Start the New Year with an Improved Retirement Plan

12.19.25: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

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

Speaker1:
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.

Speaker2:
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 adviser, Ford Stokes.

Speaker3:
And welcome to another episode of The Retirement Podcast. We're so glad you're with us. I'm Ford Stokes and chief financial advisor at Sam Davis here with us, who is our senior financial advisor and co-host of the show. We've been doing this show as a radio show for the last almost six years, and now we're going to focus on our podcasts. And one of the things that we want to remind everybody what we're trying to do here is we're trying to help you build a more tax efficient, more efficient, and more market efficient portfolio so you can build that successful retirement. Sam, let's go ahead and get into this week's episode. We're going to talk about 2026 and how we can help all of our listeners and also our viewers on YouTube, how they can actually make 2026 their most successful financial year ever.

Speaker4:
Yeah. And I actually think, Ford, that this is the best time of year to get your things together and start putting together what is likely going to be a better financial plan and a better retirement plan for your future. And most people have a little bit of extra time around the holidays. People are setting new goals and resolutions for themselves. Why not make retirement and a better financial plan something that's at the top of your list for the new year? And so, Ford, we want to get into some of these items. But first I have a quote of the week from Robert Kiyosaki.

Speaker5:
And now for some financial wisdom, it's time for the quote of the week.

Speaker4:
It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep. How hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. And Ford, I think this is a great quote because it is not just about how much you make. We've worked with folks that have very high incomes that have not done a good job saving. And people who have, you know, lower or modest incomes who have done a fantastic job saving throughout their careers. It really is about what you keep, and that's why a couple of the first things we do for is try to help people. What you said become more efficient, save the money on fees, market efficient, save them money on their expense ratio, trading fees, management fees, things like that, and more tax efficient as well. If you can get some of that risk, some of those fees and taxes out of your plan, you're going to be keeping a lot more of your hard earned money.

Speaker3:
Yeah. With when you're reducing fees, it's a guarantee, right? You're not to depend on how the market performs. Also, if you want to take the income portion of your portfolio and lock that in and do what you talk about a lot. Sandwiches, hey, declare victory. So take 20 to 40% of your portfolio and put it into a fixed indexed annuity and replace the bonds within your portfolio. Then go more aggressive with ETFs and actual equity ownership within your portfolio. That's a great strategy as well. So just if you just did those two things and say, hey, I'm going to reduce my fees, I want to reduce my advisory fees, my portfolio fees, my expense ratio within my portfolio. I'm going to do that first. Then also I'm going to. The second thing is I'm going to replace bonds and I'm going to delete the advisory portfolio fees with that. But I gotta tell you, if you just did those things, you're probably going to get between 1 and 5% more efficient and more effective. How that could build over a 30 to 35 plus year retirement. That's going to leave a lot more money for you to enjoy during retirement, but also really have a lot more money to give to your heirs to make sure it lasts through the generations. When those kids feel like they hit the lottery when you pass away. It'd be nice if you had enough money where there were. If you had two kids, where there was two lottery checks, where you had it big enough, where they could sustain that and also have some guardrails in place with revocable trust and things like that, where they can't blow it all in the first year. Um, it's over like 70% of all retirements are actually with when those inheritance happen, they're all blown within the first year, some within the first 90 days.

Speaker4:
And what I find is that people really just don't know or don't understand the components of their portfolio that are holding them back. They may get those quarterly statements in the mail. They may get them, you know, just by checking in on their, you know, dashboard, on their financial accounts. But most people are really just focused on what's that top number, what's that balance? How much have I gone up? How much have I gone down? I hope I haven't gone down. They're not getting into the components of the portfolio, the fees, those management fees that you're paying. And what we're suggesting is just a few adjustments right off the jump. And we find those areas for improvement when we do a portfolio analysis for everybody. And I think this is also a good time of year, not just for planning and getting those statements together for, but for thinking about that smart vision that you have for your retirement because everyone has one, whether they know it or not. And you wrote about this in your book for the Smart Retirement Plan. Smart vision is one of the first things that you want people to be thinking about, and it helps us understand how to build a plan that's going to help them make that vision their reality.

Speaker3:
Yeah. If you want to get a free e-book copy of the Smart Retirement Plan, I encourage you to go ahead and visit retirement. Com forward slash plan. That's retirement com forward slash p a n and just put your information in. We'll reach out to you and we'll email you that free e-book copy so you can get that right away. Absolutely no cost just because you watched and download our podcast. Um, here's some questions for you to ponder before you start planning for the future. Number one is what are you doing during your retirement years? Like, are you supporting a charity or are you spending time at church? Are you trying to support the church? Are you are you relaunching with a new career or are you traveling a lot with your spouse? Are you spending a lot of time with kids and grandkids? Or do you have a lake house or a beach house where the kids and grandkids come to visit you? More than just on Thanksgiving and Christmas? They're there with you on Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, and all throughout the summer. What are those things that you're doing during your retirement years? Try to write those down, like what's your best plan for retirement? We don't want to just necessarily have, let's say, 1 million to $2 million for retirement and then just go sit in our downsized home where nobody's going to come see us. You might want to get on the water, um, with your home.

Speaker3:
Then also the next thing is. And Sam, you and I talk about this quite a bit is like, who are you with? Are you spending time with family? You spending time with friends? Are you traveling in retirement with friends, or are you playing golf and going on golf trips? Guys, trips to Biloxi or Vegas or or, you know, anywhere where they've got great golf and a lot of fun things like that. So I mean, that's for the guys out there. Ladies, are you going out and shopping and going on shopping trips to, you know, to New York or, you know, what are you doing with retirement? But also who are you with? And then also who are you taking care of in retirement? Are you taking care of elderly parents? And we're a lot of Gen Xers are what's called that sandwich generation, where you're taking care of your parents and you're taking care of your kids. We're in that situation now with my my dad and my mother in law. Um, my, my wife's lost her dad. I've lost my mom a lot of years ago. Almost 20 years ago now. Um, but we've I've still got my dad, who's 87 years young, and I've still we've still got her mother, who's 82 years young, and they're both still hanging in there doing alright, but we're having to either help financially or we're having to spend a lot of time with them.

Speaker3:
But we also have 19 year old twin daughters that are going to Auburn that are costing us a lot of money out of state. So it is a drain financially. We do have a little bit of time that we've got to spend on both sides with our parents and then also with our kids too. So it's it can be a lot. So you got to figure out who you're taking care of. One thing too, that I was going to share is there's over 40 million. Tendai says there's over 40 million unpaid caregivers in the United States, and he's one of the foremost experts on ageism. And I think there's a real opportunity for all of us to really get a plan for that. Let's really try to plan what are we doing? Um, during retirement, who are we taking care of? And also just try to set some specific goals for ourselves. Hey, we really want to make sure that our kids colleges, our college education are completely taken care of without them going into debt, that might be a great goal. We want to make sure that we can pay for the weddings and rehearsal dinners for our kids, whether weddings for the for the girls or rehearsal dinners for the for the boys. And then we may want to have want to make sure that we're not spending more than 4% each year. And we're drawing more than 4% during our retirement.

Speaker3:
Want to make sure our nest egg never goes down during retirement so we can leave money to our heirs, but more specifically, our money can outlive us versus us outliving our money. And we may have an idea of, hey, do we want to retire or do we want to relaunch? Do we actually want to go more entrepreneurial with it? Um, you know, one of the things that Mr. Wonderful says is a salary is what they give you to give up your dreams. You may if you finally have saved enough money, you may want to go ahead and relaunch and really build a business. And then the last thing is really, how are you going to fund it? And that's what Sam and I are here for. We're going to help you fund it. And I will tell you, the best way for you to fund it is to get more tax efficient, more efficient, and more market efficient, for sure, but also try to have a plan for your retirement income plan. And that starts with the retirement income gap analysis. Sam, you're really adept at helping all of our folks on building that retirement income plan for them using bond replacement strategies. Why don't you go more into that and also talk about what it means to actually get a smart inspection of your retirement savings, which is that first part right after you build that smart vision for your retirement.

Speaker4:
Yeah. So if you've answered those questions that Ford just went through, now you have that smart vision, which is so good for two reasons. One, it's going to get you excited about retirement. It's going to get you thinking about the future. It's going to get you motivated to achieve that goal. Because now you have a vision. You have a goal. You've answered those questions. And the second reason that's important is because that's going to dictate what your budget is in retirement. Meeting that vision for yourself, meeting that goal is going to have a price. It's going to have a price every month. And now it's your job and our job, working together with you to build a plan that's going to help you fund that smart vision. So whether it's $5,000 a month or $10,000 a month, whatever you need to make your vision a reality, we want to make sure that that income is coming to you on a guaranteed basis. We start with a Social Security maximization report. We take a look, see what are you going to get from Social Security that's going to help make up some of that cost monthly for you. Then we look at your guaranteed income sources. You know, hey, do you have a pension? What are you getting from that? Do you have rental income that you're generating from some of your properties, all of the guaranteed income sources. And usually for there's a difference between the amount of guaranteed income that people have coming in in their retirement plan and their expenses each month. And that difference is what we call that retirement income gap. And so the next changes that we're going to make to your plan are going to focus on filling that retirement income gap so that we know at the very least, your expenses are going to be met on a guaranteed basis every single year of your retirement.

Speaker4:
And, you know, I would ask everybody listening if given the choice, would you want your retirement income to be guaranteed or non-guaranteed? You know, sure. You could just make systematic withdrawals every single month or quarter, but you don't want the market dictating how you feel about pulling out that money you need for retirement. The smarter thing to do is structure your plan in a way that that income is going to be coming to you, guaranteed. And that's really where our smart inspection comes through for. We're doing this every single week for people who give us a call, who come into our office, whether they're working with us here in the state of Georgia, where our headquarters is located, or anywhere in the United States. We take a look at your statements, and we want to take a look at what are the components of all of your different accounts, what are the fees that you're paying? What are the tax consequences that you have based on your plan right now? And one thing that we're doing a lot for is we're doing annuity x rays. A lot of people have annuities out there. Most of them are variable annuities that are really underperforming and draining them on fees. And so that annuity x ray is really important. If you have an annuity that's older, maybe one that you got five, ten years ago or longer, that's a really important piece for us to take a look and see how we can improve.

Speaker3:
There's a couple of things that I want to follow in on that. First of all, great job. I think you outlined it exactly what people need to really look at when they're doing smart inspection. We'll go into everything you get with the smart inspection, absolutely at no cost to you. We'll go into that next. But I wanted to share a couple of things. One is it's more of a question, how would you like to make sure that the income that you're generating from retirement is free of all of these. So if you are if you replace the income portion of your portfolio, let's say you're going to replace the bonds within your portfolio and you eliminate let's say you're hey, I'm taking income from 40% of my portfolio. 40. I've got 40% in bonds, 60% in stocks and ETFs, or in mutual funds. When you're taking income from a fixed indexed annuity, that's not a bond you can be. Rest assured. You know what? I am at least making sure that the money I'm getting is the maximum amount of money I can get from the 40% of my portfolio also. Here's another really cool hint. Fixed indexed annuities are going to give you more than that traditional 4% withdrawal rate. So and as you age it goes up generally with most products point 1% each and every year that you take income and you age, obviously you're going to age every single year that you that you're still in this earth.

Speaker3:
So It's great that you can get a higher payout factor from 40% of your income. But how much greater would it be if your actual growth rate outpaced the withdrawal rate and it was higher than the traditional 4% rate? Most people are having are building really successful retirements with fixed indexed annuities. Also, here's another real big factor. People that own fixed indexed annuities in 2008 and 2009, they didn't lose a dime. They did not lose a single dime during retirement or during that time period. And a lot of the criticism of fixed indexed annuities really shut everything down when they didn't lose any money. And people lost 50.1% of their assets when the S&P 500 lost 50.1% of their of its actual value, and it took six and a half years for that money to come back. So can you imagine if you went six and a half years without any growth, but with a fixed indexed annuity Those people got had growth as the market rebounded there. Zero was their hero in 2008 2009. And as the market rebounded, they made out like bandits. They made a lot of money. So I would urge you to go ahead and visit retirement results. Com forward slash plan. Get the free Smart Retirement plan e-book. But then also let's go ahead and get started on your really your whole portfolio analysis and your free financial plan and your Social Security maximization report. So here's the second thing I was going to say.

Speaker3:
Here's what you get when you actually book that that free financial plan and portfolio analysis with us. Number one is you're going to get a portfolio analysis that is going to analyze the risks you're taking with with standard deviation, the fees you're paying with with expense ratio. And the three is the correlation. Your assets. That's your portfolio analysis is number one. Number two is we're going to give you a Social Security maximization report to help you maximize your Social Security income. And if you're if you're not taking Social Security or your spouse isn't taking Social Security, one of the two of you are both or you've both of you or just one of you have taken Social Security literally just within the last 12 months, but not after 12 months, not longer than 12 months. You really need to get this Social Security maximization report. And I'm a registered Social security analyst. I can help you. No problem. There's only 23 of us in the state of Georgia. We're here to help you do that. And Matt McClure and I are both part of active wealth management. We're two advisors. We're almost 10% of the total registered Social Security analysts in the entire state of Georgia. Then number three is we're going to give you a retirement income gap analysis. See if you're starting with a positive retirement income surplus or a negative retirement income gap. So we'll try to help you with with that piece, because you really want to start with a positive retirement income surplus.

Speaker3:
When you start retirement, when you're in that red zone of retirement, the first five years before retirement and the first five years after retirement, so that those ten, that ten year period is really important. Let's do a great job in that retirement red zone. Um, and then number four is we're going to give you a financial plan, your 95th birthday with your current plan. That has nothing to do with us. It's going to factor in the advisory portfolio fees you're paying, the expense ratio, the risk level you've got, the correlates of your assets. And also what is your monthly expense needs that you're going to give us? It's your you're going to give us that input. We're not going to we're not going to talk you in or out of anything. And that's going to give you, hey, here's what my current plan looks like. And we're going to grate it from 0 to 100. You're going to get a grade just like you did in school. Then number five is and this is a really important one. We're going to give you a financial plan of your 95th birthday with the youngest of the spouses. So if your wife's two years younger than you will go to your 97th and we'll go to her 95th birthday, and we're going to give you a, a complete financial plan with our recommended portfolios and a strategic Roth ladder conversion plan to help you delete the IRS from being your partner in retirement.

Speaker3:
Is that any good? Do you really want to see? How can I delete the IRS from being my partner in retirement? How can I get more fee efficient with the income portion of my portfolio? How can I generate really consistent retirement income that I can absolutely wait on? Uh, you know, how can I get that mailbox money working for me and let the rest of my assets grow? Sam, we talk about this all the time, but when people get those five things the portfolio analysis, the Social Security maximization report, the retirement income gap. Analysis number four is the Financial Planner 95th birthday. With their current plan, that has nothing to do with us. And then number five is a financial plan with our recommended portfolios and also a strategic growth ladder conversions, where they can actually delete the IRS from being their partner in retirement. Imagine if we can do all of those things and do that. It's a $2,500 plus value. We do all those things on the front end absolutely for free, so they can make an informed financial decision on their retirement future, because we want to make sure they can make that informed financial decision. As fiduciaries, we're putting their needs first. We're going to do all that on the front end, absolutely in no cost to them. It's kind of a game changer for people.

Speaker4:
Again, for most people, for they are really taken aback. They've never seen their retirement plan laid out so clearly for them, not just where they're at today and what they've done currently with no changes where that's at, but how just maybe 2 or 3 adjustments, getting some of the risk and fees out of there, especially what, just a couple things like that can do to their retirement plan and their future earnings. Because I like how you mentioned we give them a grade and we do we see we give out a lot of A's and B's, but we see some C's and D's out there as well. So you know that's kind of an interesting thing to see what grade your current plan gets. And then on our recommended plan, our recommended plans are always a passing score because we're making those adjustments based on what we need to do to help meet that vision and help them succeed in retirement. And so I really think that this time of year is fantastic to get those statements together. Definitely think about that smart vision. That's a fun thing to do with your spouse, with your family. When you've got everybody together around the holidays, you know, talk about retirement. What do you want to do? What trips do you want to go on? And then you can give retirement results. And the team here at Active Wealth Management a call, and we'll work with you on how we're going to fund it. We've helped so many retirees really bring that smart vision to life forward. And what we want to do here at Active Wealth more than anything is do that for more people in our community.

Speaker3:
Yeah, Sam, go ahead and put the phone number up to, you know, you guys can just call us. It's 1-888-814-0304. That's (888) 814-0304. Um, we're here to help you. Uh, you can call us toll free. We can work with folks in all 50 states. Um, there's a de minimis standard where we can work with up to five people in each state. But we're also registered in a lot of states because we get a lot of calls to help people. We meet with people via zoom quite often. We love doing virtual appointments. We also love meeting with people at one of our three offices here in in Alpharetta, Georgia, also in Midtown Atlanta and also in Kennesaw, Georgia. And we we love meeting with folks in the panhandle of Florida as well. Um, through our Regis and and WeWork office, um, deals that we've got with those folks. So just pick up the phone and give us a call again at (888) 814-0304. We're happy to take your call. Um, we've got licensed financial advisors, we're fiduciaries. We've got to put your needs ahead of our own. And we're going to start the right way by giving you that full financial plan to your 95th birthday with a portfolio analysis, the the Social Security maximization report, in the form of an RSA roadmap and a retirement income gap analysis, and a strategic Roth letter conversion to help you delete the IRS from being your partner.

Speaker3:
Retirement. We're going to do all of those things on the front end upfront. Absolutely free for you. The meter is not running. So all you've got to do is reach out to us and give us a call at 304. If you haven't done it before, if you feel like you know I really need to do that, go ahead and make the choice if you. Tony Robbins says you haven't made a decision unless you've taken action, I would encourage you to go ahead, take that action and give us a call at (888) 814-0304. And let's get started right away today. Sam, I think this has been a very informative and and action packed episode of retirement results. Thanks so much to everybody for listening. Um, and we look forward to talking with you soon and happy retirement everybody.

Speaker2:
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, 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.

Speaker1:
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 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.

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