% on your bank CD money, and you’ve got old bank CDs that are just sitting there not doing anything and you’re losing money to inflation. That’s a melting ice cube strategy. What I would encourage you to do is consider investing into. A 2 to 3 year multi year guaranteed annuity or a five year. Or six year fixed indexed annuity. That would be a really good idea. Don’t just waste your money by. Investing in bank CDs because guess what? Guess who benefits the most from you? Investing into bank CDs? The bank. And I would encourage you to bank on yourself. I would encourage you to consider a micro or a multi year guaranteed annuity. We do market and sell multi year guaranteed annuities. We also market and sell. Fixed index annuities that only have a surrender period of five years. That’s a lot lower than what most fixed indexed annuities that usually are seven, ten, 12 and 14 years long. So I would encourage you to consider. Investing into a fixed index annuity that’s only a five year or a two or three year multiyear guaranteed annuity. The the MIGA is the multiyear guaranteed annuities that come from companies like Skylark and Mutual of Omaha and others. They’re basically going to pay between two and 3% on that, but that’s a lot higher than 0.6. So we can definitely help you. All you’ve got to do is reach out to us at. 7706851777. Again, 7706851777. Or you can just visit Active Wealth and click that.

Ford Stokes:
Scheduling consultation in the upper right corner. It’s absolutely free. We we give you a full, smart retirement plan. We give you a full financial plan to your 95th birthday. Absolutely. At no cost to you. We want to do everything we can to make sure you don’t have to go back to work and make less than you did when you were working. Another brick in our smart retirement. Plan path. Here is a smart plan. You want to have a comprehensive retirement plan just like we just talked about. You want to get results in advance planning. If you don’t feel like you understand your retirement in advance right now and you don’t have an idea of what it’s going to look like going forward, I would encourage you to pick up the phone and give us a call at 7706851777. Again, that’s 7706851777. Or just visit active Ofcom or visit active wealth show or our episodes are up there all the time. You can see them any time you want. Then also you’ve got to do a smart launch. You’ve got to take informed action. Your retirement success absolutely depends on it. Tony Robbins says, Hey, you haven’t made a decision unless you’ve taken action, so make sure you take action. That’s that smart launch part of the Smart Retirement Plan. Then the next is Smart Legacy. But a smart legacy plan would be, hey, I want to make sure, one, I have a will. You can also consider investing into a trust.

Ford Stokes:
But that smart legacy, also, the number one smart legacy to me is one have a final expense plan. Make sure you’ve got your funeral expenses paid for. I you know, when my mom passed away over a little over 16 years ago now, she actually never met my girls. Unfortunately, my girls were 15 years old and when she passed away, my sister and I had to go out of pocket. We had to both come out of pocket and pay for her funeral. And her funeral cost is like right around ten grand. She had over 500 and something. People attended her funeral because she was 63 years old when she died. So she was young. And she had she had a lot of people that she knew here in Atlanta. And. The next is you really should consider a Roth IRA because if your kids are going to inherit something liquid cash or liquid assets, they would love to be able to invest. They would love to be able to accept and inherit. An inherited Roth IRA versus an inherited IRA. Big difference with an inherited IRA. They have to pay the ordinary income taxes on the money that they’re receiving on their income tax rate. And more than likely, when they inherit money from you, they’re going to be in their prime earning years. So they’re going to get a lot less than what you’re. Wanted to give them. The IRS is going to get more and more of that money and they have to take it over a ten year period.

Ford Stokes:
They got rid of the stretch IRA. And in other words, it used to be where you could inherit it and then you could do it based on your age and stretch it over your your lifetime of retirement. Now, they don’t do that. They make. If you inherit an IRA, they make you take it over ten years. Next thing you do is have a smart review. You need to assess what’s going on with metric performance of your retirement plan. Listen, if you’ve seen a significant double digit losses this year, you’re really owe it to yourself to come in and talk to us. You really do. You deserve it. You deserve to have a free review so you can understand the fees you’re paying, the risk you’re taking, the performance of your assets, and also the allocation of your assets and the correlation of your assets. We measure risk, by the way, with a measurement called standard deviation, and we’ll give you an actual metric number on that. And also the average rate of return over the last 20 years of your assets. And you’ll see whether there’s a good risk reward exchange with your current assets and also what it looks like with our recommended portfolios and the last just smart adjust, you want to be able to adjust and make changes to your plan, make changes at least on a quarterly basis. And if you’re not doing that, you’re not investing in a smart way. It’s the final.

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

Ford Stokes:
So on today’s show, we heard a little bit from Laura Ingraham in my interaction with her on that national financial webinar with financial advisers across the country. And it was great to hear her thoughts on being careful, staying the course, don’t react or invest emotionally and stay invested, and also to seek counsel. And we’re happy to be that counsel for you. I think you’ll also find our our advisory fee and portfolio fees to be incredibly reasonable and likely less than what you’re paying now. And then we talked at length about, hey, here’s what’s going on with gas prices and health care costs. We gave you our inflation demonstration. And then we also shared. Our significant smart retirement plan. We kind of talked about it actually with different bricks in our path for our smart retirement plan. So. And I want to recap those. You’ve got smart inspection where you’ve got portfolio analysis, income gap analysis, Social Security maximization, tax planning and Medicare review. All of that is part of a free financial plan and portfolio analysis. When you meet with us and you’ve got to just visit active wealth dot com click that schedule a consultation button or give us a call at 7706851777. Also, now’s a good time to remind you. Also, you can get a free copy of my book, Annuity 360 at Annuity 360 net. That’s Annuity 360 dot net. And then Smart Safe, which was not in the market investing with life insurance products like life index, universal life insurance and fixed indexed annuities, and then also making sure you’ve got a good bond replacement strategy.

Ford Stokes:
Then we talked about smart risk with tactical asset allocation and fee reduction and strategic allocation, even a structured note ladder. We talked about smart income with income planning, Social Security maximization and rule following with the 4% rule and the rule of 100. And then smart health with Medicare planning with plan Medicare plan A, B, and D and also at least having an idea of what could happen with long term care, by the way. According the US Government, we’ve got 6.9 people out of every ten will need long term care. So which one are you or are you the one that’s going to need long term care or not? And the gentleman lived to be about 18 months in long term care facilities and women live over three years in long term care facilities. Smart tax with tax diversification. Tax deferred tax free. Just trying to get your money in different buckets, but specifically investing in Roth IRAs and life insurance. Smart planning with a comprehensive retirement plan and seeing your results in advance, what we call results in advance planning. You need that. Smart launch, you actually need to take action on what? Whatever we talk about, whatever you agree to, because you don’t take action, you actually haven’t made a decision.

Ford Stokes:
And the success of your retirement absolutely depends on it. And then smart legacy. We are trying to make sure we give our kids, you know, tax free death benefit from life insurance or Roth IRAs that are absolutely tax free. We’re also making sure we have a will so that the state is not making decisions on where our assets go or a trust to be even more tight on protecting our retirement nest egg from. You know, from creditors and things like that and taxation, additional taxation. And then you’ve got smart review. We want to kind of review each quarter kind of where we’re where we are and how we can readjust. And then just adjusting your plan on a quarterly, semi-annual or annual basis so you can enjoy your successful retirement, we hope you really enjoyed. This week’s active wall show about how to build a smart retirement plan. Hope you guys are enjoying the summer. Please stay safe, everybody. Have a great week. And when we come back next week, we’re going to talk more about the smart retirement plan and how to plan tax efficiently and also kind of what to do with your bonds. And again, everybody has a fantastic week and thank you so much for listening. Active well show right here on AM 920.

Producer:
The Answer thanks for listening to the Act of 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 Fareed Stokes at 7706851777 or visit Active Wealth Investment Advisory Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC. Become a registered investment advisor. Bcm and Active Wealth Management are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BC 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:
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 interests of our clients and to make full disclosures of any conflicts of interest. If any exist, refer to our firm brochure the ADV to a page four for additional information. Any comments regarding safe and secure products and guaranteed income streams refer only to fixed insurance products. They do not refer in any way to securities or investment advisory products. Fixed insurance and annuity product guarantees are subject to the claims paying ability of the issuing company and are not offered by BWR.

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